Quantum theory says that the world is a product of an infinite number of random events, while Buddhism teaches that nothing happens without a cause, trapping the universe in an unending karmic cycle.
Reconciling the two might seem as challenging as trying to explain the Higgs boson to a kindergarten class. Yet if someone has to do it, it might as well be the team of academics, translators and six Tibetan monks clad in maroon robes at Emory University in Atlanta.
They were joined last week by the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, who decided seven years ago that it was time to merge the hard science of the laboratory with the soft science of the meditative mind.
The leaders at Emory, who already had formal relationships with Tibetan students there, agreed, and a unique partnership was formed.
For the monks, some of the challenges have been mundane, like learning to like pizza and trying to understand Lord Dooley, the university’s skeleton mascot.
For the team of professors involved in the project, called the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative, there are the larger issues, like how to develop methods to quantify the power of meditation in a way the scientific world would accept.
However, for the Dalai Lama, an energetic 78-year-old who rises at 3:30am for four hours of meditation, his pet project is a no-brainer.
Buddhist teachings offer education about the mind, the Dalai Lama said in an interview on Thursday.
“It is quite rich material about what I call the inner world,” he said. “Modern science is very highly developed in matters concerning the material world. These two things separately are not complete. Together, the external and the internal worlds are complete.”
The first batch of six monks arrived on campus in 2010 and have since gone back to India, where most Tibetan exiles live, and started teaching. Dozens of monks and nuns have taken lectures from Emory professors who traveled to Dharamsala, India, to instruct them, and 15 English-Tibetan science textbooks have been devised for monastic students.
The university spends about US$700,000 a year on the program, which includes tuition for the monks, who then go back and teach science in the monasteries.
However, it has not been a smooth road. It took until last year for Buddhist leaders to accept science education as a mandatory part of monastic education. It was the first major change in the monastic curriculum in 600 years.
Many of the toughest battles are down to seemingly simple issues of lexicon. How does one create new words for concepts like photosynthesis and clones, which have no equivalent in the Tibetan language or culture? How does one begin to name thousands of molecules and chemical compounds? What of words like “process,” which have several meanings for Tibetans?
So far, 2,500 new scientific terms have been added to the Tibetan language.
“Much of our work is to make new phrases novel enough so students won’t take them with literal meaning,” said Tsondue Samphel, who leads a team of translators.
Learning has gone both ways. Professors find themselves contemplating the science of the heart and mind in new ways.
Debate is a constant, said Alexander Escobar of Emory, who has gone to India to teach biology. For example, monks have wanted to know how he could be so sure that seawater once covered the Himalayas. (The answer? Fossils.)
Western academics are looking at their work through a new lens, contemplating matters like the nature and origins of consciousness.
One result has been the development of cognitively-based compassion training, a secular mediation program proven to improve empathy.
The partnership has had other, more practical applications.
Social worker Linda Hutton, whose clinic treats sexually abused children and families in Greenville, South Carolina, teaches her patients to practice mindfulness, and how to use meditation and breathing to cope with trauma.
“I draw from a lot of medical research, but what I have found here [at Emory] transcends that,” Hutton said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not