Anne Harrington is Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. Arthur Zajonc is Professor of Physics at Amherst College.
In the late 1980s, Colorado's Mind & Life Institute initiated a
series of semiprivate conversations involving the Dalai Lama,
leading figures from the contemplative traditions, and prominent
Western scientists with the aim of enhancing our understanding of
the mind. Accessible to nonspecialists, this work, extraordinarily
well edited by Harrington and Zajonc, takes the reader to the
two-day-long Mind & Life XI, a conference cosponsored by MIT's
McGovern Institute in 2003. On each of three topics--attention and
cognitive control, imagery and visualization, and emotion--two
papers, one presented by a Buddhist practitioner and the other by
Western researchers, combine with a panel's reactions and questions
from the 1200 observers in pursuit of empirically testable
hypotheses integrating Buddhist and scientific approaches to
understanding the mind. The conference reported experimental
results that challenge Western assumptions, while Zajonc's
summarizing reflections note several exciting research
collaborations spawned by the event.--James R. Kuhlman"Library
Journal" (08/01/2006)
"The Dalai Lama at MIT" is a "broadcast" of an historic 2003
meeting between the Dalai Lama and 22 world-renowned scientists at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..."The Dalai Lama at MIT"
does an excellent job of introducing readers to Buddhist and
scientific approaches to understanding human consciousness.--Mirka
Knaster"Greater Good" (07/01/2007)
The practical applications of this meeting are fascinating;
something whole is created from these conversations that leaps off
the pages and gives a reader new reason to remember that science
has more to do with life than with destruction and death.--Susan
Salter Reynolds"Los Angeles Times Book Review" (10/01/2006)
Can the sciences of the mind and brain learn anything from
Buddhism? Plenty, say the neuroscientists and Buddhists--the Dalai
Lama among them--who attended a conference at MIT in 2003 to
explore how both disciplines investigate reality. This compelling
book lays out the issues discussed there. Most illuminating is
seeing how the different approaches (subjective in Buddhism,
objective in science) can complement each other, and how open
Buddhists are to accommodating scientific progress into their
thinking.
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