Bring to your mind a past occasion of inner
joy and happiness," writes Matthieu Ricard
in his new book Happiness: A Guide To
Developing Life's Most Important Skill. "Recall
how you felt. Consider the lasting effect
this experience has had on your mind, and
how it still nourishes a sense of fulfilment."
"Now this," I tell Ricard, "was the point
where I started to run into trouble. However
long I worked at this meditation exercise,
the memory that kept coming back to me was
of the evening in May 1999 when I was
sitting in the Nou Camp in Barcelona, and
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored the injury-time
goal that won the Champions' League for
Manchester United."
"I would suggest that what you experienced
that night was elation. And elation is not
really what we mean by happiness. It would
be an interesting experiment for you to
relive that night, and assess what you
actually gained from it."
"You're right," I tell him, remembering how,
once the euphoria had worn off, I was left
contemplating the same void that has been
described by countless sports fans, from
Frederick Exley, author of the classic A
Fan's Notes, to Doug Stanhope, American
comedian and follower of the Boston Red Sox.
"When I woke up the next morning," I tell
him, "my head still ached, I was still
working for a magazine editor who loathed
me, and my laptop was still broken. Now that
I come to think about it, Manchester United
had done absolutely nothing for me."
"Because elation is a transient thing - not
true spiritual fulfilment."
"But if I achieve spiritual fulfilment, will
I lose interest in going to Old Trafford?"
"Absolutely not. That's one of the mistakes
people make: that a serene, balanced mind is
a dull mind. I love football."
Matthieu Ricard, French translator and right-hand
man for the Dalai Lama, has been the subject
of intensive clinical tests at the
University of Wisconsin, as a result of
which he is frequently described as the
happiest man in the world. It's a somewhat
flattering title, he says, given the tiny
percentage of the global population who have
had their brain patterns monitored by the
same state-of-the-art technology, which
involves attaching 256 sensors to the skull,
and three hours' continuous MRI scanning.
The fact remains that, out of hundreds of
volunteers whose scores ranged from +0.3 (what
you might call the Morrissey zone) to -0.3 (beatific)
the Frenchman scored -0.45. He shows me the
chart of volunteers' results, on his laptop.
To find Ricard, you have to keep scrolling
left, away from the main curve, until you
eventually find him - a remote dot at the
beginning of the x-axis.
"It's true," he concedes, "that I was well
outside the normal parameters."
As a young man, Matthieu Ricard, 60, was
regarded as one of the most promising
biologists of his generation. He completed a
starred PhD at the Institut Pasteur under
the supervision of Nobel prize-winner
François Jacob, but abandoned his scientific
career in 1972, when he moved to Darjeeling.
There, he devoted himself to studying under
Kangyur Rinpoche, a Tibetan master in the
Nyingma tradition: the most ancient school
of Buddhism. He has been a monk, and
celibate, since he was 30. Ricard still
lives at the Schechen Monastery in Nepal.
All proceeds from his books go to funding
hospitals and schools in Tibet - which makes
it feel barely appropriate that we should be
meeting in a large apartment in the 16th
arrondissement of Paris, an area roughly
comparable to Mayfair. The monk explains
that the flat - sparsely decorated with
Tibetan artwork, and pictures of the Dalai
Lama - belongs to a wealthy philanthropist
who has moved to the country. Before I met
Ricard, who greeted me in his maroon robes,
I confess to having harboured some
scepticism about his good works. But within
minutes of speaking to him, I can tell that
the $30m mansion in Malibu, where he
secretly retires to snort cocaine off the
thighs of Lithuanian hookers, in the
tradition of innumerable TV evangelists,
cannot conceivably exist. In the foreword to
Happiness, the psychologist Dr Daniel
Goleman describes how a three-hour wait at
an airport "sped by in minutes, due to the
sheer pleasure of Matthieu's orbit" - a
phrase which had made me faintly nauseous
when I first read it. Now, it seems to make
perfect sense. Ricard exudes a sense of
tranquillity, kindness and - surprisingly
enough - humour.
Versatility has been the keynote in his
life. An outstanding goalkeeper in his
youth, Matthieu Ricard also enjoys an
international reputation as a photographer,
and was lauded by Cartier-Bresson. He shows
me pictures he's taken of the idyllic view
from his hermitage. Having myself been
described by Private Eye as "journaliste
misérable" - harshly I think, given that, of
the "84,000 negative emotions" described in
Buddhist teaching, there are at least a
dozen that I haven't yet experienced - I
feel obliged to concede to Ricard that I may
have something to learn from him.
"On the other hand," I ask the monk, "how
hard is it to be happy when you live on a
mountainside with breathtaking views of the
Himalayas, where your only concern is
polishing your wind chimes? What if you had
my life, living in the shadow of the new
Arsenal stadium, the streets crowded with
vengeful Cockney van drivers, the
supermarkets staffed by cashiers who pass on
the oppression of their wretched existence
by drumming their fingers and flinging goods
down the checkout at a speed that would have
tested Peter Schmeichel in his prime? Not
that I'm saying you'd be any happier where I
grew up in Manchester, where two of my three
uncles have been fired at with Uzis..."
"What," Ricard interrupts, "is an Uzi?"
"It's a machine gun."
"Ah." The monk pauses. "I understand what
you're saying. I believe that, if I had to
live where you live, I could. By choice, I
would not move there. But if you allow
exterior circumstances to determine your
state of mind, then of course you will
suffer; you become like a sponge, or like a
chameleon. I have lived in difficult areas.
I lived in Old Delhi for almost a year. That
really is a miserable place. And yet
sometimes I felt so light there. It was like
- how can I put this - different weather."
Happiness is a remarkable book, untainted by
the pretentious tone of many works that
offer life-enhancing advice - even if one of
the reviews quoted on its first page praises
Matthieu Ricard for locating "the chambers
of the mind where serenity resides". ("In
the wardrobe of my soul," I can hear the
late Vivian Stanshall singing. "In the
section labelled 'Shirts'.")
Developing happiness, Ricard argues, is a
skill. Most people exist like beggars,
"unaware of the treasure buried beneath
their shack". We can develop our potential
as if "polishing a nugget" and eventually
(omega) achieve happiness, "like a bird
soaring into the sky when his cage is
opened".
Ricard's book exudes inspiration and
intelligence, qualities embodied in its
author. Even so, I tell him, one line that
resonates with me is a quotation from the
critic Dominique Noguez, who argues that
misery is more interesting than contentment:
"Because it has a seductive intensity, and
the attraction of always leaving something
to anticipate: happiness."
"What other things," Ricard asks now, "make
you happy?"
"I don't know... a half case of Jaboulet's
Parallèle 45 Côtes du Rhône with friends,
over prawn dhansak..."
"What you're describing is a lull; a calm in
the storm. You have to identify what it is
in that situation that makes you happy. It's
as though you're making a journey, and you
look in your rucksack to find it half filled
with provisions, half with stones. You need
to take out the stones and put in more
provisions."
"More wine?"
"No. What I'm saying is that these
interludes - of alcohol, or physical
exercise - give a hint of what life could be
like, if you changed the balance of your
mind, instead of altering external
circumstances." A laboratory rat, he says,
given access to a "pleasure bar" that
stimulates euphoria in the brain, will keep
pressing the lever until it dies of
starvation.
Ricard is a highly unusual figure in that -
by contrast with the unquestioning, some
would say credulous, nature of many
believers - he has brought the scientific
rigour of his early life to his faith: first
in the form of his translations of texts
from Tibetan (the language in which he
normally communicates) then, more recently,
in his contribution to the question of
whether science can accurately map an
individual's mental equilibrium.
He was assessed in a programme headed by the
cognitive scientist Professor Richard K
Davidson, principal of the Laboratory for
Affective Neuroscience at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. Davidson is one of the
world's leading investigators in the field
of neuroplasticity: the comparatively recent
discovery that the brain is constantly
evolving in response to experience, and that
such evolution can be represented in a scan,
then quantified.
"The relationship between the left and right
cortex of the brain can be measured," says
Ricard, "and the relationship between them
faithfully represents the subject's
temperament." Heightened activity on the
left, he says, is associated with pleasant
emotions; bias to the right indicates
negativity and depression.
"In these tests," he explains, "all the
meditators were outside the standard curve.
Statistically, they fell into in a tight,
well-defined group. Even though they came
from different backgrounds: a Tibetan nomad,
a young French boy, an academic. They all
came in a cluster. That's the point. If it
was just me, it could have been a fluke."
"Isn't there an inherited predisposition to
gloom?"
"It's true that a difference in mental
balance can be demonstrated in children aged
two. So now you're going to ask, what's the
point? It's this: the important thing with
mind training - probably a more useful term
than meditation - is that you change your
own base line. This is very different from
the temporary sensation of feeling good that
you might experience when you watch a Marx
Brothers film. What you have to do is raise
that base line."
Matthieu Ricard was born into a family that
could hardly have been better-connected. His
mother, Yahne Le Toumelin - who has become a
Buddhist nun herself - is an abstract
artist, praised by André Breton in his 1957
study, Surrealism and Painting. His father,
Jean-François Revel, who died last year, was
one of France's most celebrated
philosophical authors and journalists.
Matthieu attended the private Parisian Lycée
Janson-de-Sailly; fellow alumni include Jean
Gabin, Valerie Giscard d'Estaing and Lionel
Jospin. He was 16 when he first had lunch
with Stravinsky.
His father was less than delighted when
Matthieu (influenced by films on Tibetan
Buddhism, made by his friend Arnaud
Desjardins) abandoned his studies and left
for India. In 1998, father and son published
a series of dialogues, The Monk and the
Philosopher, which sold almost 500,000
copies in France, and is one of the most
brilliantly informative works of modern
philosophy ever written.
Happiness, a more accessible book, contains
simple exercises designed to help the reader
achieve the same sort of composure that
radiates from Ricard himself. "Anger," he
says, "is a destructive emotion, which
reduces us to puppets."
"Have you never lost it?"
"Occasionally," Ricard says. "In the 1980s I
got my first laptop. I used it to translate
Tibetan texts. A friend tossed flour on to
the keyboard, as a joke. When he saw I was
really angry, he said: 'One moment of anger
can destroy years of patience.'"
Psychological studies, Ricard argues,
"contradict the notion that giving free rein
to the emotions relieves bottled-up
tension."
"Staying with laptop rage," I tell him, "I
had an Apple that was constantly crashing.
In the end, I took it into the back garden
and kicked it to pieces." Like my friend
Ralph Steadman who recently put a pickaxe
through his fax machine, I explain, I felt
much better for it. "Then with my next
laptop - a Toshiba whose screen was forever
whiting out - I tried to do the right thing.
I posted it with a civil letter to Mr Walker
at Toshiba's PR company. He never returned
the machine, or replied to my subsequent
correspondence. This has left me subject to
feelings of real loathing towards Mr Walker,
which can surface at any time of the night
or day. Are you absolutely sure that
mindless vandalism can never be good?"
"I think this is an example where cognitive
therapy could be very good for you," Ricard
replies. "Your problem is that you imagine
Mr Walker had something against you
personally. The truth is that he had (omega)
nothing against you at all. He was probably
overworked. If something is not going to
happen, you have to leave it at peace. Let
it go."
"I know you had another laptop stolen not so
long ago, when you were travelling in
India."
"I didn't feel aggrieved at all," Ricard
says, adding that his only regret was that
he hadn't been able to send the thief the
power lead.
But where does such passivity lead, I ask
Ricard, in less trivial circumstances?
"Let's say, for the sake of argument," I
continue, "that you live in a country
governed by a man who has betrayed every
principle he ever professed to believe in,
who habitually lies, who has sent innocent
citizens to die in illegal combat he
wouldn't choose to engage in himself, and
who accepts the hospitality of at least one
world leader who is shamelessly corrupt.
What's the correct response to that
behaviour?"
"To expose it," says Ricard. "It's important
to have a desire for honesty and truth. But
in a practical way. Not through hatred."
"To take a well-worn example: if you'd found
yourself armed and alone in a room with
Hitler at Berchtesgaden in 1937..."
"I'd have shot him, certainly. If there was
no other way. Because it would have
alleviated greater suffering. Somebody once
asked the Dalai Lama what he'd do if someone
came in wanting to murder everyone in the
room. He replied: 'I'd begin by shooting at
his legs. If that didn't work, I'd move up
to his head.'"
"He has a sense of irony, then."
"He does."
"Does he watch the Marx Brothers too?"
"He doesn't have to. His life is so full of
humour. Although I think he used to watch
Mash."
My own limited knowledge of Buddhism, I tell
Ricard, relates to the life of Chogyam
Trungpa, who was one of Allen Ginsberg's
mentors. Trungpa, who died of cirrhosis in
1982 aged 48, was responsible for helping to
popularise the religion in Britain. A
notorious alcoholic and philanderer whose
spiritual reputation suffered a public
setback when, drunk at the wheel of his
sports car, he crashed into a joke shop on
the outskirts of Dumfries. Just as
Christianity is symbolised by the
crucifixion, for me, until now, just the
mention of Buddhism has evoked the image of
a robed figure lying semi-conscious among
pieces of dashboard, whoopee cushions and
chattering teeth.
"Trungpa was extremely unconventional, as
you suggest. He never tried to hide his
behaviour. I never met him. I would not take
him as my teacher."
The fundamentally unconfrontational
philosophy of Buddhism, Ricard says, will
triumph in the end.
"If you have a society of selfish people,
combined one-to-one with altruistic people,
theoretically the altruists should be wiped
out. But altruists can co-operate. Which
gives them a strong advantage. That is the
cause of hope."
"Hope's the right word, because I don't see
the world getting any better."
"It may look that way on the news," Ricard
replies, "but every serious study indicates
a decrease in the number of deaths in armed
conflict. At the time of Napoleon, the
Spanish took French soldiers and nailed them
between planks. It was the most terrible
death."
"Fair enough, but... they were French."
"They were..." Ricard extinguishes the hint
of a smile. "The point is that I do believe
there is an increased tendency towards
compassion."
"In Baghdad?"
"Every conflict has its source in hatred.
Once the forest is on fire, you're not
dealing with how to extinguish the spark. Of
course you can't go and teach meditation in
the midst of genocide, say. But in the
future, perhaps we can shift people's
thinking to discourage such developments.
People don't blow themselves up for no
reason. Changes of mind build slowly, out of
discontent, greed and neglect. These things
have to be addressed before hatred is fully
blown."
Like the Dalai Lama himself, Ricard says, he
is an ardent follower of the BBC World
Service, and BBC News 24.
And yet watching live reportage is hardly
conducive to happiness. When, I ask Ricard -
it's a question which, as I confess to him,
makes me squirm slightly, but I don't think
it's irrelevant in this context - did he
last weep?
"I cried recently because of... what was it?
I remember it was an item on the television
news, about people who had suffered a lot. I
believe it had to do with abuse. I cried for
a long time."
We talk for two or three hours, into the
early evening. I'm struck by how much better-known
Ricard might have become had he applied his
wit to his father's trade, in philosophy and
journalism; and how much more impressive
he'd have been than France's best-known
contemporary intellectual, Bernard-Henri
Lévy. Lévy, who has proved more susceptible
than most to the charm of his own ego,
recently claimed to have developed stigmata,
and last year received his seventh cream pie
in the face from the Belgian Nöel Godin, who
has made it his life's work to subvert the
immaculately preened thinker.
As it is, there's only one moment in our
conversation when Ricard risks his karma by
addressing current affairs in a waspish
spirit. It happens when I ask him if he has
even been tempted to write political
articles.
"I have. Because you turn on the radio, and
you hear Jeb Bush saying he is suspending
capital punishment for a month because it
took one man 20 minutes to die. And then you
hear [Socialist presidential candidate]
Ségolène Royal say: 'I admire Chinese
justice because it is swift.' Well, she's
right there. For sure," says Ricard, who has
spent much of his life attempting to repair
the consequences of that nation's brutal
assaults on Tibet. "Chinese justice. It's
swift."
By the time I leave, he has persuaded me of
the benefits to be gained from forgiving my
enemies - and I think I can forgive them,
with the possible exceptions of Mr Walker
and that bouncer at the Borderline.
And yet, I tell him, I know that, in terms
of happiness, my nugget remains unpolished,
my bird still caged.
"And as for the treasure buried under my
shack - I'm not even sure I remember where
my shack is. Apart from working with the
meditation exercises in Happiness, what
should I do next?"
"There's a programme called MBSR:
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction,
developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at Massachusetts
University. They have produced a range of
excellent tapes. But ultimately, it's how
your mind relates to the world that
determines whether you're miserable or not.
You have to ask yourself: is my happiness
dependent on other people?"
It's dark by the time I leave Ricard's
borrowed apartment. Walking back into the
streets of the city feels like re-entering
another reality, a bit like coming out of a
cinema to find that night has fallen. I have
an appointment with a French journalist
friend at a brasserie in north-eastern
Paris. During the evening, a fellow diner
who has clearly been pulling on the rat
pleasure bar - which, in his case, takes the
form of half litres of Stella Artois with
Armagnac chasers - for a number of hours,
makes the bold but mistaken decision to
launch into solo renditions of anthems in
praise of Olympique de Marseille. An ugly
confrontation ensues, involving supporters
of Paris Saint Germain.
I wonder if Matthieu Ricard would have
sought to intervene in the ensuing fracas,
at the height of which I'd guess that the
Marseille supporter, had he been asked
whether his happiness depended on other
people, would have had a word or two to say.
I couldn't ask Ricard about this because he
was across town, finessing his Tibetan aid
programme. If he had been here, I'm sure
this remarkable man would have thought of
something. That said, I think even Ricard
would acknowledge that - contagious though
his patience, compassion and serenity are -
it may be some time before they are espoused
quite so enthusiastically by the wider
world. s
'Happiness: A Guide To Developing Life's
Most Important Skill', is published by
Atlantic Books
