The First Video That Put Me On The Path Of Self Actualization

[Loreena]

I painstakingly wrote the entire transcript because this video for me is probably the most important video or message of my life. It opened the road to self-actualization for which I will forever be indebted and grateful. If it inspires you, then I am glad. This was the first video that opened my eyes and for the first I saw how important it is to focus on self and changing oneself in order to see a change in life... ..............So Enjoy

 

The transcript is typed a little haphazardly. So I apologize for that.

 

 

Mattieu is very gifted scientist who became a buddhist monk. He was regarded as the one of the most promising scientist of his generation. Sorry biologist. I took it from web. He completed his PHd thesis in 1972 before like most of you were born.and unfortunately he wasn't able to join google at that time. So he went to nepal and became a biologist. Now thats kidding. He became a monk. He has lived and studies in the himalayas for the past 35 years where he has been doing humanitarian projects.

. Mathieu is also a best selling author.he is a translator and he is a photographer. And all these pictures they are taken by him. He is also an active prticipant in current scientific research on meditation and the brain. And inmany of the those studies he is the brain.   So mathiey so he wrote an entire book on happiness.

 

Its honour and pleasure form me to welcome mattieu ricard  in our presence.

 

There  called noora nasrudden. He asked how do you know its me. Enjoyabl eplace i see people with their swimming trunks moving in the alleys going to the swimming pool Occasonaly meng as he leaves his massage chair to go to his office. So definitely i would like to work here. this is better than being at home. So probably i have nothing to teach you about happiness. Someone told me equally that I should never have written this book because i never suffered very much in my life i am the last person to write a book on happiness and suffering. So anyway. I though to share few ideas because they were very dear to me. .............

 

.....

 

This came through meeting beings of great wisdom. It sort of started like that.

 

We speak of leadership. Leadership has to be someone who somehow inspires you  the potential that you can actualize, showing you what you could become. And give you a sense of direction and inspiration. Thats not very frequent in life.i was quite lucky in my teens to be born in a family in France where my father was a philosopher and we so got all these poets and thinkers at home  My mother was an artist and all these  soriya painters coming becaue of the muscial connections when i was 16 years old i had lunch with  Stravinsky himself just for 2 hours with three people all together my uncle was an explorer. He went around the world on an board after the second world war  and worldclass of eccentric friends Such as one when we went to paris there was a small note on his door saying i left on foot to Timbaktu. And things like that. So lot of wonderful people. And in science of course...

The lab i was working with 2 three nobel prize winners in medicine  jakolt mono and wolfe at Pasteur Institiute .So it was very exciting very there was definitely lot of  people to look at as to know what could i do what could i be inspired . At the same time definitely i would have wish to play the piano you know like Stater srivester or the chess like bobby fisher. I dont know if you remember bobby fisher . But Who wants to become Bobby Fisher. So there was some kind of discrepancy you know you could take 100 governors and you will have a number of wonderful people and some governors who are quite short-tempered not so as to deal with but the same thing with philosophers same thing with scientists same thing with artists no matter  what their particular  skill or genius was there was no correlation as such between their human quality and their particular genius. So you could try to pick up things and make your own salad and try to but thats somehow didnt seem bit artificial.Like making a palace of all that and think its going to work. So then I was lucky enough to travel to the Himalayas. And Then i met something different. I saw men of wisdom men and women of wisdom. What was bit special about them and they are all great tibetan teachers who have fled the invasion of tibet and towards india and other places.I didnt really care so much what they knew themselves you know poetry tibetan grammar and even buddhist philosophy in the beginning that was not my interest at all.but what they were that was inspiring  the quality. The human quality and then i thought how i would become like them  not just know what they know. And because there was a kind of a The first trigger was seeing  a documentalry movie on some of the great teachers and some friend of mine those and at the end of the documentary there was a five minute silence upon one face of the meditators and hermits and spiritual teachers the dalai lama one after another just like silent  it was so powerful. I thought like 20 socrates or 20 senfosis or fasisceists whoever .you feel like representing them wisdom of humanity just there alive in all times and so i thought where i should go to see  and that was very interesting because Somehow someone like that and i am going to show some images show you what you could become its a source of inspiration. Give you that that this is possible you know somebody made it somehow then of course you get interest in how.first you have to see that it makes sesnse . So also in the course of living in the himalayas. After a while travelling back and forth  . Some of the things became quite clear. You know what brings a sense of fulfillment in life. And it seems that we so much put our hopes and fears in the outer conditions.So now.Lets be clear from the beginning. Its its we want outer conditions to be optimal compared to 150 years ago when the life expectancy  even in europe was like 30 years and now who doesn’t want to live long to be healthy to have access to education to have a wonderful working place harmonious human relations in one’s family and friends with people  living in country where there is peace where there is not a oppressive regime so all that we deeply sort of yearn for that and thats right. WE ought to develop that to the maximum we can to and especially    . In  a world where there is far from being granted for many many places of the world where 3000 children  still die everyday of malaria and all that you know and there is so much to do just to bring those minimum outer conditions. Yet its quite clear too that if we only put our hopes and fears in the outer world we  Its not going to work in our search for direction for meaning for genuine sense of fulfillment and accomplishment  what we would  call genuine happiness. genuine happiness does not mean pleasant feelings one after the other each one more and more intense  piling them up renewing them seeking them and then falling out collapsing of exhaustion at the end . Thats not going to work . So its more like a cluster of qualities that we can develop as skills you know openness genuine altruistic love compassion inner strength some kind of inner peace  and then that gives you a sense of confidence thats not just like the false confidence of arrogance but confidence that you are less vulnerable and therefore more ready also to be of service of others and contribute to a more compassionate society that  gives you better way of flourishing yourself and others and  because less means more confidence means less feelings of  insecurity or fears then more readiness to be there for others. So its quite clear that outer conditions themselves are not enough  however necessary or useful they might be. Not enough because we also can clearly see that our state of mind the way we interpret and translate those outer conditions in our inner sort of experience are what really determines states of well being and or misery and the state of mind can easily override those outer conditions.

 

11:17

We can feel terrible in a little paradise and we can feel still very strong and joyful to go about one’s life and contribute to the happiness of others even in the face of adversity and

 

So dalai lama once gave this striking example  if you move in a very luxurious  flat at 100 floor of a hi-tech skyscraper for the first time you just bought it and then  you are totally ruined within destroyed in your your heart and in your mind  all you are going to look for is a window from which to jump,

 

On the other hand you could have this great joy to be alive and petty and whatever all those human qualities even when you know when the outer conditions doesn’t seem  nice at all because your state of mind is stronger.And that such a fortunate situation. Because imagine that to find happiness       12:16

The world will have to be the image of your desire your fancies.

 the universe will have to be vast catalogue in which you can order all the ingredients for happiness.forget it. No Its never going to happen like that. There should be  6 billion catalogues and everyone will choose different items and they will never work. So but no this is not just a it seems obvious but great thinkers thought otherwise. Emmanuel Cant wrote complete happiness will be the complete fulfillment of all our desires in quantity quality and duration.now.  Just the whole idea of happiness goes to the drain . this would never happen never how can that be and anyway in permanence is there even if you had for a fraction of a second everything to be happy then one piece was turning to be missing the next day so again collapse. It doesnt work. And we know in real life as i remember once going to tahiti with the young  abbot of my monastery first two buddhist monks in tahiti was big news

 

So in the ....... In the ....in the ....yes ..so in the evening news there were two big items . They found a snake in the forest there are no snakes in tahiti and second item two buddhist monks arrived in tahiti. SO The next day we were in  this wonderful like postard looking sunset in Paul gogenz house and while he was not there but  a beautifully lit swimming pool.I am sitting there and we are looking at each other and you know.....ss.. Who is the owner of that supposed to make us happy. There seems to no relation.And if that makes us happy then what  If you double the size of the swimming we would be twice as much happy.  So of course no no relation. Its the way you interpet things.

14:25

And we had the confirmation of that of the way of interpreting the world the next morning because you know Tahiti looks great on postcard.but its pretty hot and damp wet when you are there . So We were sitting under a beautiful tree and there was imagine there was this kind of soft sort mist refreshing mist falling from the tree. We are sitting there in complete bliss thinking wow This is a real paradise no even the trees are air-conditioned. But Then someone came and said you know those are pissing flies/. So Our perception of the world changed right away.

 

15:05

So now so lets assume that the inner conditons for well being are really what will determine the quality of every $$$ that goes by. And Thats fair assumption .but then  thats when in the most metaposition because Thats our mind. The final experience of all of that.Thats At least i am not having  to modify the whole world to our taste. But we can change our mind. If we can change our mind   then we can change our world thats the world we experience so thats the idea  so for that we need to  identify which  conditions in our mind are leading to sense of fulfillment sort of fruition accomplishment and sense that we look 20 years ahead if we look back we see that somehow thats the best that we could do with our capacities and which was the right direction something that is truly meaningful in our life. So what are those conditions that will nurture the quality also the quality of every moment that passes. Because after all  Life is not just remembering the past and projecting the future. The quality of the present moment. Thats what the days is made of. As someone said  If we take care of the minutes the hours will take care of themselves. If all the minutes are unhappy how could the  hours and day be somehow be fulfilled. So we need that quality .

 16:31

 That has to do with the states of mind. Then there are states of mind which are totally detrimental to the  quality of that life like hatred to be sentimental grudge nagging jealousy obsessive desire sort of arrogance  all those (are just) makes you feel miserable and of course they also induce you to act and speak in ways that also cause suffering around you. so  its a lose lose situation that comes to very self-centered excessive $$$$ feeling self-importance  bringing everything to oneself and trying to buildup so called selfish happiness sometime at the detriment of others well being Thats absolutely not going to work.if a selfish happiness is the goal of your life then that life is soon going to be without any goal .because That simply cannot work. The reason it cannot work is because excessive preoccupation with onself is the constant source of torment and being vulnerable to everything criticism praism failure and success all those would take a disproportionate sort of importance there.  You will be like a storm in a glass of water. And thats each of those will be like small balls bouncing in that small tiny bubble of the ego and then hurting you every-time .we need to explode that self-centeredness bubble and let those bullets be lost in the vast space of open-minded and so that we not just simply obsessed whats going to happen to me and how do i feel. And all these things

 Its just way of buying trouble for ourself . So now there are other types of emotions and mental state which definitely we feel as something that is nourishing the sense  of well being like say loving kindness unconditional love wanting to an act of generosity with no strings attached   .  Just a mere wish of bringing some happiness or relief from suffering to others and some sense of inner peace inner strength inner kind of contentment. So all those together makes a way of being. And thats what genuine happiness is.

Its not just pleasant feelings even and trying to like accumulate them endlessly because pleasant feelings are so much fleeting even if you try to renew them they depend upon circumstances upon time. They change in nature from one moment to the other. Something that is very pleasant  like a chocolate cake one serving is great two three you become nauseous so the same thing as a change of nature  there must be beautiful music you can dream of  you might if you have really  hooked on to it listen 3 4 times at a row but imagine 24 hours nonstop what a fatigue . Doesnt work. And also it is something that somehow is so centered upon oneself you can experience  intense incessant pleasure if everyone is suffering even at the cost of other making suffer its not something that it is  inspiring necessarily and so vulnerable to change. No. Happiness as a way of being as a optimal sort of way of the mind to be. . Wil remain throughtout the ups and downs throughout the different emotional states and give you  give you the resources to deal with whatever comes so rather than being dependent on the fluctuating changes of ups and downs  of life lets give you the resources to deal with those changing conditions. Its like the depth of the ocean its always there compared to the change of the surface where theres sometimes storm sometimes beautiful weather but in both if you dont have the depth then you are in the midst of the  weather change of the surface with nothing to refer to

20:41

So it is a way of being. Or as manner of being. But manners need to be learnt. Its not granted. yet

Its true we are more or less born with the kind of triats.There are more happy and extrovert kids or kids which are little bit more violent and some others are very sweet and will give their toys to others. So we have traits. But those are just blueprints. This is not the time to elaborate on that but epigenesis means that even you have this set of genes at any time something that could regulate their expression. Wonderful studies now done showing that almost any kind of gene that determines traits can be modified by the environment by receiving and giving love and tenderness. Gene can be for stress can be blocked for life if there is a strong component of tenderness very early in life and so those are just sort of potential that we are more or less sort of gifted in the beginning but hard work and the interaction can change that. So there is this flexibility in everything in genes in the way we experience the world. So there is margin to change.

 

 

22:05

And not only that but by which can kind of mystery our mind the way we experience things will just change towards happiness because we wish to be happy. Everything else in life we need to learn.

 Like going to school leanrt by experinece. There must be some fundamental quality just come like that. Its human nature. It would be terrribly boring three days on uninterrupted happiness is so boring its always the same but suffering is so vibrant. It always changes you know so exciting but you know is it true or are we just saying that  to justify the fact that we are not quite sure how to change that. And then we try to make a philosophy to it with that state of affairs because in truth you know

 

23:52

When you are sitting maybe in a beautiful garden or somewhere by the lake with someone you love and just like enjoying the beauty of nature and  feeling harmony with the world with others with yourself with less inner conflict working the stars or something like that and feeling really at peace are you going to regret the tense atmosphere of a emergency room of a hospital or something. Or if i come now and  you are sitting peacefully and say please get angry right now and you will say why should i you know i am fine or would you like to spend the whole afternoon being terribly jealous. You will say no why this doesnot sound such a nice prospect but if i say would you like to spend the next two three hours you know having compasssion or loving kindmess as the main sort of state of mind   Wows that seems pretty   you know. We feel instinctively that even though we cant escape from the for the time being from those kind of  different kinds of mental toxins.WE rather be well off without them. Now is it possible to change that because we might say its so deeply

Intrinsic to human nature that we cant do anything. So yes ina way it is in human nature and we  all have those positive and negative emotions. So in that sense it is part of human nature but to be part of something there are different ways of being part of something. You could be part of something like the whiteness of the screen thats all over the texture of the screen and to remove that we would have to destroy the screen.But this is also somehow part of the screen. It stays on the screen but it doesnt penetrate the screen doesn’t belong to the screen doesnt remain on the screen and the screen allows it to appear yet it is not modified as such but it allows it to appear so thats the key in order for all the mental states mental constructs to arise in our mind whether positive emotions or negative ones no matter. There has to be some kind of basic screeen or like the light

If i show a torchlight to shine on you the light can show in the garden  beautiful flowers  or maybe a pile of garbage so you might say this is beautiful  this is ugly the light allows you to seee that but the light doesnt become beautiful or ugly the light just makes that perceptible visible.

 

26:19

 

 Likewise at the fundamental aspect of cognition  of the mind we call the bay of consciousness or the sort of pure awareness. Its kind of basic cognitive factor and that thing  meditators can introspectively sort of experience that behind the screen of thoughts this kind of pure way of presence or we call the laminous aspect of mind in buddhist terms .  luminous not that it glows in the dark or like those google thing shooting from the earth. But that it is luminous compared to a dark object like this stool where there is no cognitive quality whatsoever. So it luminous. It a cogni..cognicent. So now that is not tainted by hatred jealousy and so forth. It allows that to occur . It cannot be. If hatred was so intrinsically part then it should shine on everything like the light was beautiful in itself everything would be beautiful when you shine the light on something or ugly or whatever.  So thats not the case. That gives margin because those mental constructs are result of causes  and conditions . So it gives modify those causes and conditions and thats the principle of mind training,  and thats what meditation is all about. Meditation has many meanings

27:38

But the root the actual literal meaning in sanskrit bavana means to cultivate. And in tibetan gom means to be familiar with something to become familiar with a new way of being with qualities with the perception of a world which is ore attuned with the reality and not seeing the world as autonomous permanent objects but as a dynamic sort of flux interdependent on ceaselessly changing causes and conditions even our consciousness is a stream a dynamic stream constantly changing and so it also develops qualities like compassion and loving kindness so meditation is really to cultivate something. It can be to cultivate inner calm to begin with like through mindful breathing let the thoughts subside little bit and through not being caught in the constant whirlpool then from that state we can develop those qualities like compassion and loving kindness. So it is something that need to be trained and everything has to be learned. Our life is spoiled brat of our mind it is going to continue to run over the place and this you know we are the mixture of constant joy and torments we can do much better. We say this is normal but normal state is just a pandemic. We are so much alike we think that everything is normal. But optimal is something else. And with this is possible. So we can use all kinds of  methods and techniques thats what the sort of he methodology or the science or the contemplative science is about.

 

29:09

Using antidotes. For instance. Antidotes means there are things that are one to one that are  mutually exclusive. You cannot in the same gesture stretch your hand friendly way  and give a blow. You cannot in the same moment of thought want to harm someone and want to do good. Its very simple but if you think of that the more you bring say altruistic thoughts thought of benevolence in your mind the less at those moments there will be space for malevolence harmful thoughts and so forth. So you can imagine that yes we do feel moments of love and moments of resentment but we dont cultivate them we dont try to generate loving kindness and just keep it flowering in our mind and remaining it and feeding it and sort of maintain preserving it for 5 or 10 minutes its not something we do but thats what we need to do if we want it  to become a part of or mind. To change our minute to minute emotion and then moods then finally traits thats how we learn.

 

 

30:10

fgbvb

 

 

It wont happen without a mimimum of sort of dedication and to dedicate oneself to someething and to find the time for it we need to see the advantages of doing so. And in case of changing one’s mind the advantages are quite obvious.  Ther are many other ways but just to give you a quick example

 

Not indignation in the face of injustice

 

 

34

 

Since we speak of changing your mind chnaging your brain some years now we have been collaborating with neuroscientists. This is an endeavour that has  was started by dalasi lama inspired by him to study the influence on the brain of

 

The areas that deal with the fingers with the motor coordination and all kinds of things. It has vastly increased in activity even in size so what happens not if you not learn the piano but if you learn compassion. You know training vigilance attention. Would that change the brain too. If that does it means that meditation not only blissing out under a mango tree and trying to empty your mind unsuccessfully. But it is really a deep change that comes through mind training that was an interesting sort of approach so

35

 

we need to start with  experienced meditators because now if there is a noticeable difference in them.

 

If there was no difference in the experienced dont expect

 

 

 

35:25

Here are the place where they come from. Well its almost as nice  in the google campus but its still easier to meditate there then on the subway. But we can soonhave a google campus on tibet or something somewhere and so meing will be very happy to be on top of everest without oxygen and

So those are the beautiful places where they come from and this was in eastern tibet

August 1st the hottest day of the year and the night before we were camping with tibetan friends they said we are going to sleep outside. I said why we have big tents.  No its summertime. So they slept outside.

 

 

 

36:11

In the morning there was 10 cm snow on their clothes. So this is what i am fortunate to see from the window of my small hermitage in the himalayas so i cant complain

 And this is a example of  a what is spiritual teachers here. You can see that there is some kind of beyond word it kind of human quality that we sort of cant miss. In reality it is sertainly very strong it is almost like human goodness becoming almost palpable. Thats what Paul eckman you are going to receive soon one of the world’s specialist on emotions thats how he described his encounter with the dalai lama there is something that you almost physically not there not this weird vice but something that so sort of natural ands simple and yet something that you can really feel.

Inner strength mixed with goodness and sort of solidity but at the same time sensitivity . I mean its very hard to describe but its really that makes an extraordinarily good human being and this cat is certainly one of the fortunate ones and this is my first teacher Kanjuriem bushey and then and ya this is the hermit who comes out of 6 years of meditation in the hermitage so the question is

Is he so happy because he finally he is coming out or because he did 6 years of meditation  and knowing him well i would favor the second hypothesis that this is something that he acquired  through his training.

 

So in madison wisconsin the meditators have 256 electrodes and they are two ways of measuring brain activity one is through electro cephalogram that is a very good time resolution thousands of seconds change can be recorded on the scalp but not so clear exactly where it happens in the brain. So we have to combine that with fmri which is magnetic resonanace  scanner which is a very good 3 dimensional analysis of way things happening in the brain and imaging but not so good in time wise . The resolution is 1 or 2 seconds so its like a camera in the first case its very fast shutter speed but not so well focused second case it is very well focused but slow shutter speed but if you combine both you get both time sort of resolution . So thats coming out of 2 and half hours in the scanner so theres huge relief from the mini retreat

. This is richard davidson the lead scientist in madson wisonsin

In the labs doing this tsudy in princeton and harvard and berkeley and so far from here and more and more   38:58

So there are many states you can study because meditation is very varied so that you can focus on attention mental imagery visualization you can study compassion and thats one of the one way studied most and each of these as different brain signatures. So compassion here i spare you all the reading the unconditional feeling of love that begins with an object but then to more and more universe and and to all sentient beings and this is a very powerful and strong feeling of loving kindness

 

39:33

So this is the first paper published in the PNAS and now the actual first results. So now what we need is to compare things. We need to compare the meditator at rest and in meditation . Also we have compared meditator with control group those who are novice in meditation and see if there is a difference. So we give the instructions to them same  instructions that meditators used for many years and ask the to do it for a week and come back to the lab and then in the lab what we do is the minute of rest  getting into state of compasssion or focused or whatever the subject is and then doing that again and again 30 40 times in out in out and measuring changes with the experienced meditators and with the controls. In case of the controls the green line is the resting state the blue line is also the meditation state. They try they feel something but its not so strong enough to elicit a strong response in the brain. Here you see with the meditators that the rest line is the same but now when they engage in compassion meditation there is a huge increase 1200 percent of their brain waves particularly in the gamma waves which is connected with the connection in the brain and so forth. It does happen also interestingly enough mostly in the areas of the brain where the left prefrontal cortex which has to do with positive emotions so compassion is among the most powerful positive emotions and just to give you an idea this is a huge increase:

 

41:00

 

Maybe there is something big happening in the brain if you are about to be run over by an elephant. But to go from a resting state and in 15 seconds voluntarily bring a powerful mental state thats never been recorded like that in neuro science. So even they everyone started to doubt is it an artifact something so it almost a year to make sure that this was really the result of meditation and not just something else. This is just a different way of showing or displaying the same result. Another way. Here are the controls here are the meditators. Its very very different  this is the real time monitoring the compassion meditation sort of takes off   increases then the meditator will have a small keyboard and with the right and left arrows he will command 1 2  3 4 5 and then if you prolong that to some minutes he might stop losing it little bit so that he will go down he is not going to look at the numbers to be influenced but he will check in with the keys and  then he will come down maybe

4  3  2 and then brings it back to from here again he will go up the ups and downs seem to be very closely related to what is actually measured in the brain 0.69 corelation you know if you are statistician there is a chance of one in a 40 million times that this is just random or  due to chance

 

 

42:27

 

And this is now the brain imaging and here the   compassion the area that is vastly activated is the left pre-frontal cortex which has to do with positive emotions joy

Sense of enthusiasm so compassion is in itself the most powerful emotion . Now interestingly enough too the blue signifies the decrease of activity and that area of the right pre frontal cortex is normally associated with depression rumination excessive self concern negative effect so here that compassion is almost as an antidote to depression  which is of course a fascinating avenue of research

43:11

Now also this aspiration to relieve suffering that comes with compassion strongly reduces  activity in the amygdala which is known to be connected with fear and anger. So again compassion reduces that. It also increezes activity in the motor area of the brain that means compassion comes with a readiness  to act   of couse for the  benefit of others. So now attention normally if you have to  maintain your attention very sharply you start losing it out of fatigue   and now if you are       the task where you see flashing numbers very fast and this time you have to press a button after 5 or 10 mins you start making more and more mistakes  your score goes down which is happening here but with meditators after 10 mins there is no change and now we did that for 60 mins absolutely no change 2 errors in thousand trials and they dont report to be tired just like a set of flow this is specialty what the skill is about you do it naturally perfectly without being tired but you know this a   in the face of so much assumptions

The founder of modern psychology no one can maintain their attention for more than a few seconds on a given object. But its to be quite different here. And this shows areas of the brain those that are activated in the meditators when they perform those attention tasks and compared to the controls that just cannot do it that much. So now what about short term training ou may say its great for you to be in the himalayas for years what about us you know  you can go to the swimming pool yes there is  yes thats quite good but what about meditation we your dear friend is trying to ring a boon an extra boon in google. What if we do 30 minutes a day for few months well thats exactly what was done in a very highly stressed employees of a biotech company in madison. They volunteered to do 30 minutes a day for 3months and there was a control group which they said we will give you the training after please come to the lab every week. So then the measurement was done before and after . So this on trait of anxiety a bunch of questionnaires and  that determines your level of anxiety can see here time 1 the control group and the meditator no difference and there was a significant difference after just 3 months . Now the left i mentioned about this right side activity of the brain   negatives one as you can see here at time 2 i dont know why it says 3 here the meditators are much more activated on the left side and surprisingly the control group was even negatively activated because you know its kind of boring you have to the lab without doing the meditation they were a little bit upset at the end of those 3 months. But later they went through the training dony worry

 

Now interestingly enough the immune system is boosted  and significantly not to miss work they have to get a compulsory flu shot in November they dont skip coming working so now when you give a vaccine whether it will work or not it depends upon he strength of your immune system . Now in the first iraq war a vaccine that normally would take 80% cases because the soldiers who were going to the war so stressed it would take only 50 %. The  level of stress decreases the effectiveness of the vaccine

So those who are gone through this 3 months of 3o minutes of meditation their immune system response was boosted 20%.. So that also means the same strength to fight actually flu and other diseases

47:10

Now the stress level which is measured with the cortisone in the saliva in the meditators is 4 times less than in the control group thats not with the novice meditator thats with the meditators people doing long retreats. So there is definitely an effect in those preliminary studies even for short term  i mean not short term but a short amount of time everyday already in 3 months it shows significant effect and then maybe next year by something that might make big time sort of news  we are now studying the aging process which has to do some of you might be know at the end of the dna the chromosome they are free what they call as telomeres and it shortens the age.  Now it still is a preliminary result. I am telling us between you and me

 

48:00

After 3 years of intensive meditation thats not 30 mins a day theres more like a in a meditation workshop for 3 months a significant decrease or diminishing of the telomeres. Wow that would be big news isnt it?

Stay young meditate

So now to come back to the outer conditions which i mentioned in the beginning we often see people who are extremely rich extremely powerful on top of that they might be strong and beautiful and you hear they are miserable or depressed you say whats wrong with this guy ? If i had all that i would be happy weel thats not the case of course for money which is one of the obvious candidate if you are below the poverty line and cant feed your kids and suffer terrible conditions . Yes o go above that makes a huge difference in the quality of your life. After that beyond that then doubling tripling just doesnt make any difference

48 : 55

Here is the gdp in the united states three times increased  from 46 to 96 . The gross national happiness stationary even slight decrease. Now marriage buys you happiness. Here you are. Time zero. 5 years later. Well you know richard davidson who gave me that slide said i have been married happy for 30 years but thats what has come out of the study. Yet there is another data that shows it still better happier repoted life for people who are married  or companionship rather than people who are single or separated but relatively the change of happiness basically you come back where you were. And now widowhood. Well you recover  from it also.

 

49:55

So external factors only have a limited effect on our level of  happiness. They do have but altogether if you bring all the social factors then there are thousands of studies over 70 years basically they contribute to something about 15 % of your reported happiness. People differ in their emotional disposition and affective style and those dispositions are relatively stable if you win the lottery you are greatly happy but one year later you more or less come back to same level, they can be changed thats the point.

 

50:26

Meditation has demonstrable effects on the brain and they represent one of the few ways in which purely mental training has been demonstrated to have robust impact on brain function. And this is a meditator and these are the monks escaping from the lab. So now here you might say well theres a contradiction here . You said that happiness can be trained and we just show that  before after marriage before after widowhood money doesnt make any difference so then what if thats stable whats the point of meditating you are going to make just another of those peaks and come down.so whats the point. Well remember as i mentioned in the beginning  genuine happiness as a way of being is not the peaks of joy and pleasant and the lows of depression and so forth. This is the ups and downs, but when you go up and down you go up and down above and below a baseline. So here mindful. Meditation and mind training raising the baseline.

 

51:26

 

The platform in which you standing in line the place where you come back. Those ups and downs its going to happen. Maybe you will be less vulnerable to them less carried away by them less affected or impacted by them you maintain this sense of direction and meaning in life. But you can change that. And so thats a really worthy endeavor in life. And also to get inspiration to do that we need to identify some kind of potential we have within ourselves. We need to at some point sit quietly and say what really matters for me in life what do i really want to accomplish in life.not just you know filling questionnaires after you pass some test put that into a machine or  computer or going to a professional orientation and then okay you have this this this and thats what you are good for. But really feel what deeply you would like to spend your life so that 20 years later when you look back you say no i did my best thats what i wanted to do and i have a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment thats otherwise you know whats the point. Even if you succeeded in this this this that and you feel not so you know there is no sense of accomplishment is not there some sort of fulfillment was worth it to live in that way. Thats what we want.

52:49

I think its so important to identify in ourselves what we really want  what really matters and then find a way. Theres always a way to accomplish it. So i think this if meditation could be as a mind training not taking the exotic aspect or oriental aspect of it. Just it it could be become a genuine contribution to a more open compassionate society and so to the quality of our life. So thank you for your attention

 

53:16

Questions

Thank you very much.That was fascinating. I am just curious about the power of meditation. Children with Aspergers.

 

 

 

54:09

since last year we are taking trying to study education not only from educators and social but bringing together psychologists educators social workers neuro scientists and contemplative science and this is the first time that it is happening at a very good level of science and contemplation. So there have been obvious ideas of doing with children which have attention deficit and you know this is very really beginning approach but this is part of the what we would like to contribute to more like a secular approach to those things not just the Buddhist level nothing wrong with the buddhist level but it might look too much like a religious approach and then deprive te tools for actually serving society in a deeper way so i have a friend in france who has a trainig called secular training to attention its very good and everybody is very happy about that. Well i think this is the way to go yes no the mind and life institute

 

55:30

I keep hearing the number 10000 tens of thousands of hours of training and its really cool to see the fmri effects of meditation but i also curious there have been advances in training so that random people who cant do that for 20 years  ..a simple biofeedback kind of a thing where people can recognize the state like the monk who was pressing the keys on the keyboard he knew what he was feeling

 

56:00

You know we have been taking our feedback and when we start to get hooked on the electro cephalogram and we can look you can start generating compassion and you see those gamma waves going bzzzzooo its kind of fun but at the same time you know

Its little bit interfering you know suppose i see myself in my hermitage trying to meditate i dont want to watch a screen on brain waves and this is electrode 825 and i am trying to make it shhweep  go up. I think this is more like a distraction . But i think again the 10000 hours  argument its thats why we do now all these studies  Our goal is if there are robust results there was one groundbreaking paper in PNS three years ago and now there’s 3 more coming this year which will really establish that contemplative neuroscience field maybe better but the real goal is once there is robust study with the experienced meditators and really to go to everyone otherwise there is no use of the curiosity but if it really applies you know in the biotech company certainly it can apply here

 

57:11

I am wondering when you are an expert meditator you have an average level of happiness and desire otherwise. What if you stop meditating . How long does it take to go down. Is it something that lasts for long ever or not at all

 

Well you know the idea of stopping meditation of 20 years to see how  terribly miserable i would become. Thats not exactly. Meditators are very determined volunteers you know. Its like the kamikaze of  happiness

 

 

No then its like a medicine you have to take forever

 

 

No no i think there are things like skiing. I skipped skiing for 35years i can show you a photo last year it was a joy after 2 hours to be able to ski as before. So i think there are i think there is something that  so deeply changed thats it certainly remained. Thats the point of a way of being of a baseline it takes time to acquire it but because of that it has a really  strong and firm foundation

And actually it has to be a test. We say you know its fine if the meditators are siting in the sun basking with full belly no problem but when confronted with adverse circumstances thats where or she is put on the scales and i think that way in daily life we can see what we need to see . Now  The fireworks of mystical experiences dont last. But its like the hand of a clock. When you stare at it its not moving but when you look from time to time it has changed so those changes are slow hence the need for mind training but because they are slow they are much more likely to  be stable. And thats the idea. Now the brain wont degenerate too quickly hopefully and then your experiences also i think its something that at some point there;s a kind of a sort of a no return point in this kind of a baseline. Yes thank you . Thank you so much for your attention

applause

 

 

Complete

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Loreena]

Thank you Matthieu Ricard for changing my life forever and I can't be thankful enough. God bless those like him who spread a message to change lives.

[Guest username]

@Loreena Have you read his books? They're in my list for the future, but I haven't bought them yet.

 

This man is truly awesome. He's one of the ones that made me start looking to higher consciousness values rather than trying to neurotically optimize the internals. (I'm still pretty low consciousness, haha. :x)

[sgn]

@username I have the Art of Meditation and Happiness. Good books. Thinking of buying Altruism too.

[sgn]

On 4/2/2017 at 9:31 PM, My_Name_Is_Mud said:

Two girls. One cup. It was then I realized anything was truly possible, and that is what ignited this incredible journey I'm on. It's also how I ended up in Florida at one point.

Omfg hahaha!!! This guy...