A forest of prayer-flags near Dechen Choling Palace, Thimpu, like there are so many throughout Bhutan: on hilltops, at clearings, at river confluences, near temples, and atop high mountains. The flags are printed from woodblocks with prayers and sacred images. Once or twice a year the local people replace them with new ones that have been consecrated by a lama. It is said that wherever the wind that touches them goes, it will carry the beneficial power of the prayers to any beings it meets. The other elements are used similarly: prayers carved in the rocks, big prayer-wheels turned by the running water of mountain streams, or smaller ones turned by the heat rising from the flame of a butter-lamp. 1983
About the artist :
Matthieu
Ricard
“Matthieu's camera and his spiritual life are one, and from this spring these images, fleeting and eternal." Henri-Cartier Bresson
Matthieu Ricard has photographed the spiritual masters, landscapes, and people of the Himalayans over the last forty-five years and published several albums of photography including, in English, Journey to Enlightenment (Aperture, 1996 - The Spirit of Tibet in paperback, Aperture 2001), Buddhist Himalayas (Harry Abrams, 2002), Dancers Monks of Tibet (Shambhala, 2003), Tibet, an Inner Journey (Thames and Hudson, 2006), Motionless Journey (Thames and Hudson, 2007) and Bhutan, a Land of Peace (Thames and Hudson, 2008). His work have been exhibited in New York (RMA Museum, Aperture Gallery, Asia Society), Paris, Perpignan (Visa pour l’image), Winthertur, Stockholm and Hong Kong and reviewed in the New York Times and other magazines throughout the world.
Born in France in 1946, Matthieu Ricard did a Ph.D. in cell genetics at the Pasteur Institute under Nobel Laureate François Jacob and when he was twenty, wrote the widely read book Animal Migrations (Hill and Wang, 1969). Since 1967, he lived in Himalayas to study Tibetan Buddhism and is the French interpreter of the Dalai Lama.
Matthieu has initiated and supervises thirty humanitarian projects (clinics, schools, erlderly people’s home, bridges) in Nepal, Tibet, India and Bhutan. The royalties of his books are entirely donated to such projects (www.karuna-shechen.org)
He lives in Nepal at Shechen Monastery and devotes much of his time to the preservation of Tibetan cultural heritage. He has set there a unique Archive where 15,000 photographs on Himalayan art have been preserved and are made available to art schools, research centers, scholars and individuals.
He is also the author of several books including The Monk and the Philosopher (Schocken, 1999), a book of dialogues with his father, the late French philosopher Jean-François Revel, which has been translated into twenty-one languages, The Quantum and the LotusHappiness, A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill (Little Brown, 2006) that remained 20 weeks on the best-seller list in France. As a renown Tibetan scholar, he has translated numerous books from Tibetan into English and French. A board member of the Mind and Life Institute, which is devoted to meetings and collaborative research between brain scientists and Buddhist meditators, his contributions have appeared in Working with Destructive Emotions (edited by Daniel Goleman), The Dalai Lama at M.I.T, and other books of essays. (Crown Publishing, 2002) a dialogue with the astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan and Happiness, A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill (Little Brown, 2006) that remained 20 weeks on the best-seller list in France. As a renown Tibetan scholar, he has translated numerous books from Tibetan into English and French. A board member of the Mind and Life Institute, which is devoted to meetings and collaborative research between brain scientists and Buddhist meditators, his contributions have appeared in Working with Destructive Emotions (edited by Daniel Goleman), The Dalai Lama at M.I.T, and other books of essays.