Portugal: Conference by Matthieu Ricard in Porto – The Need for Altruism
Porto | March 8, 2010
Matthieu Ricard, the well-known french buddhist monk, will be in Porto for a Public Conference, on March 8th, a jointly organized event by Kangyur Rinpoche Foundation and C.A.S.A. (Centro de Apoio ao Sem Abrigo). The conference, entitled “The Need for Altruism”, will take place at Fundação Dr. António Cupertino de Miranda.
About Matthieu Ricard
Matthieu Ricard is a french buddhist monk, photographer and author. He lives and works in the Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal, Himalayas, for forty years now.
Born in France in 1946, son of the renowned French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel, Matthieu Ricard grew up among the personalities and ideas of the french intellectual circles. He traveled to India in 1967.
Matthieu Ricard holds a Doctorate in molecular genetics at the Institut Pasteur from Paris in 1972 but he decided to forsake his scientific career and concentrate on the practice of Tibetan Buddhism. He studied with Kangyur Rinpoche and with some other great masters of that tradition and became close student and assistant and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, until his death in 1991. Since then he has dedicated his activities to achieve the vision of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
Matthieu Ricard’s photographs of spiritual masters, landscapes and people from the Himalayas have appeared in numerous books and magazines. Henri Cartier-Bresson said about his work, “the spiritual life of Matthieu and his camera are one, from which spring these images, fleeting and eternal.”
He is the author and photographer of “Tibet, An Inner Journey” and “Monk Dancers of Tibet, and, in collaboration, the photo books “Buddhist Himalayas”, “Journey to Enlightenment” and recently ” Motionless Journey: From a Hermitage in the Himalayas”. Matthieu Ricard is the translator of many Buddhist texts, including “The Life of Shabkar”.
The dialogue with his father, Jean-Francois Revel, in “The Monk and the Philosopher”, was a bestseller in Europe and was translated into 21 languages, and “The Quantum and the Lotus” (co-authored with Trinh Xuan Thuan ) reflect his long-standing interest for science and Buddhism.
In his 2003 book “Plaidoyer pour le Bonheur” (published in English in 2006 as “Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill”) he explores the meaning and plenitude of happiness and was a huge best-seller in France.
Matthieu Ricard was dubbed “the happiest person in the world” by popular media after volunteering for a study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on happiness, ranking significantly above the average after the testing of hundreds of other volunteers.
A board member of the Mind and Life Institute, which is devoted to meetings and collaborative research between scientists and buddhist scholars and meditators, his contributions have appeared in “Destructive Emotions” (edited by Daniel Goleman) and other books of essays. He is deeply engaged in the research on the effect of mind training on the brain, at the Universities of Madison-Wisconsin, Princeton and Berkeley.
Matthieu Ricard received the “Ordre National du Mérite” by the french president François Mitterrand for his humanitarian projects and efforts to preserve the cultural heritage of the Himalayas.
In the last years Matthieu Ricard has devoted his efforts and donates all the profits of his work to thirty humanitarian projects in Asia, including maintenance and construction of clinics, schools and orphanages in the region: www.karuna-shechen.org
Since 1989, Matthieu Ricard acts as the French for H. H. the Dalai Lama.
(TN: Karuna means “compassion” in Sanskrit)
Source: Wikipedia
Date: March 8, 2010
Hours: 18h30
Location: Fundação Dr. António Cupertino Miranda, Avenida da Boavista, 4245, 4100-140 Porto
More information:
T: 21 390 40 22 – 21 774 25 39 – 934 353 961 – Web: www.facm.pt – www.krfportugal.org – www.matthieuricard.org
See also other events: Kangyur Rinpoche Foundation
