Altruism: The Heart Of Happiness - Matthieu Ricard - WGS 2018

so today there was quite a lot of presenters who put the emphasis on interconnection the need for compassion for care to as a core component for happiness so I want to just say a few words about that so it's quite true that first of all it's tempting to think that well you know I'm one person if I can take care of my happiness it's point of easier than having to take care of the happiness of everyone on earth I have nothing against it that's not my job at the same time we also know that no one can eat for you sleep for you so in terms of growing the inner qualities that bring about flourishing like compassion in your peace in your strength in your freedom someone can inspire you show you the way but you have to do the job in the end so that is quite true we have to gradually thought of the thought emotion after emotion hour after hour month after month trying our best to become a better human being but also they could be the temptation to say well in that case the easiest way to succeed will be to search for selfish happiness because then I am in my little bubble I can control better the conditions and that's easier so now begins the problem with that is that if you think mimimi all day long and then somehow you are going to make yourself very miserable and you probably make everyone miserable all around you and the reason is that it is very stuffy in that little bubble everything becomes like a storm in the glass of water the slightest praise and you become puffed up with arrogance and vanity the slightest criticism you get angry or depressed so it doesn't work and also you become a pain everyone's mind on top of that it doesn't work for another reason because it is a Tod with reality we are not separate entities that could build up the happiness in the little corner and succeed in doing so so it's a lose-lose situation you make yourself unhappy and you make everyone happy now if you look at the other scenario yes of course everyone no one wakes up in the morning think he may suffer the whole day and if possible my whole life one way or the other we want to try we want to see the light at the end of the tunnel at least we want to relieve some suffering otherwise if we see no hope at all that's despair we don't see what's the point going on with this life this being said and how should we proceed about that it is just by you know trying to achieve that in that little bubble well it turns out that if you project yourself in others people's mind even though they might be confused about where to search for happiness and sometimes they will run to the causes of suffering yet deep within they have the same longing for not to suffer and to achieve well-being so that's the fundamentals of a common humanity and even common sentience with other species avoid suffering so to take that in account it's already some recognizing that interconnection that commonly humanity our common sentience on top of that it is well known that among all the different mental state that we can experience those who are connected with love with tenderness with generosity with connection with friendship the quality of human relationship are the major factor for our own flourishing and it turns out that of course compassion loving-kindness truism others Orientals so their primary goal is to bring more happiness and to relieve suffering therefore it will be perceived in a very constructive way by others so here you have a win-win situation on the own personal experience and in addition to that instead of being at odds with reality it is in harmony with the very fact that we are so deeply interconnected so it will work so this is the kind of thing that made me believe fundamentally that although happiness in itself is a wonderful pursuit but unless we connect that to altruism and compassion we would not succeed so why do I show some beautiful photos just to give you an idea what the place where I live and I have been trying for half a century to cultivate you know those qualities and as a photographer every photographer was to show his photographs so here they are but this being said how can we move toward a happier and more altruistic society so how we can go from personal change to societal to social justice so now this idea we have of the eye it begins with I exist I'm cold I'm hungry I'm happy but then we are restoring the person the dynamic stream of our consciousness all the experience we went to our life so all that is fine but then we start making it up sort of creating conceptually echo a notion of a self that is the core that is unitary that is independent and that's the heart of my being so here comes the trouble because from there you have self centeredness self service in attraction repulsion what is going to be attracted that self what is what can be instrumentalized to what we think will benefit self and then hatred desire lack of discernment arrogance jealousy suffering basically all that are embedded in what we could call selfishness now in fact if we understand as I mentioned the interdependence sorry and then it leads to an increased consideration for others so altruism can be defined as the global aspiration may others find happiness and the cause of happiness so now when that altruistic love or benevolence is confronted with suffering that aspiration becomes it's a particular sort of application of unconditional benevolence is main suffering at the cause of suffering busy spend so again this leads to a win-win situation so now this is not just about personal experience we are fishing many challenges in our time and one of the main one is to reconcile the needs for the three timescale the short-term how can we feed our children how can we survive how can we gain freedom if we are oppressed also the short term of the economy that we know changes all the time so then there's the need of the long term what Ministry of happiness is doing looking after flourishing over a generation a lifetime and that's the aspiration to be happy we cannot deny that a country that will be the most powerful and the richest where everyone is miserable what's the point but now there's a new challenge not twelve thousand years ago we were five million people on earth now seven billion and the tools that we have are so powerful so for the first time we enter the entropic scene we have the power to affect seriously future generation so now we have this new long term challenge that we need to care for future generation now when enviromentally speaks with policymakers and speak with economies it's a kind of schizophrenic dialogue they don't speak the same language and if we assume that most of us except a few nutcase want a better world so we need to sit together the scientists policymakers social workers those who deal with the economy with the short term and finding way a tread that will a conceptual tread that will allow us to work toward a better world selfishness will not do the job you know Groucho Marx maybe some of you know Groucho Marx he said why should I care for future generation what did they do for me so I had a lot of people saying the same thing seriously about climate change you know we will see in hundred years why should we bother now so that's one of the problem so it seems that having more consideration for others is the only way to sit together and work together toward a better world to have a caring economics for the short term to a more social justice with use in equality favor education people's flourishing in the midterm and the ultimate challenge is to care for future generation they don't exist by the will and they will say you knew yet you did nothing but it's hard because evolution has equipped us to react emotionally at the immediate danger if I tell you there's a rhinoceros coming full speed in this room we all get up and run if I say it's coming in 30 years we say you will see so that's the problem with the environment so now we start with our mind from morning till evening we have to deal with our mind whether we like it or not and that mind can be our best friend this is a photograph of my first teacher someone achieved complete inner freedom and boundless compassion certainly someone who knew how the mind works but the mind can be also our worst enemy and we know that depression has been increasing in modern society by a big factor the first onset of depression average has gone from 25 years old to 15 years old over 20 years so this is a serious issue we also have poverty in the midst of plenty despite the increased wealth in the world we still have a lot of wealth but also a lot of poverty in the midst of that and then we have using other species 8 million other species whole scale you can't imagine the numbers it has been evaluated that about a hundred billion human beings have lived on earth because we were again five million ten thousand years ago roughly this is the number of animals that we kill every two months it's a lot of debt and a lot of animals and we instrumentalized that as if it was nothing as if it was our right so there's something wrong it is a gap ethical gap you know walked was a more civilized world and we went from this small world few people and the big planet is just the opposite so now in a way we are sort of at the edge in many ways and if you say five years we were at the edge of the precipice and now we make a big step forward that's the problem when you are the edge of the precipice so this is what environment that is called the planetary boundaries and if we remain with this those boundaries we can still go on prospering as humanity as a civilization in the Holocene of a period of stable climate this was in 1900 this is the beginning of the great acceleration in 1950 and now we went vastly over some of the limits we now have the technical know-how to do something about climate change but we clearly lacked political will so why is it because we are dead selfish that man is the word for man why does it seems to be so and if you look at young children they are much more inclined to cooperation they appreciate better people who behave nicely to each other so as social we are more inclined of course we can do terrible things but we also more basically inclined to do a good appreciate good as well we love cooperation and not only human beings by the way of course there is the struggle for life the survival of the fittest and man doesn't always win but it turns out that cooperation has been much more creative throughout evolution to come to increased level of complexity than competition that exists and so we can compete together to survive not against each other but is something in human beings that school beyond that the young selfishness and now there's a dilemma here so that let go keep on holding my friend but also you know if we get over exposed to suffering we can fall into empathic distress emotional exhaustion burnout and the research that was done especially with Tanya singer and which Davison who is here have shown that we tend to confuse empathy which is affective resonance if you are in joy I'm joyful if you suffer I suffer because of your suffering and also there's a cognitive empathy that I can put myself in your shoes but if you only stick with empathy and suffer again and again because of the suffering of other that's too much so we need the most more constructive dimension of altruistic love and compassion and the word that was done with Tanya singer especially as shown that there are different networks in the brain and I can't tell you the story in the 11th minute that is left but we found out experimentally then when she asked me in the fMRI to only resonate with suffering for 45 minutes I got completely burned out and when she gave me permission to switch to altruistic love and unconditional compassion suddenly everything changed in my brain and in my feeling and all embracing to what suffering instead of not knowing what to do feeling distress so there's a courage that comes out with compassion so there's no compassion fatigue there's only empathy fatigue and I think something very important when we deal with altruism and happiness so over last 28 years there have been meetings between scientists and it says the Dalai Lama exploring different aspects of that and neuroplasticity is which Davidson was so so sitting here so trying to bring the best of mind training and contemplative science with modern science especially neuroscience and psychology so you have all schools great human beings which are role models at least for my life but also you can bring some of their students to the lab and study how their brain works when they train their mind in resilience in compassion in altruism does it make a lot a difference so here's mingled emotion of a great teacher who lent himself to those experiment and he is the bad meditator coming out of after one enough of a memory machine so now for almost nearly 20 years now though studies have been going on and they in short though it has been shown that those who have trained their mind they have the ability to most strongly activate certain areas of the brain connected with positive effects so here on the top you see this blue activation is when long-term meditators engage in compassion unconditional compassion towards others compared to the down graph which is people who were told for a few days to generate compassion but have not trained over a long time and as you can see the difference is striking now if you look at brain imaging on the right side you of the novices at rest nothing happened in meditation nothing happened but on the Left long-term practitioner were trained their mind over 10,000 or 15,000 hours address the rest but when they engage in compassion is a strong activation of air we are related with parental care with sense of belonging with empathy and all those positive effects related to pro-social behavior so that's a result of training you can cultivate that as skills and even within four weeks you already see also structural change in the brain and now it has been shown that it is specific to the kind of meditation that you do whether it's mindfulness loving-kindness perspective-taking so in Richard Davidson's lab they could show that two weeks of compassion meditation already changed your pro-social behavior it's quite amazing so what we need now is to create not just you know what we call sustainable development as this was said this morning about endless growth when we speak of growth we always think in terms of Kant quantitative growth more of the same what we need is a qualitative growth better with less a better quality of life we cannot and we don't have the three earth planet earth to fulfill our endless thirst for more energy more resources we need to sustainable harmony means now to remedy to inequalities by more social justice and in the long term remain in harmony with nature so that we don't over exploit it so sustainable harmony is more about a quantitative growth we need to realize the Holocene the stable period of climate that has been for 12,000 years and the starting to change now is our paradise this is our Eden we need to protect that that's the way that civilization that continue to flourish we need to do more of a caring economics where economy is at the service of society and not the opposite so we need to balance that and for instance I'm sure the Ministry of happiness does that but the idea of Gross National Happiness where you have the financial measures prosperity financial prosperity social prosperity and environmental prosperity so for instance Bhutan the calculator that if they would cut all their forests that GDP will be multiplied by ten but then they find themselves with a devastated country so they will lose a lot of such that this environmental world was ten times the GDP so better keep it they also calculate like you know when people volunteer this is like something that is should be included in the GDP not just selling tobacco or things like that if you just go by the GDP what happens you smoked up tobacco GDP increase then you go to the hospital because you have lung cancer the GDP increase and then there's somebody who takes care of your coughing and this expenses your GDP increase but the social weight has been gone down because of that so we need to go to a model that is not like that where the financial is dominating the social world and environmental weight we need local commitment it start with us we cannot say all others have to do it we need to begin with our behavior with the vision and not be discouraged you know if you ask people are you ready to do something for the environment 20 percent say yes no matter what I will start riding a bicycle I will do this I will do that I will instantly different in my house 20 people say I don't care I damn I will do as much as I like and they will see they will find some solution in the future sixty percent say I will do it if others do it as well so what you need is two nuts as it was said this morning those 60% so that an idea becomes so compelling and so inspiring and so strong that you rally to it if you look at the way slavery was abolished in the late 18th century in England there was ten wise person that said we should abolish slavery everybody laughed at them in the house of parliament say haha impossible the British Empire will collapse economically ten years later slavery was abolished that idea had became so strong that you could not say anymore and to you can say let's go back to savings but convenient 100 people be taking care of a thousand people well that's a good investment you can't say that anymore so this cultural change there's tipping points so what we need in terms of altruism and the environment especially is to wish to this critical mass of people with a strong clear listed with wise message and tip over the 60% so that they rally the 20% were clearly decided so we need of course to adopt the global goals and this morning our friend from Indonesia saw that clearly that there are also spiritual environment and social so that think that's a very good way of presenting it we need to extend our tourism to the other 8 million species you know we can go on killing 60 billion land animals and the trillion that's thousand billion sea animal every year as if nothing happened this was so very bad for everybody because we wrote the sixth extinction of species since earth since life appeared on earth and the last one is back to the dinosaur time and that's going to be huge mess for everybody humans included of course and you know sometimes we have to learn even from those animals in terms of care as you can see and so we have to search happiness through altruism and compassion not just to pursuing endless selfish purposes is not going to do the job so there are a few wonderful book and inspiring book as you could look at and a few from the humble servant here and so I think Martin Luther King put it very clearly every man or woman of course must decide whether he or she will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness so you might say well here's this Buddhist monk coming from his Hermitage you know is staying in front of the Himalaya you saw the picture in the beginning good for him you know it doesn't pay tax it doesn't ever the twenty five children to raise easy you know to speak of compassion and happy look at this guy you know sitting on his balcony enjoying those beautiful mountains so what a sham so in fact that's why we need pure heart and dirty hands let's put compassion in action so we try to do that and just to give you not just to advertise for what we do but to show that this can translate when people are really a commitment and sense of determination so now to an organization that I started seventeen years ago in Asia were helping more than 300,000 people through this organization in terms of health education social services in very remote areas of northern India Bihar and jokhang in Nepal and eastern Tibet so we'll just look at this investment many of you might be knowing about that return on investment a school for 2,000 children will with bamboos $400,000 can you beat that I doubt so we build nine of those school that 20,000 kids for a limited amount will build clinics in the high plateaus of Tibet 4,000 meters of altitude and schools this is the happiest woman in the world by the way and we do literacy program in India and so Karuna means compassion so that's compassion in action and this is what gives the most satisfaction for me as an elderly monk is to have been the camp have been being able to fulfill that dream to put compassion in action and that can tell you that gives the greatest happiness is to transform yourself to be better at the service of others and have 26 seconds left so let's rejoice thank you so much [Music]

Channel: World Government Summit

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Length: 26min 6sec (1566 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2018