Interview with Matthieu Ricard: A monk at the crossroads between science and conscience

– Matthieu Ricard, a monk at the crossroads between science and conscience

Media figure of Buddhism in France, the monk has undertaken in-depth research on the effects of meditation. At UNIL, he will evoke wonder in the face of nature.

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You are a scientist by training. How did this influence your awakening to Buddhism?

We could define science as the set of means of investigation which allow us to acquire a fair understanding of reality. It can be applied to a wide variety of fields provided that this investigation is rigorous. My interest in Buddhism could have distanced me from the scientific approach, but it was the opposite. One of the main goals stated by Buddhist philosophy is to check whether our perceptions and beliefs are in line with reality. Buddhism shows how, through misguidance, we take as permanent what is constantly changing and believe we see autonomous and enduring entities in what is only a dynamic flow of interdependent phenomena. The main area of ​​investigation in Buddhism is the workings of our minds. How can the latter build worlds of suffering or, on the contrary, help us free ourselves from the confusion that leads to suffering?

Having become a monk, you collaborated on neuroscientific research on the effects of meditation. What did you learn from it?

Volunteering for this research led me to visit countless laboratories and spend over a hundred hours doing MRIs (editor’s note: magnetic resonance imaging exams). Among the various projects on which I have collaborated, the one carried out with Tania Singer, from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, is one of those which has opened up the most new perspectives for me. It made it possible to distinguish empathy from compassion.

Why is this distinction important?

Affective empathy allows us to resonate with the inner state of someone else. It’s the effect that other people’s emotions have on you. If you are empathetic and your work causes you to resonate with the suffering of others day after day, the cumulative impact of these resonances eventually results in emotional exhaustion. Tania Singer’s experiences demonstrate that while empathic distress leads to burnout, altruistic love and compassion, on the contrary, regenerate our ability to care for our neighbor with kindness and courage, like an antidote. So there is not “compassion fatigue”, a term used in medicine, but “empathy fatigue”. Data analysis confirms that the brain networks activated by compassion meditation were different from those related to empathy.

You invite us to marvel at nature. How can billions of individuals do this without degrading it, on the contrary?

Wonder at wild nature alone will not solve the ecological crisis, but it will, I hope, generate awareness and respect. Indeed, doesn’t respect generate the desire to take care of its object? This desire drives action, likely to lead to lasting harmony between man and the environment, which are interdependent like all things. The human species will have marked the history of the planet by the fabulous development of its intelligence, its arts and its sciences, but also by its role as super predator. The ecological crisis that we have triggered is the great challenge of the 21st^e century and it is vital to act with determination and discernment, quickly and well. However, the inertia of decision-makers is dangerously delaying the implementation of the solutions recommended by scientists. We need a drastic change in the way of life of the richest societies, which are still hesitant to give up their unbridled consumption of natural resources and move towards happy simplicity.

Can we train the mind to wonder?

The transformative power of the mind should not be underestimated. To cultivate wonder, we must create it frequently in our minds. Let us marvel at the luminous gaze of a child, the smile of an old man, the kindness that radiates from a wise man, a sublime landscape, the crisp mountain air or the scents of an undergrowth. . The most important thing in practicing meditation is regularity.

What can a spirituality like Buddhism bring to science?

Buddhism has conducted an exhaustive investigation of the mind for twenty-five centuries. At a conference I attended in 2003, Stephen Kosslyn, then chair of the psychology department at Harvard University, noted that Buddhist contemplatives have contributed a considerable amount of empirical data to modern psychology. Before the Christian era, Buddhism had already proposed a much more sophisticated refutation of the existence of indivisible particles than the theory of “hooked atoms” proposed in ancient Greece. Around the 1st century AD. BC, Buddhist philosophers wrote surprising modern treatises on the theory of perception.

And can Buddhism be questioned?

The Dalai Lama has often stated that if science refutes certain Buddhist theses with irrefutable evidence, these should be abandoned without hesitation. He thus declared that Buddhist cosmology (based on that of Hinduism) was obsolete in view of current scientific knowledge.

“Amazement at the wild part of the world”conference, then dialogue with Sarah Koller, project manager at the UNIL sustainability center, on 1^er June at 11 a.m., UNIL Amphimax, room 350. Free entry but registration required: mysteries.ch