Word: lamas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...latest such research shows that daily meditation can improve mental and physical health, but at Harvard the Dalai Lama wasn't convinced by some of the comically deferential - and facile - extrapolations made from there. When one Harvard psychologist suggested that Western cultures defy the biological imperative to connect with others an make it more challenging to be compassionate, the Dalai Lama paused for 20 seconds before answering. "Firstly," he said, "some people make a distinction between West and East. And there are some lifestyle differences ... but in the mental area, I don't think there are differences ... At the mental...
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...
...Dalai Lama seemed at every turn to want to soften the hard intellectual mood - to have a flickering back-and-forth with the other panelists. He took his shoes off at one point and carefully folded his legs underneath him - first the left, then the right. He loudly blew his nose into a tissue at one point, and he laughed a lot with those great sparkly eyes...
Finally, one of the panelists responded to his body language. Marsha Linehan, one of the world's leading psychologists, invented Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a highly effective, widely replicated treatment for suicidal and self-harming patients that includes mindfulness. Before Linehan spoke, the Dalai Lama had asked a playful question: "What, exactly, is psychology?" No other panelist answered him, but Linehan addressed the question as soon as she spoke. She called psychology "the science of behavior, including the behavior of the mind...
...first time, the Dalai Lama seemed truly delighted, since here was something, and someone, to engage. "You mean psychology is not just the mind itself...