Buddism

- Buddhist monk is the world's happiest
man
Tibetan monk and molecular geneticist Matthieu
Ricard is the happiest man in the world according
to researchers at the University of Wisconsin. The
66-year-old’s brain produces a level of gamma
waves - those linked to consciousness, attention,
learning and memory - never before reported in
neuroscience.
As he grins serenely and his burgundy robes billow
in the fresh Himalayan wind, it is not difficult to
see why scientists declared Matthieu Ricard the
happiest man they had ever tested.
The monk, molecular geneticist and confidant of the
Dalai Lama, is passionately setting out why
meditation can alter the brain and improve people's
happiness in the same way that lifting weights puts
on muscle.
"It's a wonderful area of research because it shows
that meditation is not just blissing out under a
mango tree but it completely changes your brain
and therefore changes what you are," the
Frenchman told AFP.
Ricard, a globe-trotting polymath who left
everything behind to become a Tibetan Buddhist in
a Himalayan hermitage, says anyone can be happy
if they only train their brain.
Neuroscientist Richard Davidson wired up Ricard's
skull with 256 sensors at the University of
Wisconsin four years ago as part of research on
hundreds of advanced practitioners of meditation.
The scans showed that when meditating on
compassion, Ricard's brain produces a level of
gamma waves -- those linked to consciousness,
attention, learning and memory -- "never reported
before in the neuroscience literature", Davidson
said.
The scans also showed excessive activity in his
brain's left prefrontal cortex compared to its right
counterpart, giving him an abnormally large
capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity
towards negativity, researchers believe.
Research into the phenomenon, known as
"neuroplasticity," is in its infancy and Ricard has
been at the forefront of ground-breaking
experiments along with other leading scientists
across the world.
"We have been looking for 12 years at the effect of
short and long-term mind-training through
meditation on attention, on compassion, on
emotional balance," he said.
"We've found remarkable results with long-term
practitioners who did 50,000 rounds of meditation,
but also with three weeks of 20 minutes a day,
which of course is more applicable to our modern
times."
The 66-year-old, accompanying other senior
Tibetan monks at a festival in the remote Nepalese
Himalayan region of Upper Dolpa, has become a
globally respected Buddhist and is one of the
religion's leading western scholars.
But he has not always been on the path to
enlightenment.
Ricard grew up among the Paris intellectual elite as
the son of celebrated French libertarian philosopher
Jean-Francois Revel and abstract watercolor
painter Yahne Le Toumelin.
"All these people used to come around, most of
Paris intellectual life. We had all the French
painters and I was myself interested in classical
music so I met a lot of musicians," he said.
"At lunch we'd have three Nobel Prize winners
eating with us. It was fantastic... Some of them
were wonderful but some could be difficult."
By the time he got his PhD in cell genetics from the
Institut Pasteur in Paris in 1972 he had become
disillusioned with the dinner party debates and had
already begun to journey to Darjeeling in India
during his holidays.
Eschewing intimate relationships and a career, he
moved to India to study Buddhism and emerged 26
years later as something of celebrity thanks to "The
Monk And The Philosopher," a dialogue on the
meaning of life he wrote with his father.
"That was the end of my quiet time because it was
a bestseller. Suddenly I was projected into the
western world. Then I did more dialogues with
scientists and the whole thing started to spin off
out of control.
"I got really involved in science research and the
science of meditation."
A prominent monk in Kathmandu's Shechen
Monastery, Ricard divides his year between isolated
meditation, scientific research and accompanying
the Dalai Lama as his adviser on trips to French-
speaking countries and science conferences.
He addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos
at the height of the financial crisis in 2009 to tell
gathered heads of state and business leaders it
was time to give up greed in favor of "enlightened
altruism."
His other works include "Happiness: A Guide to
Developing Life's Most Important Skill" and several
collections of photographs of the landscape, people
and spiritual masters of the Himalayas.
Ricard donates all proceeds of his books to 110
humanitarian projects which have built schools for
21,000 children and provide healthcare for 100,000
patients a year.
He was awarded the French National Order of Merit
for his work in preserving Himalayan culture but it
is his work on the science of happiness which
perhaps defines him best.
Ricard sees living a good life, and showing
compassion, not as a religious edict revealed from
on high, but as a practical route to happiness.
"Try sincerely to check, to investigate," he said.
"That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel
-- the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is
a science of the mind."
Copyright (2012) AFP. All rights reserved.