Discover the Mind-Blowing Secrets of the ‘Happiest Man in the World’ – Unveiling His 3 Life-Changing Rules!

Matthieu Ricard is an ordained Buddhist monk and internationally successful author of books on altruism, animal rights, happiness and wisdom. His humanitarian efforts led to his homeland awarding him the French National Order of Merit. (Ricard’s main residence is a Nepalese monastery.) He was the French interpreter for the Dalai Lama and has a PhD in cell genetics. In the early 2000s, researchers at the University of Wisconsin discovered that Ricard’s brain produced gamma waves, which have been linked to learning, attention and memory, at levels so pronounced that the media dubbed him “the man.” Most happy in the world”. He was also late for our Zoom, and it was driving me crazy. Didn’t receive my confirmation email? Why hadn’t she emailed him to say she was late? He had deadlines! Tight deadlines! My carefully planned schedule was going to hell! Unfortunately, everything worked out, as it always was going to be. Clearly, he had a lot to learn about taming the mind. “You shouldn’t get discouraged too quickly,” said Ricard, whose memoir, “Notebooks of a Wandering Monk,” is forthcoming. “You can’t master playing the piano now. These skills take time.”

It’s not the best thing to say, but I can easily imagine wishing certain people would suffer. How are we supposed to gracefully deal with our polar opposites in a world that feels more and more about polarities? I mean, the Dalai Lama could talk to Vladimir Putin all he wanted, but Putin is not going to say, “Your compassion has changed me.” Once, a long time ago, someone said to me, who is the person you would like to spend 24 hours alone with? I said Saddam Hussein. I said, “Maybe, maybe, some little change in him is possible.” When we talk about compassion, you want everyone to find happiness. Without exception. You can’t just do that for those who are good to you or close to you. It has to be universal. You can say that Putin and Bashar al-Assad are the scum of humanity, and rightly so. But compassion is about remedying suffering. and their cause. What would that look like? You may want to change the system that allowed someone like that to emerge. Sometimes I visualize Donald Trump going to hospitals, taking care of people, taking migrants to his house. You can wish that cruelty, indifference, greed would disappear from the minds of these people. That is compassion; that is being impartial.

But why does compassion have to be universal? Because this is different from moral judgment. It doesn’t stop you from saying that those are walking psychopaths, that they don’t have a heart. But compassion is remedying suffering wherever it is, whatever its form, and whoever causes it. So what is the object of compassion here? It is hate and the person under its power. If someone hits you with a stick, you don’t get mad at the stick, you get mad at the person. These people we are talking about are like sticks in the hands of ignorance and hatred. We can judge the actions of a person at a given moment, but compassion is wishing that the present aspect of suffering and the causes of suffering can be remedied.

For a while now, people have been calling you the happiest man in the world. Do you feel so happy? It’s a big joke. We cannot know the level of happiness through neuroscience. It’s a good title for journalists to use, but I can’t get rid of it. Perhaps on my grave it will say: “Here lies the happiest person in the world.” Anyway, I enjoy every moment of life, but of course there are moments of extreme sadness, especially when you see so much suffering. But this should ignite your compassion, and if it ignites your compassion, you’re off to a stronger, healthier, more meaningful way of being. That is what I call happiness. It’s not like you’re jumping for joy all the time. Happiness is more like your baseline. It’s where you get after the ups and downs, the joys and the sorrows. We perceive even more intensely—bad taste, seeing someone suffer—but we maintain this sense of depth. That is what meditation brings.

But if you were explaining that to someone, you could still say, OK, how do I change? Is the answer as simple as “Start thinking about compassion”? When you’re in that moment of unconditional love, say, for a child, it fills our mind for 30 seconds, maybe a minute, and then suddenly it’s gone. We have all experienced that. The only difference now is cultivating that in some way. Make him stay a little longer. Try to be silent with him for 10 minutes, 20 minutes. If it goes away, try to bring it back. Give it vitality and presence. That is exactly what meditation is about. If you do that for 20 minutes a day, even for three weeks, it will cause a change.

I don’t want to reduce 2,500 years of contemplative science to a single sentence, but are there any thoughts you can suggest to people who may have in mind that might be helpful to them as they go through life’s challenges? If you can, as far as possible, cultivate that quality of human warmth, genuinely wanting others to be happy; that is the best way to fulfill your own happiness. This is also the most rewarding state of mind. Those guys who believe in selfishness and say, “You do that because you feel good about it,” this is so stupid. Because if you help others but don’t give a damn, then you won’t feel a thing! Wanting to separate doing something for others from feeling good yourself is like trying to make a flame that burns with light but without heat. If we try humbly, with some happiness, to increase our benevolence, that will be the best way to have a good life. That is the best modest advice I could give.

Excuse me, are you using an Apple Watch? Yeah.

Why does a Buddhist monk need an Apple Watch? Path in the forest. I try to count 10,000 steps to be healthy at 77 years old. I don’t do a lot of interviews anymore, but when I do, I usually don’t wear this because the first thing guys say is “Why do you have an Apple Watch?”

I realize this is a question that no one on the path to enlightenment would ask, but generally speaking, am I on the right path? You?

Yeah. [Laughs.] I mean, I can’t do a clinical test, but I feel like they resonate with ideas that are dear to me. So that’s a good sign.

I’ll take it! If you had said, “Oh, that’s all rubbish,” you know, there was a French journalist once, very cynical, and he said to me, “This becoming a better person and all that, this is the politics of the hashish.” I don’t know what he meant. But what I said was, “My dear friend, if I’m really trying to become a better person and do a little bit of good, if that’s the policy of the hashish trade, I’m happy to spend my whole life in the hashish trade.

Opening illustration: original photography by Raphaële Demandre

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Emma Chamberlain on leaving YouTube, Walter Mosley on a dumber America and Cal Newport on a new way of working.