“Be the change that you want for the world”
talk by Matthieu Ricard
He is the author of
“Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill”
“The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life”
What do we mean by Happiness?
At this talk at MD Anderson there are a lot of people who have very serious illnesses and
to speak of being happy under those circumstances might not seem reasonable. But I
want to be very precise about defining the type happiness I am talking about which might
be achievable for even those with challenging illnesses.
Most people see happiness as a series of never ending external pleasures. We eat the
food we want, see the places that inspire us and enjoy the entertainments of life. Our
happiness can depend upon our external circumstances such as how wealthy we are, how
young, how beautiful or handsome or how successful.
We can look at happiness from a different perspective. It can be a sense of well being
that we cultivate through developing important life skills such as compassion and love.
When we place our emphasis on the pleasures and external circumstances then life
becomes a roller coaster ride as circumstances change. The things we like such as food if
taken in abundance can lose their appeal. Any of the pleasures taken to extremes can
become a burden
When we place our emphasis on happiness based upon cultivating an inner sense of well
being then we are less vulnerable to life’s vicissitudes. Ultimately happiness is a state of
mind and there are things like love and compassion that alter that state of mind and make
us feel better about the world and ourselves.
Our mind is what translates the external events and circumstances into out thoughts,
emotions and feelings. You can often find people with extremely favorable
circumstances who are unhappy and people with unfavorable conditions that are much
happier with their lives. This DOES NOT mean that we should neglect our external
circumstances but that also does not mean that our sense of well being has to be directly
linked to the external circumstances.
The crucial thing to us is the way that we experience life. For most of us our mind is
wandering from topic to topic which often leads us to negative states of mind such as
anger, hatred, fear and jealousy. These emotions are the afflictive emotions and the
changing focus is called the “monkey mind”. We can become addicted to the causes of
our suffering. Success can lead to arrogance, self righteousness and then anger and
hatred. It is these negative emotions and the roller coaster ride that makes life seem
exciting.
Happiness is the goal of goals. Ultimately what leads to internal happiness is the way
that our minds functions. To cultivate happiness we need to transform the way that our
minds work. We have to change the way that we experience ourselves. When we are
generous to others we can get a sense of well being that we can feel.
Do we really want to change? Most people consider the deep emotions as part of who
they really are. If the emotions change they feel that they might be losing their “real”
self. Emotions also have a function in life. People might also question whether the
mind can be changed.
Our mind can at times be healing or poisonous. Our mind naturally is luminous, but the
negative emotions can poison them. The state of our minds change based on external
circumstances.
Authentic happiness is an optimal way of being. It is a state of mind filled with
compassionate courage and not despair. Once we have an authentic sense of happiness it
stays with us through all circumstances. This authentic happiness is a state of mind that
needs to be cultivated. It can be curative to undergo this transformation of our minds to
an authentic happiness.
How do we cultivate this sense of authentic happiness? We can do this through
meditation which helps us relax and have a clearer mind. We have a better sense of
reality when we are not driven by the afflictive emotions and the drama that it creates.
When we cultivate compassion through our meditation we see the world more clearly and
optimistically.
It is also important to be very clear about the negative emotions. For example there is a
malevolent anger that inspires you to want to harm others. There is also an anger that is
indignant to the suffering of humanity and causes you to want to do positive things to
help others and relieve their suffering. Likewise with desire, we can have a desire to
protect the environment which could be a positive force. The way to distinguish
between the afflictive emotions is whether they inspire you to do harm to others.
There are antidotes to all of the afflictive emotions. For anger there is patience, for
hatred there is love, for craving – a sense of inner freedom and freshness of the present
moment. It is these antidotes that we are cultivating when we meditate. It takes time to
cultivate these positive qualities.
To cultivate this sense of well being you need to meditate. You can NOT learn how to
play a piano in 15 minutes a week. To change the afflictive emotions will also take time,
dedication and persistence.
We are not anger, we suffer from anger like we suffer from a disease. Meditation and
mindfulness allows us to cultivate an inner observer which can stand back and look at the
anger. When we observe our own anger, observe it in detail, see how it impacts our
physiology, become aware of the thoughts and feeling associated it, the energy from the
anger will dissipate. Meditation helps us cultivate this inner observer and the disidentification with the emotions so that the emotions do not lead to impulsive reactive
behavior.
We also should not suppress the anger or it will build up over time and we will have a
very strong reaction. As we cultivate this awareness, this inner observer we will find
that over time some of the less significant negative circumstances will have little or no
impact and we will recover more quickly from the more significant negative
circumstances.
Dr. Ricards did not ever see his teacher get angry in 15 years of studying with him. The
Dalai Lama also never displayed any of the afflictive emotions in Dr. Ricards presence.
Dr. Ricard has seen environments where many people have cultivated a sense of well
being to the point where there do not have the emotional roller coaster and he feels that
we can cultivate a much better sense of well being with meditation practice and patience.
There are many physiological advantages of doing meditation and there are scientific
studies that show that it changes us physiologically. Meditators are more quickly able to
get into very deep compassionate states, they can moderate their sensitivity to physical
pain. They have a decrease in blood pressure. The Dalai Lama has encouraged the
scientific evaluation of the meditative states and the transformations from a scientific
point of view are staggering and measurable.
Scientific studies have been done to measure the happiness of the general population. It
has been found that over a certain threshold of financial security that happiness is not
dependant upon wealth. For example a family making $100,000 a year is as likely to be
happy as a family making $1,000,000 or 10,000,000 a year.
There were also some scientific studies done on very experienced meditators. They were
asked to sense different levels of pain in a specific part of their body. Even though there
was not “real” pain stimulus scientifically measurements showed that they simulated the
same brain patterns as when “real” pain existed. The meditators were also able to
regulate the amount of pain that they could experience and the scientific measurements
showed those variations. Likewise there are measurements that can be detected when
people feel “happy”. Meditators could also modulate the level and this could be
quantitatively measured.
One interesting graph that he had was of happiness based on marital status. It appears
that people are the happiest around the year that they get married and then they go back
to some normal state of happiness. No discussion was done about the cause of this
phenomenon.