Hedonistic Happiness from a Tibetan Monk

According to Matthieu Ricard, a former biochemist and now a Tibetan monk, happiness is solely dependent upon ourselves. More succinctly, he claims that happiness and pleasure are the interpretations of the brain to our exterior stimuli. Thus, if we can control the emotions produced by our brain, regardless of the circumstances, we can maintain a happy and pleasurable life just as hedonists describe. Interestingly enough though, he touches on many theories of good life and meta-ethics that we have discussed this semester. By describing how they all relate to each other, he gives a very thorough definition of happiness and well-being.



Ricard's opening words, "consciously or not, directly or indirectly, in the short or the long term, whatever we do, whatever we hope, whatever we dream, somehow is related to a deep profound desire for well-being or happiness," sound very familiar to the theory of psychological egoism, willingness to act for oneself. Moreover he clearly states his belief as a hedonist. He believes that every waking moment we are in search of happiness. But what is happiness he asks? It cannot be pleasure as it is fleeting and subjective. He concludes that happiness is well-being, "a sense of serenity and fulfillment" that always predominates over surfacing emotions; happiness and well-being is a state of being. To achieve this we require a set of things that compose this state of happiness, but the exterior is out of our control, we must cultivate this state within us, in our mind.

He continues to say the exterior matters in our lives, but is always trumped by the interior since all experiences are translated by our minds; our brain is the ultimate determinant of the state of mind conducive to well-being. Under my light, he talks about two very important things very briefly: desire satisfaction theory and virtue theory. Ricard claims that our desires are futile because they are only representative of a certain pleasure, they are instrumental only. So he proceeds to say we must retain only those "states of mind that are conducing to this flourishing, to this well-being that the Greek called eudaemonia," and recreate those states of mind with our brains. Maintaining a cognitive quality of consciousness that revolves around happiness will retain this state of well-being, just as hedonism claims; the mind reinforces an obsession for happily conducive moments. Mind training and brain plasticity, meditation, can help achieve this ultimate state of well-being.

He finally presents statistical evidence that this is possible. Ricard presents an experiment where people were asked to meditate and their frontal lobe activity was recorded. A dominant right frontal lobe activity denotes worries and unhappiness, whereas a dominant left frontal lobe activity represents calmness and happiness. A tibetan monk was introduced into this normal distribution; his score was four standard deviations below the mean. The monk achieved a statistically significant meditation state that was conducive to happiness. Clearly, you can achieve a state of ultimate well-being by harnessing the power of plasticity of the brain to achieve a state of well-being, even perhaps a state of eudaemonia.

Source:
TED.com
https://www.ted.com/talks/matthieu_ricard_on_the_habits_of_happiness#t-1240340