Matthieu Ricard sends you a joyful and happy new year message with a wish for compassion in 2018.
“Some French intellectuals despise happiness and are very vocal about it. I debated one of them for a French magazine and thought that if I ever wrote another book, I would include a chapter on the subject. In the meantime Paul Ekman, Richard Davidson, Alan Wallace, and I spent two days at a northern California coastal wilderness, writing an article titled “Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being.” I realized that the subject was so central to human life that it deserved an in-depth exploration. For a year I read everything I could get my hands on about happiness and well-being in the works of Western philosophers, social psychologists, cognitive scientists, and even in the tabloid press, which regularly reports peoples’ views on happiness, such as that of one French actress: “For me, happiness is eating a tasty plate of spaghetti”; or “Walking in the snow under the stars,” and so on.
The many definitions of happiness that I encountered contradicted one another and often seemed vague or superficial. So in the light of the analytical and contemplative science of mind that I had encountered through the kindness of my teachers, I embarked on trying to unravel the meaning and mechanism of genuine happiness, and of course of suffering. When the book came out in France, it sparked a national debate. The same intellectuals confirmed that they were not interested in happiness and discarded the idea that it could be cultivated as a skill. One author wrote an article asking me to stop bugging people with the “dirty works of happiness.” Another magazine did a feature on “the sorcerers of happiness.” After spending a grueling month in Paris engaged in these debates and with the media, I felt like the scattered parts of a puzzle.
I was happy to return to the mountains of Nepal and put the pieces back together. Although my life has become more hectic, I am still based at Shechen Monastery in Nepal and spend two months a year in my hermitage facing the Himalayas. I doubtless have a lot more practice and effort ahead of me before I achieve genuine inner freedom, but I am fully enjoying the journey. Simplifying one’s life to extract its quintessence is the most rewarding of all the pursuits I have undertaken. It doesn’t mean giving up what is truly beneficial, but finding out what really matters and what brings lasting fulfillment, joy, serenity, and, above all, the irreplaceable boon of altruistic love. It means transforming oneself to better transform the world.
When I was twenty words like happiness and benevolence did not mean much to me. I was a typical young Parisian student, going to see Eisenstein and Marx Brothers movies, playing music, manning the barricades in May ’68 near the Sorbonne, loving sports and nature. But I didn’t have much sense of how to lead my life except playing it by ear, day in and day out. I somehow felt that there was a potential for flourishing in myself, and in others, but had no idea about how to actualize it.
Thirty-five years later, I surely still have a long way to go, but at least the sense of direction is clear to me and I enjoy every step on the path. That is why this book, though Buddhist in spirit, is not a “Buddhist” book as opposed to a “Christian” or an “agnostic” book. It was written from the perspective of “secular spirituality,” a theme dear to the Dalai Lama. As such it is intended not for the Buddhist shelves of libraries, but for the heart and mind of anyone who aspires to a little more joie de vivre and to let wisdom and compassion reign in her or his life.”
~ Matthieu Ricard, Shechen Monastery, Nepal
Born in France in 1946 as the son of French philosopher Jean-François Revel and artist Yahne Le Toumelin, Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk, author, translator, and photographer. He first visited India in 1967 where he met great spiritual masters from Tibet. After completing his Ph.D. degree in cell genetics in 1972, he moved to the Himalayan region where he has been living for the past 45 years.
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