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General Buddhism => General Buddhism => Topic started by: Q on September 27, 2013, 04:20:22 PM
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Just came across this article about the happiest man in the world. I'm sure many of us know about Matthieu Richards. I read through the article and thought that it's very insightful and something that we can use to make ourselves happier as well as help in our Dharma practice. Enjoy reading!
What I've Learned
Matthieu Ricard, 67, Buddhist monk
"If you can learn how to ride a bike you can learn how to be happy," says 63-year-old Buddhist monk and Happiest Man In The World, Matthieu Ricard.
As a child, poet Andre Breton, film-maker Louis Buñuel and composer Igor Stravinsky were regular guests to Ricard's philosopher parents' Parisian home. However, observing that the genius of his parents' friends didn't seem to make them any happier he set off for the Himalayas (abandoning his work as a molecular biologist at the Pasteur Institute) and transformed his life via meditation.
At the last count he'd clocked up more than 10,000 hours. Highly complex MRI scans by cognitive scientists at the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience in Wisconsin have shown extraordinarily high levels of upbeat activity (-0.45 on a range where -0.3 is described as "beatific") and almost invisible levels of negative emotions. "I don't see everything as rosy," he says, "but the ups and downs of life don't unsettle me in the usual way."
Here are his life lessons.
Anyone can be the happiest person in the world if they look for happiness in the right place. The problem is that we tend not to.
Happiness is not the pursuit of an endless succession of experiences. That's a recipe for exhaustion more than happiness. Happiness is a way of being. The challenge is to let that way of being overtake all other emotional states.
Unlike pleasure, which exhausts itself as you experience it, happiness is a skill and cultivated. We all have the potential for it. You have to examine what contributes to a flourishing in your life. In Buddhism we say the root cause of unhappiness is ignorance.
Being happy is about raising your "baseline". It's not about seeking sudden fireworks or euphoric experiences. The first step to take is to realise that you want to improve - that the world is not a mail order catalogue for our fantasies and desires and that we have a relatively limited control over those transient, illusory conditions.
To be truly happy we have to get rid of mental toxins such as hatred, obsession, arrogance, envy, greed and pride. The whole point of mind training or meditation is to get rid of those and to cultivate positive qualities such as altruism.
You might argue that a bad temper or a bit of negativity can define a person's character so it's not necessarily bad. That's as maybe - we all have a different mix of light and shadows - but should we just give in to that view and think that it's optimal? You don't say, "it's human nature to get ill and die so why go to see a doctor" do you?
The way the mind interprets the world is a crucial element in determining the quality of every instant that goes by yet we pay so little attention to our inner condition. We must learn to recognise that there are mental states or emotions that are conducive to flourishing and some that are destructive. I call it antidote training.
Usually when we have a flash of anger there follows a sort of refractory period where we can't even begin to acknowledge the positive aspects of the person with whom we're angry. They are just 100 per cent despicable and our whole mental landscape is full of that. A direct antidote approach is to treat it like heat and cold. This means that the more you bring benevolent or altruistic thoughts at that instant to the mind, the less space there is for the opposite. This is antidote training.
By keeping aware of the anger it cannot sustain itself, it stops being fuelled and slowly dies out. If you become skilled in that, then with awareness you can simply let those afflictive emotions dissolve without keeping them in like a time bomb, or exploding them each time. It's about realising that you not anger any more than you are the flu.
Of course I get irritated. But I usually start laughing quite quickly at the irritation, because it's so silly.
Everyone would be helped by meditating for half-an-hour a day. Meditation is a very vague term and there's a lot of cliché - like emptying your mind and relaxing and all that stuff. But it's really a means to cultivate or be familiar with a better understanding of the way the mind works. Studies have shown that meditation combined with cognitive therapy can help people who suffer from severe depression and reduce the risk of relapse by up to 40 per cent.
To be completely free you can't at the same time have a responsible concern for people who depend on you. How can I be happy when I've been celibate for 30 years? If I have a family I will cause a lot of suffering so it's not feasible. It doesn't mean that you don't have wonderful friendships and relationships with half of humanity. One aspect may not be there but many others are.
Life is not all about sitting on my balcony and looking at the Himalayas. You may say it's easy for me, that I live up a mountain and don't get set upon by hoodies on the way home every night. But it's not easy. I took 70 flights from 15 July to 6 November. I've not had one day off.
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All of us can be happy man in the world when we develop inner peace. Inner peace that comes within us cannot be taken away thus leading us to happiness. Happiness depending on external source to make us happy can be taken away as it is impermanent. Hence, developing inner peace is the smartest thing to do which can lead us to eternal happiness.
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I've always admired Matthieu Ricard. He is a living proof that true happiness is achievable and he proves it through scientific methods. Because he subjected himself to those experiments, it can now be scientifically proven that happiness can be obtained and measured. As Ricard said, one can learn to be happy! There are techniques and exercises to be followed and if we follow these methods properly, we will definitely be successful. As Ricard is a Buddhist monk, it goes without saying that the methods he used were Buddhist. I think Ricard will continue to inspire people to follow Buddhism and practice meditation as a means to achieve lasting happiness.
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Beautifully expressed "happiness is not an experience but a learning to be". As such it is a state of being not an occurrence of an event or phenomena.
Happiness is within and not without. Buddhism teaches us to get out of suffering and so doing we gain inner peace and happiness. Happiness is a learning. Wonderful realisation.
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Everyone thirst for joy and happiness and hoped the party will never come to an end. Buddhism mentioned that the antidote to gain happiness is inner peace. In order to achieve the goal to happiness , the only person we could rely on is only ourself. The moment our mind is peaceful and calm, ultimately we will gain the state of happiness. We can understand this through our own experience. For instance, even if we are in the most beautiful surroundings and have everything we need, the moment we get angry any happiness we may have disappears. This is because anger has destroyed our inner peace. I really inspired to be the transformation of the next Matthieu Ricard.
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I agree Pinecone that even in the most beautiful place and also with the people we love most will disappear when anger arises.
The other illustration is that we may be happy in a favourite environment and when we leave it we will feel sad as we believe our happiness and joy had ended.
Definitely happiness is self cultivated and nurtured in our mind.
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Happiness is right there in front of us. That is what we call the Buddha Nature. We all have the ability to be ultimately happy as shown by the Buddha Himself but we are deluded from our ignorance and countless lives of bad habits has lead us nowhere and has habituated us with more delusions.
Matthieu Richards methods are the path of the Dharma as taught by the Buddha. He said simply; "if you know where to look" is deceptively difficult to do but still with an opportune human rebirth we can achieve this happiness within this lifetime if we practice diligently like him or many attained practitioners.
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In this degenerate times, people find it hard to meet the Dharma, and when they do they find it hard to learn the Dharma and practice it. They need most things to be scientifically proven to benefit them before they embark on it. Or they choose to follow the mass and succumb to the choices of the majority.
Fortunately, Matthieu Ricard, is a walking and living example of how the practice of the Dharma based on the teachings of the great sage Buddha Shakyamuni , can give him happiness. The methods he adopted and practiced transformed his mind for the better. And this is proven scientifically as he allowed himself to be clinically tested by today's scientists.
Thank you Matthieu for using your practice and experiences to help many . May you live long to continue to spread joy and happiness !!
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Happiness is not the pursuit of an endless succession of experiences. That's a recipe for exhaustion more than happiness. Happiness is a way of being. The challenge is to let that way of being overtake all other emotional states.
Not pointing fingers to everyone but this is quite common for most of us. Advertising always claim giving you the best experience from cars to holiday getaways and we deluded into thinking and believing it is true.
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Happiness is being truly selfless, has little to no personal wants and needs. Happiness is gaining renunciations, Boddhicitta and Wisdom. Any degree of these three is an increase of happiness.
Also there is an interesting movie I watch recently that is called "Happiness is". Below is the link in Youtube to the trailer. Couldn't find the link to the full movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSW2mzOumno (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSW2mzOumno)
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I was once told by my dharma teacher that ultimately there is no sadness nor happiness. I've pondered over this for a while and have not come to a conclusion that I fully grasp this. Perhaps I can dissect it using inferential logic.
Sadness arises from having projections that are not fulfilled. So likewise, happiness arises from having projections that are fulfilled. Hence, both states of mind arise from the grasping of the mind. If we free ourselves from projections and the self, then what's left is perhaps a state of mind that can labelled "inner peace". So in my opinion, we may want to reconsider our pursuit of happiness to inner peace.
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When we get what we want, we are happy. When we don't get what we want, we are unhappy. Both comes from within and in the mind. Why do we want? That is grasping, hanging on, attach to it and gratification of having it, desire and fulfilling what we want for our self, most of the time. So is being 'happy' or 'sad'crucial or important? Being neutral without feeling happy or sad in whatever circumstances or condition and just stay in peace is better. No attachment, no biasness and just as it is.
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Can science really quantify happiness with empirical data? From what I read quite a few other Buddist monks have been subjected to the same brain test and scored higher than the average man. In all cases, the monks didn't exhibit "happiness" as we perceived instead they were meditating on compassion. The test result would imply happiness is actually a state of mind and not an emotion.
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After reading the article and comments here, I just realised that Buddhism teaches us to be out of suffering, never really happiness. Now thinking of it, that is true as happiness always wears off just as sadness. Therefore these are still attachment to seeking the fulfilment of emotions. To be out of suffering is when we are able to abide in non duality where nothing is good, neither is it bad. When we train our minds thus then we will not be suffering. Meditation will help us to focus on many aspect that is making us unhappy and in understanding we will be able to maintain the peace within our minds when confronted with unhappy situations again.
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Everyone wants to be happy and Buddhism teaches us that the real source of happiness is inner peace. If our mind is peaceful, we shall be happy all the time, regardless of external conditions, but if it is disturbed or troubled, we can never be happy, no matter how good our external conditions may be. True happiness is the state of the mind.
Matthieu Ricards pursue of happiness is in accordance with the Buddha’s teachings. He applied the teachings and cultivated mental discipline to transform himself. By the practice of replacing previous negative conditioning or habituation with new positive conditioning, one can achieve inner peace and a happier self. Thank you, Matthieu Ricards for sharing what you have learned and experienced with us.
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As Mathieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk states, happiness is a state of being and it can be learned by everyone. But we need to consciously develop inner peace and happiness as we may get easily overwhelmed by our habituations and difficulties in daily life. Learning, contemplation and meditation are ways to improve our quality of life. Stopping our negative emotions like hate, ignorance, anger and desire is most important. They only increase our sense of "I" and our attachment.
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It is true indeed the secret to happiness is to develop inner peace. Meditation is the best choice to obtain peace and calmness in the mind and also cure our internal sickness such as depression, fear, anger, anxiety etc. Hence, practice more in meditation may lead to higher level which is spirituality.
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The Nyingmapa Matthieu Ricard might explain why he feels so happy while sharing cozy moments with such a brutal criminal as the evil dalie lame, known for inciting racist bloody riots, gruesome self-immolations, and waging a horrifying war against a large section of the Tibetan people because of their religious beliefs.
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Just in case Matthieu Ricard fails to offer an explanation (about so much happiness while sharing cozy moments with the evil criminal dalie), here follow some other people also overflowing with exhilarating happiness, all of them well known mass murderers and war criminals!
Scientists would be amazed at their beatific levels of ”upbeat activity”!
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And since not only Matthieu Ricard but also four-legged animals such as hyenas can experience beatific happiness while smelling blood, let's integrate them in our gallery! Any similarity with the above pictured is not mere coincidence!
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What's definition of happiness? Research in the field of positive psychology and happiness often define a happy person as someone who experiences frequent positive emotions, such as joy, interest, and pride, and infrequent (though not absent) negative emotions, such as sadness, anxiety and anger. Happiness has also been said to relate to life satisfaction, appreciation of life, moments of pleasure, but overall it has to do with the positive experience of emotions.