Word: germer
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Other researchers also seemed to puzzle the Dalai Lama. Conference organizer Christopher Germer, author of the forthcoming book The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself From Destructive Thoughts and Emotions, asked His Holiness whether he would "lead us in a brief meditation that the therapists in this room could practice at home to cultivate compassion for themselves as well as for their patients." The Dalai Lama shot him a skeptical look that got everyone laughing. He was sweet about it, but meditation isn't a "brief" trick...
...Germer began meeting with Schlecht and reading religious texts by authors like C.S. Lewis and Simone Weil. “I was really hungering for a spiritual aspect of my life,” she says. “Because I’d been studying it. And I liked watching it in other people…I just didn’t know if I could get past my belief that the knowledge of God is really beyond human understanding...
...beliefs followed, exacerbated by issues she already had with her life and her friends. But by December, something had to give. “This sounds so stupid, because if someone had said this to me a year ago I would have laughed at them,” Germer says wearily. “But I just kind of finally sat down and prayed. And I just said, ‘You know, God, I believe in this. And I believe that You sent Jesus to die for my sins.’ Part of me was laughing at myself...
Most converts say that while it isn’t easy being a person of religious faith in a climate of rigorous skepticism, their close friends received the news of their conversion with tolerance or acceptance, tempered occasionally with apprehension. Germer can recite the list of stereotypes about religious people, because she once held them: “Religion is anti-intellectual. You can’t be smart and be religious. If you believe in a certain religion, you must just be lying to yourself...
...those who arrive and find the social environment here fraught with competition and pressure, a religious community may offer a refreshing alternative. “Yes, Christians at Harvard are different,” Germer says. “But not because they’re weird and they don’t go out and drink or, you know, they’re from small towns in the South. They’re different because they care about other people. They’re different because they’re willing to stick by it in tough times. They?...