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HAPPY? SLOW
DOWN
In 1972, Matthieu Ricard had
a promising career in biochemistry,
trying to figure out the secrets of E. coli
bacteria. A chance encounter with
Buddhism led to an about turn, and
20 talks
Ricard has spent the past 40+ years
living in the Himalayas, studying
The most popular talks of all time
mindfulness and happiness. In this free-
wheeling discussion at TED Global in
October 2014, Ricard talked with
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journalist and writer Pico Iyer about
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some of the things theyve learned over
the years, not least the importance of
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being conscious about mental health and
 Sign Up
being conscious about mental health and
how to spend time meaningfully. An
edited version of the conversation,
moderated by TED Radio Hour host Guy
Raz, follows. First, Pico Iyer on how he
became taken with the idea of staying
still:

Guy Raz (left), Pico Iyer (center), and Matthieu

Ricard (right) discuss mindfulness and the
importance of being still at TED Global 2014.
Photo by Duncan Davidson/TED.

Pico%Iyer: When I was in my twenties, I

had this wonderful 25th-floor office in
midtown Manhattan, in Rockefeller
Center and I had a really exhilarating
life, I thought, writing on world affairs
for Time magazine. And it was so
exhilarating, I never had a chance to find
out if it was really fulfilling me, or if I
was happy in a deeper sense, because I
was constantly happy in the most
superficial kind of way.

And so I left all that behind. I moved to a

single room on the back streets of Kyoto,
Japan, and now Im probably the rare
journalist whos never used a cell phone.
I live with my wife in a two-room
apartment in Japan; I have no car, no
bicycle, no media, no TV I can
understand. Essentially, no internet.
And I still have to support my loved ones
as a travel writer and a journalist. Its
only by keeping a distance from the
world that I can begin to see its
proportions and begin to try to sift the
essential from the fleeting. I feel that so
many of us now have the sensation of
standing about two inches away from
this very crowded, noisy, constantly
shifting big screen, and that screen is
shifting big screen, and that screen is
our lives. Its only by stepping back that
we can see what the screen is
communicating.

Matthieu,%in%1972%you%were%a
molecular%geneticist%in%France.
You%had%just%completed%your%PhD,
and%you%made%a%lifeCchanging
decision%to%seek%a%different%path.
Can%you%describe%your%journey?

Matthieu%Ricard: I had a fantastic

adolescence. My father was a
philosopher and my mother is a painter,
so all these people, writers and thinkers
were coming to our home. I was a
musician myself I met Stravinsky
when I was 16 years old. My uncle was
an explorer, and I was in the lab with
two winners of the Nobel Prize of
medicine. You could not wish for better
potential for looking either this way or
that way at life.

Then when I was 20, I saw some

documentaries on all the great Tibetan
masters who had fled the Communist
invasion of Tibet. And when I saw those
faces I thought, Wow, here is Socrates,
St. Francis of Assisi, alive now. Im going
there! So I just went. And then at one
point I thought, Well, its nice to study
the cell division of E. coli, but if I could
have a little insight on the mechanism of
happiness and suffering

So I retired when I was 26, and Ive done

my post-doc in the Himalayas for 45
years.

IT SO OFTEN
HAPPENS THAT
SOMEBODY SAYS
CHANGE YOUR LIFE
AND YOU REPAINT
YOUR CAR RATHER
 YOUR CAR RATHER
THAN RE-WIRE THE
ENGINE. PICO IYER

Pico,%you%were%working%on%a%book
about%the%Dalai%Lama%when%you
first%met%Matthieu%about%a%decade
ago.%What%struck%you%about%him
back%then?

PI: What struck me about both

Matthieu and the Dalai Lama is they
present happiness not as something
peculiar to Buddhists or monks, but
available to everyone whenever you
want. I once went for my annual
checkup with my doctor, and he said,
Well, your numbers are all fantastic,
but youre getting on in years so you
should spend 30 minutes every day in a
health club. As soon as he said that, I
signed up the next day, and I religiously,
so to speak, observed that practice.

But when another friend of mine

asked me, Have you ever thought of
sitting still for 30 minutes every day? I
said, Oh no! I dont have time,
especially now Im on the treadmill for
30 minutes every day. Not beginning to
think that of course the mental health
club or just sitting still is much more
essential to my well-being, my
happiness, and probably even my
physical health than the treadmill. And I
think it so often happens that somebody
says change your life and you repaint
your car rather than re-wire the engine.

Matthieu,%what%does%the%word
stillness%mean%to%you?
stillness%mean%to%you?

MR: There is outer stillness, which is

relatively predominant in this room,
except that were making a little noise,
but theres also inner stillness. The real
question is how can you integrate those
two?

There is often this feeling that we put all

our hopes and fears outside ourselves.
If I have this or that then everything
will be fine. If I dont have it, I cannot
really be happy. Of course we should
improve the condition of the world I
run 140 humanitarian projects so I know
what it is to be at the service of others
and I rejoice in that but in the end, we
deal with our mind from morning till
evening, and it can be our best friend or
our worst enemy.

If we dont deal with the inner condition

for well-being, then we are really in
trouble. And so thats what inner
stillness is not that cliche about
meditation, that you blank your mind
and relax. Stillness is to avoid the
chaotic aspect of the mind, and then you
can deal with thoughts and emotions, or
sometimes you just sit or rest in that
pure awareness. Thats a place of
immense peace.

PI%[to%MR]: What do you say when

people say, Here we are in Rio, there
are probably three million people here
without enough food, or there are crime
problems in the street. Isnt it selfish just
problems in the street. Isnt it selfish just
to go and investigate the mind or go on
retreat or sit still?

MR: I hear that a lot. And if you were

just going there to escape paying tax or
seeing nagging people, then of course
that would be some type of selfish. But if
one of your chief goals is get rid of
selfishness, how could you call that
selfish? Its like saying to someone,
Why do you want to build a hospital?
That takes years! You should do
surgeries right now in the street! When
you build the hospital, making plumbing
or doing cement work obviously doesnt
cure anyone, but when the hospital is
ready, how much more you can help. I
see now, working in the humanitarian
world, we start to help people, and we
get derailed by conflict of ego,
corruption human shortcomings. So
the best thing you could do instead of
training to run an NGO or make
accounts would be to start to become a
better human being so that you can
serve others better and not be distracted
by trying to make everyone perfect on
the way. Thats the job of the Buddha,
not your job.

Is%stillness%a%physical%act%and%is%it
the%same%thing%as%quiet?

PI: On my way here I was in that most

exalted of places, Los Angeles airport,
and I was in the United Airlines lounge,
and suddenly I saw a quiet room. It was
five feet from where everyone was
grabbing pieces of cheese and watching
CNN, but I just stepped into that place
and it might have been five miles away.
It was softly lit, and there were candles,
It was softly lit, and there were candles,
and all I really wanted to do was read or
close my eyes but suddenly, quiet was
right there. So certainly in that case, the
stillness was a kind of active presence. It
wasnt the absence of noise, it was the
presence of a kind of quiet that they had
laid out.

I think thats why people like me, who

are not part of a religious tradition, will
often go on retreat to monasteries,
because suddenly you can listen to
everything and youre not endlessly
talking and youre not trying to impress
everybody around you, and youre not
being distracted by emails and texts
Suddenly when you start to watch
things and start to listen to things, even
if youre a journalist without religion,
the world becomes much richer.

Sometimes people assume that going on

retreat is a very ascetic thing, but in my
small experience, its extremely
sensuous. Suddenly youre hearing the
birds, youre seeing, youre listening to
the tolling of bells, youre seeing detail.

Youre%hearing%your%own
heartbeat.

PI: Matthieu, I loved it when I met you

here yesterday night, you said youre on
retreat a lot of the time still
sometimes with your 91-year-old
mother. In other words, youre on
retreat, but its about compassion, and
its about tending to your loved ones. So
my sense is that going on retreat is a
waystation to coming back into the
world with more to give.

MR: We say that a beggar cannot give a

banquet. If I have nothing to give you, I
cannot invite you for lunch.

Its%not%uncommon%for%our%culture
to%confuse%stillness%with%being%idle,
with%maybe%wasting%time.
Practically%speaking,%how%can%we
go%to%that%place,%even%if%just%for%a
go%to%that%place,%even%if%just%for%a
few%minutes%every%day?

MR: I hear that all the time too, people

saying theyre so busy, how can they
possibly take another 20 minutes? Its
just as Pico said about physical fitness
before. If people from Nepal come to
Paris and they see people jogging early
in the morning or going on a bicycle that
goes nowhere, they think they are mad.
Because they are running in the
mountains all day, so they dont need
that. If 15 minutes of stillness change the
23 hours and 45 minutes left in your
day, including your sleep and your
human relations, it seems to be
worthwhile. So to say I dont have time
is like going to see a doctor for treatment
and then when you hear it saying, Oh
Doctor, its impossible!

ENLIGHTENMENT IS
ELIMINATING MENTAL
CONFUSION,
ELIMINATING
HATRED, JEALOUSY,
MENTAL TOXINS,
CRAVINGS. THATS
VERY SIMPLE AND
STRAIGHTFORWARD.
WHETHER YOU CAN
DO IT OR NOT IS
ANOTHER MATTER.
MATTHIEU RICARD

So%much%of%our%lives%plays%out%in
our%heads.%This%process%of%trying
to%experience%stillness%can%also%be
a%process%of%working%through
a%process%of%working%through
anxiety,%cant%it?%Im%sure%Im%not
the%only%person%in%this%room
who%has%woken%up%at%three%in%the
morning%in%a%quiet%and%still%time%to
find%the%mind%racing.%You%cant
stop%it,%and%its%actually%not%very
pleasant.

PI: I go on retreat four times a year

for the last 22 years at a Catholic
monastery, though Im not Catholic.
Initially it was like walking into pure
radiance and liberation, and I was so
excited by that first experience. But
inevitably, at some point I was just
thrown back on myself everything I
was trying to evade in my day to day life
would come up, shadows, demons, bad
memories, terrors, but I thought, well,
better to face those than to run from
them as I would in my normal life. If
that happened in my bedroom, I would
be able to go and click onto YouTube or
turn on a baseball game or do something
to run away from that, and I was grateful
for the fact that there was no place to
hide there.

MR: I remember one time I translated a

1000-page autobiography of a great
Tibetan master from the 18th century
into French and English. It was a
beautiful biography and then I was
giving an interview in France, and
someone was presenting the life of Saint
Thrse of Lisieux, one of those mystics
who had those dark, dark nights, and the
interviewer said, Your autobiography is
very inspiring, but its kind of dull,
because it doesnt say anything about all
those obstacles, about those storms.
And I wondered why this doesnt happen
so much in this kind of practitioner. And
I thought maybe it has to do with the
view that pervades different spiritual
traditions. Look at Mother Teresas
nagging doubts. If everything is to relate
to an absolute deity, whatever you call
to an absolute deity, whatever you call
God or other names in other traditions,
then of course, if you have complete
confidence that such an entity exists
then there will be this incredible
richness. If suddenly you think maybe
its not there, everything sort of
collapses.

Whats the difference in Buddhist

practice? Its more like being at the foot
of Everest there is no doubt that the
mountain is there, but you might have
doubt about being able to climb it. Will I
be observant enough or determined
enough? In the case of Buddhism theres
no mystery. Enlightenment is
eliminating mental confusion,
eliminating hatred, jealousy, mental
toxins, cravings. Thats very simple and
straightforward. Whether you can do it
or not is another matter. But you dont
have those big fundamental existential
doubts; its more like sometimes you feel
tired on the way, and you have to reach
out your strengths, but I think its quite
different in a way.

I%think%that%many%of%us%deal%with
the%noise%in%our%minds%by%seeking
out%distractions,%right?%By
avoiding%those%periods%of%stillness?

PI: Yes. And the distractions are the

problem. The more we run from a
problem, the more were actually
running into it.
Pico,%theres%a%concept%you%talk
about%in%your%book%which%you
describe%it%as%going%nowhere.
Can%you%tell%us%about%that?

PI: I think it refers to two things: first,

sitting still. Ive been lucky enough to go
to Bhutan and Easter Island and
Ethiopia and Ive had extraordinary
experiences there, but none has
compared with sitting in one place.
Second, just what Matthieu and Leonard
Cohen and others have done, which is
not to feel like you always have to get
somewhere. When I was growing up and
I was going to overpriced colleges, they
were always telling us, Youve got to
accumulate a wonderful resume, youve
got to climb this hurdle and this hurdle
and this hurdle, become partner,
become editor-in-chief, become
Supreme Court judge. And that seems
to lead to permanent dissatisfaction,
because once you become a Supreme
Court judge, you want to become the
head of the court in the Hague, or once
you get the Pulitzer Prize you want the
Nobel Prize, so theres never any end to
that craving. So I think going nowhere in
some ways seemed to me a more
promising alternative than always trying
to get somewhere. And Henry David
Thoreau and Walt Whitman and so
many of Americas great writers have
always extolled the virtue of sitting
where you are.

Many%of%us%remember%a%beautiful
TED%Talk%by%Brother%David
SteindlCRast%[Want%to%be%happy?
Be%grateful],%and%he%had%a%very
simple%piece%of%advice%for%those
seeking%happiness,%which%was%to
express%and%to%feel%gratitude%on%a
daily%basis.%Is%finding%those%places
and%seeking%that%stillness%and
searching%for%those%things%that
easy?%Because%it%seems%like%its
actually%hard%work.

MR: Its easy and hard. Its easy but it

takes time. The Dalai Lama often says,
The problem in the West is people want
enlightenment to be fast, to be easy, and
if possible, cheap. So by cheap, he
doesnt mean by paying money, but
cheap in the sense of you know, just do
it casually, it will work. But you dont
become a good pianist instantly; were
not born knowing how to read and write,
everything comes through training, and
whats wrong with that? Skills dont just
pop up because you wish to be more
compassionate or happier. It needs
sustained application. But its joy in the
form of effort. Everybody who trains to
do something, musicians, sportsmen
and so on, says theres a sort of joy in
their training, even if it seems to be
harsh. So in that sense, it does take time.
But why not spend time? We dont mind
spending 15 years on education, why not
the same to become a better human
being?
PI: William James, who I think is one of
Americas great psychologists, said, The
greatest weapon we have against stress
is to choose one thought over another.
And of course, stress has been called the
single biggest epidemic of the 21st
century. But to choose one thought over
another has to do with mind training. At
the end of the day you can think of all
the things that have gone wrong, or you
can think of all the many, many things
that we take for granted that have gone
right. Day after day people ask his
Holiness the Dalai Lama how to deal
with challenge or loss or whatever. And
he says, see it in a wider perspective
and change your mind.

In that sense, its like Shakespeares

wisdom, Theres nothing either good or
bad that thinking makes it so. We have
more power, I think, than we imagine
and more choice to look at any event
from any angle.

EVERY DAY THERE

ARE SMALL
MOMENTS WHEN WE
HAVE A CHOICE: WILL
WE TAKE IN MORE
STUFF, OR JUST
CLEAR OUR MINDS
OUT FOR A BIT?
PICO IYER

Of%course,%this%is%not%always%easy.
Pico,%do%you%find%yourself
sometimes%slipping%or%not%giving
sometimes%slipping%or%not%giving
yourself%the%space%you%need%and
the%time%you%need%to%go%to%those
places?

PI: Im permanently slipping! My whole

life is slipping. When I landed in Rio on
Saturday, I realized that was the 12th
airport Id been to in three and a half
days. So yes, I travel much more and I
take in more data than I would like, but I
do try consciously to maintain some
kind of balance and not just surrender to
the pull of the modern moment, which is
towards being almost drowned in more
information than you know what do
with. But I think in tiny circular ways
when I go on the treadmill, I try not to
turn on the TV. When Im on a plane,
sometimes I try not to watch a movie or
read a book, but just sit where I am.
Every day there are small moments
when we have a choice: will we take in
more stuff, or just clear our minds out
for a bit? I try to lean to the latter.

In%your%book,%you%mention%that%we
are%actually%working%fewer%hours
in%the%West,%and%yet%we%still%seem
to%have%fewer%moments%to%give%to
ourselves.%Is%there%something
about%the%moment%we%are%living%in
now%thats%different,%thats
changed?

PI: Even 20 years ago, I dont think

most of us worried about information
overload or multi-tasking in the same
way or with the same urgency. And
remember, the world is not going to get
slower, and devices are not going to
uninvent themselves. Ten years from
now, well be dealing with things that
make texting and Skype look really old-
fashioned. And the machines arent
going to teach us how to keep our sense
of balance. That part is up to us. The
information revolution came without a
manual. The one thing technology cant
teach us is how to make the best use of
 teach us is how to make the best use of
technology, how to keep our sanity in
the face of technology. For that, we cant
go online.

The Art of Stillness by Pico Iyer is

available now. Featured image courtesy
of Matthieu Ricard.

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In conversation Buddhism, happiness,

Matthieu Ricard, mental

health, mindfulness, Pico

Iyer, spirituality, TED

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