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Keck
lab director Richard Davidson (top, greeting the
Dalai Lama) and Ned Kalin, director of UW's Health
Emotions Research Institute (bottom picture, near
left), showed off the non-invasive imaging machinery
that scientists are using to scan a Buddhist monk's
brain while he meditates — work that the Dalai
Lama described as "wonderful."
Photo
by Jeff Miller
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Mind
Matters
Whoever said East and West shall never meet
hasn't been hanging around the Dalai Lama. The exiled
leader of Tibet, one of the most recognized teachers
of Eastern religious tradition, joined some of the
world's top brain researchers on campus in May to
explore the intersections between spirituality and
Western science.
Tenzin
Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, has made no
secret of his interest in the evolving sphere of research
into human emotions. As scientists have become interested
in emotions and how they may affect human health,
he has been an active participant, attending conferences
and adding insights he has gained from his Buddhist
training. His visit to UW-Madison coincided with a
two-day conference focusing on whether meditation,
a core practice of Buddhists for more than two thousand
years, can transform the brain in beneficial ways.
"Our
scientific lives have been deeply affected by these
interactions with His Holiness," says Richard Davidson,
director of UW-Madison's new Keck Laboratory for Functional
Brain Imaging and Behavior, who helped arrange the Dalai
Lama's visit. Davidson says that many scientists now
believe that meditation may bring about changes in brain
chemistry that translate to better health and well-being.
They are interested in testing whether meditation, removed
from its religious context, can be useful as therapy
for chronic pain or other ailments.
While
his fifth visit to Madison was predominantly a low-profile
one, the Dalai Lama did participate in a well-secured,
twenty-minute press conference at the conclusion of
the conference. Shifting between English and his native
Tibetan, the Buddhist leader praised scientists for
investigating and seeking to improve the human condition.
Those goals, he said, are essentially his goals.
"It
is our basic right to be a happy person, happy family,
and eventually happy world," he said. "That
should be our goal." One of the tenets of Buddhist
teaching, he said, is that people can achieve happiness
by training their minds. Scientists also seem to want
to help people think differently, he said.
However,
"I think that scientists, no matter how great, cannot
prove Nirvana," the Dalai Lama joked. "That is our
business."
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