L’uomo più felice del mondo: così è chiamato Matthieu Ricard (ex-biologo dell’Istituto Pasteur e monaco buddhista) dai suoi colleghi scienziati che, studiandone il cervello, hanno constatato che 30 anni di meditazione hanno atrofizzato le aree preposte alla depressione rendendo molto più attive del normale quelle del benessere.

«Meditare – spiega Ricard – è mirare a uno stato di lucidità, compassione e pace interiore immenso da cui affrontare le difficoltà; pensiero, parola e azione sono allora sempre adeguati, e perciò fonte di bene per sé e per gli altri, invece che di stress». Abbiamo ora la prova scientifica che il training meditativo può stabilizzarci nella felicità.

Per la prima volta in video l’esperienza e la saggezza di un monaco buddista, biologo, filosofo, e scrittore:

Matthieu Ricard è autore inoltre di diverse opere fra cui “Dal Big Bang all’Illuminazione“, uno straordinario dialogo con l’astrofisico Trinh Xuan Thuan che approfondisce i temi di cui parla questo video.

Un DVD con la presenza di un grande maestro che ha saputo unire le conoscenze di scienza e meditazione e che con semplicità ti aiuterà a mettere in atto i cambiamenti per cambiare.

Ti donerà i benefici di un training meditativo quotidiano.

Imparerete cosa significhi:

• “svuotare la mente” : un processo in cui si prende gradualmente dimestichezza con ciò che siamo davvero
• distaccarsi da comportamenti abituali negativi
• creare nuove reti neuronali
• rilassarsi nel momento presente nonostante le difficoltà e le sfide dell’esistenza
• coltivare le qualità umane fondamentali quali altruismo, compassione, gioia di vivere, equilibrio emotivo
• eliminare le “tossine mentali” delle emozioni conflittuali
• vivere nella libertà dalle dinamiche dell’ego

Guido Ferrari L’uomo Più Felice del Mondo – DVD + Libro Come la meditazione cambia il cervello: le scoperte delle neuroscienze Macrovideo Compralo su Macrolibrarsi

Matthieu Ricard’s extraordinary new photography and text book, Bhutan: The Land of Serenity, presents a profoundly transporting portrait of the land, culture, and people of this Himalayan kingdom.

Bhutan has exerted a spell on me over the past three years. Though I’d been aware of the country for almost two decades, somehow recently the place had taken on a special magnetism, through tales of its pristine landscapes and culture, its exuberant religious celebrations, its atmosphere of spirituality and tranquility and of course, its much-admired attention to Gross National Happiness. Fanciful as it may sound, I had the feeling that it was almost mystically calling me, that something important was awaiting me there. But I didn’t fully comprehend the character – and allure — of the place until I came upon Matthieu Ricard’s extraordinary new photography-and-text book, Bhutan: The Land of Serenity.

A good place to finish, with Matthieu Ricard: “Remember that there are two kinds of lunatics: those who don’t know that they must die, and those who have forgotten that they’re alive.”

“Lunatic” sounds harsh. Being innocent and forgetful isn’t the same as being a loony, crazed, eccentric, unpredictable, pegged to the phases of the moon, obsessive with names and pets. Is it?

Can be.

Or it could just be the distracted condition of the average media-swilling consumer in our entertainment-besotted pop culture, amusing ourselves to death while booing Simon and snubbing Dave and fretting about who the judges will favor in the “reality” competition.

“Accepting death as a part of life serves as a spur to diligence and saves us from wasting our time on vain distractions.” Front the fact, hear the rattle in your throat, crank up the realometer. But I’m not so sure most of us still crave reality in the raw, the way Thoreau said he did. He seemed sane enough, though plenty eccentric too. I don’t think he named his critter-friends at Walden “Eric,” though he did claim the solitude-easing company of the stars and the raindrops and the “sweet and beneficent society of Nature.”

Ricard endorses Epicurus’s glibly-dismissive attitude towards death: it is “nothing to us, since when we exist death is not yet present, and when it is present, then we do not exist.” Seneca’s smarter to advise treating the end as something, not nothing, and to realize that living in utter denial of death is not really living at all. But neither is an unrelenting, morbid fixation on mortality. As  Jennifer Hecht will soon tell us, we must acknowledge death and look it square in the eyes. Then, if we’re wise, we’ll turn our backs on the eternal dark and get on with living in the light. Of course that includes celebrating the lives of precious departed loved ones.

But I’m afraid I find Ricard again given to soaring over-statement when he says “life has been slipping away day after day, and if we have not learned to find meaning in its every passing moment, all it has meant to us is wasted time.” Every passing moment? That would be some batting average. Appreciating every moment indiscriminately is not wise, it’s goofy.

Just a final comment, though it would be fun to go back a few chapters and think some more about longevity, “gross national happiness,” brain plasticity, and the experience-defining essence of attentiveness (Ricard again invokes William James on this). This is a richly-suggestive book that I’m sure I’ll  continue to speak with, although I still don’t know how to make my mind as wide as the sky. I’m trying.

My last thought on the Buddhist “path” is a question, trivial perhaps, but a definitive answer might be of the greatest practical utility to me. I just want to know why it’s supposed to be better to sit when you meditate.

“Some emotions make us flourish, others sap our well-being, others make us wither.”

No kidding. I’ve been talking up the positive emotions, and so does Ricard just a few paragraphs on: “positive emotions broaden our thought-action repertoire” to include joy, interest, contentment, and love.

Great. But a friend reports his 10-year old daughter’s recent diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes, and the attendant emotions are just as you’d expect: “feeling stuck, tired, angry, & not much fun to be around.” I have a 10-year old too, I’m sure I’d be every bit as demoralized and debilitated by that news as he is. There are moments in life when overt demands to flourish ring false.

I’m not about to advise my friend to buck up and be happy. That would be insensitive and probably counter-productive. But I wonder if I’d be able to tell myself that, were we to find ourselves in his family’s  situation.

Ricard mentions William James’s concept of “sustained, voluntary attention“– the key, for James, to free will, self-determination, and ultimately to happiness itself. (Winifred Gallagher just wrote a great big book on this.) When life snaps you over the head with a two-by-four, can you still turn your attention away from “disturbing” emotions to positive, nurturing thoughts? I know, Buddhist meditators can do it for hours on end. But Buddhist meditators, afflicted by many forms of suffering and denial, still tend not to have 10-year olds with Type 1 diabetes. Or is that an outworn, culturally-confused stereotype?

Maybe it is. Buddhists in America especially come in all shapes, sizes, and domestic situations. But I’m afraid the “calming” exercise in this chapter is not a lot more specifically instructive to me than the earlier advice to expand my mind. “With a deep feeling of appreciation, think of the value of human existence and of its extraordinary potential for flourishing. Be aware, too, that this precious life will not last forever…” Carpe diem? Memento mori? I think Hallmark could do better.

In general I have nothing but admiration for such sentiments, which come to me in almost precisely this form and with some considerable frequency– usually on sunny days when I’ve placed myself in my own form of meditative receptivity, while hoofing it around and watching the thoughts rise and fall.

What I still want to understand is how Buddhists and other serene folk summon such comfort and joy when the days and nights are dark and long and the news is heartbreaking. We’re passionately “attached” to our children, we grieve when they suffer, we curse the impersonal universe that dispenses weal and woe so indifferently, and at such moments feel anything but appreciation for life’s maldistributed “potential.” (Is that what Heidegger meant by “presence in the mode of absence?”) At such moments, what we want is to be dealt a new hand… not to be urged to be effusively grateful for the crummy old one.

And we’re going to need a better “exercise,” there’s not much consolation in this one.

Chapter Ten, to Ricard’s credit, picks up the challenge. “There’s no question here of ceasing to love those whose lives we share.” No, there’s not.

“As for anger, it can be neutralized by patience.” Again, details here are wanting. But this is key, if only I could figure out how to make it fit my psychological  locks: “You are overwhelmed by a sudden tide of anger… But look closely. It is nothing more than a thought… It is a temporary condition, and you do not need to identify with it.”

But when conditions objectively “suck,” as my friend observes, shouldn’t we identify with the emotions that express our sharp revulsion? It feels like the right response–not the most pleasant, not the happiest, not the healthiest, just the right one. Why is that wrong? Why are we entitled to stuff those emotions and opt for the positive ones, when conditions do not elicit them spontaneously?

Of course, liberation from anger at the moment it arises would be wonderfully soothing– to me. It would not mitigate a little girl’s anguish, would it?

But is the point, rather, that even righteous anger does no good and might do harm? That begins at last to speak to me, as did the Oklahoma City Dad’s refusal to endorse Timothy McVeigh’s execution (ch12). One more death, one more angry act of retribution, eases no one’s pain.  ”An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” leaves us all blind and gummy.

Once again, though, the exercise does not work for me. “Don’t unite with the anger… keep on just  observing [it], it will gradually evaporate under your gaze.” Yes, eventually we’ll all evaporate. Just now, though, when the anger is a tight little knot and the world does not feel much like home, is observation the best response? It might be. But it feels like a waste of perfectly good adrenaline.

Ricard quotes “the great pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer,” and his coupling of striving and desire. The implication is that desire always frustrates, is  ”everywhere impeded,” always struggling, fighting, suffering. We can escape desire, or suppress it. But Mark Twain said the best way to conquer temptation is to yield to it. Is that not, sometimes, a gratifying strategy? (I don’t know what Shania says about desire, that’s whose image Google wanted me to put here. You prob’ly did too.)

As for dismantling hatred and hostilities: Buddhists and cheek-turning Christians have much to teach us all about this. I confess I simply do not comprehend the sensibility that is capable of feeling love and compassion for even the most hateful and hostile others, simply because they too “strive to achieve happiness and avoid suffering.” I suppose I am deficient in fellow-feeling. I hope I would refrain from calling for Tim McVeigh’s head, but I don’t feel bad about not extending to him the love and compassion I feel for my kids. Should I? Please explain.

My reflections on this book began with some quibbles about renunciation. Ricard is explicit, now, in denying my presuppositions: “Renunciation is not about depriving ourselves of that which brings us joy and happiness… saying no to all that is pleasant… Genuine happiness– as opposed to contrived euphoria– endures through life’s ups and downs.” And smooths them out? “We can get off the endless roller coaster of happiness and suffering.” That’s fine, I’m not that fond of roller coasters anyway. And I’m very fond of Ricard’s next authorial citation: “Simplify, simplify.”

But I still think William James has had the sharpest insight into our correct default position on the question of desires: fulfill as many of them as we can, erring on the  side of the presumption that more (not fewer) satisfactions will raise the sea level of our happiness.

“Take any demand however slight, which any creature, however weak, may make. Ought it not, for its own sake, to be satisfied? If not, prove why not. The only possible kind of proof you could adduce would be the exhibition of another creature who should make a demand that ran the other way. The only possible reason there can be why any phenomenon ought to exist is that such a phenomenon actually is desired. Any desire is imperative to the extent of its amount; it makes itself valid by the fact that it exists at all.” The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life

Is this wrong? If you read it as an excuse for narcissistic, ego-grabbing, non-reciprocal, non-altruistic selfishness, read on:

“Were all other things, gods and men and starry heavens, blotted out from this universe, and were there left but one rock with two loving souls upon it, that rock would have as thoroughly moral a constitution as any possible world which the eternities and immensities could harbor. It would be a tragic constitution, because the rock’s inhabitants would die. But while they lived, there would be real good things and real bad things in the universe; there would be obligations, claims, and expectations; obediences, refusals, and disappointments; compunctions, and longings for harmony to come again, and inward peace of conscience when it was restored; there would, in short, be a moral life, whose active energy would have no limit but the intensity of interest in each other with which the hero and heroine might be endowed. We, on this terrestrial globe, so far as the visible facts go, are just like the inhabitants of such a rock.”

Our emotions and desires need not pull us apart. They can bring us together, here at The Rock. We just gotta follow the rules, keep our cool, resist pointless anger, and practice a little tough love (as well as loving-kindness) with the rule-breakers. Don’t be spiteful and immature. (And, don’t get a swell-head like Goob did once.) Ol’ Barn had it all figured out. “Frood wrote a book about it, Andy.”

Humming the Beatles again… “First we conceive the ‘I’… then we conceive the ‘mine’…” But, enough about me; what do you think of me?

What is this precious ego we’re so fixated on? An “artificial entity,” frozen by concepts, “hiding inside a bubble. “Ego-grasping and self-importance are the best magnets to attract suffering.” The cure? Burst the bubble, dissolve the self, admit your inescapable inter-dependence upon other people and upon nature. Selfhood is entirely relational, you do not stand apart and alone and cannot subsist independently.  You are not the center of the world, but we’re all parts of the great network of relations without which there would be no world.

This all sounds healthily humbling, but I worry about slipping too far to the other extreme: from overweaning self-aggrandizement to abased self-loathing and misanthropy. The “great man/woman” view of history is hard to shake. How many truly impressive  achievements have been notched by people without an assertive sense of self? Our supposedly selfless heroes and humanitarians know very well who they are and what they represent. They wear their benefaction proudly and prominently. Why not?

But Ricard says we too quickly conflate ego and self-confidence. Socrates, Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama, he claims, all displayed inner confidence without an oversized ego to match. I’m skeptical.

But let’s concede the larger point that self-regard can too  easily degenerate into  selfishness. Does it then follow that we must repudiate all egotism as mean and corruptible? Or can we effectively monitor and regulate our respective projects of self-creation, with a will to responsibly serve the common good while chasing one’s personal dreams? If we do not retain those projects, how can we muster the ambition to pursue our goals?

These are rhetorical questions, to which Buddhists reliably respond: “If the ego were really our deepest essence, it would be easy to understand our apprehension about dropping it. But if it is merely an illusion, ridding ourselves of it is not ripping the heart out of our being, but simply opening our eyes.”

OK, then, I will consider it.

I will. My mind is open. Buddhism’s appeal is to a mind at a time.

But is there still room here for a Kantian transcendental ego, an Emersonian transparent eyeball, an I large enough also to mean we? “Where did ‘we’ go?!”

What becomes of subjectivity on this view? And what, then, of the life-quickening personal enthusiasms predicated on “what’s inside a person”? Do they count? Can the literally-selfless human spirit still exhilarate for no special reason at all? (“Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration…”)

Those jumping monks of Tibet Ricard showed the TEDsters: were they jumping for joy, on springs of delight? Or was that part of a routinized, ritual, meditative daily practice?

As usual, my questions far exceed my certainty. These are tentative concerns, not conclusive criticisms. But I’d not be happy to think that the cost of our serenity was the end of natural uplift and “transparency.”

Standing on the bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball-I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me-I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances-master or servant, is then a trifle, and a disturbance. I am a lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I have something more connate and dear than in the streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature. Emerson, “Nature“

So what I wonder is: do selfless transparent eyeballs write books, deliver lectures, and inspire the generations? Do they leave us a reverberant, singular note, when they’re gone? “Happy are those whose singularity gives a note so clear as to be victorious over the inevitable pity of [the] diminution and abridgement” of death.

“They suffer, Majesty.”

That’s the squashed version of human history, boiled down from 36 thick volumes for the King of Persia (as recounted by Matthieu Ricard).

“Yes, they suffer, at every moment and throughout the world. Some die when they’ve just been born; some when they’re giving birth. Every second, people are murdered, tortured, maimed, separated from their loved ones. Others are abandoned, betrayed, expelled, rejected. Some are killed out of hatred, greed, ignorance, ambition, pride, or envy. Mothers lose their children, children lose their parents. The ill pass in never-ending procession through the hospitals. Some suffer with no hope of being treated, others are treated with no hope of being cured. The dying endure their pain, and the survivors their mourning. Some die of hunger, cold, exhaustion, others are charred by fire, crushed by rocks, or swept away by the waters…

These are not mere words but a reality that is an intrinsic part of our daily lives: death, the transitory nature of all things, and suffering.”

Bleak. But not so bleak as the misnamed optimism of a Leibniz, one of those western philosophers “for whom suffering is inevitable and happiness out of reach” (though of course he’d never say so). Sartre, in his very different style, may be another. (He pretty much does say so, despite all the existentialist bravado about radical freedom.)

And so Buddhists commit to alleviating as much of it as they can for others, and liberating themselves.

Suffering is real, and an enumeration of instances can overwhelm. But all is not suffering. If it were, there could be no meaningful alleviation– let alone liberation. The problem of evil is mirrored by the happy problem of gratuitous good: there is a lot of “pointless” joy to be had in the world, by those who’ll have it. (“Cards win. Cards win!”)

But the melioristic impulse Ricard highlights in ch6 is admirable. I’ve written about it:

Meliorists relish the fight and the spirit of sober-yet-cheerful work (as we may prefer to call it, with a less martial turn of mind), as we push back against the stubborn sources of our discontent.  These reflections surely underscore the Jamesian refusal, the radical empiricist’s refusal, to allow that either the optimists or the pessimists, as conventionally and historically defined, can be right. If “the optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true,” pragmatic meliorists will insist on another way around or through the poles of this dilemma. It cannot be true that total perfection reigns in the actual world of our experiencing. We can only believe so by shutting our eyes to the obviously real ills and injustices by which humans are regularly visited—by disallowing, in short, the evidence of our experience. Those rare individuals who are personally charmed to lead lives free from affliction must know—or, minimally, must have heard or read of—others who are not; or else they are living ostrich lives and are more to be pitied than envied.

What is more, unqualified optimism that denies real suffering and deficiency in the world insults our real capacities; it disables our remedial impulses. Can our humanitarian and compassionate responses be so misguided, our felt regrets so misplaced? James certainly had no tolerance for dilettantism and the effusion of idle regret, disconnected from responsive action. But what of the active regret that fuels reform? Are the heroic deeds of good men and women, the noble benefactors of humanity (not merely the acclaimed, the Schweitzers and Mother Teresas, but the unsung and under-appreciated community volunteers, the “Habitat for Humanity” workers, et al) superfluous? Or (what comes to the same thing for anyone possessed of the kind of philosophical temperament James exemplifies) necessarily ineffectual?

It needs saying, here, that of course the Leibnizian optimist has his “theodicy” and his rational response and denies that anything—absolutely anything—is “superfluous,” or gratuitous, or unnecessary. All is Rational Necessity. For Hegel “the Real is the Rational, the Rational is the Real.” What a startling, potentially stultifying attitude, for anyone who purports to live and act in the world of our collective experience!

And so I give Ricard and Buddhism all credit for working to make the best of suffering and even learn from it. “Resigning ourselves to it with a simple ‘that’s life!’ [ignores] any possiblity of the inner change that is available to everyone…”

Right. But this talk of mainly- inner change is a shift from the bolder meliorist resolve to push back at suffering’s external sources. I confess, I’m not much impressed by this suggested exercise:

“Imagine that you are taking upon yourself, in the form of a gray cloud, the disease, confusion, and mental toxins of [suffering] people, which disappears into the white light of your heart without leaving any trace. This will transform both your own suffering and that of others… “

It will? Or will it transform how I feel about suffering? Sounds pretty Stoic. Is that the change we need?

Don’t misunderstand me: we should do what it takes, internally, to allow ourselves (amidst suffering) to “feel a great happiness.” But we should also refrain from describing that inner transformation as (in itself) effective remediation. Moral holidays are  necessary. They’re not sufficient.

Rainy days, sunny days, cloudy days, beautiful days… These three  books are perfect for any day:)

“Understanding Our Mind” Thich Nhat Hanh

“The Quantum and the Lotus” by Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan

“The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness” Erich Schiffmann

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

–kayma

Matthieu Ricard begins Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill by trying to rehabilitate an idea I confess I’ve always looked down on: renunciation, “a much-misunderstood concept.” It’s not about giving up anything good or beautiful or meaningful, he says; it’s about “freedom from mental confusion and self-centered afflictions,” and “meaning through insight and loving-kindness.”

So it doesn’t parallel “negation,” is in fact an affirming state of mind? Joyous, even? It will be a stretch for me to make that connection, I thought joi de vivre was a condition requiring active, energetic, integrative and positive movement– none of which are normally connoted for me by the word “renounce.” But I’m listening.

Here’s an illustration of how I’ve tended to think about renunciation: “The purity of [the Jamesian concept of ] pure experience,” I wrote, ” is not that of renunciation in the eastern sense, of personal desires and attachments. James was quite at home with the idea that we are the particular bundles of wants, preferences, valuations, and (especially) experiences, and actions that uniquely individuate each of us. As they change and grow, or stagnate, so do we. The people, places, and things to which we sustain voluntary attachments are the most important constituents of our respective identities. To renounce them, or detach from them, would be to die… you can reach a state of consciousness called ‘clear consciousness’ in which the mind is perfectly lucid, without being caught up in discursive thoughts.” We can reach such a state, but James does not advise futile efforts to stay there. Life presses forward.”

Renunciation, in other words, has always seemed to me to mean something like stagnation, torpor, ennui, even suicide. But I stand ready and receptive to Brother Matthieu’s correction.

But I also note that some advocates of renunciation are quite frank: it means “losing interest in life’s activities… letting go of all desires and attachments… turning inward instead of constantly being focused outward.” This is the diametrical contradiction of Russell’s advice in Conquest of Happiness. Happy people of my stripe take an active interest in the  far-flung “outward” world. Is there some reason I’m missing, why we can’t honor our inner subjectivity while also caring about people, places, and things out there?

It’s not, they say, about “going off to meditate on a mountain and escaping the world.” But Ricard opened his TED talk with that enticing Tibetan mountain view. It sure looks, at the very least, like holding the world at arm’s length. It looks like detachment, when engagement seems the more responsible attitude. Is this just semantics?

Then, Ricard gently disputes Henri Bergson’s view that the vagueness of “happiness” is a virtue, allowing us each to interpret its meaning as we see fit. He wants to be more precise.

Can we agree that the Sage of Konigsburg, dutifully bearing the world of pure and practical reason on his back, following his impersonal imperatives and acting categorically for all humanity, was badly mistaken when he said happiness must be “rational and devoid of any personal taint.” Taint?!

This is one of the nubs of the issue, for me. Personal values, predilections, enthusiasms, interests, idiosyncracies, peccadillos… these are our delights. For us to abandon them for the rational, impersonal, categorical (etc.) out of a sense of duty to the Moral Law and Reason for its own sake, is not to pursue happiness, it’s to denigrate happiness as peripheral to more important things (to be ascertained by always supposing that our choices must legislate for all, imperatively, impersonally, and categorically).  Kantians can help us remember not to denigrate the common world, and bless them for that. But if happiness  is not, at the end of the day, about personal satisfactions and my individual flourishing (and yours), I say it’s over-rated. It is, though. So it isn’t. Critique that, Immanuel.

This looks like a more promising formulation: happiness is “a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind… not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being.” And the stoic element of Buddhism is prominent here too: “while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.” I’m prepared to take that possibility as axiomatic, though it seems impossible to “prove.” No problem.

I think Ricard must (to his credit) be a walker, with his example of a perfectly happy pedestrian “walking through a serene wilderness, [with] no particular expectations beyond the simple act of walking. She simply is, here and now, free and open.” Yep, that’s precisely the feeling behind my goofball smile, if you ever spot me ambling down the street or around the lake. (Kant was a daily walker too, I wonder what his problem was.)

But that’s not the whole nine yards, “the difference between these flashes… and the immutable peacefulness of the sage is as great as that between the tiny section of sky seen through the eye of the needle and the limitless expanses of outer space.” So it’s vast, cosmic. I’m familiar with the flash, and find it readily repeatable. But I wonder how I’d do as a sage.

Better than Sartre, I hope. We’ve already seen that he has no use for what he regards as the silly American pursuit of happiness. He makes me sick. Nauseous. Dukkha-filled. Redundant. Superfluous. Suicidal. Well, he would if I swallowed his Nothingness nostrums.

In fairness, Sartre is expressing the state of mind of the pre-Existentialist hero who has yet to take full personal responsibility for creating his own essence, when he says “we hadn’t the slightest reason to be [here].” He’s quite clear, in Existentialism is a Humanism, that fashioning one’s own raison d’etre is a worthy and meaningful undertaking. He’s also quite clear in subverting that activity through the concept of “bad faith.” No wonder he sat around in bars smoking harsh unfiltered cigarettes, suffering logorrhea and the “wicked world syndrome.” (And I suppose I might, too, if the Nazis occupied my country.)

“Sukha is the state of lasting well-being that manifests itself when we have freed ourselves of mental blindness and afflictive emotions,” and Ricard says it is also an undistortive window on reality. My framing question remains: can I have some without disengaging from responsible activity and involvement in the world? Windows are good. So are doors.

So: how to begin to meditate. I love the instruction to just “watch your mind, the coming and going of thoughts… do not be bothered by them.” I do it every day. But I don’t sit first, I walk out the door and I keep going. Works for me. But what works for you?

This evening I attended a lecture given by Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist Monk residing in Nepal. Originally born and raised in Paris by the renowned Philosopher Jean-Francois Ricard he travels the world with positive messages. The lecture focused on Meditation and the importance of Altruistic Love and Wisdom. “Our mind can be our best friend or our worst enemy” Matthieu begins, “think of the wings of a bird, on one wing there lies compassion and on the other wisdom and there must be balance between the two.” Tonight he focused on how imperative it will be for people to “get happy” and lose their selfishness and mono-world identities. He spoke of the destruction of the mind being sicknesses like hatred, anger, jealousy, envy, narcissism and self-absorption. “Compassion is not about likeness but the wish that others may not experience negativity.” As I sat through this two hour long lecture, my patience was surely tested, but I began to connect his thoughtfulness and message to the current philosophies that I’ve been writing and ruminating about.

Matthieu’s lecture perpetrated the message: BEGIN MEDITATING. If I focus  my energy in a healthy and positive direction, I will ultimately not only have a profound affect on myself but others as well. Matthieu suggested, ” empty your mind, relax, fall into pure mindfulness and sustain attention on a small point in space.” There has been much scientific study on the powers of Meditation which include not only experts, but novices as well. It is known that meditating creates a healthy more energized lifestyle. The power of the mind exceeds that which we can even begin to imagine!

Lovely readers, tomorrow morning I will hike up the mountain behind my home and once I’ve gotten to the top I will rest in my favorite spot and embark on my “vigilance task”, the task of Compassion Meditation. I have meditated before but not in such a way, in such a mindset of importance. I cannot wait to embark on this journey!

Aspiration! Intention!

Yours truly,

Xangalm

[Monje budista, nacido en París en 1946. En Abril de 2007 fue considerado como el hombre más feliz de la tierra tras años de estudio de su cerebro mediante resonancias magnéticas en el laboratorio de neurociencia afectiva de la universidad de Wisconsin.]

“Vivir las experiencias que nos ofrece la vida, es obligatorio; sufrirlas o gozarlas, es opcional”.

hi there !

I have been away for quite a while, writing a book, studying … I don’t forget about you all, but my weeks are really busy ! So many things to learn and so little time ! I yet have to accept that one day is only 24 hours … here is a conference I just found while working, I was listening to it and decided to make a quick little post so everyone can enjoy it.

I hope you are all doing fine and enjoying the summer

Cheers

Jayce

Der Neid und die Eifersucht gehen aus der grundlegenden Unfähigkeit hervor,

sich am Glück oder dem Erfolg anderer zu freuen!

Matthieu Ricard mit Andreas Kellner

Einige Bücher:

I finally finished Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard. Ricard is the son of French intellectuals who started his career in science before running off to Tibet to live with monks. He does a good job of translating Eastern practices for a Western audience. I have to say though- I really have not spent any time meditating so I can’t comment on its life changing ability. I can see the benefit in clearing your mind, but I haven’t ever found the patience to sit still for long. I did unlike the meditation game on Wii Fit with the candle flame recently so I will start there.

My next talk will be at Thammasat University this Saturday. It is on the new translation of the book The Quantum and the Lotus, which has just been completed by Suan Ngern Mee Ma Press. The book is an extended conversation between Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan. The former is a former molecular biologist who turned to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and the latter was born in a Buddhist culture and became a well known astrophysicist working in the US.

So we have a symmetrical contrast — a French scientist who became a monk and a Vietnamese who became a scientist. The symmetry would have been more perfect if Thuan had been a monk first and then disrobed. But that is not too necessary. The idea of the book is a dialog on various topics between Buddhism, represented by Ricard, and science, represented in Thuan. This in itself is a welcoming reversal to the perhaps stereotypical perception that science belongs to the West and Buddhism to the East.

The book started with a background of both Ricard and Thuan — how both became what they are right now, and it gave an account of the two’s long conversation together when they met in a conference, an event which led to the present book. The chapters deal with topics which are of interest to both Buddhists and the scientists, such as, the structure of matter, the beginning and the end of the universe, mind, consciousness, mathematics, whether real knowledge and truth can be obtained through either Buddhism or science, and so on.

The first chapter opened with a general account of the orientation of both Buddhism and science. What are the purposes or the objectives of both enterprises? Science, of course, aims at finding truth about the natural phenomena, theories that would explain how the phenomena came about and how they are to be understood. Buddhism, according to Ricard, aims at the same goal. Buddhism has an interest in knowing what the truth is like, because then the practitioner would gain an insight which will lead him or her to attain the Final Goal, that of liberation from all sufferings.

And here is the main difference between science and Buddhism lies. Science appears to want to know how things are just for the sake of it, or at least that is the version usually put to us by scientists, who claim that the purpose of basic, in contrast to applied, science, is just to know the truth without using the acquired knowledge for some other purposes. This account of the distinction between basic and applied science is very much contested, because even the so-called basic science is fraught with interests which are immediate and social, but that would take us further from the present point of this essay, so more on this later. The point here is that the version of the real distinction between basic and applied science here appears to contrast with Buddhism. For Buddhism it is not enough just to learn how things are just for the sake of it. Buddhists would say that that is an example of lobha, or desire, in this case desire for more and more knowledge. If this is so, then the desire for more knowledge would lead us further away from the Final Goal. So if science is viewed in this way, then the objectives of both seem to lead each in opposite directions.

The Thai version

That does not seem to be what Ricard has in mind in his dialog with his physicist counterpart. According to Ricard, Buddhism has an interest in finding truth about the natural phenomena, and he apparently believes that only through getting at this truth is the Goal possible. However, if such is really the case, then it becomes difficult to understand how the Goal has actually been achieved by countless practitioners of Buddhism throughout the ages. This is because even now such truth about the natural phenomena has not been fully achieved. Scientists are still debating among themselves and are frankly acknowledging that there is a lot that we do not yet know about our natural world. What, for example, is Dark Matter or Dark Energy? Right now there is no satisfactory account. Are there really parallel universes or ‘multiverses’ where our own is just one among countlessly many?

According to Ricard, one would have to learn about how things really are before one has a chance to gain Realization. After quoting the Buddha in one of the sutras when he told his students that his teachings were only a handful when compared to the whole of knowable things, which were as many as all the leaves in the forest, Ricard says:

But experience shows that it is necessary to understand correctly the nature of the exterior world and of the ego, or what we term ‘reality,’ if we want to eliminate ignorance. That is why the Buddha made this the central theme of his teaching. (The Quantum and the Lotus, Random House 2001, pp. 12-13.)

The problem here is how much of this ‘correct understanding’ would suffice. The Buddha’s parable of the leaves in his hand and the leaves in the forest shows that we can make do with the small amount we have and achieve the Goal. This would be all we need if what we really want is to achieve the Goal and nothing else. Science, on the other hand, seems to want more and more. You can’t stop at the level where you smash atoms to bits; you have to smash the bits further and get even smaller bits. You can’t stop at seeing this far out in space; you have see even further and further. But do the ever smaller bits belong to the leaves in the Buddha’s hands or out there in the forest?

It is true in a way that Buddhism has an interest in knowing the reality. Ricard’s examples of knowing the real nature of the ego and the “empty” characteristic of everything are good ones. But in Buddhism it does ultimately speaking not matter whether what you get is the real truth any way, so long as you sincerely believe it is. This is very difficult for non-Buddhists and especially scientists to understand, because they typically would think that our own thinking or conception of things is one thing, and what is out there objectively is another. But that is not the case in Buddhism. You will achieve Liberation if you sincerely believe that the ego is just a mental or conceptual construction and that reality is empty of inherent characteristics. What things really are outside of our conception or perception is not so important. They can be anything they like. They don’t matter at all.

One of the main practices in Tantric Buddhism is to visualize that the place that we are in right now is the Buddha’s realm full of jewels and the like. Every sound that we hear is mantra; every sight that of an enlightened being; the air we breathe is the air of Enlightenment, and so on. Here what scientists or empiricists usually take to be the “truth” has no place. In full visualization, in the eyes of an enlightened one, a “truth” is just that, a bubble in the water.

“La beauté véritable est le visage d’un cœur bon.”

Matthieu Ricard

ps.: indicadísssimo o site deste monge e fotógrafo francês Matthieu Ricard

Lieve Mensen, bijna alweer een jaar voorbij…tijd voor reflectie en diamantjes verzamelen, en het woord dat in mij resoneert is ‘dierbaar’.

Ik realiseer me hoeveel me dierbaar is en ben dankbaar voor wát en wíe mij dierbaar is, ondanks alweer een afscheid, deze keer van mijn liefdespartner en levensmaatje gedurende de afgelopen 7 jaar. We ontwarren ons samenleven en onze relatieknoop en gaan voortaan ieder onze eigen weg. Hij is mij heel dierbaar, net als de vele goede herinneringen aan waanzinnig veel lol en heerlijkheid samen; schitterende diamantjes die ik meeneem mijn toekomst in. Daarnaast ervaar ik ook verdriet van wat niet verder heeft kunnen zijn of worden. Een grote nieuwe uitdaging ligt voor me.
Gisterenavond heb ik meegezongen in de voormalige Amstelkerk met Jan Kortie, bij zijn maandelijkse samenzang met ongeveer 200 mensen: “Het lied van de ziel”, waar we o.a. vanwege de kerst met een heel eenvoudig lied de vier aartsengelen Rafaël, Gabriël, Michaël en Uriël – die ik niet eens allemaal kende – toezongen, voor mij een nieuwe mantra, die ik in die samenzang als troostend ervaarde en me tot tranen toe roerde.

Mijn leven lang ben ik al een Kerstkind en heb daar vroeger jarenlang mee geworsteld, zoekend naar manieren om mijn verjaardag net als andere kinderen te kunnen vieren, een onmogelijkheid natuurlijk in die tijd van het jaar, tot ik zelfs een puberjaar of twee uitweek naar de 17e juni: “Dán maar een half jaar later, dan komt er misschien iemand op mijn feestje…” en heb nu sinds lang mijn eigen vormloze vorm gevonden door het soms lang van te voren te organiseren met een etentje met vrienden of familie, of zoals vorig jaar een groots vóór mij georganiseerd feest te vieren, en soms in alle eenvoud te laten ontstaan, zoals dit jaar.
Het lukt mijzelf gelukkig redelijk snel om door de commerciële laag rond Kerst heen te zien, tot de essentie te komen van samenzijn, uitrusten en introspectie én ik ervaar het eigenlijk bijna altijd als een emotioneel intense periode, denkelijk ook aangestuurd door het seizoen alhier, want in de jaren dat ik met korte mouwen op een terrasje in Turkije mijn verjaardag vierde, was de kersttijd duidelijk luchtiger en letterlijk en figuurlijk lichter, maar toch altijd met een gevoelige klank van raakbaarheid.

Juist als ik dit schrijf, wordt op de TV een programma aangekondigd wat zondagavond uitgezonden wordt: “Bij Yerli”, waarin Nilgün Yerli deze keer Alexander Pechtold in Turkije zal ontvangen en interviewen – heel boeiende bijeenkomsten,waarover zij zelf zegt: “Nu mogen Nederlanders mijn gast zijn, in het land dat ik niet echt ken.” Ik ken Nilgun als een ruwe diamant die steeds prachtiger gaat schitteren, de scherpe kantjes minder of precies daar waar ik ze meestal erg waarderen kan. Mooi ook de synchroniciteit: Terwijl ik iets over mijn 10 jaar daar schrijf, komt die aankondiging op TV. Zij is net weer een paar jaar terug in Turkije na op haar tiende vertrokken te zijn naar Nederland.

De TV staat aan omdat ik op zaterdagochtend vaak de uitzendingen van de Boeddhistische Omroep beluister en met een half oog bekijk, terwijl ik me voorbereid op een rustige dag thuis. “Taking it slow.” Ik ontspan bij uitstek van het zien, horen en zijn bij Tibetaanse monniken en kan enorm genieten van en veel steun en bemoediging vinden in de vertellingen van Soygal Rinpoche (schrijver van het Tibetaans boek van leven en sterven) en vandaag van Matthieu Ricard.
Hij noemt zichzelf een clown die een beetje de wereld afreist. Maar in werkelijkheid is hij een zeer toegewijde Franse monnik die al ruim 30 jaar met tal van projecten in de weer is. Hij doneert een miljoen dollar per jaar aan hulpbehoevende scholen, ziekenhuizen, kloosters en filosofische instellingen in Tibet, India en Nepal. Inspirerend en troostend vanwege zijn ‘miljoenen druppels op een gloeiende plaat’, een lichtend voorbeeld. Ook werkt hij mee aan wetenschappelijk hersenonderzoek, naar de werking van meditatie en de staat van mededogen op de hersenen die blijvend van invloed blijkt te kunnen zijn, ook op het immuunsysteem. Niet nieuw voor mij maar heerlijk dat het op zo’n hoog wetenschappelijk niveau bewezen wordt.
Als dat afgelopen is, staat tijdens het opruimen en afwassen en mail beantwoorden dit weekend en deze week Serious Request aan, met ook dit jaar weer een ongedwongen en toch zeer betrokken, krachtige actie vol verbinding, creativiteit en inventiviteit, ditmaal voor vluchtelingen over de hele wereld, middels het Rode Kruis. Vanaf 2e kerstnacht wordt het intunen op SR voor mij prettig afgewisseld met de Top 2000 (Ik lijk wel een TV gids deze keer).

En om nog even in de sfeer te blijven, wordt precies op het moment als toetje nóg een programma naar mijn hart aangekondigd, voor de 23ste, ook zeer de moeite waard en een andere diamantje: “Selcuk, de stad van Maria”, alweer in Turkije. Daar leven Moslims en Christenen samen in een geloofsgemeenschap bij de resten van het huisje van Maria waar zij volgens een openbaring van Hildegard von Bingen haar laatste jaren heeft doorgebracht. Ik kan sowieso beamen dat er een bijzonder zacht vergevingsenergie-veld hangt op die plek. Dat brengt me bij de laatste herinnering die ik met jullie wil delen: Toen ik in Kusadasi woonde, vlakbij Selcuk, en meditatie-avonden begeleidde, heb ik zowel de abt als de zusters van het Efeser klooster bij mij thuis uitgenodigd, en waren we met moslims, christenen en ‘non-conventionele believers’ bijeen, om een avond samen te zijn en mee te doen aan een wereldwijde hartsmeditatie (1995). Dat was ontzettend leuk voor iedereen en heel inspirerend, fijn om mee te mogen maken. Alweer een schitterend diamant, een dierbare herinnering. Efese, een plek die meer dan de moeite waard is om te bezoeken! Terug naar hier en nu…

De Gouden Driehoek is inmiddels geopend en met veel plezier in gebruik genomen, met naast
de coachingspraktijk o.a. een tweewekelijks healingcentrum op de maandagavond. Als je als gecertificeerd healer mee wilt komen stromen en healen, voel je dan bij deze uitgenodigd!
Het eerste traject van de toegepaste readingopleiding is inmiddels van start gegaan en wordt met veel enthousiasme ervaren. Volgende keer een reactie van een van de studenten. Hou de website in de gaten voor de datum van de eerstvolgende open middag,

Hieronder vind je een paar links naar het programma van begin 2009 met onder andere Autobiografisch Schrijven en Zinspelen in actie en de Agenda alsook informatie over het healingcentrum. Ook kun je doorklikken naar een artikel in de Business Utrecht van deze maand met de aurareading van Doreen Boonekamp, directeur van het Nederlands Filmfestival. Deel 1 en deel 2 Ik was door redacteur Mart Rienstra uitgenodigd om Ciska Rippen te vervangen bij de terugkerende serie aurareadings van bekende Utrechtse ondernemers voor dit blad. De serie komt binnenkort aan zijn eind en ter ere daarvan komt er in 2009 een klein boekje uit. De reading – gewoon op kantoor tussen de bureaus van het Nederlands Filmfestival, was erg leuk om te doen. Bedankt!

Dat brengt me – na wat zijwegen – bij mijn welgemeende nieuwjaarswensen:

“Dat je heel erg veel leuks en uitdagends tegen mag komen om te doen,
de lastige dingen zo gemakkelijk mogelijk kan volbrengen
en de rest lekker kan laten!
En dat, waar jij ook bent en met wie je ook gaat zijn
in deze en volgende dagen,
je een 2009 vol vervoering, liefde en bezieling mag beleven!”

Hartelijke groet,
Carolien Geurtsen
Traningsbureau Bezield Coachen

source

” Le sujet et l’objet sont comme le bois de santal et sa fragrance. Le samsara et le nirvana sont comme la glace et l’eau. Les apparences et la vacuité sont comme les nuages et le ciel. Les pensées et la nature de l’esprit sont comme les vagues et l’océan. “    Guéshé Tchayalpa

“… fondre la glace des concepts et des préjugés pour la transformer en l’eau vive de la liberté de tous les possibles.”  Khyentsé Rinpotché

” Les pensées surgissent de la conscience pure et s’y dissolvent à nouveau, comme les vagues s’élèvent de l’océan et s’y résolvent, sans jamais devenir autre chose que l’océan lui-même.”

” Rappelez-vous que les pensées ne sont que le produit de la conjonction fugace d’un grand nombre de facteurs. Elles n’existent pas par elles-mêmes.” Khyentsé Rinpotché

“Le bouddhisme définit l’esprit comme une continuité  d’expériences (…)”.

(extraits de l’Art de la méditation, de Matthieu Ricard, ed. NIL)

source
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” L’objet de la méditation est l’esprit.”

Matthieu Ricard
L’art de la méditation
Ed. Nil

parte 1

parte 2

parte 3

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será que ainda vou a tempo?

Here’s a trailer for the new documentary about lotsawa, photographer, humanitarian, monk, and happiest man alive, Matthieu Ricard. The film recently had its UK premiere in London, at the International Buddhist Film Festival.