A 69-year-old monk who scientists call the 'world's happiest man' says the secret to being happy takes just 15 minutes a day

• Alyson Shontell Jan. 27, 2016, 8:31 

Follow Business Insider:

Matthieu Ricard

Matthieu Ricard, the world's happiest man.

Who is the happiest man in the world? If you Google it, the name "Matthieu Ricard" pops up.

Matthieu Ricard, 69, is a Tibetan Buddhist monk originally from France who has been called "the world's happiest man."
That's because he participated in a 12-year brain study on meditation and compassion led by a neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin, Richard Davidson.

Davidson hooked up Ricard's head to 256 sensors and found that when Ricard was meditating on compassion his mind was unusually light.

Simple Capacity details the findings:

The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves – those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory – ‘never reported before in the neuroscience literature’, Davidson said. The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, allowing him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity.

Ricard, who says he sometimes meditates for entire days without getting bored, admits he's a generally happy person (although he feels his "happiest man" title is a media-driven overstatement).
He spoke with Business Insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Here's his advice for how to be happy.

Stop thinking 'me, me, me'

To Ricard, the answer comes down to altruism. The reason is that, thinking about yourself and how to make things better for yourself all the time is exhausting and stressful, and it ultimately leads to unhappiness.

"It's not the moral ground," Ricard says. "It's simply that me, me, me all day long is very stuffy. And it's quite miserable, because you instrumentalize the whole world as a threat, or as a potential sort of interest [to yourself]."

If you want to be happy, Ricard says you should strive to be "benevolent," which will not only make you feel better but also make others like you more.

That's not to say you should let other people take advantage of you, Ricard warns, but you should generally strive to be kind within reason.

"If your mind is filled with benevolence, you know, the passion and solidarity ... this is a very healthy state of mind that is conducive to flourishing," Ricard says. "So you, yourself, are in a much better mental state. Your body will be healthier, so it has been shown. And also, people will perceive it as something nice."

That all sounds great in theory, but how does a person actually become altruistic and benevolent and not let selfish thoughts creep in?

Start training your mind like you'd train to run a marathon

Ricard believes everyone has the ability to have a lighter mind because there's a potential for goodness in every human being (unless you're, say, a serial killer, and there's something actually chemically abnormal going on with your brain).

But like a marathon runner who needs to train before he or she can run 26.2 miles, people who want to be happier need to train their minds. Ricard's preferred way of training his is meditation:

"With mental training, we can always bring [our level of happiness] to a different level. It's like running. If I train, I might run a marathon. I might not become an Olympic champion, but there is a huge difference between training and not training. So why should that not apply to the mind? ... There is a view that benevolence, attention, emotional balance and resilience are skills that can be trained. So if you put them all together, you could say that happiness is a skill that can be trained.

OK, so how does one train their mind to be happier?

Just spend 15 continuous minutes a day thinking happy thoughts

Start by thinking happy thoughts for 10 to 15 minutes a day, Ricard says. Typically when we experience feelings of happiness and love, it's fleeting and then something else happens, and we move on to the next thought. Instead, concentrate on not letting your mind get distracted, and keep focused on the positive emotions for the next stretch of time.
And if you do that training every day, even just two weeks later you can feel positive mental results. And if you practice that for 50 years like Ricard has, you can become a happiness pro too. That's backed up by neuroscientists, by the way. Davidson found in his study that even 20 minutes of daily meditation can make people much happier overall.
_______________________________________ 
 
I asked Richard Davidson what specific meditation he used in the epic Univ of Wisconsin study. 

"Tonglen" he told me. "But a non specific version." Meaning instead of the traditional Tibetan Buddhist meditation (paraphrasing) where you imagine a person who is ill and then you "call upon the healing light of the universe" to draw the illness (anger, sickness, rage) from them into you, and as it comes into you, you transform it into healing energy and breathe that energy back into them - instead of visualizing a person, the monks visualized the planet as a sick patient. 

So focusing on losing the word "me" "mine" and "I" is one way of eliminating self focus, but the other way is to actually think of people you love (or don't love, depending) who are in need of a cure, and you visualize yourself helping to facilitate that cure. The point is simple; Science proves that by doing so you can "cure or eliminate symptoms of depression" in yourself. 

There's no evidence that the meditation cures or helps the other person, (or prayer for that matter, but it can't hurt) but there is science that absolutely proves that it can cure depression. Literally "loving your neighbor as yourself" affects the amygdala, the part of the brain where depression resides. 

Davidson says that even "one session of meditation" (or tonglen) can change the physical shape of the amygdala. Should be included/required in every doctor's kit bag; every school yard; ten minutes a day cures or alleviates symptoms of depression (and eventually replaces medications involved with amygdala suppression (SSRI drugs like zoloft and prozac) which as we know, in some people, some children, have dangerous side effects (suicide/violent acts). 
 Let me say it again. Ten minutes a day. Cure (or alleviate symptoms of) depression. Not a fad. Not a religion. Not a philosophy. It's free. It's science. It's data with proven results. 

("Is this mic on?")

Do not Panic - He is in Control, Things will Work Out

Do not fear your limitations, you have access to My limitless resources. When you face a tough challenge do not panic, remember that I am with you. Talk with me and listen when I talk to you through each challenging situation. I care about you, sometime I allow difficulties to come into your life to prepare you to fully handle them. Relax in my presences trusting My strength.

~.~.PkC.~.~

“Be afraid of nothing. Hating none, giving love to all, feeling the love of God, seeing His presence in everyone, and having but one desire - for His constant presence in the temple of your consciousness - that is the way to live in this world.”   --Paramahansa Yogananda

My Night Prayer

Thank You Thank You Thank You

Thank you for all the experience I had today in this life.
Please excuse me of my mistakes and follies I did during any of my activities during the day, knowingly or unknowingly.

God, grant me the serenity
         To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
      And the wisdom to know the difference.

Thank You

My Morning Prayer

I am grateful that I am a conscious being.  I am grateful for each breath,  I am grateful for each moment, I am grateful for this life.

I am doing my best in my each action, with no attachment to the results,  hurting nobody.

I surrender to all that this moment is and accept it as it comes. I am exactly who I am and where I am suppose to be right now.

Happiness is  my birthright, I deserve and I am feeling real joy and abundance love and prosperity. No matter what happens,  I choose not to let even a single moment, even a single breath  in which I am stressed, depressed, sad, angry or over excited.

You are what you think and You are what you eat. I am the author of my thoughts and I choose to think only positive thoughts.

Like a warrior everyday I am impatient to savor what each day each moment brings.

                                                                         .~.~.~.

PAIN TO PLEASURE

We have five senses, through these senses our body is protecting itself. We are conscious being, we are aware of thing around us, and things inside us. We have memory to remember past experiences, every cell in our body has memory to remember each experience. A conscious being, with five senses is definitely going to get hurt, going to get sick and also getting our feeling hurt.  Living exposes us to pain, pain characterizes human  existence. This pain is actual pain, it is a physical pain also a psychological pain.

Along with pain we experience joy, pleasures, peace, bliss. All these characterizes human existence.

Normal tendency is to reduce pains to zero and increase pleasure,  that looks like not possible and also pleasure alone will make life boring. So can I get little bit of pain that I can bear and more pleasure, for example nobody hurts me, I should have enough money, I should not have cancer or other bad diseases, normal temperature, cold, headache are fine.

Lets first understand facts; Everything is changing and nothing stays same, your body, life is changing every day, we have to accept the reality that we age and at sometime we are going to lose our loved ones.

Another thing we need to understand is 'Cause and Effect'.  Where you are today because of your actions in the past, let me say other way your tomorrow will rely on what actions you take today. I know this statement does not look 100% correct, you are right; but it is 95% of time it is correct.


Lets take some examples. If you do regular exercise and correct healthy diet, tomorrow after 10 year chances of having diabetes, cancer or any chronic disease are very less. If you work hard and get good grades tomorrow you will be in better university with scholarship. If you save money later you have enough for rainy days.

It is possible, if you work hard has good grades but best university did not selected you. You eat healthy food, did exercise still you get cancer or diabetes. You save money, but still in rainy days people cheated you and money was not enough. BUT chances of these things are very less. Even if bad things happen but still you be strongly facing it, because you know how to work hard, that working hard has become your habit. Where ever you go you will succeed.

Enough on cause and effect, back to PAIN. You can not control other people behavior, you do not know what is going to happen tomorrow to you or to your loved one. Only way to reduce pain and sufferings is understand following true facts, facts means facts like 'Sun rises from east'. Here are the facts:

• Impermanence : Everything is changing, what you are different from what you were yesterday or a moment back. Everything around you are changing, even you can see any physical change but it is changing. Nature removes old and make way for new.
• What seems like dying is actually a process in the creation of something new.
• Perception is a choice: you are free to see any situation as chaotic or creative.
• Fear of the unknown isn't innate. It comes from old conditioning and can be overcome.
• Every suffering is an opportunity.

How you feel about yourself, how you experience yourself. Generally we experience our-self as I as a an man/woman who want to earn money and buy lots of things to make myself rich and happy. We always think we are separate from this universe, separate from environment, separate from others. This separateness make us fearful, we try to protect our-self from other, we try to be better than other, we judge ourselves and others all the time. We analyze every situation to check if we are safe, what is in it for me. We are never relaxed, we are not enjoying life. You will find yourself that very rarely you laugh out load. All the time your mind is busy in something for tomorrow for something that happened in the past.

All these cause psychological pain, or call it sufferings. Here is the solution:

Today give yourself freedom to be as, as you are and let things and people around you be the way they are. Do not impose how they should be, accept them (people, situation and things) as they are.
Open yourself to uncertainty, do not predict anything, do not expect anything, ready for uncertainty. Try, you will feel if your heart has been unclenched and a rush of  flow of energy.

Every suffering/pain is an opportunity. You accept how the things are actually means how this universe is, when we try to change we are against the universe trying to change it. We are not ask for sufferings, but when it comes we will take it as a new opportunity.

 .... TO BE CONTINUED

You Are Me and I Am You

You Are Me and I Am You

I like this poem of Thich Nhat Hahn. I was looking for right picture behind it and I found this. Later found that is called Ketubah  or Ketubah tree.

Here is wikipedia,  A ketubah (Hebrew: כְּתוּבָּה ; "written thing"; pl. ketubot) is a special type of Jewish prenuptial agreement. It is considered an integral part of a traditional Jewish marriage, and outlines the rights and responsibilities of the groom, in relation to the bride. 

I think this poem is ideal prenuptial agreement.

Read from left to all the way right.

Dealing With Suffering and Seeing it as Grace

What are some of the ways that I can deal with suffering and then start taking it to a place of Grace?
Ram Dass: For most people, when you say that suffering is Grace it seems off the wall to them. And we’ve got to deal now with our own suffering and other people’s suffering. Because that is certainly a distinction that is very real, because even if we understand the way in which suffering is Grace – that is the way in which it can be a vehicle for awakening – that is fine for us. It’s quite a different thing to look at somebody else’s suffering and say it’s Grace. And Grace is something that an individual can see about their own suffering and then use it to their advantage. 

It is not something that can be a rationalization for allowing another human being to suffer. And you have to listen to the level at which another person is suffering. And when somebody is hungry you give them food. As my guru said, God comes to the hungry person in the form of food. You give them food and then when they’ve had their belly filled then they may be interested in questions about God. Even though you know from say Buddhist training, or whatever spiritual training you have had, that the root cause of suffering is ignorance about the nature of dharma. To give somebody a dharma lecture when they are hungry is just inappropriate methodology in terms of ending suffering.

So, the hard answer for how you are able to see suffering as Grace, and this is a stinker really, is that you have got to have consumed suffering into yourself. Which means, you see there is a tendency in us to find suffering aversive. And so we want to distance ourselves from it. Like if you have a toothache, it becomes that toothache. It’s not us any more. It’s that tooth. And so if there are suffering people, you want to look at them on television or meet them but then keep a distance from them. Because you are afraid you will drown in it. You are afraid you will drown in a pain that will be unbearable. And the fact of the matter is you have to. You finally have to. Because if you close your heart down to anything in the universe, it’s got you. You are then at the mercy of suffering. And to have finally dealt with suffering, you have to consume it into yourself. Which means you have to with eyes open be able to keep your heart open in hell. You have to look at what is, and say Yea, Right. And what it involves is bearing the unbearable. And in a way, who you think you are can’t do it. Who you really are can do it. So that who you think you are dies in the process.

Like I am dealing, I am counseling now, the counselor of a couple who went to a movie and when they came home their house had burned down and their three children had burned to death. Three, five and seven. And she is Mexican Catholic and he is a Caucasian Protestant. And they are responding entirely different to it. She is going in to deep spiritual experiences and talking with the children on other planes and he is full of denial and anger and feelings of inadequacy. And in a way, that situation is so unbearable and you wouldn’t ever lay that on another human being but there it is. And what will happen is she may come out of this a much deeper spiritual more profound, more evolved person. And he, because the way he dealt with it was through denial, may end up contracted and tight because he couldn’t embrace the suffering. He couldn’t go towards it. He pushed it away in order to preserve his sanity. In a way, there is a process in which suffering requires you to die into it or to give up your image of yourself. When you say I can’t bear it. Who is that? And they talk about the saints of India as being the living dead, because they have died who they thought they were. And they talk about the saints for whom all people are their children. So that everybody that is dying is their child dying. It’s easy to say “Well, it’s not my child.” or “It’s not my brother or my friend.” This poem is most familiar to most of you here, but it’s still every time I read it I get off on it. I think it’s worth it.

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow

because even today I still arrive.

Look at me: I arrive in every second 

to be a bud on a spring branch, 

to be a tiny bird whose wings are still fragile, 

learning to sing in my new nest, 

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, 

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. 

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, 

in order to fear and to hope,

the rhythm of my heart is the birth and 

death of all that are alive. 

I am the mayfly metamorphosing in the 

surface of the river. 

I am also the bird which, when spring comes, 

arrives in time to eat the mayfly. 

I am a frog swimming happily in the 

clear water of a pond. 

I am also the grass-snake who, 

approaching in silence, 

feeds itself on the frog. 

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, 

my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. 

I am also the merchant of arms, selling deadly 

weapons to Uganda. 

 I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, 

who throws herself into the ocean after 

being raped by a sea pirate. 

I am also the pirate, my heart not yet capable 

of seeing and loving. 

I am a member of the politburo, with 

plenty of power in my hand. 

I am also the man who has to pay his 

“debt of blood” to my people, 

dying slowly in a forced labor camp. 

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes 

flowers bloom in all walks of life. 

My pain is like a river of tears, so full it 

fills up all the four oceans.

Please call me by my correct names, 

so that I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once, 

so I can see that my joy and pain are but one. 

Please call me by my correct names, 

so I can become awake, 

and so that the door of my heart be left open, 

the door of compassion.

~Thich Nhat Hanh, from Earth Prayers

You see, part of the answer is the way in which one embraces suffering into oneself.  Instead of that distancing.  Sure, the joy is my joy; the birds are my birds.  But the cruelty and the viciousness and the pain -- the distancing of it from you -- is the one that doesn't allow suffering to become Grace.  Because the only way that you can see suffering as a spiritual thing is when you don't have a vested interest in protecting yourself from it.  You don't ask for it, but when it comes down the pike you work with it, including when it's in other people.  What's happened to me is very strange lately.  It's very hard for me to even talk about it because I only barely understand it.  But I am finding myself in more and more situations, like I work with a lot of AIDS patients, for example.  Situations where there is incredible suffering.   There is physical pain, uncertainty, social stigma, alienation, all kinds of stuff.  Fear, economic travail, etc.  And I find myself there for that person first in an empathic way, where I empathize with how it must be for them.   And I feel that pain with them.  And I feel it ripping me apart because they find themselves in such a position as an incarnate soul.  And as we are together, there is a way in which we meet so purely and so deeply and I can feel that that horror has pushed us through the doorway into a place of being together that is such Grace that I find a place in myself that is giggling with delight.  And it is so delicate to acknowledge the giggle in the face of such a cruel situation for a human being, and to realize that it is both of those things. 

One day when my guru was walking down the street with one of his old devotees- he closed his eyes for a minute and he said "So and so, this old devotee, so and so just died."  And then he laughed.  And he had been very close to her.  And the other guy, who was a very close devotee and kind of had a kidding relationship with Maharajji said "Why are you laughing. She is dead.   Are you some kind of butcher?"  And Mahharajji said "What would you have me do?  Make believe I am one of the puppets?"  That's a hard story to hear, because from where he was sitting, death, birth, suffering, it's the unfolding of Karma.  Who can see that?  If you are seeing that to push away the suffering, you are doing what's known as a spiritual uplevel.   And it's a cop-out.  Somebody falls down in front of you and you say "Karma."  It has no quality of heart in it.  But when you realize it's your child and it's yourself then it's all you and it's in you. Maharajji would cry at times when other people were suffering and at the same moment he was right there, understanding it.  You could feel that all the emotions were at play, and he could hear the unfolding of Karma.  From where I'm sitting, there are no errors in the universe.  It is the lawful unfolding; it's the Laws of the Karma.  The lawful unfolding in a cause and effect, but a very complex interweaving one, in which everything is related to everything else.  And when you have that kind of lawful unfolding, then suffering is just another part of it. 

And what I have noticed is that suffering, like with my step mother when she was dying, she had a tough ego.  She was a strong woman; a very willful woman.  A wonderful person.  A very good friend.  And I loved her a lot and I would have done everything to take away her pain, but I couldn't do it.  I mean I had the morphine and the this and the that and the next thing, but I couldn't take away all her pain.  And that pain just kept beating against her and beating against her and beating against her.  And it was ripping me apart because I loved her and I was going to miss her and it was all the human qualities of me.  And I watched as I held her and went through the whole process of her dying.  I watched that pain beat against her until her will finally had to surrender before it.  She couldn't push against it any more.  And what happened was, it was just like you watched a shell break and something new be born.  And who was born those last few days was so spiritually beautiful.  I felt I was in the presence of Grace itself.  And she recognized it.  She knew that she was now who she somewhere in herself knew she was but had never been able to be.  And it was the pain that did that.  And I looked and I thought can I bear to look at nature that baldly where my heart's breaking because this person I love is going to be lost and that at the same moment there is a perfection in this.   That as she is dying, this is what the whole incarnation was about.  And that was the completion of that work.
 
So I have developed an interesting way of you do what you can to relieve somebody's suffering with food, or shelter, or protection from violence, or whatever you can do.  But there is another level you have got to deal with in this paradox.  It is a paradox.  That most of the time you are taking away somebody's suffering when there is another level in which you know suffering is Grace.  Because they are not asking for Grace that way.  And you can't lay a trip. You can't say it's good for you, suffer.  That's the beginning of dealing with the issues.

Be a Soul

Practicing being a Witness leads to Self-Realisation, 

and Glad Acceptance makes you a Witness! 

Accept all, you stand tall. 

Show resistance, you will fall !