Get Happy

Not that I'm saying you'd be any happier where I grew up in Manchester, where two of my three uncles have been fired at with Uzis..."

"What," Ricard interrupts, "is an Uzi?"

"It's a machine gun."

"Ah." The monk pauses. "I understand what you're saying. I believe that, if I had to live where you live, I could. By choice, I would not move there. But if you allow exterior circumstances to determine your state of mind, then of course you will suffer; you become like a sponge, or like a chameleon. I have lived in difficult areas. I lived in Old Delhi for almost a year. That really is a miserable place. And yet sometimes I felt so light there. It was like - how can I put this - different weather."

Robert Chalmers interviews Matthieu Ricard- a Buddhist monk, confidant of the Dalai Lama and neurologically speaking, a most remarkable man.
Full article in The Independent online edition