The memoirs of renowned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard and his extraordinary journey toward
inner freedom and compassion in action. Matthieu Ricard began his spiritual transformation at
the age of twenty-one in Darjeeling India when he met Tibetan teacher Kangyur Rinpoche who
deeply impressed the young man with his extraordinary quality of being. In Notebooks of a
Wandering Monk Ricard tells the simple yet extraordinary story of his journey and the
remarkable men and women who inspired him along the way including Kangyur Rinpoche Dilgo
Khyentse Rinpoche and the fourteenth Dalai Lama as well as great luminaries such as Desmond
Tutu Jane Goodall and a number of leading scientists. Growing up Ricard the son of
philosopher Jean-François Revel and artist Yahne Le Toumelin regularly found himself in the
company of intellectuals and artists such as Luis Buñuel Henri Cartier-Bresson and Igor
Stravinsky. Young Ricard loved nature classical music and science and dreamed of unlocking
the mysteries of molecular biology. But six years after meeting Kangyur Rinpoche Ricard gave
up a promising career in genetics to pursue a meditative life in the remote Himalayas. While
spending half a century in India Bhutan and Nepal he visited Tibet more than twenty times
and spent years publishing rare Tibetan texts and photographing his spiritual teachers and the
world in which they lived. Elegantly translated by Jesse Browner and accompanied by more than
fifty full-color photographs some of which are Ricard’s own Notebooks of a Wandering Monk
charts Ricard’s lifelong path to wisdom and compassion. This candid and reflective memoir will
inspire all readers wherever they may be on their own journey to a meaningful and well-lived
life.
