Healing Emotions (eBook)

Introduction

Canthe mindhealthe body? How are the brain, immune system, and emotions interconnected? Whatemotions are associated with enhanced well-being? How does mindfulness functionin a medical context? Is there a biological foundation for ethics? How candeath help us understand the nature of the mind? In summer 1991, ten Westernscholars from a broad range of disciplines gathered with the Dalai Lama in hispersonal meeting room in Dharamsala, India, to grapple with these questions asthe focus of the third Mind and Life Conference. This book is a compendium ofthe presentations and dialogue that occurred at this meeting.

Expertsfrom the fields of psychology, physiology, behavioral medicine, and philosophypresented the quintessential discoveries of their fields and discussed theconnections among these findings with the Dalai Lama and with prominentpractitioners of Buddhist meditation. The purpose of this cross-fertilizationwas to increase mutual understanding and facilitate the emergence of newinsight into the relationship between health and emotional experience.

Itis only in the past twenty years that Western physicians, biologists, andpsychologists have begun to comprehend the interrelationship between emotionalstates and mental and physical well-being. Buddhist thinkers, however, havebeen aware of the mind's healing capacity for more than two thousand years. Thepresence at this conference of the foremost leader of Tibetan Buddhism provideda unique East/West synthesis. The Dalai Lama served as a touchstone for therecent scientific discoveries reported by the other participants.

TheMind and Life Meetings
TheDalai Lama has lived in India since he led thousands of his people to freedomfrom Chinese oppression in 1959. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1989,he is universally respected as a spokesman for the compassionate and peacefulresolution of human conflict. Less well known is his intense personal interestin the sciences, he has said that if he were not a monk, he would have liked tohave been an engineer. As a youth in Lhasa, itwashe who was called on to fix broken machinery in the Potala Palace, be itaclock or a car.

Beginningin October 1987, the Dalai Lama has met regularly with select groups ofscientists to discuss bridges and interfaces with what can broadly be calledthe sciences of mind and life—,biology, cognitive science, neuroscience, andpsychology, as well as philosophy of mind—,the disciplines of most immediaterelevance to the Buddhist tradition. The spirit of these meetings has been oneof candor and mutual respect on both sides, as seen from the careful selectionand preparation of the meetings, their private nature, the attention given toexcellent translation, and the extensive time devoted to them by the DalaiLama. The books that emerge from these dialogues—,including this one, itishoped—,offer readers a sense of immediacy and spontaneity in an unprecedentedexchange between a spiritual path and state-of-the-art science, between anancient wisdom and the modern quest for answers.

Background
Thisseries of dialogues was initiated in 1985 jointly by Adam Engle, a U.S.attorney and businessman, and Dr. Francisco Varela, a Paris-basedneurobiologist working with the National Center for Scientific Research who wasaware of the importance of a serious dialogue between science and Buddhism. Thefirst Mind and Life Conference was held over a period of a week in Dharamsala,India, and dealt with neuroscience and cognitive science more generally. A bookbased on this first conference, edited by Francisco...