Matthieu Ricard, known by neuroscientists as the "happiest man on earth," offered these remarks at the conclusion of a 21-day Interfaith Compassion Challenge in October 2024.  

Cynthia Li: One thing that has really struck me is not just your happiness, but really the humor that you bring to things like compassion, like altruisim -- these big concepts -- with such a lightness and a joy and a humor, which is such a teaching in and of itself. So, thank you. 

You have spoken a lot about altruism and altruistic happiness and kindness.

How do we grow in compassion and altruistic service, and cultivate it in a more sustainable way? In a way that we don't deplete our own energy, or in a way that we don't become overwhelmed by the suffering of others?

Matthieu Ricard: Thank you. Yes. I'm not a teacher, by the way, so, yes. So, you know, there's a French writer, Roman Holan. He was not a Buddhist, but he said "If selfish happiness is the main goal of your life, your life will still be goal-less." It doesn't work. "Me, me, me" all day long makes you miserable and makes everyone miserable. It doesn't work, personally, and of course it doesn't work in the world, because if you instrumentalize the world for your own needs or see it as ... an instrument to pursue your self-interest, it's not going to work. You know, we are so interdependently connected. So both on the personal and the global level, it's a lose-lose situation.

So why is altruism or benevolence or compassion a win-win situation?

First of all, of course, if you are benevolent. Usually, most of the time others will appreciate, even dogs will appreciate. So that's, that's the goal, is to bring happiness to others and to remove their suffering as much as possible. So that's the state of mind, that's the intention, to care for others, bring them happiness, and relieve their suffering. So that should be the main motivation without further calculation, expecting something special in reward, doing that because you will get more or because people will praise you or because you will feel proud of yourself. It should be the pure motivation. 

Now, that also happens that it's also the best way to flourish yourself. So it's a win-win situation. Of course, people who ... speak of universal selfishness say, "Haha." You have the warm glow. So you only do that because you feel good. Well, if you were to do something good to others simply because you heard of the "warm glow," [but] you don't care a damn about others, it will not work. And actually it's a good indication of what lies deep within our nature, a sort of primorial goodness, that we feel attuned to our profound nature when we behave in compassionate ways. That will be terrible if we feel truly good within when we do something harmful to others. So, in a way, simply attuning with our deepest nature is basic goodness, and what we do, what we say, what we think is turned towards others.

So, on the global level, it is also most crucial. If we see what are the challenges of the 21st century, one of the main ones is to try to reconcile the need for the short term, the long, the midterm, and the long term. The short term could be a mother in Africa who has to feed their kids in the next week. So that's what matter for her above all.

And then, in the midterm, is to flourish in life. We have this deep aspiration to fulfill our aspiration in life. So during a lifetime, a career, a generation. 

Then, the long term is now a new challenge, which is that we are the main actors who determine the fate for all the future generations to come. And if we continue the same way [we have been going], they will say, "You knew and you did nothing."

So how to reconcile those three things that seem pretty irreconcilable? How to sit around the table and try to build a better world together with social activists, with politicians, investors, and scientists of the environment, and so forth. So selfishness will not do the job.

My favorite Marxist is Groucho Marx, and he said, "Why should I care for future generation? What do they do for me?" When I heard an American billionaire saying the same thing on [the] news. He said, "Why should I care for the rise of the ocean a hundred years?" You know, I find it absurd.

Only one concept can reconcile those three timescales and help us to work together. That [concept] is having more consideration for others.

If we have more consideration for others, we'll remedy poverty in the midst of plenty, social inequality, social justice, and so forth. If you have more consideration for others, we'll make the condition in the world so that everybody has access to health, education, you know, safety, and so forth. And if we have more consideration for others, we will seriously consider the fate of billions and billions and billions of human beings that will come after us. And also 8 billion other species who are our core citizens in this world.

So that's why, as Victor Hugo said, "There's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come," and I'm deeply convinced that this is the time of altruism, benevolence, whatever you call it, or compassion. 

Cynthia Li: Thank you. You've given us a tall order. So next I would just like to share a little bit about my work with people living with chronic complex conditions, many who have been debilitated for many years. And I have seen some of them do the deep inner work of this transformation that you're talking about, and also this altruism, this benevolence, and [I've seen them] really come to this place of genuine compassion for self and for others. And I've also witnessed them come into genuine gratitude. But happiness -- not so much. 

Can you speak to us about this deep state of happiness, or wellbeing? ... It's beyond emotional happiness, which can be very fleeting. Could you speak to us about this state and how necessary it is for these times, particularly, of very turbulent change?

Matthieu Ricard: Oh sure. So before [I do that], let me say one word. [Earlier,] you asked a question about empathetic distress.

So it's very crucial to distinguish compassion and empathy. Now, there are two sides of empathy. Effective empathy you resonate with others -- could be joy -- but also could resonate with suffering. Empathy is the impact that the state of others have on you. If they're joyful, you feel joy. If they suffer, you suffer -- and you truly suffer. 

My friend Tanya Singer showed that in the brain, it's a real suffering when you suffer because of the suffering of others. And then there's also a cognitive side of empathy. While compassion -- and we found that while working with neuroscientists -- is totally others oriented. But the problem with empathy or core empathy is very important to know. What is the situation of others? Do they suffer? Are they joyful? If you don't know, then someone like a sociopath won't realize that they suffer, so they can cut them in pieces and they don't mind. So it's important. So it's a kind of signal. If the signal, or the alarm, sort of sort of shouts all day long, then you become emotionally drained. You fall into empathic distress and burnout because it's a burden on you.

So what we found by doing research in neuroscience is that compassion is an antidote to burnout because it's entirely turned with others. It's unconditional love toward others, and it actually refreshes your strength and your capacity to help others. So that's important.

Now, happiness, while you know, it's a big debated concept, it's often very misunderstood. 

So first of all, happiness should not be confounded with pleasant sensations. There's nothing wrong with pleasant sensations, [like] taking a hot shower after walking in the snow or listening to beautiful music or something. But it is different.

First of all, pleasant sensations tend to change into neutral ones, and sometimes the opposite. You know, if you listen to most beautiful music, it's great. If you listen for twenty-four hours, it is torture. They use that in Guantanamo to torture people, so it's different. If you are looking for endless, pleasant sensations, it's a remedy for exhaustion, not for happiness. So, again, there's nothing wrong with pleasant sensations, but provided there's no craving and grasping to them.

Now, happiness as it is defined by scientists and also in the in Buddhism (what we call suka), is not a sensation. You can have this sense of compassion, of meaning and so forth, even in sadness, even if you lost someone dear. But, still, wisdom, compassion, is still there. So, it's a way of being. Unlike pleasure that exhausts itself as you experience it, the sense of the state of mind or state of being -- the more you experience [compassion], the more it gets deeper and stable.

So what is it made of? There's no happiness center in the brain. So, first of all, our control of the outer condition is limited, is transient, and very often illusory. So if you only put your hope and fear in the outer condition, again, you are for a rough ride. But the way we experience the world can be translated either into misery or wellbeing. So the way we perceive the world is very important, but also happiness is actually the result of enhancing a number of fundamental human qualities. So to achieve an exceptionally healthy mind that give us the resources to deal with the ups and downs of life and various emotion that come in our life.

So those qualities, as a cluster, each of them can be cultivated as a skill. Among them foremost is altruism, compassion, benevolence, but also, the faculty of inner spaciousness (so that we can keep inner peace even in the face of adversity), resilience and inner freedom (not to be the slave of your own thoughts and emotion and so forth) -- so all those qualities together create a way of being, a very healthy, optimal way of being, that is kind of the platform to which we stand in life.

Mind training of the spiritual path ... can enhance that platform. There will still be the ups and downs of joys and sorrows, but where you come back is your baseline. And that baseline could be mostly, at the end, be made of deep fulfillment, a sense of Felicity. And so, that's what we were looking for, and what we can cultivate. Unlike pleasant sensations that cannot be shared with others, you can feel pleasant sensations even when others sometime are suffering or being very selfish. So it's important to distinguish those two. 

Thank you everyone for these beautiful testimonies. As I was watching the faces from the movie, Human, from my dear friend, Yann Arthus-Bertrand, of course we are reminded of our sense of common humanity -- that it is so much needed, especially these days where there's so much fragmentation, hyper-individualism, and we often tend to forget this common humanity.  But also those faces coming silently, besides the beautiful song that was accompanying them, remind me of a turning point of my life.

When I was a teenager, I was sort of fortunate to be exposed to many French intellectuals. My father was a philosopher; my mother, an artist; and also I was an apprentice scientist myself. Also, I met many great musicians, including Igor Stravinsky when I was 16 years-old. My uncle was an explorer. So, from all walks of life, there were all these people who were somehow remarkable in their own field.

At the same time, as a teenager, I was quite puzzled that there was no obvious connection between a particular skill (such. as being a great mathematician, a gardener, carpenter, philosopher or artist) and being a good human being. If you take 50 gardeners and 50 mathematicians, you would find the same distribution of altruistic and selfish people, happy and miserable people. That was puzzling for someone who is somehow looking for a role model in life. 

Then, when I was 20, I saw a documentary made by a friend of my family, Arnaud Dejardins, on all the great Tibetan masters and hermits and meditators who had fled the Communist invasion of Tibet and had sought refuge on the Indian side of the Himalayas. He had filmed them for six months. At some point in the documentary that's called The Message of the Tibetan (there's two parts), there was a silent segment with only faces of those great masters. Some were very skinny, some more fleshy. Some old, some younger, but there was a common, extraordinary quality: I felt I was seeing twenty Socrates, twenty Saint Francis of Assisis, alive in our time.

So I decided I'm going there, which I did when I was 21 in 1967. And it was a wonderful decision. I did travel back and forth while I was doing my PhD at Pastoral Institute. And finally, at the end of 1972, I took a one-way ticket. And then I've mostly been living for last 55 years in the Himalayas near those great masters. So that was really a turning point to see those faces. 

I must say that in the film, Human, we also see a lot of tragedy behind those looks. Quite a lot of suffering, as well. And a few occasional smiles, which is wonderful, as you said. Actually, we made a photo book called 108 Smiles. I worked with my dear friend, Paul Ekman, who distinguished 18 different kinds of smiles, out of which there are quite few that are not genuine smiles.

Recently, I'm in Bhutan now. I was following some teaching where 10,000 people attended the teaching every day for 110 days. I think it's a world record! You have Olympics and you have rock concerts, but they only last for a few days. But for 110 days ,there was 10,000 people peacefully listening to teachings. It's also a great occasion to take some portraits because there were 10,000 people waiting there. :) So I had a very wonderful, and I sent that to a friend and he said, Oh, those such a genuine smile from the heart. It's quite a change from what we usually see on so-called social media.

Our topic today also is about how to bring together all the religions. I have been an interpreter for the Dalai Lama for 30 years, and he said he had several main missions. One was to basically promote basic human values, what is called universal ethic, or secular ethics, not because it is against religion, but because it is common to all religions or even to people who are not religious. [It's] the golden rule: don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you. So that's one of his main messages, the message of compassion.

I remember once, I was doing a one year retreat in a hermitage, and I had to come out to interpret for him in Belgium. So I came for one or two weeks. Then, while going back to my hermitage, I asked him for advice. I said, "I'm going back to another six months of retreat. What advice do you have?"

And he said, "In the beginning, meditate on compassion. In the middle, meditate on compassion. In the end, meditate on compassion."

So the message was clear. :)

Then, his second main mission was to favor harmony between religions. And then the third one was dialogue with science, and of course the cause of Tibet as the fourth one. So it was wonderful to hear him speaking about harmony among religions and how to foster that. I think it's much better if I try to share what he said.

He said there are several ways to bring together religions.

First of all, on the philosophical level ... theologians and scholars can meet and know well each other's philosophies, religions, metaphysics and so forth, so that they don't have the wrong ideas about what is inspiring others. Of course, there will be differences in the end. [For instance,] a very major differences is whether we consider there is a creator or not, just to cite one of them. But at least to know each other well and to know authentically what is the content of those. Religion is a great step towards respecting each other.

The second one, he says, is to [be open to] contemplative meetings. I went with them [to] the Cartesian monastery, where they don't come out for all their life and they keep silence. We spent two hours there, and they spoke a little bit for us. At the end of those two hours, the Dalai Lama asked, "How do you pray? What do you do when people die?" And so forth.

So, he was saying that we start by invoking God and at the end it becomes more abstract and we merge with the absolute. So at the end, the abbot said, "Well, either there was some communication 2000 years ago, or some blessing fell from the sky."

So that's the second way.

The third way is to pilgrimage together to sacred places, which are very inspiring, because then we leave our luggage -- our preconceived ideas, our likes and dislikes -- and, together, we try to be inspired by the power of the place. 

So he went to Jerusalem, [the Dalai Lama] went to Lourdes, he went to Fatima, and he went to many places like that. And he always wanted to meet, living practitioners of those traditions. When he went to Marbella ... in Spain, he heard that there was a hermit in the mountain, so he wanted to see him. So he went up there, and he was there, sort of radiant with love, and he said, "What have you have been meditating on all your life?"

And he said, "Just on love."

So the Dalai Lama likes to tell those stories.

Also, he often speaks of the multiplicity of single truth. What does he mean by that? When we practice a spiritual path, of course, we have to be entirely dedicated to that. Now, we cannot just ... try to sew with a needle with two heads. If we try to dig to find fresh water in a desert ... well, the main thing is to get to the clear, pure, fresh water by keeping on digging in one place. If we dig ten wells halfway, then we don't get any water. So this kind of going here and there, this kind of supermarket of spirituality and religion doesn't allow us to go in depth. So we need to be fully committed.

He says, I'm a Buddhist, so I follow the Buddhist path with my entire heart and my entire mind. But, at the same time, I recognize the validity of this other single truth for others. That means not as a separation, but with full respect. So the the big mistake, of course, is to say, "Okay, this is my truth and this is wonderful. And, for me, there's nothing higher than that, but then others are wrong or I should bring them into my own truth."

So that allows [us] to foster harmony among religion and he has been, all his life, trying to promote that. Myself, I have many occasions where I met many representative of other religions, and I dialogue with them. We have exchanges. I have a very dear friends like Brother David Steindl-Rast, who is 95 now, and by some gratitude, we went together walking in Patagonia. We met in many places, and it was so wonderful. 

So, this is my humble experience.

Now, I'm 78. I only aspire to stop clowning around and to go back to my hermitage, do translations, and stop writing stupid books and to do practice so that I don't die in the airport, but I die in meditation, sitting on my cushion. :)

Charles Gibbs: Thank you so much, Matthieu. I love the commitment in depth and acceptance of many expressions of a single truth. By the way, I think you may have the best "home office" of anyone I've ever known from the pictures I've seen of your hermitage.

Matthieu Ricard: Well, I'm not [currently] in my hermitage. [My hermitage] is three meters by three.  I'm just [currently] hosted in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, for one night with a dear friend of mine. My hermitage is nine feet by nine feet, and that's perfectly fine, but I have 200 kilometers of the Himalayas in front, so I don't need to rent them. :) They're just there.

Charles Gibbs: Wonderful. 

Favorite Mantra and a Joke 

Cynthia Li: One last question; it's really two short ones. Do you have a currently favorite mantra? And, also, a favorite joke?

Well, my favorite mantra is, "I need nothing. I need nothing. I need nothing." When I say this 10 times, I feel so at peace. :)

One time, I was sitting on the balcony of my hermitage and I thought, Suppose a fairy comes and tell me you can make three wishes, but only for material things (not [things like] getting enlightened and all that). So then I thought and I thought and I thought -- again, my hermitage is nine feet by nine feet. I cannot fit much in it. So then I burst in laughter.

I really did not need anything, and I was so happy like that. So that's my favorite mantra.

As for a joke -- well, I'm not sure. :)

Well, I did with a friend [make] a collection of the stories of Mullah Nasreddin. So, I love those stories, and, well, I can tell you just one or two, very briefly, because they're very deep philosophically, also.

So one time he came into a tea shop and he went straight to the counter and asked the owner, "Did you see me enter?"

And the guy said, "Yes."

"But," and he said, "but do you know me?"

He said, "No."

"Then how do you know it's me?"

So it is full of those wisdom.

Another time, he came to the village and said, "The king spoke to me!"

Then everybody thought, "Wow. The king. The king has spoken to Nasreddin. They say, "Amazing." So they were very impressed, and after a few days, they came back. They said, let's go; maybe you should ask, "What did the king say?"

So they came to Nasreddin and said, "What did the king tell you?"

"Oh. He said, 'Get out of my way.'"

[Laughter]

So anyway, there's many of those stories. So we put together about a hundred of those. I don't think it's translated into English, but we had great fun doing that.

Cynthia Li: Thank you. Thank you so much for your wisdom, compassion, happiness. It's really felt. [...]

Matthieu Ricard: Once, I went to India to an asrham, and there was a berth of a Swami. They didn't want me to stay overnight; they said it's not a hotel. But the berth had a very nice inscription. It said, "Be good. Do good." So I think this is a very good idea. Take care.