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- The Venerable Matthieu Ricard
The Venerable Matthieu Ricard
"Cultivating the Inner Conditions for Genuine Happiness"
The Venerable Matthieu Ricard, who has served as His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s French interpreter since 1979, is a renowned Buddhist teacher and monk residing in the Shechen Monastery in Nepal.
Born in France in 1946, Ricard has lived in the Himalayan region for the last 40 years. He earned a PhD in cell genetics at the Institute Pasteur under the Nobel Laureate Francois Jacob. He traveled to India in 1967 and met great spiritual masters from Tibet. After completing his doctoral thesis in 1972, he left his scientific career to concentrate on Buddhist contemplative practice. Since then, he has lived in India, Bhutan and Nepal with some of the greatest living teachers of that tradition, Kangyur Rinpoche and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
Ricard has authored numerous books, including The Monk and the Philosopher, a dialogue with his father Jean-François Revel, which has been translated into 21 languages; The Quantum and the Lotus, a dialogue with the astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan; Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill and Why Meditate?
Ricard has been photographing the spiritual masters, the landscapes, and the people of the Himalayas for 40 years. He is the author and photographer of Journey to Enlightenment (The Spirit of Tibet in paperback), Tibet: An Inner Journey, Buddhist Himalayas, Motionless Journey, and Bhutan, Land of Peace (www.matthieuricard.org).
Ricard is a member of the Mind and Life Institute, an organization dedicated to collaborative research between scientists and Buddhist scholars and meditators. He is engaged in the research on the effect of mind training and meditation on the brain at various universities in the United States and Europe.
He donates all proceeds from his books and much of his time to 40 humanitarian projects including clinics, schools, orphanages, elderly people’s homes, bridges, and vocational training, in Nepal, India, and Tibet. Ricard received the French National Order of Merit for his humanitarian works.
Ricard websites: