About 25 years ago His Holiness, The Dalai Lama, began a collaboration with neurocognitive and social scientists to study the relationships between modern science and religion or spiritual philosophies. As these conversations have been exploring the depths of mind through Buddhists training and principles, with quantum mechanics and neuroscience, the once perceived bodies of knowing and experience begin to merge. The latest series of sessions taped this time at a monastic order in Drepung Monastery in Mundgod, Karnataka, India are revealing hidden capacities of the mind to heal and the remarkable plasticity of the adult brain to rewire itself through meditation and the practice of compassion.
Why should you watch this? Top Western scientists give what constitutes a primer on the latest understanding of how the brain works, the history of how science came to be influenced by Decarte’s view which separated matter from spirit or mind. These conversations illustrate how these two ways of knowing are coming together with new understanding of how the brain processes information and forms thought, quantum theory, and the experiences of monastics through years of meditation.
I will listen to these sessions continuing to mine new meaning and understanding. To watch one session you need to devote a couple of hours and be willing to patiently listen. As they stop often to clarify concepts for the Dalai Lama, your own questions are answered or concepts refined and confirmed. For example, I now have a beginner’s understanding of what quantum physics means in terms of interconnectedness. And this is just rudimentary because the laws of nature at subatomic levels are not the same as we experience in our daily lives, or perhaps better said, with our Newtonian understanding of how things work.
Susan Feathers 