We must have come across many books, lectures, lecturers on being happy and
content. This weekend lets spend some time on a person who has been
un-officially rated as the happiest man on earth. A brief about him is
attached below. What a time to talk of happiness; the festivities of light
just round the corner. Interested souls can do goggling to know more about
him; whatever you may rate this write-up, but the person is interesting for
sure.
Matthieu Ricard (born 15 February 1946) is a French Buddhist monk who
resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal. Born in
Aix-les-Bains, Savoie, France, he is the son of the late Jean-François
Revel (born Jean-François Ricard), a renowned French philosopher, and grew
up among the personalities and ideas of French intellectual circles. He
first travelled to India in 1967. His mother is the lyrical abstractionist
painter Yahne Le Toumelin, who has been a Buddhist nun since 1968.
He worked for a Ph.D. degree in molecular genetics at the Pasteur
Institute. After completing his doctoral thesis in 1972, Ricard decided to
forsake his scientific career and concentrate on the practice of Tibetan
Buddhism.
He lived in the Himalayas studying with the Kangyur Rinpoche and some other
great masters of that tradition and became the close student and attendant
of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche until his death in 1991. Since then, Dr. Ricard
has dedicated his activities to fulfilling Khyentse Rinpoche’s vision.
Ricard’s photographs of the spiritual masters, the landscape, and the
people of the Himalayas have appeared in numerous books and magazines.
Henri Cartier-Bresson has said of his work, "Matthieu’s spiritual life and
his camera are one, from which springs these images, fleeting and eternal."
He is the author and photographer of Tibet, An Inner Journey and Monk
Dancers of Tibet and, in collaboration, the photobooks Buddhist Himalayas,
Journey to Enlightenment and recently Motionless Journey: From a Hermitage
in the Himalayas. He is the translator of numerous Buddhist texts,
including The Life of Shabkar.
The dialogue with his father, Jean-Francois Revel, The Monk and the
Philosopher, was a best seller in Europe and was translated into 21
languages, and The Quantum and the Lotus (coauthored with Trinh Xuan Thuan)
reflects his long-standing interest in science and Buddhism. His 2003 book
Plaidoyer pour le bonheur (published in English in 2006 as Happiness: A
Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill) explores the meaning and
fulfillment of happiness and was a major best-seller in France.
He has been dubbed the "happiest person in the world" by popular media.
Matthieu Ricard was a volunteer subject in a study performed at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison's on happiness, scoring significantly
beyond the average obtained after testing hundreds of other volunteers.
A board member of the Mind and Life Institute, which is devoted to meetings
and collaborative research between scientists and Buddhist scholars and
meditators, his contributions have appeared in Destructive Emotions (edited
by Daniel Goleman) and other books of essays. He is engaged in research on
the effect of mind training on the brain, at Madison-Wisconsin, Princeton
and Berkeley.
He received the French National Order of Merit for his humanitarian work in
the East. For the last few years, Dr. Ricard has dedicated his effort and
the royalties of his books to various charitable projects in Asia, that
include building and maintaining clinics, schools and orphanages in the
region. Since 1989, he has acted as the French interpreter for the Dalai
Lama.
As I always say, brickbats and bouquets welcome
-Sukhi
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