Wondered what you felt about this:
By David Charter, The Times
Brain specialists object to Dalai Lama's lecture on fostering compassion by means of meditation
HE HAS devoted his life to promoting happiness and harmony. But the Dalai Lama’s forthcoming lecture to a gathering of American brain specialists on “fostering compassionate behaviour” has provoked a bitter dispute.
More than 900 researchers have signed a petition calling for the Tibetan spiritual leader’s talk to be scrapped because it will “highlight a subject with largely unsubstantiated claims and compromised scientific rigour and objectivity”.
The Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is due to share his views on the power of meditation to alter the brain and generate positive thoughts at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington next month.
Some of his supporters believe his critics may be motivated more by political objections than scientific doubts, pointing to a number of petition signatories of Chinese origin. The Dalai Lama has been in exile since 1959, after China annexed his homeland.
Yi Rao, a neurology professor at Northwestern University, and one of the first to sign the petition, said that the Tibetan monk’s beliefs contradicted the fundamental basis of neuroscience.
“This merger of serious neuroscience with a particular religion is a practical joke because the very recognition of the Dalai Lama relies on the belief in reincarnation,” he said. “That means that the mind and the body have to be separate for the mind to pass from one generation to another.”
The petition says: “The presentation of a religious symbol with a controversial political agenda may cause unnecessary controversies, unwanted press, and significant divisions among SfN members . . . with conflicting religious beliefs and political leanings.
“Inviting the Dalai Lama to lecture on the neuroscience of meditation is of poor scientific taste because it will highlight a subject with largely unsubstantiated claims at a prestigious meeting attended by more than 20,000 neuroscientists.”
Supporters of the Dalai Lama, who will mark his 70th birthday in Washington on a ten-day visit, say that he has collaborated with scientists for 15 years. He has worked with Richard Davidson, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose researchers reported that biotechnology workers showed increased levels of neural activity after taking a course in meditation.
But Dr Nancy Hayes, a neurobiologist at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey, said: “As the public face of neuroscience, we have a responsibility to see that research is replicated before it is promoted and highlighted. If we do not do that we may as well be the Flat Earth Society."
The society yesterday defended the lecture. It said: that the Dalai Lama’s talk “is expected to bridge the cultural gap between neuroscientists and Buddhist practitioners by pointing to the methods of observation and verification that lie at the heart of both science and Buddhism”.
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2 comments:
It always amazes me that people can have such narrowness of mind!
the world is full of sceptics and those who just have to undermine!!
the dalai lama has done so much to bring many into spiritual awareness, I pray he continues from strengh to strengh!
An interesting article.
From a buddhist perspective the Dalai Lama is proposing the theory that meditation is a skilful act which brings benefits to those who practice it. The job of the scientist is to test proposed theories to see whether they are true or not. By all means they should test his theories and i am sure we would all benefit from their research.
Where I am concerned is where scientists have agendas other than seeking the truth such as in this case seeking to discredit an enemy of their government.
I was interested to see the implication that buddhists believe in reincarnation. This is not so. I quote from the Buddhist Studies website:
Reincarnation is the belief that at death the soul leaves the body and reanimates a new one. Reincarnation is a fundamental belief in Hinduism and several other religions but it is rejected by Buddhism which denies the existence of a soul.
Buddhism teaches that when a person dies they are reborn and that this process of death and rebirth will continue until Nirvana is attained. This raises the question : "What is the person?" Most religions believe that the core of the person, the real person, is the soul, a non-material and eternal entity that survives in the afterlife. Buddhism on the other hand says that the person is made up of thoughts, feelings and perceptions interacting with the body in a dynamic and constantly changing way. At death this stream of mental energy is re-established in a new body. Thus Buddhism is able to explain the continuity of the individual without recourse to the belief in an "eternal soul", an idea which contradicts the universal truth of impermanence. Different Buddhist traditions explain the process of rebirth differently but all agree however that the circumstances into which one is reborn is conditioned by the sum total of the kamma created in the previous life.
Critics of the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth say that if there is no soul, only a changing stream of mental energy, then there could be no identity and thus to talk of a person being reborn or experiencing the results of good or bad actions done in the past, is meaningless. However this criticism fails to understand the phenomenon of identity in change. Even within a single life we can notice a person change, sometimes quite dramatically, and yet still be able to recognise them as the same person. This is possible because different aspects of the person changes at different velocities. For example, the complexion and amount of wrinkles on a person's face may change with age while the general shape of the face changes little. Again, a person may change their beliefs while holding them with the same intensity as they held their former ones or perhaps retain the same beliefs but in a more moderate way than before. To use a simile - the Ganges River is changing every moment and over the centuries its width, its course, the quantity and quality of the water it contains have all changed and yet it can still be recognised as the same river. Thus the idea of a dynamic personality does not contradict the idea of identity.
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