Matthieu Ricard
Matthieu Ricard Nepali: म थ य र क Religion Buddhism School Vajrayana Personal Nationality Nepalese Born 15 February 1946 (1946-02-15) (age 69) Aix-les-Bains, Savoie, France Religious career Teacher Kangyur Rinpoche Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche Website www.matthieuricard.org Matthieu Ricard (Nepali: म थ य र क 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. His mother is the lyrical abstractionist painter Yahne Le Toumelin. Matthieu Ricard grew up among the personalities and ideas of French intellectual circles. He worked for a Ph.D. degree in molecular genetics at the Pasteur Institute under French Nobel Laureate François Jacob. 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 Rinpoche's 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 spring these images, fleeting and eternal."[citation needed] 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 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 called 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 on happiness, scoring significantly above the average of hundreds of volunteers. He co-authored a study on the brains of long-term meditators, including himself, who had undergone a minimum of three years retreat. 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[vague]. For the last few years,[when?] 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. Ricard has been a speaker at the World Happiness Forum conferences held in Sydney, London, San Francisco and Singapore. He is the author of Caring Economics: Conversations on Altruism and Compassion, Between Scientists, Economists, and the Dalai Lama (forthcoming 2015)