Matthieu Ricard

Here the author of the international bestseller Happiness (Ricard is a Tibetan Buddhist monk who some say is the “happiest person in the world”) makes a passionate, beautifully inclusive case for altruism—and why we need it now more than ever.

 Every cow just wants to be happy. Every chicken just wants to be free. Every bear, dog, or mouse experiences sorrow and feels pain as intensely as any of us humans do.

Buddhism shares with science the task of examining the mind empirically; it has pursued, for two millennia, direct investigation of the mind through penetrating introspection. Neuroscience, on the other hand, relies on third-person knowledge in the form of scientific observation.

Few Buddhist meditation masters continue to have the influence that Dza Patrul Rinpoche, active in the nineteenth century, has to many Buddhist practitioners today. A wandering yogi, he eschewed urban areas for a life living in the wilds, caves, and mountains of Tibet.