Matthieu has lived in the Himalayan region for the last forty years.
Born in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie, France, he is the son of the late
philosopher Jean-François Revel and the abstract painter, Yahne
Le Toumelin. He earned a Ph.D. degree in Cell Genetics at the
Institut Pasteur under the Nobel Laureate Francois Jacob. Since
1972, he has lived in India, Bhutan and Nepal. Dr. Ricard is a
Buddhist monk and has served as French interpreter for His
Holiness the Dalai Lama since 1989. He is a prolific author and
photographer. Matthieu is a member of the
Mind and Life
Institute
, an organization dedicated to collaborative research
between scientists and Buddhist scholars and meditators on the
effect of mind training and meditation on the brain. He is engaged
in research on this at Madison-Wisconsin, Princeton, and
Berkeley. He donates all proceeds from his books and much of
his time to forty humanitarian projects (clinics, schools,
orphanages, elderly people’s homes, bridges, vocational training)
in Nepal, India and Tibet. He received the French National Order
of Merit for his humanitarian work.
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