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Overview
Their meeting captured headlines; the waiting list for tickets was nearly 2000 names long. If you were unable to attend, this book will take you there. Including both the papers given at the conference, and the animated discussion and debate that followed, The Dalai Lama at MIT reveals scientists and monks reaching across a cultural divide, to share insights, studies, and enduring questions.
Is there any substance to monks’ claims that meditation can provide astonishing memories for words and images? Is there any neuroscientific evidence that meditation will help you pay attention, think better, control and even eliminate negative emotions? Are Buddhists right to make compassion a fundamental human emotion, and Western scientists wrong to have neglected it?
The Dalai Lama at MIT shows scientists finding startling support for some Buddhist claims, Buddhists eager to participate in neuroscientific experiments, as well as misunderstandings and laughter. Those in white coats and those in orange robes agree that joining forces could bring new light to the study of human minds.
Synopsis
The meeting between the Dalai Lama, other Buddhist monks and scholars, and Western scientists captured headlines; the waiting list for tickets was almost 2,000 names long. If you couldn't be there, this book will take you there. Including both the papers given at the conference and animated discussion and debate that followed, The Dalai Lama at MIT shows scientist and monks reaching across their cultural divide to share insights, studies, and enduring questions.
New Scientist
Can the sciences of the mind and brain learn anything from Buddhism? Plenty, say the neuroscientists and Buddhists--the Dalai Lama among them--who attended a conference at MIT in 2003 to explore how both disciplines investigate reality. This compelling book lays out the issues discussed there. Most illuminating is seeing how the different approaches (subjective in Buddhism, objective in science) can complement each other, and how open Buddhists are to accommodating scientific progress into their thinking.
Editorials
Greater Good
The Dalai Lama at MIT is a "broadcast" of an historic 2003 meeting between the Dalai Lama and 22 world-renowned scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...The Dalai Lama at MIT does an excellent job of introducing readers to Buddhist and scientific approaches to understanding human consciousness.
— Mirka Knaster
Los Angeles Times Book Review
The practical applications of this meeting are fascinating; something whole is created from these conversations that leaps off the pages and gives a reader new reason to remember that science has more to do with life than with destruction and death.
— Susan Salter Reynolds
New Scientist
Can the sciences of the mind and brain learn anything from Buddhism? Plenty, say the neuroscientists and Buddhists—the Dalai Lama among them—who attended a conference at MIT in 2003 to explore how both disciplines investigate reality. This compelling book lays out the issues discussed there. Most illuminating is seeing how the different approaches (subjective in Buddhism, objective in science) can complement each other, and how open Buddhists are to accommodating scientific progress into their thinking.