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Among all of those qualities, there are other qualities, like a sense of felicity,
sometimes we can say bliss, of perfect attunement with one's self,
with others, with the world. I think one of the qualities of
that inner flow is some kind of unconditional benevolence.
A priori, whoever might come in the field of
our attention, whenever we are in that state of pure awareness and
unconditional benevolence, will benefit from that. And
it is really attuned to our deepest nature. That's why, in a way,
that flow has a kind of felicity. Of course, violence does exist,
it happens within human nature. It's a kind of coming out of that.
When we say something that hurts others, when we harm others, so
often we say, I was no more myself. I was out of myself.
As if we recognize that the state that we would like to be most of the time is
a state of benevolence. I mean, if we are doing a seminar, I'm telling you
in 24 hours we'll make you 100 times more jealous and angry... Who will come?
But if we say it will make you increase your kindness, your good heart...
You'll say, Oh, that sounds neat. So, in fact, and even, you know,
neuroscientists have been working for years with Rich Davidson in Madison.
When we study the different types of meditations, it turns out that
the one that creates the strongest activation in certain areas of the brain,
and the certain frequency, like the gamma frequency,
is the meditation on altruistic love and compassion. If you look at positive
psychology, one of the founders or the pioneers of positive psychology,
Barbara Fredrickson, just wrote a wonderful book,
called Love 2.0, in which she says that love, defined as positive,
affective resonance, is the supreme of all emotions or all mental state. It is,
among all the positive effects, the one that broadens the most your perspective,
that cause, that come along with the most other positive emotions. So, and
then, of course, if you are in that state, it is most likely that your words and
your actions will be somehow beneficial to others,
perceived by others as something that make, puts them in a state of confidence,
of openness, of trust. They will...it will be
good to be with someone who is, has that kind of benevolence.
It's sort of as the Dalai Lama said, that someone who is extremely angry all
the time, even dogs run away from that person. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] So,
it seems that on an experiential level,
this kind of warm-heartedness is the best possible thing to be.
It's the best possible thing to be with others, so it's a win-win situation.
Another reason why it is like that, because it is attuned to reality.
The pursuit of selfish happiness supposes that we are sort of separate entities.
That we could build our happiness within the bubble of self-centeredness,
the bubble of the ego.
It's kind of stuffy in that bubble. And then we think, me, me, me all day long.
And everything is like a storm in a glass of water. Slightest sort of criticism,
or something that doesn't go exactly what we want, we're always about our feelings.
How do I feel? Everything becomes like, arrives like an enemy, a potential threat,
or an object of desire. And that small world is always in turmoil.
And then the idea that we could build our happiness within the small entity and
say, Well, others, I don't mind if they're happy, that's not my job,
is basically at odds with reality, because we are so deeply interconnected, and
we are not separate entities. So on the experiential level,
the pursuit of selfish happiness is a lose-lose situation. We feel miserable.
And we make everyone's life miserable. Plus it's actually not attuned to reality,
so it doesn't work. That's why the French writer Romain Rolland said,
If selfish happiness is the only goal of your life, your life will be soon be
goalless, because it doesn't work. While the pursuit of happiness,
true altruism, and compassion, it's a win-win situation, and it works because
it reflects the deep interdependence of everyone.
You don't want up in the morning thinking, may I suffer the whole day, if possible,
my whole life. Similarly, if you transport yourself in anyone's mind,
even if they're as much confused as we are, still basically, fundamentally,
they don't want to suffer. So we have that as the most common part of humanity.
And therefore, if we have consideration and value the fact that I don't want
to suffer, and I'd like to flourish, then I should value it in others.
Other sentient beings, not only human being, but even animals.
No one wants to suffer. So that's for the experiential side. Now,
how can we bring that understanding that we may feel, hopefully, deep within,
at the bigger level? How altruism could play a role in our time,
to meet the challenges of our time. It seems that one of these challenges
is to sort of reconcile three times scale, which, really difficult in our times.
We have the fast pace of the economy. Everything goes so fast, and we say,
that's reality, if we don't deal with that, everything else,
nothing will work. There's no happiness, no future, no nothing.
Of course, that speed is, you know, a matter of few years or the end of the year
balance sheet, or the ups and downs of the stock market from one day to the next.
The super high-speed transaction. All that gets speedier and speedier.
But then there's also 10 years,
20 years, a career, a family, a lifetime... And what matters?
Two things, the quality of every moment that passes by, the flow, and
also how do we look over a larger span of time. Was it worth living?
Did I... ...how could I see the next few years as
something that has a sense of direction? Like I'm traveling the mountains
in the Himalayas, and there's ups and downs. Sometimes it's beautiful,
fantastic landscapes. Sometimes there's hail and rain. But, if I have a goal,
every step is a joyful, is a joy in form of effort. But if I am lost,
if I have no direction, I sit there in despair. I don't know where to go.
Even I make few small steps, I don't know if they take me further away from my goal.
Here is someone who's a Chinese person who lost his leg when he was five.
He's taking care of so many people, including his ailing father. And
look at the joy of taking care of others. Cooperation, the joy of cooperating...
Mihaly was speaking about the joy of flow, of being together among hunter-gatherers.
Cooperation is a highly rewarding sort of activity. We work together. It's
a joy to work together. It's like a feast. And animals do so. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] And
then of course the struggle for life, the survival of the fittest. [AUDIENCE
LAUGHTER] But, now the new sort of development in evolutionary theory,
like the super-cooperators of Martin Nowak from Harvard,
clearly show that cooperation has been a factor of increasing complexity
in evolution that was much more creative than competition. Competition exists,
of course, but cooperation is so much more productive of new creativity and
complexity. And also, the bonds of humans, the quality of human relationship is the,
perhaps the number one factor. According to a recent study of the OECD,
much before income, the quality of human relations is what they said people
have answered to be the most determinant factor of their level of happiness.
And not, again, not for only for human beings.
Now here, two centenaries from Japan.
There's a place in Japan where there's the most centenarians in the world. Well,
they all say it's because we live together from birth to death,
everyone is together. We enjoy together. This is what makes us special. So,
high social support, which is also linked with empathy, with altruism,
is linked with higher mental health, more longevity, immunity, less heart disease,
less substance abuse, less dementia. So now, is it true that we are all selfish?
Well, of course, there are sort of simulated altruism.
You know, if you do something with having something in
mind that you will get more in return.
Or if you just do it to show a good image of yourself. Or
if you simply, you see someone suffering and you can't stand seeing them suffer,
you feel empathic distress, and you don't really care for the person, but
you just want to relieve you're feeling so bad. That's not real altruism.
And then there are a school of people saying that everyone, you can always find
a selfish motivation behind any act that looks altruistic. But that is armchair
science, there's never any study of, whether some psychology or social study,
that have shown that. Rather, the opposite. Daniel Batson spent 30 years
doing all kinds of experiment to show that there's always a number of people, no
matter what the situation are, that behave in altruistic ways. I've no time today.
I did that for six hours yesterday. It's more difficult to do it in few minutes.
But it's really shown in the lab. Not just guessing people's intention and so
forth. So now, there's some people who say, well, you know, when people
do something for others, they say, Oh, I feel so good to have done that for them.
So I say, Oh, the warm glow. You did that because you feel good, so it's selfish.
My friend Daniel Batson spent a whole life putting people in the lab in very
complex situations, and, of course, we are sometimes selfish, and
some people more than others. But he found that systematically, no matter what,
there's a significant number of people who do behave altruistically no matter what.
Now, if you see someone deeply wounded,
great suffering, you might just help out of empathetic distress.
You can't stand it, so it's better to help than to keep on looking at
that person. So he tested all that, and in the end he said, Clearly,
people can be altruistic. So that's good news! And he even searched further,
we should look at the banality of goodness. Now look at here,
when we come out, we're not going to say, That's so nice, there was no fist fights
when that monk was speaking about altruism. No, we expect that isn't it?
If there was a fist fight, we would speak of that for months. So the banality
of goodness is something that doesn't attract your attention but it exists.
Now, look at this,
Okay, so some psychologist said, When I tell them I run 140
humanitarian projects in the Himalayas, that give me so much joy.
They say, Oh, I see, you work for the warm glow. This is not altruistic,
it's you just feel good. You think this guy, when he jump in front of the train,
he thought, I'm going to feel so good when this is over?
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] But that's not the end of it. They say, Well, but
when you interviewed him, he said, I had no choice. I had to jump, of course.
Is that no choice? Automatic behavior is neither selfish or altruistic.
Look at this guy. He's not thinking, you know, for half an hour,
should I give my hand or not give my hand? [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] There's a choice, but
the choice is so obvious that he does it. I know. So, not only. So,
he has a choice, it's costly for him to keep his friend up.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] And there are choices that last much longer.
There's the father Andre Trocme and his wife, during the Second World War,
they saved 300, 3,500 Jewish family with the whole village.
There was no...they never closed their door to anyone who sought refuge.
That was a big choice, they risked all their life, their family life, and
they did it. So, it's better to think that goodness leaves us gasping,
for we refuse to recognize it as a natural human attribute.
So off we go on a long search for hidden motivation,
you know, scratch an altruism and a selfish will bleed, something like that.
Some extraordinary explanation for such peculiar behavior. You know, he's a saint,
she's a saint... But look at human nature. The bad thing will come back for sure.
Instead of attempting to distance ourselves politely from them,
while the same time lauding their deeds, wouldn't it be better to rediscover
the altruistic potential within us? Let's not search for a mysterious explanation of
goodness in others, but rather discover the mystery of goodness in ourself.
So that's what we should do. We discover in ourself, express it outside, and
be confident that that's the way we can live our life. So empathy, of course,
empathy is not altruism. Empathy's the trigger, the affective resonance, or
the cognitive putting yourself in the place of others that alerts you,
that person is suffering, or that person is joyful. And then, if you feel that,
naturally if you have consideration and you value others,
you'll do something. So empathy alone, if it's just left on its own,
if you keep resonating with suffering, can lead to burnout. And
the study we did with Tania Singer shows that if we just do empathy,
empathy all the time, it's burnout very soon.
It's like an electric pump that runs without water, it burns.
You need the bigger sphere of altruistic love, of human warmth,
to sort of remedy that as an antidote to burnout.
So then people will feel more, you know, being taken care of.
There is a sense of warmth that you feel also. It comes from maternal love,
but it can be extended to others, and also across species. And so
it's a mother tiger in Calcutta zoo with some adopted piglets. And
then this consolation that we give to others, and not only, and
more humans again, you know... So then,
can we cultivate that at the individual level? Well,
2,500 years of contemplative history says yes.
Meditation, cultivating again and again benevolence, does change yourself.
You suppose the great Tibetan masters, with whom I lived for 40 years.
And then as soon as the Dali Lama, you know, decided that maybe
the collaboration with science will help to serve society better,
to bridge this experience of contemplative 2,000 years with modern science. So
here's Richard Davidson here, one of great neuroscientists with whom I worked so
many years. And then comes, going into the lab, studying the effect of meditation,
of different types of meditation. And each of them has a different signature in
the brain. This was the fMRI machine, EEG, all have different functions.
This is after two and a half hours in fMRI machine at Madison, so
everyone is relieved that I survived. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] And now very briefly,
you can see here, here are novice meditators, who only did for one week.
When they engaged in compassion meditation, nothing happens, and
when they rest nothing happens either. The meditators, when they engage, when they
are stressed, nothing happened. When they engage in compassion meditations,
a huge peak of activity in the gamma frequency. So then,
if you look at the brain, similarly, these are meditators in meditation, at rest.
And in novices nothing happened at rest, nothing happened in meditation,
that's normal, they didn't train. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] But now,
if you look not at people who did 50,000 hours, but people who did four weeks,
20 minutes a day, you can already see a structural change in some areas
of the brain that deal with assimilating novelty. And not in the control group.
So it's really anyone who trains can do that.
And even two weeks, now, can increase your prosocial behavior. Even children,
four and five years old, there's a program in Madison with kindness and
mindfulness that gives extraordinary results after eight weeks.
Increase of prosocial behavior. And then the sticker's test.
You ask them give stickers to their best friend,
their least favorite child, an unknown child, and a sick child. And
before and after, and before they give everything to their best friend. After,
there's no more discrimination. They give as much to their best friend and
their least favorite child. We do that in India, we have 25,000 kids in
the school that we built and it has very wonderful results. Now,
we can develop altruism at the individual level. How do we do that now,
what is the point of junction between personal change and societal change?
Well, it has to come through the evolution of cultures that is faster than genes.
That's one of the wonderful things is that culture can change faster.
It's accumulated from generation to generation.
Just a handful of people made a declaration of universal human rights.
A handful of people in the 18th century managed to abolish slavery.
So every culture can change, to shape individuals. Individuals change through
neuroplasticity, epigenetics... They also change against the institution, and
they are mutually fashioning each other, like two blades of
a knife sharpening each other. So it's our responsibility at the individual level to
change, but it's also how we will change our institutions.
We can go to a more altruistic society, and that's what we need.
It's no more a luxury, it's a complete necessity.
So hail to the revolution of altruism. Thank you very much.
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