For those who don't know me, my name is [? Mei. ?]

For those who know me, my name is still Mei.

I'm the jolly good fellow which nobody can deny.

It's my honor today to introduce fellow jolly good

fellow, Matthieu Ricard.

Now Matthieu is a very gifted scientist who became a

Buddhist monk.

He was regarded as one of the most promising scientists of

his generation.

Sorry, biologist. I took it from the web.

He completed his PhD thesis in 1972, before

most of you were born.

And unfortunately, he wasn't able to join

Google at that time.

So he went to Nepal instead, and became a biologist. No,

just kidding, he became a monk.

And he has lived and studied in the Himalayas for the past

35 years, where he has been doing humanitarian projects.

Matthieu is also a bestselling author.

He's a translator, and he's a photographer.

And all these pictures, they are taken by him.

He's also an active participant in current

scientific research on meditation and the brain.

And in many of those studies, he is the brain

that they're studying.

When you were in high school, did they ever

call you the brain?

OK.

If they did, they'd be right.

So, Matthieu is a very happy man.

He's so happy he wrote an entire book on happiness.

And he autographed my book, so I'm very happy.

Thank you.

Matthieu is one of the most fascinating men I've ever met

in my life, and--

MATTHIEU RICARD: You only met me once, so.

Yeah.

And I meet a lot of famous people, you guys know that.

It is an honor and pleasure for me to welcome Matthieu

Ricard to our presence.

AUDIENCE: [APPLAUSE]

MATTHIEU RICARD: You know, just to go on about, for those

who don't know him and those who know him, there is also an

interesting story of a Middle East wise man

called Mulla Nasreddin.

Many of you could know him.

And once he came into a coffee shop, and went straight to the

owner and asked him, did you see me enter?

And the guy said yes.

And then he asked, but, do you know me?

And the guy said no.

Then how do you know it's me?

So, thank you so much.

It's a pleasure to visit this wonderful enjoyable place,

where usually people in swimming trunks moving into

the alleys, going to the swimming pool.

Occasionally [INAUDIBLE]

as he leaves his master chef to go off to his office.

So I definitely would like to work there, it seems better

than being at home.

So probably I have nothing to teach you about happiness.

And someone told me actually I should never have written this

book because I never suffered very much in my life, so, the

last person to write a book on happiness and suffering.

So anyway, I thought to just share a few ideas because they

were very dear to me, and they brought a lot of sense of

fulfillment and joy to be alive, and a sense of

direction in life.

And this came through reading beings of great wisdom.

It sort of started like that.

We speak of leadership, leadership has to be someone

who somehow inspires you by showing you the kind of

potential that you could actualize.

Showing you what you could become, and giving you a sense

of direction and inspiration.

It's not very frequent in life.

And I was quite lucky in my teens to be born in a family

in France where my father was a well-known philosopher, so

we had all these great thinkers and poets at home.

My mother was an artist, so we had all these surrealist

painters and all that coming.

Because of musical connections when I was 16 years old, I had

lunch with Stravinsky himself, just for two hours with three

people all together.

And I had an uncle who was an explorer, he went around the

world on a sailboat without the engine after the

second world war.

And the uncle had all kinds of eccentric friends, such as one

when we went to see in Paris and there was a small note on

his door saying, I left on foot for Timbuktu,

and things like that.

So a lot of wonderful people.

And in science of course, the lab I was working with, with

three Nobel Prize of medicine, [? Jakov, ?]

[? Mono, ?]

and [? Wolf, ?]

at [UNINTELLIGIBLE] institute.

So it was very exciting.

There was definitely a lot of people to look at, as what

could I do, where could I be inspired?

At the same time, definitely I would have wished to play the

piano, you know, like [INAUDIBLE], or the chess like

Bobby Fischer.

But I don't know if you remember about Bobby Fischer,

but who wants to become Bobby Fischer?

So there was a kind of discrepancy.

You could take 100 governors, you would have a number of

wonderful people, and some governor with a quite short

temper and not so nice to deal with.

But same thing with philosopher, same thing with

scientist, same thing with artist. No matter what their

particular skill or genius was, there was no correlation

as such, between their human qualities and

their particular genius.

So you could try to pick up all the things and make your

own salad and try to--

but that somehow didn't seem a bit artificial.

Like making a [INAUDIBLE] of all that and

thinking is going to work.

So then, I was lucky enough to travel to the Himalayas, and

then I met something quite different.

Men of wisdom.

Men and women of wisdom.

And what was special about them--

they are all the great Tibetan teachers who have fled the

invasion of Tibet towards India and other places--

is I didn't really care so much what they knew in terms

of poetry, in terms of drama, and even Buddhist philosophy

in the beginning.

That was not my interest at all.

But what they were, that was inspiring.

The quality, the human quality.

And then I though, I want to become like them, not just

know what they know.

And so because there was a kind of--

the first trigger was seeing a documentary movie on those

great teachers, that a friend of mine made for the French

television.

And at the end of the documentary, there was a five

minute silence [INAUDIBLE]

of those meditators, and hermits, and spiritual

teachers, and the Dalai Lama.

One after the other, just silent.

It was so powerful.

It was like 20 Socrates or 20 St. Francis of Assisi, whoever

you feel like is represent the wisdom of humanity.

Just there, alive, in our time.

So I said, well, I should go to see.

And then that was very interesting, because, somehow,

someone like that-- and I'm going to show some images--

show you what you could become.

It's a source of inspiration.

Give you--

that this is possible, somebody made it somehow.

Then of course we get interested in how, but first

we have to see that it makes sense.

And so also, in the course of living in the Himalayas, I

know, after awhile traveling back and forth, some other

things became quite clear about what brings freedom or

fulfillment in life.

And it seems that we so much put our hopes and fears in the

outer conditions.

So now, let's be clear from the beginning, we want outer

conditions to be optimal.

Compared to 150 years ago when the life expectancy even in

Europe was like 30 years.

And who doesn't want to live long, to be healthy, to have

access to education, to have a wonderful working place,

harmonious human relations in one's family, with friends,

with people?

Even in country where there is peace, where there is not an

oppressive regime?

So all that we really deeply support yearn for that, and

that's right.

And we ought to develop that to the maximum we can.

And especially in the world where this is far from being

granted for many, many places of the world.

Where 3,000 children still die every day of malaria, and all

that you know.

And there's so much to do just to bring those

minimum outer condition.

Yet it's quite clear too, that if we only put our hopes and

fears in the outer world, it's not going to work in our

search for direction, for meaning, for genuine sense of

fulfillment and accomplishment, what do we

call genuine happiness.

Genuine happiness doesn't mean pleasant feelings one after

the other, each one more and more intense, piling them up,

renewing them, seeking them, and then collapsing of

exhaustion at the end.

That's not going to work.

So it's more like a cluster of qualities as we can develop as

skills, like openness, genuine altruistic love, compassion,

inner strength, some kind of inner peace.

And then that gives you a sense of confidence that's not

just like the false confidence of arrogance, but confidence

that you are less vulnerable and therefore more ready also

to be of service to others, and contribute to a more

compassionate and society that gives you a better way of

flourishing yourself and others.

And because more confidence means less feeling of

insecurity or fears, then more readiness to

be there for others.

So it's quite clear that the outer conditions themselves

are not enough, however necessary or

useful they might be.

Not enough because we also can clearly see that our state of

mind, the way we interpret and translate those outer

condition in our inner experience, are what really

determines states of well being and/or misery.

And the state of mind can easily override those outer

conditions.

We can feel terrible in a little paradise, and we can

feel still very strong and joyful and wish to go about

one's life, and contribute to the happiness of others, even

in the face of adversity.

So as the Dalai Lama once gave this striking example, if you

move in a very luxurious flat at the hundredth floor of a

high-tech skyscraper, for the first time, you just bought

it, and then you are totally ruined within, destroyed in

your heart, in your mind, all you are going to look for is a

window from which to jump.

On the other hand, you could have this great joy to be

alive, empathy, whatever, all those human qualities, even

when other conditions doesn't seem nice at all.

But because your state of mind is stronger.

And that's such fortunate situation.

Because imagine that to find happiness, the world would

have to be the image of you desire, your fancies, the

universe could be a vast catalog in which you could

order all the ingredients for happiness, forget it.

It's never going to happen like that.

There still should be 6 billion catalogs, and everyone

would choose different items, and they would never work.

This is not just it seems obvious, but great thinkers

thought otherwise.

Emmanuel Kant wrote that complete happiness will be the

compete fulfillment of all our desires, in quantity, quality,

and duration.

The whole idea of happiness goes to the drain.

This would never happen, never.

How could that be?

But anyway, impermanence is there, even you had for a

fraction of a second, everything to be happy.