Happiest Man in World

Source  : Esquire

Writer  : Mat Smith

Matthieu Ricard, 67, Buddhist monk 

"If you can learn how to ride a bike you can learn how to be happy," says 67-year-old Buddhist monk and Happiest Man In The World, Matthieu Ricard.

As a child, poet Andre Breton, film-maker Louis Buñuel and composer Igor Stravinsky were regular guests to Ricard's philosopher parents' Parisian home. However, observing that the genius of his parents' friends didn't seem to make them any happier he set off for the Himalayas (abandoning his work as a molecular biologist at the Pasteur Institute) and transformed his life via meditation.

At the last count he'd clocked up more than 10,000 hours. Highly complex MRI scans by cognitive scientists at the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience in Wisconsin have shown extraordinarily high levels of upbeat activity (-0.45 on a range where -0.3 is described as "beatific") and almost invisible levels of negative emotions. "I don't see everything as rosy," he says, "but the ups and downs of life don't unsettle me in the usual way."

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