Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk, an author, translator, and photographer. He has lived, studied, and worked in the Himalayan region for over forty years. The son of French philosopher Jean-François Revel and artist Yahne Le Toumelin, Matthieu was born in France in 1946 and grew up among the personalities and ideas of Paris’ intellectual and artistic circles. He earned a Ph.D. degree in cell genetics at the renowned Institut Pasteur under the Nobel Laureate Francois Jacob. In 1967, he travelled to India to meet great spiritual masters from Tibet.
Since then, he has lived in India, Bhutan, and Nepal and studied with some of the greatest teachers of that tradition. He is the author of several books including The Monk and the Philosopher, a dialogue with his father; 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? (The Art of Meditation in UK). His books have been translated into over twenty languages.
Matthieu donates all proceeds from his books and much of his time to 110 humanitarian projects (clinics, schools, orphanages, elder care, bridges, vocational training) in Himalayan areas and to the preservation of the Tibetan cultural heritage. He strives to bridge the gap between science and spirituality and offers us an interesting perspective on happiness.
Also see: Positive psychology