The Dalai Lama at MIT

by Anne Harrington (Editor), Arthur Zajonc

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.

Genres: Buddhism, Science, Nonfiction, Religion, Philosophy, Spirituality

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Tenzin Jampa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book produces the revised and edited transcripts from the Mind and Life conference that happened at MIT in 2003 titled 'Investigating the mind'.

It's a relatively quick but an insightful read on two fronts. One in being a snapshot of history, it captures the energy of Dalai Lama's first visit to MIT in 2003 and the suspicion/excitement that naturally comes with the dawn of something new - collaboration between science and buddhism towards understanding the nature of our Mind. The other in the wide ranging discussion on topics like Attention, Introspection, Imagery, Visualization, Emotions, and whether first-person experience can be a valid data point in scientific enterprise.

[Winnie Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

what to read the science of buddha.!

[Braxton Barr · Rating 4 out of 5]

a true symposium

[Brad McKenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because I love the Dalai Lama. It is the transcription of a conference held at MIT in which scientists and Buddhist collaborate in an investigation of how the mind perceives things and how it deals with emotions. Incidentally, in the strictest Buddhist sense, emotions don't exist. Mull that over for a bit. Yeah, deep stuff. Another gem was the comparison of the state of "Pure Awareness" as being "A mirror that's not reflecting anything." Again, wow.

I'll admit that some of the scientific explanations were over my head. I am not, after all, a neuroscientist. Another issue I had with the book was the sparsity of the Dalai Lama. The book presents talks from scientists and Buddhists and then presents a discussion of those talks by a panel. His Holiness is on all of those panels and does give his two sense. The conference also closes with a speech by him. However, I picked the book up because of the Dalai Lama and was disappointed at how little he actually had to do with it.

That said, it's a fascinated topic. One that is a great example of East meets West. I would reccommend it with the caveat being: don't expect much from the Dalai Lama.

[Jake Berlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

certainly interesting at times, but stays a bit too much at the surface, and repeats itself a lot -- and not in the way that reinforces difficult ideas. still, it did make me think about the limits of science and the value of other types of human knowledge, and that was in many ways the point.

[Brendan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't read all of this, very little with the Lama ( misleading title )

[Vikrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book to connect d dots between science and spiritualism

[Johannes Bertus · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can imagine the Buddha rolling his eyes over this.