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Altruism
The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World
1 of 1 copy available
In Happiness, Matthieu Ricard demonstrated that true happiness is not tied to fleeting moments or sensations, but is an enduring state of soul rooted in mindfulness and compassion for others. Now he turns his lens from the personal to the global, with a rousing argument that altruism — genuine concern for the well-being of others — could be the saving grace of the 21st century. It is, he believes, the vital thread that can answer the main challenges of our time: the economy in the short term, life satisfaction in the mid-term, and environment in the long term.
Ricard's message has been taken up by major economists and thinkers, including Dennis Snower, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, and George Soros. Matthieu Ricard makes a robust and passionate case for cultivating altruistic love and compassion as the best means for simultaneously benefitting ourselves and our society. It's a fresh outlook on an ardent struggle — and one that just might make the world a better place.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 2, 2015 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781478983248
- File size: 857277 KB
- Duration: 29:45:59
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Dan Woren's vocal calmness and smooth phrasing create a compelling performance of this thoughtful book, translated from French, about how to become a better human being. Woren's pacing has the distinctive quality of being slow and determined without sounding labored or overdramatic. The life quest of the author, a long-serving French translator for the Dalai Lama, is to use the traditions of Buddhism, science, and Western philosophy to balance the contemplative life with serving others effectively. His colorful international stories embody the wisdom of many spiritual leaders and tell us that compassion without action is hypocritical. Advocating that we cultivate an appreciation for the future of our planet as well as for each passing moment, he says we need to make the combination of compassion and altruism a continuing part of our culture. T.W. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine -
May 15, 2015
An overlong but vigorous gloss on the Dalai Lama's famous remark, "My religion is kindness." Former geneticist and longtime Buddhist monk Ricard (Happiness, 2012, etc.) sets out to prove that true altruism exists, but he winds up exploring nearly the whole of human nature. His task is compounded by the Hobbesian mood of the age, when the individualistic mode is one of "irresponsible selfishness and rampant narcissism, to the detriment of the well-being of all." However, altruism means many things to many people. Ricard generally agrees with researchers who hold that it is the motivation and not the "intensity" involved that counts: for it to matter, in other words, altruism is less the instinctual sacrifice of throwing oneself atop a hand grenade in a foxhole than the self-negation that comes, in one of the author's examples, with abandoning a promising white-collar career in order to dig wells for impoverished villagers. One great virtue of this virtuous book is Ricard's ability to poke holes in received wisdom. For example, he observes that while some abused children become abusers as adults, more often, they decide to "do the opposite of their parents when they have children." Sometimes, the author is imprecise: cutting down on meat consumption won't really "prevent 14% of deaths in the world," since all of us die; perhaps he means death will be forestalled in that many cases. Elsewhere, Ricard ranges too far in quest of examples; his revisiting of the Holocaust-era extermination squads Christopher Browning writes about in Ordinary Men (1992) draws perhaps the wrong conclusion, for the opposite of that murder would not be guilty weeping but instead a policeman's taking the place of a victim. Still, Ricard's book, full of good behavior on the part of humans-and other animals-is of a piece with Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) in suggesting that we don't have to be rotten. Inspirational in all the right ways but a challenge to get through it all.COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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