Is this guy the happiest person in the world?

I think you are exaggerating the amount of separateness that is associated with a meditative life. If you’ll note, the monk discusses compassion, and new research in genetics. He is not pulled back from the world. He is engaged. He also spends a few hours a day meditating.

Also, he is not examining his life when meditating. Meditation is not psychotherapy. It is practice. You practice being able to separate yourself from your thoughts. This is how you can experience happiness, they say—by coming to be able to practice the idea that you are not your thoughts.

I don’t know what humans are if they aren’t their thoughts, but I hope to learn, since this practice is helping me deal with depression. Of course, I’d rather get there by understanding than by practice, but I suppose, sooner or later, I might have to practice. Although, I do think I have my ways of practicing (making music, dancing).

I think he does a pretty good job of clarifying in the interview that this “happiest man in the world” hype is the product of the media’s lust for hyperbole.

The article speaks of “long term meditators” as people who’ve spent 10,000–40,000 hours meditating. That seems like a lot. But Ricard has been practicing meditation for 40 years. Even if he only meditates for an hour a day, that would rack up to 14,600 hours. Now consider how many hours a day the average person watches television or surfs the web.

Spending an hour or two a day meditating is hardly displacing the business of actual living. I get my hour a day not by logging off to the world, but by getting up an hour earlier in the morning. I suspect you’d find that Ricard gets up pretty darned early, too.

I should have done the calculation. Even 2 or 3 hours a day would not be unreasonable given that he is a monk by profession. Somehow I had gotten the impression that he spent nearly all his waking hours in meditation.

There is no way of officially withdrawing a question in Fluther, but consider this question unofficially withdrawn.

I always wondered what happened to Ricard after Start Trek.
A monk in Wyoming seems perfectly reasonable.

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Seriously though, that was a great article. I like how he pointed out that anyone can work towards the same level of happiness with meditation and mental training.