This Buddhist Monk Shocked Scientists With “Unheard Of Brain Activity” While Meditating

Credit: WisconsinNews
Credit: WisconsinNews

Meet Mattieu Ricard, the world’s happiest man. This 66-year-old Tibetan monk and geneticists has displayed unheard of brain gamma waves, and in effect has shocked – and inspired – the modern scientific world.

These gamma waves are intertwined with attention, learning, memory, and consciousness, and are what researchers declare to be what makes Mattieu the world’s happiest man. According to Ricard, meditation is the secret to his blissful success.

“Meditating is like lifting weight or exercising for the mind,” Ricard told the Daily News. “Anyone can be happy by simply training their brain,” he states.

Credit: SchoolForTheMind
Credit: SchoolForTheMind

And right he is. In this age of information and distracting technologies, the majority of the population is seeking fulfillment through external means, instead of realizing that they are and have everything they truly need within. Such realization can allow one to no longer look at their ‘goal list’ as the means as to what will make them happy, but as a possible series of events which may result from aligning to their true state and acting from a place of peaceful intention.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Blaise Pascal

To quantify how happy Ricard truly is, neuroscientists from the University of Wisconsin hooked the geneticist up to 256 sensors, which they attached to his skull. He then focused his attention -as instructed – on compassion. During this meditation, Ricard’s brain produced gamma waves off the charts! His brain also displayed intense amount of activity in his prefrontal cortex, signaling to the researchers that he has an overly large capacity for happiness.

This extremely happy man was not the only monk studied. Other monks who have engaged in over 50,000 rounds of meditation were hooked up to the sensors as well, and similarly showed significant differences in brain function. And interestingly, those with only three weeks of 20-minute per day meditation sessions also displayed some mental changes.

Credit: WisconsinNews
Credit: WisconsinNews

This finding goes to show that just by taking 5 – 20 minutes per day to quiet your mind and evoke an emotional state of gratitude, compassion, and peace, not only will your health benefit, but your mental status and overall happiness is likely to greatly improve.

In order to share the message about reaching happiness, Ricard also authored his first book, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill. Profits from this book are used to fund over 100 humanitarian projects.

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