| Meditation News and Articles July 2005 Schedule for Dalai Lama lecture angers neuroscientist July 27, 2005 Jianguo Gu, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida who has helped to organise a petition against the Dalai Lama's lecture, said: "I don't think it's appropriate to have a prominent religious leader at a scientific event. The Dalai Lama basically says the body and mind can be separated and passed to other people. There are no scientific grounds for that. We'll be talking about cells and molecules and he's going to talk about something that isn't there." Dr Gu and many of the scientists who initiated the protest are of Chinese origin, but according to them, their concern are not related to politics. "I'm not against Buddhism," said Dr Gu, who has cancelled his own presentation at the meeting. "People believe what they believe but I think it will just confuse things." The research peaked in November last year when a team led by Richard Davidson, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, published research in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that suggested networks of brain cells were better coordinated in people who were trained in meditation. The scientists included Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk at the Shechenm monastery in Nepal, who has a PhD in molecular biology from the Pasteur Institute in Paris. They said the brain differences they observed might explain the heightened awareness reported by meditating monks. Mr Davidson helped to arrange the Dalai Lama's talk at the neuroscience conference, which is the first in a series billed as dialogues between neuroscience and society. Their petition reads: "Inviting the Dalai Lama to lecture on neuroscience of meditation is of poor scientific taste because it will highlight a subject with hyperbolic claims, limited research and compromised scientific rigour." It compares the lecture to inviting the Pope to talk about "the relationship between the fear of God and the amygdala [part of the brain]" and adds "it could be a slippery road if neuroscientists begin to blur the border between science and religious practices". 7bn for meditation and world peace Los Angeles Film director David Lynch said he is seeking to raise $7-billion to fund a giant program of transcendental meditation which he says will foster world peace. The Oscar-nominated movie-maker famed for dark and disturbing films including Blue Velvet, Eraserhead and Twin Peaks will launch the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-based Education and World Peace. The foundation's goal is to raise money to allow meditation to be taught in schools and eventually spread across the world by practitioners, easing global stress and tensions and promoting harmony, he said in an interview. "I want to raise seven billion dollars," he said of the launch of the foundation that aims to propagate what Lynch says is a proven method of improving health, banishing stress and tension and reducing violence. "People laugh about that, they have a really good time with it. But the real joke is that we don't laugh when the US government develops a bomb for two billion dollars that only serves to kill people. The money raised by Lynch, who is planning a tour of the United States in September and October to help raise the funds, will be used to fund meditation in schools that wish to teach it. With a corps of 8 000 people dedicated to meditating and pumping out positive waves, peace will gradually settle on earth, Lynch explained, citing the quantum physics theory of a "unified field" as the basis of the argument."This is real, it works," Lynch said of the power of meditation. Mind & Life Institute Conference With Dalai Lama On “Science and Clinical Applications of Mediation Washington, DC July 13, 2005 -- The Mind and Life Institute announced that the “Mind & Life XIII: The Science and Clinical Applications of Mediation” public dialogue with the Dalai Lama and leading scientists is set for November 8-10 in Washington DC at the DAR Constitution Hall. Adam Engle, Chairman and co-founder with the Dalai Lama of the Mind and Life Institute, said, “Meditation has begun to be used in the treatment of stress, pain and other chronic diseases, but the applications have only touched the surface. The conference will build on the growing interest in meditation in medicine and biomedical science. Leaders in science and related disciplines will share their views with the Dalai Lama and the public.” The Mind & Life XIII conference is co-sponsored by Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Georgetown University Medical Center. The November meeting will be the second public dialogue with the Dalai Lama. The previous 11 private conferences took place in India, Europe and the United States since 1987 and seven books have been published about those discussions. The XIV Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, gave a directional challenge to the Mind and Life Institute to explore the means by which people can create and maintain a healthy mind. A recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, he is regarded worldwide for his leadership about universal responsibility, love, compassion and kindness. The Dalai Lama feels through a better understanding of meditation and scientific applications that people can be helped to find inner happiness and lead to a more peaceful world. He will be traveling to the United States from his home in India and will remain in the U.S. for a short time after the Mind and Life Institute meeting for other engagements, including a major speech at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and a public talk at the MCI Center in Washington DC. The Dalai Lama is head of the Tibetan government-in-exile and is revered as the leader of Tibetan Buddhism. Dalai Lama co-founded the Mind and Life Institute to give direction and momentum to the area of scientific exploration of meditative practices. The Mind and Life Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a working collaboration and research partnership between modern science and Buddhism and other contemplative traditions to better understand the nature of reality and investigating the mind. The Mind and Life Institute, based in Boulder, CO, is a 501 C3 non-profit organization co-founded in 1987 by the Dalai Lama, entrepreneur Adam Engle and an acclaimed neuroscientist, the late Franciso J. Varela, to create a rigorous dialogue and research collaboration between modern science and Buddhism. Georgetown University Medical Center is an internationally recognized academic medical center in Washington, DC, with a three-part mission of research, teaching and patient care (through its partnership with MedStar Health). Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is one of the world's premier centers for scholarship, research and patient care.. |
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