Is Buddhism Good for Your Health? (인용한 글)

[프리티휴맨빙]

To: kwanumzengroup
From: "Diana Lenceviciene"
Subject: [kwanumzengroup] Is Buddhism Good for Your Health?


I guess due to Dalai Lama's visit to Boston (and other
cities?), there's quite a lot of coverage of Buddhism
in the press:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/magazine/14BUDDHISM.html?ex=1064808000&en=a52485b59844ae62&ei=5004&partner=UNTD

(registration required?)

another one:

http://www.salon.com/mwt/wire/2003/09/13/lama/index.html


Dalai Lama meets with MIT scientists


- - - - - - - - - - - -
ASSOCIATED PRESS


Sept. 13, 2003 | CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) --

Can concentration be controlled? Can attention be
practiced and perfected?

These are questions that are of increasing interest
today to scientists, but which Buddhist monks have
been exploring for thousands of years.

With the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist
leader, sitting between them, the two sides gathered
Saturday at the Massachusetts Institute Technology in
a search for common ground in their pursuit of
understanding of the mysteries of the human mind.

Scientists are trained to trust 몣third-person''
verification and are sometimes wary of
몣first-person'' spiritual explanations.

But psychologists and neuroscientists have become
interested in meditation, a central component of
Buddhist religious life, and in what it says about the
limits of an individual's control over the mind.

Panelists suggested that scientists are starting to
see that expert meditators may be useful not only as
guinea pigs, but in shaping understanding.

몣Before I got into this, I thought we should be
open-minded, but I didn't think it was likely we would
be able to have a useful exchange,'' panelist Nancy
Kanwisher, an MIT psychologist, said after the first
morning session of the two-day conference.

Now, she said, 몣I feel like there is a common
language, a common engagement of ideas. We've only
scratched the surface.''

The Dalai Lama, who is half way through a 16-day tour
of the United States timed to coincide with the Sept.
11 anniversary, said he hoped science could provide
answers in areas where inward contemplation cannot.

몣I myself am not clear,'' he said at one point,
drawing laughs from the overflow crowd that included
actors Richard Gere and Goldie Hawn.

The scientists wanted to pick the minds of the
Buddhist scholars about how best to use technology
such as brain imaging to study consciousness.

몣I can think of a million things to measure, but what
I am interested in is, 'What do you think are the
right things to measure?''' asked Jonathan Cohen, a
Princeton University brain expert.

Ajahn Amaro, co-abbot of a Buddhist monastery in
California, had a ready answer: use technology to
measure how the brain reacts to 몣the effects of one's
behavior, particularly one's lifestyle.''

Amaro said he would like to know what the machines say
about how 몣level of comfort is associated with how
honestly you live.''

...()...