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| vishontar |
Posted
on 12-Sep-03 02:54 PM
I wish I could attend this conference. Dalai Lama, one of the great meditators introducing Dharma to the Scientists of the west. I don't like politics and religions( sects, cultures, faiths and dogmas) but I love meditaiton. It is pure science. I remember Daulat Singh Kothari, one the renound Physist of India said " Rajniti or Dharam ke din lad gaye hai, ya to Bigyan or Adhayatma ka jamana hai". Indeed Daulat Ji. Words are very confusing now a days. He used Dharma word for religion or sect what we call in Nepali Sampradya. I used Dharma word for his Adhatma, sprituality.
I know Dalai lama as a humble and simple person. His everlaughing face, his gentle personality, his open mind and his compassion influence me. I have heard him talking about Quantum Mechanics, latest verson of microscopic science. i know him as a meditaror as a sceintist of mind.
I am sure scientists will be the first person who understand Dharma. Pure Dharma. Law of nature. I have seen Dalai lama in documentaries, and I have watched his many talks in DVD and vedios. I have watched the vedeo of his deep expalination of Four Noble Truths in London.
I have heard he is giving public talk in fleet centre, may be on sunday.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/09/12/dalai_lama_visit_provides_a_subject_for_scientists/
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| vishontar |
Posted
on 12-Sep-03 03:04 PM
This is the Nepales monk of Tibbetian tradition. He is studying in Harvard. if anybody could provide me his address, I will be more than glad.
http://www.diamondway-buddhism.org/teachers/gyaltrul.html
vishontar
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| Gokul |
Posted
on 13-Sep-03 08:46 PM
The book "Einstein and Buddha: The parallel sayings" is appropriate to see the link between Dharma and Science.
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| vishontar |
Posted
on 15-Sep-03 11:24 AM
Gokul ji,
Thanks for suggesting the book. Many of my friends suggested me to read Tao Physics also. I am less intersted in theory, I am more intersted in practice. I would love to share my feelings with you in your thread, theolizing life.
Vishontar
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| vishontar |
Posted
on 15-Sep-03 11:27 AM
Guys, play the vedio to see the whats going on in Harvard.
http://www.harvard.edu/news/videos/dalailama.rm
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| Gokul |
Posted
on 15-Sep-03 12:34 PM
"The monk and the philosopher" is a very interesting book. Matthieu Ricard, who is staying in Kapan monastery, discusses Buddhism and science with his famous philosopher father. A must-read.
Tao of Physics is definitely brilliant. It is more like a Poetry of Physics. Compares Eastern religions with modern physics. There is little wonder that SN Bose once called Buddha the most profound person in the history of mankind.
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| vishontar |
Posted
on 15-Sep-03 01:56 PM
Gokul Ji,
Satandra Nath said the reality. I am fully satisfied. He was very genius guy. the theroy that he had given in 40's, Bose-Einstien Condensation, has recently proved by a MIT professor John D. MacArthur(I have attended his talk after he received the prize). He shared Noble prize of 2001 for that purpose. How genius he was, without any facility, from poor country like India, how advance thinking. it took 6 dicades to prove his theory.
I bet, those will be scientist who will first understand Buddhas teaching. I am not talking about Buddhist religion, which is not more than the dogmas, rites and rituals as other religions have. I am talking about Buddhas teaching. I have experienced, his teaching is so scientific, so pragmatic, so pure and complete. Lucky are those who understand Dhamma.
I don't wonder why genius mind like einstien, Bose are giving respect to Buddha. There is a scientist from Las Alamos National Lab, working in field theory. He is a teacher of meditation of Karmapa tredition. I attended his physics talk and then we went for dinner. I talked to him couple of hours. He knows many more things about mind. He gives courses to new people and he cordially invited me.
Scientists are result oriented person. Buddha's teaching is challenging.
Buddha is expalining Dhamma to Kalama:
Oh Kalama,
don't accept what I said jsut because you have faith on me.
don't accept just because many wise people are accepting my teaaching.
don't accept just because many people are following my teaching.
don't accept just because your elders suggests you to do so.
don't accept jsut because it seems reasonable.
don't accept jsut because you like it.
Test Kalama, test this teaching in your life. If you find it is giving result, then accept.
Buddha used to challange like that. In many suttas, I am seeing such challanges.
He used to say,
PASSA VIKHHABE JANA-----experience Bhukkhus and then understand. I have experienced, eventhough a little bit, but its a gem. Its complete science and pure science.
He used to say:
KEBALM PARI PURNAM KEBALAM PARISUDDHAM
its (his teaching) complete and purest.
Physics deals with laws of matter only. Dhamma deals with laws of matter as well as mind.
Scientists doesnot believe until they test it and prove it.
Buddha is encouraging to do so.
He said, test my teaching. Give fair trial to this. If you find it gives result then accept if not then reject.
AKALIKO DHAMMO: Dharma gives fruit in this moment. you need not wait for its fruit. As science give fruit now in this moment.
As laws of matter(science) were before they were discovered, they are now and they will be in future. Laws of mind and matter(dhamma) were also there, are now and will remain tomorrow.
Vishontar
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| Gokul |
Posted
on 15-Sep-03 03:09 PM
Perhaps you already know, the following website is a good resource for mind and life study.
http://www.mindandlife.org/
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| sewak |
Posted
on 15-Sep-03 03:10 PM
Mathiew Richard is a student of late Urgyen Tulku and Dilgo Khentse Rimpoche. He is a very good translator in English. Take a look at the book called
JOURNEY TO ENLIGHTENMENT...KHENTSE RIMPOCHE.
We talk so much about scientific and all other technology. But we are missing the most essential point. That is love and compassion. Buddha specifically revealed 4 Noble Truth, Law of Karma, relationship between everything. Compassion has to do everything with beauty and joy in this world.
You can be great scientist and meditator. But if you cannot show love, it means nothing. That is exactly what meditation is all about in Mahayana and vajrayana. Gradually and patiently you develop compassion for everything around you. Wanting happiness for others and understanding its importance leads you to enlightenment.
Buddha said, " I have shown you to the way to Enlightenment. But it is upto you to achieve the enlightenment."
Peace
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| sewak |
Posted
on 15-Sep-03 06:49 PM
Here's the article published in New York Times.
Is Buddhism Good for Your Health?
By STEPHEN S. HALL
n the spring of 1992, out of the blue, the fax machine in Richard Davidson's office at the department of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison spit out a letter from Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Davidson, a Harvard-trained neuroscientist, was making a name for himself studying the nature of positive emotion, and word of his accomplishments had made it to northern India. The exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists was writing to offer the minds of his monks -- in particular, their meditative prowess -- for scientific research.
Most self-respecting American neuroscientists would shrink from, if not flee, an invitation to study Buddhist meditation, viewing the topic as impossibly fuzzy and, as Davidson recently conceded, ''very flaky.'' But the Wisconsin professor, a longtime meditator himself -- he took leave from graduate school to travel through India and Sri Lanka to learn Eastern meditation practices -- leapt at the opportunity. In September 1992, he organized and embarked on an ambitious data-gathering expedition to northern India, lugging portable electrical generators, laptop computers and electroencephalographic (EEG) recording equipment into the foothills of the Himalayas. His goal was to measure a remarkable, if seemingly evanescent, entity: the neural characteristics of the Buddhist mind at work. ''These are the Olympic athletes, the gold medalists, of meditation,'' Davidson says.
The work began fitfully -- the monks initially balked at being wired -- but research into meditation has now attained a credibility unimaginable a decade ago. Over the past 10 years, a number of Buddhist monks, led by Matthieu Ricard, a French-born monk with a Ph.D. in molecular biology, have made a series of visits from northern India and other South Asian countries to Davidson's lab in Madison. Ricard and his peers have worn a Medusa-like tangle of 256-electrode EEG nets while sitting on the floor of a little booth and responding to visual stimuli. They have spent two to three hours at a time in a magnetic resonance imaging machine, trying to meditate amid the clatter and thrum of the brain-imaging machinery.
No data from these experiments have been published formally yet, but in ''Visions of Compassion,'' a compilation of papers that came out last year, Davidson noted in passing that in one visiting monk, activation in several regions of his left prefrontal cortex -- an area of the brain just behind the forehead that recent research has associated with positive emotion -- was the most intense seen in about 175 experimental subjects.
In the years since Davidson's fax from the Dalai Lama, the neuroscientific study of Buddhist practices has crossed a threshold of acceptability as a topic worthy of scientific attention. Part of the reason for this lies in new, more powerful brain-scanning technologies that not only can reveal a mind in the midst of meditation but also can detect enduring changes in brain activity months after a prolonged course of meditation. And it hasn't hurt that some well-known mainstream neuroscientists are now intrigued by preliminary reports of exceptional Buddhist mental skills. Paul Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco and Stephen Kosslyn of Harvard have begun their own studies of the mental capabilities of monks. In addition, a few rigorous, controlled studies have suggested that Buddhist-style meditation in Western patients may cause physiological changes in the brain and the immune system.
This growing, if sometimes grudging, respect for the biology of meditation is achieving a milestone of sorts this weekend, when some of the country's leading neuroscientists and behavioral scientists are meeting with Tibetan Buddhists, including the Dalai Lama himself, at a symposium held at M.I.T. ''You can think of the monks as cases that show what the potential is here,'' Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who has pioneered work in the health benefits of meditation, says. ''But you don't have to be weird or a Buddhist or sitting on top of a mountain in India to derive benefits from this. This kind of study is in its infancy, but we're on the verge of discovering hugely fascinating things.''
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| vishontar |
Posted
on 15-Sep-03 09:13 PM
Gokul Ji,
thank you for the website. I did not know about it. Appreciated.
Sewak Ji,
I am completely with you. It is not meaningful to be a great scientist of the world. It is meaningful to be a good human being. Dhamma is the technique that teaches us to be nice human being. I appreciate you. But, as you have said, good meditator that is something different. How can you be considered a good meditator unless you developed a lot of compassion for the beings, unless you generate a lot of love for the beings, unless you have become a simple humble person. To generate love n compassion and to live a wholsome life are yardstick of good meditator. meditate for years, if your mind is not cleaned, you won't be considered a good meditator.
Thank you very much for sharing the article. I knew that university of Wisconsin Medicine is doing research on meditation for medication. They are mainly study how awireness helping to control disease. one of the branch of UMass is also joining it.
Compassion and love are yardstick of meditation
Vishontar
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| sewak |
Posted
on 16-Sep-03 08:31 AM
Vishontar:
Thank you. Luv and Compassion is the yardstick of meditation. But along the way, even some good meditators turns ugly. First they experience miracle which is a good sign as it shows some level of understanding. Then ego develops while they are supposed to remain calm and control themselves and focus more on the path.
I heard that those Tibetans community in different cities in the US host Dalai Lama visit . Then they build the community center from the fund they get. I heard they are building centers in Washington, DC, New York, Minnesota, Boston and Portland. Not a bad idea to. Wish we could do the same.
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