It should have been taken care of before. Because there, a few hours from an aperitif with Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk, interpreter of the 14e Dalai Lama, renowned Himalayan photographer, bestselling author and Knight of the Legion of Honor, we don’t know what to call him. My reverend? Sir ? Master ? Eminence? Dear Matthew? How about Matt, while we’re at it? We’re floundering. Panic on board. Page 411 of his Notebooks of a wandering monk (Allary, 764 pages, 28 euros) – 50,000 copies sold – reveals that one of his friends gives him “Waffle mold”. Risky for a first date. So no. Calling an office colleague, consulted too late at night, will not give the expected result. “Yogi-les-bons-pipes”the animal suggested before hanging up. Thank you.
In the early morning, Matthieu Ricard, purple toga, mustard knit, took the lead along with a seat at La Terrasse de Pomone, in the Parisian Tuileries garden, where he was expected. To the point. Hay of presentations. ” Hello. How are you doing ? Am I too late? ” A coffee ? ” Yes. With milk. No, more like tea. But especially not with jasmine. ” Noted. Toasts ? ” Toasts. ” It is 9:30 am Aperitif and breakfast.
Meditative wandering
At the Tuileries, Matthieu Ricard, 75, is a bit at home. “As a young student, I walked there with Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was a friend of my parents and lived nearby. “ Long walks Louvre-Concorde and back. One can imagine the exchanges between the immense photographer and the fort in theme. We imagine wrongly. “We didn’t talk much. We mostly walked. “ A taste of the meditative wandering to come? ” May be. “ Later, in 1972, it was still under large trees, in the forest, that he announced to his father, the philosopher Jean-François Revel, his decision to give up the brilliant career of geneticist that opened up to him. to become a Buddhist monk in Nepal. ” He said nothing. “ The same silence had accompanied their steps. But it had another meaning.
“When I was a teenager, you could say about me: ‘Matthew is a little jerk.’ I got better. We must constantly seek to become better ”
“What I am, what I could have been, does not concern me. I regret nothing. I don’t feel any nostalgia. When I was a teenager, you could say about me: “Matthew is a little jerk.” I got better. We must constantly strive to become better. ” For years he lived on 30 euros a month. Today, his copyrights (books, photos) are donated to his Karuna-Shechen association. “I created 200 jobs. I am the first of the Communists! ” Nice dialectical debate in perspective. However, it would be more prudent not to launch it in the presence of the Dalai Lama or Chinese President Xi Jinping, both quite touchy on the subject since the annexation of Tibet by the People’s Republic of China in 1951. Let’s move on.
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