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You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Matthieu Ricard, who is joining us from the south of France. Matthieu is a French author, photographer, translator, and Buddhist monk. After receiving his PhD in cell genetics in 1972, he decided to leave his scientific career to practice Tibetan Buddhism. Since then, he’s become well-known for his best-selling works, his writings, as well as his talks on happiness and altruism, which have been viewed by millions.
With Sounds True, Matthieu Ricard has joined with co-authors Christophe André, a well-known French psychiatrist, and Swiss philosopher Alexandre Jollien to create two books. The first book was called In Search of Wisdom: A Monk, a Philosopher, and a Psychiatrist on What Matters Most, and now a new book called Freedom for All of Us: a Monk, a Philosopher, and a Psychiatrist on Finding Inner Peace. These are books that were originally published in France, and are now available in the English language through Sounds True.
I feel so fortunate to have this conversation with Matthieu Ricard, and to be able to bring it to the Sounds True audience. Here’s someone who’s talking about the path of inner freedom, looking at the obstacles, the training we need to go through, and the fruits, the fruits of the path of training. Someone who, himself, has dedicated more than five years to solitary meditation practice. Someone who is qualified, truly, to speak on the topic. The big-hearted, supremely intelligent and clear, Matthieu Ricard.
Great to be with you again, Matthieu. And if you could begin, let our listeners know where you are, where you’re broadcasting from.
Matthieu Ricard: Well, a few months ago, I left my happy Himalayan mountains, where I was staying in my little three-by-three-meter hermitage facing the Himalayas, to take the last plane that [was] coming back from Nepal for expatriates, and to be near my mom, who is 97. It’s good, because since, then, I would have been sort of stuck there. So, I’m in South of France, in Dordogne, a very lush valley. So, I swapped the mountains’ quietness for the forest’s quietness.
TS: Beautiful. Sounds True has now released, in the English language, the second book with you and your dear friends, Christophe Andre, a well-known French psychiatrist, and Swiss philosopher Alexandre Jollien. The second book is called Freedom for All of Us. Tell us a little bit about how the three of you got together to have a dialogue that became this second book, Freedom for All of Us.
MR: The first book was also circumstantial. We had a friend who wanted us to talk together in a beautiful chalet in Switzerland, just for pleasure. Alexandre Jollien, who is [an] extraordinary mind, is a handicapped, really handicapped, Swiss philosopher. He was 17 years in an institution and then someone recognized that he was incredibly intelligent. So he did a degree in philosophy. He has a fantastic memory, because he has a hard time to read. He really wanted that we come down, so we did that. We were supposed to do it in the Swiss Alps, in the mountains, in the snow, and then the friend who was inviting us got sick. So we did that instead in Dordogne, where I am now.
Just after, the book was—in France at least (the French are a bit special)—was very successful. In 2016 it was number one non-fiction throughout the year. Half a million copies, blah, blah, blah. So, we wanted to thank that friend who got the idea. And one year after, we went to a place for a week, and we said, “We are not going to work at all. Just go on the snow, have a nice time, eat French, Swiss treats, and all that.” So, the first evening, as we went back and we are sitting by the fire, we start talking. And then I thought, “This is so nice. This is quite a lot of things that we never talked about.” So I put a recorder and here, we started again.
In the first one, we just usually went to some of the subject which have been dear to us all the time, which is about the emotions, the ego, all kinds of things. The second one, it was, I think, much more constructed. It was really around the theme of inner freedom, and we really built it up together.
What is inner freedom, and why do we need it, compared to other freedoms? And then, what prevents inner freedom? What are the different obstacles? We had very different approaches about the main obstacles. Now, how we can overcome those obstacles? How we can have an environment that is favorable to inner freedom? Both a physical environment and a human environment. So, the ecology of inner freedom.
We went on to—how do you train inner freedom? Are you cultivating? Because nobody wants to make any effort. They want everything, the secret of happiness, in five points in three weeks. Of course it doesn’t work. And then finally, after all the effort, what are the harvests of inner freedom? What sort of person it does bring? I think it was very nice. I really wanted to do something on inner freedom. If they had not agreed to discuss on that, I would have done it on my own. So I was very, very happy.
And then, one early morning at five, I woke up and somehow I remember[ed] a famous French movie by René Clair. It’s a classic movie. And the title came up, and it doesn’t translate well in English, but À Nous La Liberté (Let’s Have Freedom). Something like that. It was a nice title in French, but it’s not easily translatable in English. That was the story. It’s not a follow-up of the book, or like a second book. It didn’t do as much, as well. I mean, still for France, it was quite good, like 200,000. But because people thought, “Well, it’s Volume II.” It’s not volume two. Frankly speaking, as far as I’m concerned, I think it’s a better book than the first.
TS: Why is that important for you to say that it’s not volume two? Why is that important?
MR: Because this whole idea that first—somehow it happens that the three of us are authors that are well-known in France and sells a lot of books. Two years ago, there was the 20 most-sold authors in five years, and we were number two, number five, and number six. They all thought, “Well, that’s another one of those things bringing—it’s a gig from the publisher to bring three famous authors together. There’s no meaning, no substance.” Actually we are real friends in real life and it was nothing to do with that. We always—every morning—we checked our motivation. What we doing that for now?
We know [we are], a little bit, loved in France as authors; but say, “Ok, we are only doing that if it is to bring something helpful to others. That should be our motivation. We don’t give a damn whether it’s a book that sells well or not.” Even the first one, we didn’t expect that it will be such a hit anyway. Really the motivation is it’s only worth doing if it’s good for others, otherwise forget it. I think with this motivation, that’s why we wanted to explore a new subject that we had never talked about, in relation to death and all these things. It was not just like, “Okay, the first one worked very well. Let’s make a number two. We’ll get something out of it.” Like Rambo I, Rambo II, Rambo III.
TS: Yes. That’s right. What is your definition, Matthieu, of inner freedom?
MR: First of all, we meant, clear from the beginning, that we are totally in favor of all the freedom. It is crucially important, especially when people are deprived of other freedom, but in any way, whether it’s through poverty, sickness, oppression, name it. That’s clear. Now, that’s not enough, because if we think that we are free, in our mind, then I think there’s a lot of introspection to do. We are so often the slave of our own thoughts, of our own automatic thinking, of our tendencies or habits. And it can even be further, stronger, up to the level of addiction. It could be emotional addiction, substance addiction, anything.
We are far from being free. I remember, always I heard on the BBC radio a teenager from England saying, “For me, freedom would be to do everything that comes to my mind and nobody would have to object to it.” I thought, “Wow, that’s a pretty good definition of being the slave of your wild thoughts.” You are like the grass at the mountain top that bend[s] wherever the wind blows. You are absolutely not in control of your mind. Strangely enough, people think that idea of doing anything that comes through your mind—it’s opposite of freedom for me; and mastery of the mind, that people think, “Oh, no. I have to shackle my mind.”
But think about a sailor; that’s, I think, a very nice example. What is the sailor’s freedom? It is to navigate where he or she wants to go. If he says freedom is to drift wherever the wind blows, the currents take you, then the ship wreck[s] very soon. So, the freedom for the sailor is to rig the sail, take the helm and navigate to the chosen destination. Being in charge of the boat is actual freedom.
Like that, being in charge of our mind, not in a forceful way, but simply because you are not like a restless monkey—your mind is going here and there, we are distracted all the time, and follow every impulse that comes through your mind. That’s definitely not freedom, and it’s a very significant impact on the quality of our life.
Inner freedom comes with a bounty of other qualities, resilience, the faculty to deal with ups and downs of life, not being over preoccupied with yourself, therefore open to others. Many other extraordinary qualities comes along with inner freedom. Even from the spiritual point of view, you could say that Buddha is ultimate freedom from delusion and from the mental poisons.
TS: Now, you said in the very beginning that of course you and your co-authors stand firmly for outer freedom, of course. I’m wondering, what’s the connection? Is there a connection between the work we do to achieve inner freedom and outer freedom in the world? Are they actually sort of separate efforts?
MR: No, no. Of course. I mean, let’s suppose an enlightened head of state who is not the toy of his arrogance, his narcissism, his greed, his cruelty—like a bloody dictator is completely in the shackle of hatred, of total disregard for others, of total lack of empathy, of complete fear from always think[ing] that people are going to assassinate them. I mean, this is a hell of a life. Someone like Stalin, absolutely zero inner freedom. He was completely conditioned by ambition, wanting the world for power. Having caused the death of 50 million people. People like Mao and all these guys, there’s absolutely almost no inner freedom.
Except, we should not mistake inner freedom for willpower. There is very strong will of domination, of anything can go in order to fulfill their ambition, and absolutely no regard for the welfare of others. We see that recently in all these demagogic heads of states who really have no compassion for their own citizens. That’s being the slave of selfishness, of narrow-mindedness. Absolutely not caring for others is a lack of freedom.
TS: Okay. Do you believe that as people develop more of this inner freedom, that it is a natural flowering, that it will necessarily happen, that they will work for the freedom of other people in the world, it just goes that way? Or do you think that these are separate lines of development, if you will? How do you see it?
MR: I think inner freedom is in fact the measure of how much you will be able to engage in outer freedom. And I think we have a quote from Gandhi in the book that says, “The degree of outer freedom depends on how much inner freedom you have.” I don’t have it by heart, but I think it’s at the very beginning of the book, that, unless you are free from all these delusions, [they] make you think, speak, and act in wrong ways. Somehow wisdom is not just a lofty, disembodied, idealistic concept of a philosopher who [is] lost in the clouds. Wisdom means to be in adequation with reality, because delusion is to create a huge gap between the way you perceive things and the way they are.
It can be seeing things as permanence; seeing the self as being something larger, that it really exists; things being autonomous while they’re all interdependent. But it can also be, in a much more trivial level, all the fake news and all this stuff that we can see now. That’s the opposite of reality, and that’s the opposite of wisdom.
Somehow freedom from delusion is the main quality of freedom. That’s why in the various obstacles to freedom that we try to define, what is a Greek term, which is dear to my friend, Alexandre, which is akrasia. Akrasia means that you know that something is good, but you do the opposite all the time, all the time. Now, he gives the example that he goes and buys 10 books on dieting, and then he brings the book home and then he sits on the couch eating chips and watching the TV. So, do the opposite of what you’re supposed to do—and you know you’re supposed to do.
There are a few things like that. For me, the most quintessential lack of freedom is lack of discernment, is a lack of wisdom, is to be deluded about the law of cause and effect, to be deluded about what reality is. And then you are bound to be addicted to the cause of suffering, because you turn your back to wellbeing and you rush like crazy to the very causes of suffering. And you keep your hand on the fire thinking, “Oh, maybe I will not be burned.” You’re so conditioned by all these mental delusions that you are absolutely not free. That freedom is crucial to gain happiness, and usually that lack of freedom come with excessive self concern, exacerbated feeling of self-importance. This is part of delusion.
So therefore you cannot be attentive to others when you are in that condition. Well, when you are free and there’s not much expectation, hope, and fear, since you are not so over concerned by yourself, you can be available to others. You start to look around and see what others needs—“How can I address those needs? Can I do something useful?” So inner freedom naturally will express as altruism and compassion, which are the key quality that we need in our world.
TS: Now, you mentioned these obstacles to inner freedom and how addiction can be one of those obstacles when we’re doing things compulsively that we know are going against our best interests. There’s an interesting section in the book where you talk about some of the neuroscience, and I know you’ve done a lot of work collaborating with the Mind and Life Institute and neuroscientists and looking at the impact of meditation on the brain. To be honest with you, Matthieu, I didn’t quite understand this difference between—yes, so if you could explain it, and also what the implications are for the everyday person.
MR: It’s very, very neat. There’s a wonderful researcher called Ken Barish, and I just happened to hear him on the BBC last morning. So I sent him a message and we connected again. He did a discovery that he didn’t believe first in, and then nobody believed him, but then it [made] a major change in the field of addiction.
Before you are addicted, you enjoy something. You like something, the sense of pleasure. It can be anything. It can be emotional relationship. It often comes down to substances, alcohol or drugs, which apparently—I must say, I’m not a very good expert: I never drank a glass of alcohol, I never [tried] a cigarette or anything. I don’t know.
It’s well known that it gives you pleasure and that’s why you want to. That network in the brain, which likes something, which feels the pleasurable experience is a very labile, or ephemeral, those never last. Something that is pleasant, if you continue, becomes neutral and unpleasant. I mean, can see that with any kind of pleasure. Eat something delicious, great. Three pieces of chocolate cake, then you are sick. I mean, to take a hot shower after walking in the snow, how fabulous. But 24 hours in the hot shower, I doubt you will appreciate. In Guantanamo, they used to have loud music, even the most favorite music of the presenter, but 24 hours is a torture. So it is the case that the sensation of liking something is unstable.
Now, here’s the trick, and that’s what Ken Barish has shown. So when you like something, there’s a release of dopamine. Before, dopamine was thought to be the neurotransmitter of pleasure, and reward, and happy, and feeling good, and all that. But what he found is actually dopamine is connected with a different set of networks in the brain, which want something, which desire something. So by liking something a few times, and because it’s a very nice taste or very blissful experience, you build up the tendency to want that, right? And more and more. The thing is that wanting sort of network is very, very stable. Once it is built, it stays. It’s not like it changed from one day to the next. So what happens is you start wanting powerlessly something that in the beginning [brought] you pleasure, but then increasingly doesn’t. Even at some point you can be disgusted.
By activating those areas in [mice] and rats, Ken Barish could show that you could be addicted to extremely salted water—which they would never, never drink, touch a drop of it—they will drink it until they almost die. So, you could create an addiction for something that you absolutely abhor and don’t like. That’s already very important.
Alexandre Jollien, who has been suffering of more like emotional sort of addiction and so forth, he was very comforted by this aspect because he was feeling disgusted with some aspect of his addiction. So now, how to get rid of that? That’s where it becomes a real challenge. That’s why also a lot of people keep on getting hooked in addiction.
First of all, the triggers are absolutely crucial. I mean, you can be triggered by a very small thing. You see a bottle, you hear the name, you see the white powder, you see an image, if it’s someone you have an emotional addiction to. Anything. Once this is triggered, it’s almost like a tsunami, a chain reaction. It’s very hard to stop. So first of all, you need to protect from the trigger. But you remain sensitive for a long time because of that stable build up of the wanting. Now to get rid of it, you need to be very disciplined, and you need to change, because your fabric now, your neuroplasticity has built up something that makes you want something.
Here is the second obstacle. The areas of the brain, which are connected to willpower are diminished in addiction and as well as in depression. It’s really more difficult for you to have the determination to get out.
Now, third thing, you need to change your brain configuration. For that, there’s an area called the hippocampus, which normally processes training. When the meditators train into compassion or attention, the hippocampus changes, but it’s true for if you learn to juggle, if you learn to sing. There was a famous study with London cab drivers, who, before GPS, had to learn by heart 14,000 names of streets, and the hippocampus was getting physically bigger because of the training. So now in depression as well as addiction, the hippocampus is getting more lazy. It doesn’t change it’s inhibitor. It doesn’t change very easy.
You have all the odds against you. It really takes a lot of effort to master some willpower. You need to be persistent in order to enact some change. But it seems that by far the best way are two things. First, you really avoid the triggers, because you are sensitive for a long time. Then you try to get to a state where you’re so upset and you are so much at the rock bottom of your life that you say, “Okay, this is no [longer] possible,” and you make the decision enough, once for all, “[If] I don’t do that, [I’m] finished for […] life. That usually can work. So you see, it’s not easy. Now, this is extreme case, but still there are so many people who suffer from that.
But this is quite true, even in ordinary life when you are not at the level of addiction, you see you keep on wanting stuff that you don’t need, and you don’t feel so much pleasure. Like even binge shopping is a ridiculous addiction which hardly brings any satisfaction to people, but they just do it.
TS: Matthieu, just to ask you a personal about this, you mentioned how you haven’t had any alcohol, sip of alcohol, and here you are as a monk. But I’m curious, have you noted in your own life, any addictions, maybe subtle addictions that you’ve had to work with, and apply some of these principles and techniques to find your own inner freedom?
MR: Well, I think you can see that with any—what we call the five mental toxins: anger, compulsive desire, pride, jealousy … so, none of those bring you happiness. I mean, actually those are the opposite. They undermine your happiness. Nevertheless, you can fall prey to them to different degrees. I’m not a very angry person. I’d have to go many, many, many years before, to find a time where I just blew the fuse, where I was really upset. I mean, angry. And then jealousy, not so much. So anyway, people have different shades. At different degrees, the moment you see a little bit of pride, a little bit of any of those, is the same, because you go into that direction; it’s like wanting. At the same time, in the end you know it’s going to bring you nothing but happiness.
Since we [are speaking] about triggers and the importance of triggers, the whole Buddhist practice is precisely to identify a conflicting emotion or what we call “unhealthy mental states” at the very first moment when the spark comes. Same as avoiding the triggers for alcohol, a bottle of alcohol. Because at the time of the spark it’s so much easier to deal with it when the forest is on fire, because then you need to call everybody, all firemen, and usually you get burned. I think it’s the same training that we do, and of course, I have to do it all the time because I’m very, very far from the fruit of the path, but at least this is what the teaching teaches. You put the vigilance at the gate of your mind, and whenever you see, “Oh, this one is coming, I know that little pride. I know that little desire. I know this one.” Then if you are mindful at that time, then it’s much easier to apply the various antidotes, the Buddhist techniques, or whatever psychological technique gives you.
I have to work all the time with my mind. There are many occasions where I feel strong regret that I was not considerate enough and not attentive enough to others. I don’t think, as far as I can remember, ever willingly wanting to harm someone, but by not being careful enough, I certainly caused some disturbance in other’s mind. I feel very sorry for that, because I was not attentive enough. To cultivate, to be more aware, to be more attentive, to be more concerned by others, all this, somehow it’s the same process.
TS: Very good. Thank you. Now, you mentioned that the core of inner freedom is freedom from delusion. What are the main delusions that we buy into?
MR: Well, there are quite a few. About outer phenomena, one of the main delusion is to superimpose qualities that we believe to be intrinsic on the world. We think that something is—His Holiness the Dalai Lama often said that—sometimes we think, “Oh, this is a hundred percent desirable. This is a hundred percent hateful.” Of course it’s not true. Nobody and nothing is a hundred percent bad or good. We just basically 80 percent made it up, or projected, or superimposed. Then it’s easy to see that after some months of—we’ll just think the opposite. Look at human relationship: what was a hundred percent desirable and fantastic and everything, we could not see a single defect, “My whole life cannot go without this,” after a few months, “How terrible and horrible this person is.” We see that all the time.
It’s the same with possession with situation. “No, no, no. If that happens, impossible, I cannot live with that.” Or, “If I don’t have this, I cannot be happy, no way.” So all that is completely fabricated. This is a complete distortion of reality. Then the distortion of reality linked with permanence and impermanence. I think that my watch is my watch because I had it yesterday. Well, it’s not part of myself. It’s not part of my mind. It just happened to be on my wrist, but it’s absolutely not mine in any intrinsic way. Still, I think this is the same watch as yesterday. We don’t see that every single minute, instant, everything changed, never thinks the same. We don’t see that. Therefore, we grasp permanence and we grasp to things. That situation, that relationship, my self—“I should always be young. How can I die? Impossible.”
We revolt against impermanence. Whether we believe in impermanence or not, it’s there. There’s nothing about, if you don’t believe in it, it takes place. There’s another big distortion, is to think that we are separate entities. Like, I can build my happiness in my little bubble because it’s easier. I don’t have to not worry about everyone’s happiness. I may not have anything against it, but it’s not my job.
That doesn’t work. Why? Because it’s in opposition with reality. We are not like the snooker balls that sometimes hit each other, but which are independent. We are all incredibly intermingle interdependent. Our happiness and suffering goes through and with that of others. There’s no way we can be independent.
Therefore, if we try to build happiness in this way, it doesn’t work. It just fails. It’s bound to fail. It’s going to make you miserable and you are going to make everyone’s life miserable, because you were only thinking about yourself. And because you fail, you will be even more upset. This is a distortion of reality. Lack of discernment, distortion of reality, all are aspects of confusion, because that leads eventually to suffering.
TS: Very good. Now, in the first part of the book where you’re exploring the obstacles to inner freedom, there’s a section on discouragement and despair. I wanted to talk to you about this, Matthieu, right now, because I think in the midst of the pandemic especially, I think many people are feeling a sense of discouragement and despair. I want to read a quote from the book from you, and then have you comment on it: “We often say that optimists are naive and that pessimists are more realistic. It’s been shown that this handed-down idea is false. Pessimists greatly exaggerate the negative aspects of a situation. And if we suggest solutions to them, they don’t try them out because they don’t think they’ll work. Conversely, the degree of freedom of optimists is much greater. They try out dozens of solutions, one or another, which eventually succeeds.”
It’s clear that you’re very much here in favor of optimism. One of my questions for you is, instead of optimism or pessimism, what about just realism? Part of me would think that someone in your situation would be, “Let’s just see the situation realistically,” but you seem to favor optimism. Help me understand that.
MR: The reason that I favor optimism, because it has been studied, it has been shown that they are more realistic. Because there’s no point adopting an attitude that just like, because you like it or [it] feels good, again, if it’s at odds with reality it’s not going to work. That’s the part of the distortion of reality.
It has been shown that, at large, if you tell optimistic people—what they call optimistic at least according to the different psychological scales—if you tell them, “Okay, here are the dangers of doing this and that. You should not overeat. You should be careful about UV light. You should protect your face,” all kinds of things. Then you study how much they pay attention to the recommendations, depending whether they are on the pessimistic side of the scale or optimist, you’ll see systematically that the optimistic ones are more realistic. They behave more in close—and accordance to reality.
The other ones they say, “Oh, this thing not going to work. Anyway, this is just like that.” Actually people will say, “Well, the pessimistic guy, you cannot fool that person. So he’s probably more realistic.” And there is a bias like that. There has been a very interesting study, where you present to a number of people in the lab fictitious reviews about a book that doesn’t exist. Some of them show all the weaknesses of the book, and some this and that, sort of skeptical and caustic reporting. Other one, “It was very lovely,” and are praising the book.
Then you ask people, what do you think is the most realistic review? People tend to favor the negative one because they think, this guy, he had more open eyes. Well, science showed us just the opposite. In a way, being optimistic is more like, not narrowing down your vision. And somehow, because you don’t narrow your vision, it’s a part of inner freedom to embrace all the possibilities.
TS: One of the things I wonder is if there’s a kind of broken-heartedness in pessimists. Like underneath this negative view, it’s like they feel so much pain about whatever the situation is. I’m curious what your thoughts are about that. How do we address that broken-heartedness that’s fueling actually our pessimism about the outer situations?
MR: There are many sides to pessimism. One is to feel that we are no good ourself. That, “Anyway, I’ll never make it. People don’t like me. I’ve never been so happy. Happiness is not for me. People are mean anyway, and most likely they’re trying to cheat me,” etc., etc. If you start like that it becomes also a self-fulfilling prophecy. Somehow it’s part of precisely inner freedom to get rid of those habits, of those automatic thinking, because those are the mind spinning rumination and automatic patterns. Inner freedom is about [getting] rid of those automatic patterns, and then [having] a mind that is free to somehow have a thinking that is not too distorted by your perception, by your preconceived ideas, by all kinds of superimposition and distortion of reality.
Yes, people would think that “I am bad,” and the wicked world syndrome—everybody is bad in general. It’s a distortion. It’s not like that. I like to speak of the banality of goodness, that most of the time, most of 7 billion human beings behave decently with each other. That’s why we are so shocked when some people behave in completely abhorrent way because it doesn’t look the norm. Otherwise, if to be wicked and to be lying all the time and to be really mean will be the norm of human nature, then we’ll not be surprised at all. It should not be in the news, what [would] have been in the news is, “Hey, someone did something good. Amazing. We never seen that.” The fact that we report all the time on the terrible things [shows] that we consider that as abnormal. That’s a good sign, in fact, that the norm is to be a good person.
TS:
Matthieu, right here in the midst of the pandemic with the number of COVID cases surging in many countries, what is your optimistic/realistic view of the impact of the pandemic in the world?
MR: OK. Optimism doesn’t mean that you have to put a silver lining on everything. OK. There’s clearly, as usual, in those types of crises, the poorer section of the population in the country, and the poorest country in the world, are those who suffer vastly more. That’s like that. This is the social injustice of any difficulty that comes to us. What sort of a good lesson we could get out of it? There are many. First of all, to see that we are still quite privileged. We were thinking that we became the master of the universe and we could manipulate genes and people on the moon. And then this kind of arrogance has been jeopardized by this little organism of one tenth of thousands of a millimeter that put everything down, at least human arrogance.
Still, relatively, smallpox cost 300 million deaths in the 20th century. That’s three times both World Wars together. And now, thanks to vaccination and so forth, this is zero, it’s gone to zero. It’s amazing. [A few million] would die every year. Simply there’s nothing you could do. You get used to it and you live with that. Now, well, it’s certainly an unusual situation that many things came to an halt, but there are quite few lessons we could draw from that. One of them is, if you can still—except some countries, I’m sorry for you, where there was not enough determination to implement some drastic rules to protect the population—but many other countries have done so very, very successfully.
You can see New Zealand and Taiwan, to some extent, European countries, quite a few managed to, even China managed to control that. That means the government can take drastic measures and the population is sort of willing to follow it. You think, “Well, if one half of that determination and the rigor could be used to tackle climate change, then we will get somewhere finally.” There are many decisions we could take that will go that way. There’s a very recent paper in Nature Sustainability, one of the scientific, famous journals, which shows that if we were to shift to a more plant-based diet, we could gain back 15 years in CO2 emissions, just that.
Because the old chain that leads to cattle farming, which takes 80 percent of the land, and the old chain of bringing food from the developing country to rich country to produce meat and so forth is the second cause of greenhouse gas emission, 15 percent, just below habitation, and even before transportation. All that could be done.
You say, “OK, government has taken some strong measure, why don’t they do that for these?” Another point to reflect and [that] we can act upon is, if you look at all the virus epidemics for the last 30 years, whether it’s starting with AIDS, ebola, swine flu, bird flu, SARS, COVID-19, all of them were [due] to unhealthy relation to other species, either to excessive industrial animal farming, and in conditions that are horrendous, or encroaching on wildlife, those two.
All all those big viral epidemics were linked to unhealthy dealings with the 8 million other species which are co-citizen in this world. There are lessons to take from that. We should take them. I don’t know. Let’s see.
TS: Okay. So the book Freedom For All of Us takes this arc that you described in the beginning of our conversation, and we’ve talked to some about what the obstacles are to inner freedom, what supports inner freedom. Then you move into how we can train in inner freedom and the harvest that’s possible. I want to spend the last part of our conversation talking about the harvest. But before we do, just very briefly about the training. I have to be honest with you, Matthieu, when you talk about scientific studies, I get insights, light bulbs go on for me.
You explain things that aren’t easy for me to necessarily understand just through reading. I wanted to ask you in terms of the training of inner freedom, in the book you cite studies that show that meditation and mindfulness training open awareness. Yes, it’s very helpful, very important, concentration, but that also we actually need to train in loving kindness if we’re going to develop loving kindness. It doesn’t just naturally come online on its own without that training. At least that was my understanding of what you wrote. And I’d love to understand more about the studies that point to the kind of training we actually need here.
MR: Well, if you do physical training, if you muscle your arms, you’re not muscling your legs. That’s as simple as that. Of course, it’s a bit reductionist to apply that to mind, but it’s a good image. I mean, if you learn the piano, you will not learn chess. So why should “meditation” be a generic term? It’s just as general as “training.” If you say to someone, “I’m training” people would wait for—“What’s next? Good for you. Why do you train? Do you play American football or you play chess?” It’s not the same thing.“I’m training” is not enough. “I’m meditating” means basically nothing. It means you are training your mind.
Therefore, the wonderful program that John Kabat-Zinn developed about 30 years ago, the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction—because in those days, meditation was not easy to bring, especially in the medical world, but everyone was stressed. So reduction of stress was a very good approach. But if you look at the MBSR training, is a very complete set of training over eight weeks or six months, which includes all kinds of other aspects than just pure mindfulness, like loving kindness, the group situation, doing physical exercise, yoga and so forth.
My friend Tania Singer did probably the largest longitudinal study—means you keep people going for like nine months. She took a large sample of subjects, like 180 or something. She made them just do three months of each three types of practice of techniques.
One was mindfulness, not MBSR intervention, but just pure mindfulness: the way to describe moment to moment attention, in nonjudgmental way, to the state of your mind. Just pure mindfulness, attentive, clarity, and so forth.
Then there were three months where they did so-called perspective taking. You try to put [on someone else’s] shoes to see what they feel, to think about the other’s situation. You try to open your mind to others.
The third one is Metta, in Nepali, which is “loving kindness,” “compassion.” It’s more or less the same. Loving kindness is wishing everyone to find happiness. And the cause of happiness and compassion is loving kindness applied to suffering. It is wishing when people suffer, then loving kindness become compassion, which is the wish, may they to cease to suffer and be free from the cause of suffering. What she found, and also she played by, to minimize the other effect. Some group we’re starting with compassion, and then doing mindfulness second and so forth. There was all this permutation to make sure that there was not the effect because of the order in which you do the practice.
What she found is very, very clear: mindfulness increases your attentiveness, your quality of paying attention of being mindful. Okay, that’s what you’re training for. You got it. But if you test the professional behavior, it has no impact. It doesn’t make you a worse person. It’s very wonderful to be mindful. I guess if you do the MBSR training, you become also more passionate. But just pure mindfulness doesn’t make you more pro-social or more altruistic. Perspective-taking, you become a little bit more pro-social because you keep on thinking about the other situation and then you have some kind of empathetic concern as Daniel Batson would say, that leads to wanting to care, but not so much. But if you measure the way you were aware about others, it’s increased.
And then when you practice Metta, loving kindness, there’s a big increase not only in the report how altruistic I feel, but you measure the behavior in certain situation and pro-social behavior increased significantly. That’s not surprising because that’s what you are training for. In a way, loving kindness should not be expected to be an automatic byproduct of other types of meditation. It may happen if you are in a particular setting with a good teacher who’s very kind, but per se the techniques have no reason to yield that. Also she found that the networks, the signature in the brain was very different. I mean, it’s not the same network that was increased even structurally that changed. Increase of the gray matter and more volume and more activity functionally, they were not the same if we do those three types of meditation. So actually, this is nothing surprising. It’s simply that all those human quality needs to be cultivated for themselves. Then you will get the result. What can I say?
TS: It’s very intuitively obvious when you describe it. There’s also an emphasis in the training section of the book on the value of effort. You go so far as to say, “Discrediting effort is the attitude of a spoiled child.” I thought that was a great comment, like some cold water in the face. Because I do think certain people on the spiritual path are like, “I just relax, I open. I don’t really believe in exerting too much effort. Why should I effort if my original goodness is already here? Why should I effort?”
MR: Well, especially my friend, the psychiatrist, Christophe André, he noticed how much everything should be easy. I think that’s crazy. The secret of happiness in three points and three weeks. First, there’s no secret. Second, there’s no three points. And now, it’s not easy. So what? It’s the best thing you could do in life, to become a better person and then flourish and so forth?
This discrediting of effort is really dismal. It’s like kids who wants everything now—how can it work? The universe is not a mail order catalog for your fancy. If something would be easy, that’s very suspicious. That means it’s not doing any change, because change comes with sustained efforts.
I mean, think of a pianist, or any musician, any sportsman, any skill, who would want to play Mozart or Bach by just doing a few exercise once every two weeks, you’re just going to say, “He’s a spoiled child.” He wants that to be as easy as a millionaire who can buy all kinds of gimmicks and buy anything he wants or she wants, but you cannot buy playing the piano. Doesn’t work like that. You have to work harder, and so what? Ascesis, the Greek word which we think of “asceticism.” Asceticism means “exercise.” Exercise, practice, practice, practice. That’s the only way.
I mean, everyone accepts the idea, except the kids maybe at the beginning, that they should go 15 years to school, then have a professional training. You do all kinds of training, adult training, all this stuff. So, why [should] human qualities […] be an exception to the rule, and be at a more optimal state than you can be according to your own potential right from the start? That’s a crazy idea. You have a potential, and that potential needs to be magnified slowly, slowly by cultivating those qualities. That’s the only way. What kind of magic trick will apply to the mind that doesn’t apply to every other skill?
TS: Now, in terms of the fruits of inner freedom, you mentioned how it’s valuable to have role models. In your own life, could you pick someone that you’ve experienced as an embodiment of inner freedom, a role model for you and introduce us to this person, give us a sense of them.
MR: Well my friend, psychiatrist, “I think you’re exaggerating “ he says. Those persons must have some kind of weakness or something like that. But what to say—I would have never spent 50 years in the Himalayas if it wasn’t that I met some great teachers, however many years you spend in their presence. I was fortunate with my first teacher, Kangyur Rinpoche in Darjeeling, to spend seven years being his student. And then with Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, I spent 13 years continuously with him, day and night, because I was one of his two attendants. I used to sleep on the floor and be there any time, whether he would teach to humble farmers, or to Kings in Tibet, in the West, in India, in Bhutan, in Nepal. Constantly with him.
After 13 years of being in public area, in the intimate situation, when you never witness [even a hint] of one thought, one word, one action that could be harmful to others, just absolute zero, then you say, “Something is there.” You could say, “Well, of course, they’re a spiritual teacher.” But how many so-called spiritual teachers or role models—there’s a kind of façade, and then it’s not always as rosy from the backside. So when you see an absolute perfect coherence—and the coherence that is not for this kind of willpower, “I’m going to behave nicely and not do—” it is just the way they are. They are totally incapable of doing anything that could be slightly harmful. All they do is to be useful to others.
They have nothing to gain, nothing to lose, everything to share, everything to give. So that may seems exaggerated, but I remember one of my younger teachers, Khyentse Rinpoche said that if we do praise those great masters, even we use the most hyperbolic words, and people say, “You are really exaggerating” (and that was my friend, Christophe who was saying [that]), but we are still [very] far behind accurately describing the incredible quality. So that, personally—spent my life near those teachers. I never found the hidden faults. Of course, there are plenty of so-called teacher that behave wrongly. We have seen that all over the place.
But those authentic great masters, like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Dudjom Rinpoche, to name a few, Kangyur Rinpoche, my first teacher, I mean, for me, there’s an absolutely clear cut that they are the example of what human perfection can be.
There are a few things about belief. You may believe in something, even you don’t have any proof. Then you may get a confidence in something because it keeps on verifying it, so that’s some kind of grounded conviction. Then there is blind faith, which is to believe in something when you have the proof that it’s wrong, that it’s false. That’s what we see all the time now these days. In my case, of course, it’s not something material that I can put in a machine and measure on something.
But when you see this kind of absolute coherence, effortless coherence over time, then you say, “Well, that’s it. Those persons truly have got rid of all those mental toxins, have developed all those qualities, and that’s wonderful,” why not? So they show me what is the end of the path, so at least I get a sense of direction. For me, that’s the biggest teaching and great fortune of my life. So I’m very, very far from anything like that, but at least I have this confidence and I know that by walking in that direction, that’s the best thing I can do instead of going here and there.
TS: That’s an interesting word, “coherence.” I’m reflecting on that as you’re speaking.
MR: What’s the point of saying something and doing something else, or even being something else? Recently I was thinking, it’s so much better say for instance, to know that you did nothing wrong and yet you are wrongly accused of something. It’s not very pleasant, but deep within you are still coherent with yourself. It’s so much better than being covered in praises and all these things and to know that there’s something deeply wrong that you did to others or something really wacky you did. Because it’s even more uncomfortable when people praise you. So, coherence is really, really important, and gives you a lot of freedom also. Because you don’t care whatever people might say. When the Dalai Lama says, “Some people say I’m a snake in monk’s robes: nonsense. Some people say I’m living God: nonsense. I’m just a Buddhist monk trying his best to bring something about human values.” So, that’s it.
TS: Matthieu, I am going to ask you one last question that I’m going to sneak in here, because I’ve heard so many legendary stories of Tibetan teachers and masters and things they’ve done. And then in your book, Freedom For All of Us, towards the end of the book and talking about the fruits of inner freedom and exploring in the section called “Dealing with Death” you tell a story of Sengdrak Rinpoche and his dying process. When I read that, I thought, “That’s the kind of thing where I would have this reaction,” because I’m a little skeptical—one of the qualities of pessimism, I’m a little skeptical. But is that really true? Like, did that really happen? So, I wonder if you could tell that story, and how you think it exemplifies inner freedom. And we’ll end on that.
MR: It happened many times, in fact, even to—anyway. What happened with Sengdrak Rinpoche, he was a very, very close of student of Khyentse Rinpoche, even though he started— he was a main practitioner of the Drukpa tradition, for those who know Tibetan Buddhism. Khyentse Rinpoche was more like a Rimé teacher, but his root was in the Nyingma tradition. But he was very, very close. Khyentse Rinpoche thought of him probably in term of practice as his, let’s say students, if you could say that. Doesn’t make much sense, but he said that once. So he was a wonderful teacher. He had the Mahamudra teacher that would give him four lines every six months to meditate upon.
Someone might know about with Tibetan Buddhism, the so-called preliminary practices, the Ngondro. He did that 15 times. People protest when they have to do it once. He was so light and simple and joyful, I mean this perfect person. So then, when he was, I think, something late 50s, or maybe 60s, he got leukemia. He was in his Hermitage in the mountains, there were two- or three-hundred practitioners around him under his guidance. He said, “Well, if they come, they come; if they want to go, they go.” So his students begged him to come down to Kathmandu to go to some hospital. He was not so keen, but anyway, he went. There was a friend of mine who is a doctor. He’s also a monk. He was with him, an American monk. He followed him, and at some point he was getting weaker and weaker.
So Sengdrak Rinpoche told him, “When the time comes, please give me a sign.” The doctor’s called Barry Kerzine. He’s a wonderful person. At some point all the vital signs were going, “blub, blub, blub …” He said, “Maybe it’s time.” So Sengdrak Rinpoche sat down in meditation posture, he looked into the sky and he uttered the letter R, which is the letter symbolizing the emptiness from where everything comes. And then he passed away. And before that he had asked Rabjam Rinpoche, who is the grandson of Khyentse Rinpoche, to come to visit him at the hospital. And he said he wanted his body to be transported to our monastery. So Rabjam Rinpoche took it in the car, still sitting and kept it in a room.
It was in May, I think, so already a bit hot. And I can tell you, because we often deal with dead people, it starts smelling very, very fast. Within the one week, 10 days only a very sort of sweet fragrance, something like orange or orange peels or something very, very sweet and delicious, never any kind of decomposing body. His body was completely supple, no rigor mortis. He was actually sitting like in meditation, and you would think that somehow something is still there. There was something about, he’s not gone. He’s not completely a dead body, a corpse. He didn’t look like a corpse at all.
And then Rabjam Rinpoche, “I didn’t do that,” but he would touch his chest with the palm of his hand, and for a few days he still felt some heat. So this is called, tukdam, also called postmortem meditation. And there are many, many cases like that, 10 days, 15 days. And then at some point there are some signs, there’s some fluids coming from the nose and other signs. And then within a hour, the body becomes like a corpse, and the tukdam is finished. And then you deal with the body. So that’s happened again and again. At least I know 10 examples like that, including one in France, of a wonderful practitioner who did nine years retreat just next to this house where I’m staying now. He spent 15 days. The doctor, the legal doctor has to come every week, and he says, “I don’t know what’s going on. This is crazy. But anyway, so let it be.”
This thing happened. I think Richard Davidson at Wisconsin put a team with Tibetan doctors to at least measure, say that there’s a temperature or put one electrode to see if there’s something happening. But as the Dalai Lama said, “When there’s a great practitioner who dies, we don’t have the machine. And when we have the machine, there’s no great practitioner who dies.” So anyway, let’s see, I don’t know if science will be able to find something, but there’s something going on in terms of study. But in terms of testimony, it’s certainly happened many times. So, I don’t know, as a scientist, I don’t have any rational explanation to offer, but it seems to be happening, so, I don’t know.
TS: And the connection with the inner freedom of someone at this level of harvest, as you described, at the end of our life.
MR: It’s very exceptional, but it refers to some mastery of the subtle aspect of the mind. And it is a time where the practitioner—it’s a very special time for practice where you can cross very fast, different levels. So that’s what is said. Now, a great, great teacher like Khyentse Rinpoche, they don’t need that. They’re already completely free. Usually they don’t stay in such a state because there’s nothing more to gain for them in terms of inner freedom. But you can imagine that dying is a kind of testing time for a practitioner, at least we can say. So they take the advantage of this very special situation to progress steps very fast. That’s what the tradition says. I have no idea. Even the Dalai Lama says, when you ask him, “What do you think is going to happen at death?” He says, “I’m very curious to see what happens.” So what could I say, me, just a small practitioner?
TS: Matthieu Ricard, Thank you so much. Thank you for making the time for this conversation, for bringing your generosity and great intelligence and discriminating mind and helping us feel the vision of inner freedom. Thank you so much.
MR: Thank you, Tami. Take care.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Matthew Ricard. Along with his co-authors, Christophe André, a well-known French psychiatrist, and Alexandre Jollien, Swiss philosopher, they’ve created a book of dialogues about inner freedom. It’s called Freedom For All of Us: A Monk, a Philosopher, and a Psychiatrist on Finding Inner Peace. It is a book that was originally written and published in French, which has now been brought out in the English language for the first time by Sounds True. Thank you so much for listening.
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