It turns out that even after 60 years of meditating and practicing compassion, the Dalai Lama still has much spiritual learning to do.“Even now, I cannot say my spiritual experience is something very high,” he said, laughing. “It is a little above zero. So it takes a lot of years.”...The head of state and the spiritual leader of Tibet, now 75, engaged Stanford professors at a Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) conference, which aimed to tease out the neurobiological underpinnings of compassion and altruism. Professors had 10 minutes each to present their emerging findings from experimental research in psychology, neurosciences and the emerging field of neuro-economics.Brian Knutson, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, kicked off the day with a review of his work using fMRI to identify brain pathways involved in the exercise of compassion....What emerged from the daylong conference was a general consensus on the benefits of compassion, but a lack of clear understanding of how to objectively measure it using the scientific method. All researchers professed going forward that much more research was needed in the field of compassion.
It turns out that even after 60 years of meditating and practicing compassion, the Dalai Lama still has much spiritual learning to do. “Even now, I cannot say my spiritual experience is something very high,” he said, laughing. “It is a little above zero. So it takes a lot of years.” ... The head of state and the spiritual leader of Tibet, now 75, engaged Stanford professors at a Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) conference, which aimed to tease out the neurobiological underpinnings of compassion and altruism. Professors had 10 minutes each to present their emerging findings from experimental research in psychology, neurosciences and the emerging field of neuro-economics. Brian Knutson, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, kicked off the day with a review of his work using fMRI to identify brain pathways involved in the exercise of compassion. ... What emerged from the daylong conference was a general consensus on the benefits of compassion, but a lack of clear understanding of how to objectively measure it using the scientific method. All researchers professed going forward that much more research was needed in the field of compassion.From " Dalai Lama talks meditation with Stanford scientists " (The Stanford Daily):
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