Elementary thoughts on love and kindness

A beautiful mind: Even among children, the practice of thinking kindly about others may help bring about more positive emotions and interactions.

By Paige Parvin, Emory Magazine

When Emory graduate student Brendan Ozawa-de Silva first walked into the classroom of five- to eight-year-olds at Atlanta’s Paideia School, he quickly despaired of ever achieving his goal: Getting the children to meditate.

Noisy and excitable, the kids could barely sit still, much less approach the state of utter calm and concentration that is central to the Buddhist tradition of compassion meditation. But Ozawa-de Silva captured their attention using an ancient technique: Telling them a story.

He told them about the sweater he was wearing, describing how his father gave it to him and explaining that it makes him happy because it is warm and makes him think of his father. Then he asked the children to consider the other reasons why he is able to enjoy the sweater—where it came from, who made it, and how it traveled to him. The kids rattled off answers: Wool, sheep, trucks, roads, stores, people.

“Finally, they shouted out, ‘It never ends. You need the whole world!’” recalls Ozawa-de Silva.

And just like that, the children understood, at least for a moment, the Buddhist concept of universal interconnectedness that undergirds compassion meditation.

The pilot program at Paideia, which Ozawa-de Silva codirected with graduate student Brooke Dodson-Lavelle, is part of a series of Emory initiatives studying the effects of meditation on physical and mental health. The protocol for the program was developed by Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, director of the Emory-Tibet Partnership, using Cognitively Based Compassion Training, a technique drawn from Buddhism, but without the spiritual elements. Secular compassion meditation is based on a 1,000-year-old Tibetan Buddhist practice called lojong, which uses a cognitive, analytic approach to challenge a person’s unexamined thoughts and emotions toward other people.

The practice is designed to help participants recognize the interdependence of all creatures and cultivate compassion towards others, whether family, friends, or far-flung strangers. The comprehension of shared suffering is thought to reduce negative emotions, like anger and resentment, and help nurture positive ones, like kindness and gratitude.

“I really think it helps the kids to center,” says Jonathan Petrash, who teaches a class of five- to seven-year-olds at Paideia. “We have tried to make it part of our daily routine. There is a real calm, settled feeling in our classroom, with deeper and richer conversations. The kids are better able to show empathy, better able to show compassion.”

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Slavery, power and the myth of Miss Kitty

Like many anthropologists, Mark Auslander began his career working in a distant, exotic place. In his case, it was Zambia. But it was the experience of teaching at Emory’s original campus, in Oxford, Georgia, that “really shook things up for me,” he says.

He and his students took two tours of the town’s historic cemetery, where some of the early leaders of Emory are buried. One visit was guided by a conservative white member of the community, another by a local African-American.

“They gave us totally different tours,” Auslander says. “One guide emphasized the glories of Emory, by which he meant the white Emory. The other emphasized the long history of racial discrimination, that was visible in the cemetery.”

In a segregated area lay the grave of Catherine “Miss Kitty” Boyd, an enslaved woman who was owned by Methodist Bishop James Osgood Andrew, the first president of Emory’s board of trustees. Bishop Andrew’s ownership of Miss Kitty and other enslaved persons triggered the 1844 national schism of the Methodist Episcopal Church, presaging the Civil War.

“Everybody in Oxford had an opinion about Miss Kitty,” Auslander says. Bishop Andrew used to claim he was only an accidental slave owner, since all of his slaves had been inherited or acquired through his three marriages. Some conservative whites sympathized with Andrew’s view, and contended that Andrew offered Miss Kitty her freedom but she refused to accept it. But the term “accidental” rankled some members of the African-American community, who believed that Miss Kitty was the bishop’s mistress, and that she had no control over that fate.

“My students and I began to realize that we were in the middle of a very complex and exciting window to an important chapter in American history," Auslander says.

What was the truth behind conflicting versions of the story of Miss Kitty, that had been passed through families in Oxford for 160 years? Where did she come from, and what happened to her descendants?

The search for answers led to Auslander’s forthcoming book, “The Accidental Slaveowner: Revisiting a Myth of the American South.” He will give a public talk on the book at Emory's Oxford College on Wednesday, Feb. 2.

Auslander, who is now with Brandeis University, helped organized Emory’s upcoming conference, “Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies,” which begins on Thursday, Feb. 3. The first conference of its kind, it will examine the impact of the enslavement of people of African descent on institutions of higher education.

Visit Emory Report, to hear the podcast of an interview of Auslander by Dana Goldman.

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The holidays and the 'happiness paradox'

The Washington Post writes about the "happiness paradox," based on a recent Emory conference on the topic:

Before you rush off to the mall or join the office holiday party, some A-list religious leaders want you to know one thing: The happiness derived from tearing open a coveted gift or downing a tasty beverage will fade before the final stanza of "Auld Lang Syne." And all you'll be left with in the New Year is an empty wallet and a hangover.

In fact, the consumer-driven culture whose engine revs this time of year is probably "the most efficient system yet devised for the manufacture and distribution of unhappiness," says Lord Jonathan Sacks, Britain's chief rabbi.

So, if iPods and eggnog won't do the trick, what will make us happy?

Sacks was one of four prominent religious leaders invited by Emory University in Atlanta this year to answer that eternal question. "The Pursuit of Happiness Conference," organized by Emory's Center for the Study of Law and Religion, also included the Dalai Lama, Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a noted Muslim scholar at George Washington University.

In a nutshell, their common advice might be dubbed the "happiness paradox": the more you give, the happier you get. In that way, Sacks said, spiritual happiness is the "greatest source of renewable energy we have."

"If I have a certain amount of money and I give some to you, I have less," Sacks said. "But if I have a certain amount of friendship or love or trust and I give it to you, I don't have less, I have more."

Read the whole Washington Post article

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Ditch the guilt and be happy

Ditch the guilt and be happy

Mary Loftus, associate editor of Emory Magazine, describes the top 10 things that religious leaders say about happiness in the Huffington Post:

One of the things that most irritated me about Sunday school -- and there were many, including the fact that I had to wear tights, keep quiet and not ask why God wasn't a girl -- is that we were told, however covertly, that happiness was selfish.

Religion, I came to believe, was all about self-sacrifice. How could we be happy when babies in Angola were starving (or being sent to purgatory by the Pope)? How could we be happy when already we bent so readily toward sin? How could we be happy when we had to constantly be on guard against greed, pride, sloth, lust and gluttony (i.e., cool stuff, bragging, hanging around, casual sex and cookies)?

Come to find out at a recent "Summit on Happiness," hosted by Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion, many of the world's religions have nothing against humans seeking to be happy.

Can I really ditch the guilt and go for the gusto?

According to spiritual leaders from the Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist traditions, the answer is yes -- with a few conditions.

His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, the star of the show, has said that the very purpose of life is to be happy, so long as "one person or group does not seek happiness or glory at the expense of others." He didn't disappoint at the summit, sticking up for happiness as well as world peace at every opportunity, and laughing or chuckling fairly consistently throughout the event.

The Dalai Lama was joined on the panel by Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth and Islamic scholar Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University.

They agreed wholeheartedly that faithfulness and happiness were not mutually exclusive.

Click here to read the top 10 things she learned about spiritual happiness.

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In praise of tiny, perfect moles

It’s far into the future and science can do pretty much anything. Rabbits are a luminous green, pigs have human brain tissue and lions have been genetically spliced with lambs. That’s the premise of Margaret Atwood’s latest book “The Year of the Flood.”

Adam One is the leader of a sect known as “God’s Gardeners,” devoted to the blending of science and religion. Most of human life has been obliterated, but God’s Gardeners believe in the healing power of song. As the world is ending, they sing the praises of Earth’s creatures, like the tiny, perfect mole. And the little carrion beetles “that seek unlikely places. We turn our husks to the elements and tidy up our spaces.”

You’ll get goose bumps and giggles watching these videos of Elizabeth Saliers, backed by Emory musicians, singing some of the hymns from the novel. The special performances were for Atwood herself, while she was at Emory recently to give a series of talks on science fiction.

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Are hugs the new drugs?

Research is showing that compassion meditation -- focused, warm thoughts about yourself and others -- may have positive effects on both your mental and physical well-being. 

By Carol Clark

Basic empathy is a biological given. “If you talk with a sad person, you are going to adopt a sad posture, and if you talk to a happy person, by the end you will probably be laughing,” said Emory primatologist Frans de Waal. He explained that evolution has programmed us to mirror both the physical and emotional states of others.

De Waal gave the opening remarks at a conference bringing together the Dalai Lama and scientists studying effects of compassion meditation on the brain, physical health and behavior.

“Empathy is biased – it’s stronger for those that are close to you than those that are distant,” De Waal said. “Nature has built in rewards for the things that we need to do, and being pro-social is something that we need when we live in groups.”

In order to get from empathy to compassion and altruism, you need to identify others as distinct from you. While it used to be assumed that altruistic tendencies were only possible in humans, de Waal said that targeted helping of others has recently been observed among apes and elephants.

Photo by Frans de Waal shows a young chimpanzee consoling an adult male that just lost a fight.

Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin, recalled when he first began studying the effects of compassion meditation in 1992. He traveled to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery and attached electrodes to the head of an expert practitioner. The other monks began laughing.

“I thought it was because he looked so funny with the electrodes,” Davidson said. But it turned out the monks were amused that he was trying to study the effects of compassion by attaching electrodes to the practitioner’s head, rather than to his heart.

Years later, Davidson is finding that the monks’ view may be on target. New research shows that the heart rates of expert practitioners beat more quickly while they are meditating than the hearts of novices. “We believe that compassion meditation is facilitating communication between the heart and the mind,” Davidson said.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill cited her research into the effects of “love and kindness meditation,” or LKM, on the vagus nerve. The nerve, which extends from the brain stem to the heart, helps regulate emotions and bodily systems. The effectiveness of the vagus nerve is measured by its tone, or fitness. The higher the vagal tone, the better the vagus nerve performs as a regulatory pathway.

“With just six weeks of LKM training in novices, we see improvements in resting vagal tone,” Fredrickson said. “Just like physical exercise improves muscle tone, emotion training improves vagal tone.”

High vagal tone is related to both a person’s physical health and their ability to feel loving connections with others, Fredrickson said. “In a way, our bodies are designed for love, because the more we love, the more healthy we become.”



Emory researchers Charles Raison and Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi described their ongoing research into the effects of compassion meditation and depression. Negi developed a secular form of meditation for the research, based on the Tibetan Buddhist practice called “lojong.” Lojong uses an analytical approach to challenge a person’s thoughts and emotions toward other people, with the long-term goal of developing altruistic behavior.

The pair collaborated on a 2005 study that showed that college students who regularly practice compassion meditation had a significant reduction in stress and physical responses to stress. They recently launched the Compassion and Attention Longitudinal Meditation Study (CALM), to explore the physical effects of different forms of meditation.

“We’re trying to zero in on what is it about meditation that is useful for people’s health,” Raison said.

Emory researchers are also getting positive preliminary results in compassion meditation studies involving schoolchildren ages six to eight and adolescents in the foster care system.

“This seems like the dawning of a new day,” the Dalai Lama said. “We’ve heard about the benefits, and now we need to act to cultivate compassion from kindergarten to universities.”

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Dalai Lama: Make inner peace, not war

“It seems clear that it’s important to synthesize ideas” and move towards an integrated understanding of the world, and of our selves, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said during his recent visit to Emory.

His visit began with an update on the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI). The initiative aims to combine insights from centuries of Tibetan-Buddhist compassion meditation with the knowledge of modern science.

During the past 100 years, science and technology have advanced tremendously, “but at the same time, the 20th century was a century of bloodshed. More than 200 million people were killed through violence,” he said.

“Nuclear physics was one of the great achievements for science, but that great achievement brought fear and destruction,” the Dalai Lama said, referring to the use of nuclear weapons by the United States during World War II.

“Scientific achievement, in order to be constructive, to bring more happiness, more peace and a healthier world, ultimately depends on our minds and our emotions,” he said, adding that special efforts are needed to try to cultivate inner peace. “What’s important is the sense of well-being for others, in other words a compassionate attitude.”

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Morals without God?

Emory psychologist Frans de Waal writes an opinion piece in the New York Times:

I was born in Den Bosch, the city after which Hieronymus Bosch named himself. This obviously does not make me an expert on the Dutch painter, but having grown up with his statue on the market square, I have always been fond of his imagery, his symbolism, and how it relates to humanity’s place in the universe. This remains relevant today since Bosch depicts a society under a waning influence of God. His famous triptych with naked figures frolicking around, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” seems a tribute to paradisiacal innocence. The tableau is far too happy and relaxed to fit the interpretation of depravity and sin advanced by puritan experts. It represents humanity free from guilt and shame either before the Fall or without any Fall at all.
Detail from "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch. The painting combines references from religion, nature and science. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

For a primatologist, like myself, the nudity, references to sex and fertility, the plentiful birds and fruits and the moving about in groups are thoroughly familiar and hardly require a religious or moral interpretation. Bosch seems to have depicted humanity in its natural state, while reserving his moralistic outlook for the right-hand panel of the triptych in which he punishes — not the frolickers from the middle panel — but monks, nuns, gluttons, gamblers, warriors, and drunkards.

Five centuries later, we remain embroiled in debates about the role of religion in society. As in Bosch’s days, the central theme is morality. Can we envision a world without God? Would this world be good? Don’t think for one moment that the current battle lines between biology and fundamentalist Christianity turn around evidence. One has to be pretty immune to data to doubt evolution, which is why books and documentaries aimed at convincing the skeptics are a waste of effort. They are helpful for those prepared to listen, but fail to reach their target audience. The debate is less about the truth than about how to handle it. For those who believe that morality comes straight from God the creator, acceptance of evolution would open a moral abyss.

Read the whole article in the New York Times.

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The quest for inner peace and happiness

Depression is the most common mental disorder in the world. In addition to emotional suffering, it takes a terrible physical toll. “Over time, depression damages the heart and sets people up to get diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease,” says Charles Raison, clinical director of the Emory Mind-Body Program.

Emory researchers are looking for ways to treat depression without medication – including the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of compassion meditation. An initial study found that Emory students who regularly practiced compassion meditation had a significant reduction in stress and physical responses to stress. The research is now expanding, to explore whether a range of meditative practices have effects on the body and the brain that would be protective not just for depression, but other illnesses as well.

On Monday, Oct. 18, the Dalai Lama will lead a “Compassion Meditation Conference” at Emory, bringing together meditation experts and neuroscientists for a public discussion on the latest research into empathy, compassion and meditation.

So if you are not depressed, are you happy? What exactly is happiness? One way to explore the meaning of this elusive state of being is through the ancient traditions of the world’s major religions.

Happiness is something that people tend to take for granted, says Scott Kugle, an Emory expert on Islam. “But very often,” he adds, “you lose sight of the deeper psychological or devotional insights that are required to get to a point of deep happiness.”

On Sunday, October 17, the Dalai Lama will head an “Interfaith Summit on Happiness.” Broadcast journalist Krista Tippett will moderate the discussion, also including representatives of Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths.

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Monks + scientists = a new body of thought

Monks + scientists = A new body of thought

When you’re talking about cells, are you referring to their minds or their bodies?

The question from a Tibetan translator temporarily stumped Emory biologist Arri Eisen. In Tibetan, every organism has a mind and a body, and you have to be speaking about one or the other, explained Geshe Dadul Namgyal, a member of the team translating Western scientific concepts into the Tibetan language.

“I told him that Westerners don’t usually think of cells as having a mind,” Eisen recalls.

These are the sorts of conversations sparked by a groundbreaking program to bring the best of Western science to Tibetan monastics, and the insights of Buddhist meditative practices to Western scientists.

Launched in 2006, the program recently became officially known as the Robert A. Paul Emory Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI). It was the vision of Paul, the former dean of Emory College, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama that led to the formation of the Emory Tibet Partnership and the ETSI.

“It’s the way globalization should happen – taking the best of different traditions and creating something new,” says Eisen, one of many Emory science faculty who are involved with developing the ETSI.
Geshe Lhakdor, director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, looks at one of the early textbooks created for the program. Photo by Kay Hinton.

“The enthusiasm and the commitment of the science faculty has been a huge gift,” says Geshe Lobsang Negi, co-director of the ETSI.

“It’s amazing how smoothly the program has developed,” Negi says. “The pieces keep coming together as we need them.”

Emory faculty are developing special science curricula for the monastics, and teaching it every summer at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan community in exile. The faculty are working in conjunction with three Tibetan translators based at Emory, and five more at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala.

Prototype materials were created in English covering three areas: physics, neuroscience and biology and the life sciences. Work is under way to refine the curricula, based on feedback from faculty and the monastics as the program progresses. The long-term goal is to develop and translate five primers for each of these three areas, and eventually integrate the five-year science education program into Tibetan monasteries and nunneries throughout India. (The completed texts for the first-year primers for neuroscience and for biology and the life sciences were recently sent to the printers.)

Instruction of the first cohort of 30 monastics began in 2008. Six monks from this cohort are on the Emory campus this fall, to sharpen their English skills while gaining more exposure to Western-style science.

“We want to train monastics and other science educators in India to teach the curriculum themselves, so that the program becomes rooted in the community and doesn’t disappear,” Eisen says.

Each year, ETSI keeps expanding its reach. Its student body now includes 90 monks and nuns from 19 different monastic institutions.

“When ETSI first began, there was quite a bit of skepticism in the monastic community about the idea,” Negi says. “Now we’re seeing a 180 degree shift in that attitude. There is huge interest and enthusiasm among the major monasteries for making Western science part of their education.”

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Margaret Atwood on aliens and angels

What do flying rabbits and burning bushes have in common? They are both the subjects of upcoming talks by Margaret Atwood, at Emory October 24-26. A poet, environmental activist and novelist, Atwood is the author of the award-winning science-fiction books “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Oryx and Crake.”

Her latest novel, “The Year of the Flood,” imagines a country where genetic engineers have invented hybrid creatures like a lion-lamb mix, but most humans have been wiped out by an airborne plague.

Tickets are free but required for Atwood’s talks, the 10th series of the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature. Click here for details of the talks.

Atwood once wrote in the Guardian that science fiction often contains theological narrative. “Extraterrestrials take the place of angels, demons, fairies and saints, though it must be said that this last group is now making a comeback,” she wrote.

“Now we’re close to being in control of everything except earthquakes and the weather,” Atwood concluded in the article. “But it is still the human imagination, in all its diversity that directs what we do with our tools. Literature is an uttering, or outering, of the human imagination. It lets the shadowy forms of thought and feeling – heaven, hell, monsters, angels and all – out into the light, where we can take a good look at them and perhaps come to a better understanding of who we are and what we want, and what the limits to those wants may be. Understanding the imagination is no longer a pastime, but a necessity; because increasingly, if we can imagine it, we’ll be able to do it.”

What do you think? Does the imagination of writers and other artists have a place in science?

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Teaching evolution enters new era

A hypothetical young planet with a soupy mix of potentially life-forming chemicals pooling around the base of rocks. Drawing by NASA.

From fall to spring, Lakshmi Anumukonda is a science teacher at a metro-Atlanta high school. But in the summer, she dons a lab coat and becomes a molecular time traveler.

“It’s exciting,” she said. “We’re looking at chemical bonding and primitive elements that were present on prebiotic Earth.”

Anumukonda is exploring the origins of life some 3.5 billion years ago through the Center for Chemical Evolution. Several dozen middle- and high-school teachers are involved in the virtual center (formerly known as the Origins Project).

The roots of the Center for Chemical Evolution go back nearly a decade, growing out of collaborations between Emory and Georgia Tech. The latest phase of the venture launched this week, fueled by a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation and NASA. The center now encompasses 15 laboratories at institutions including Emory, Georgia Tech, the Scripps Research Institute, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Jackson State University, Spelman College, Furman University and the SETI Institute.

The center’s mission “gives me goose bumps,” said Matthew Platz, incoming director of the NSF Division of Chemistry. Platz recalled his own sense of wonder in high school, when he learned about the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment. That was the first demonstration that Earth’s primordial soup favored chemical reactions that could lead to organic compounds.

“I thought that was incredibly cool,” Platz said. “For more than 40 years, I’ve been waiting to learn the next step: how these chemical reactions created life on this planet. Now we have the technology to take on that question.”

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As the university scientists seek to unravel how life began, the high school teachers are seeking ways to connect their students to the discoveries.

“I’m learning so much,” Anumukonda said. “Our high school textbooks talk about the prebiotic soup experiment and then stop there. After that, we have no idea about the recent research.”

A supernova explodes, below, scattering elements of which we and the Earth are made into space. Credit: Hubble Heritage Team, Y. Chu, NASA.

This summer, she worked alongside scientists in the lab of David Lynn, chair of chemistry at Emory. Lynn leads research into molecular self-assembly and other forces of evolution, along with the center’s education and outreach component.

Anumukonda used her lab experience to develop lesson plans for the self-assembly of molecules. This fall, her high school students will prepare samples of sodium acetate, and then take a field trip to Emory, where they can see through an electron microscope how their samples crystallize under different conditions.

“It’s wonderful to learn about the potential for real-world applications,” said Robert Hairston, another high school science teacher who spent much of his summer in Lynn’s lab. He was intrigued by how the forces of evolution could be harnessed to help in drug design and genome engineering.

“When I bring my students to Emory in the fall, I want them to have questions already in mind,” Hairston said. “They’re going to be amazed when they see the work that is being done.”

Emory seeded the educational component of the center through an “Evolution Revolution” symposium, teacher workshops, theatrical performances, visual arts and public talks to bring people together to discuss the topic.

“Emory is the perfect place to experiment with ways to improve the public’s understanding of evolution,” Lynn said. “We’ve taken the lead in addressing an issue that is sometimes charged and fractious in the Southeast, when it should be unifying.”

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Fiction, facts and values of synthetic biology

“The story of Frankenstein is a scientific one,” says bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe, adding that the classic tale by Mary Shelley is “a product of the Christian cultural milieu that had underpinnings of suspicion and worry about technology.”

Wolpe, director of the Emory Center for Ethics, was one of the speakers at recent meetings on the future of synthetic biology, held by the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

What is synthetic biology? Are molecular biologists playing God? Should we be more excited or frightened by the potential to make life as we don’t know it? Click here to listen and watch as experts explain some of the challenges ahead, including communicating potential benefits and risks of synthetic biology to the public.

Emory President James Wagner is vice chair of the Presidential Commission, which plans more public meetings in November, on the Emory campus.

Illustration, above, from 1831 edition of "Frankenstein." Source: Wikipedia Commons.

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Faith, fervor and environmentalism

“If you really believe in trees and recycle paper, an economist will tell you that the long-run effect is going to be to reduce the number of trees,” said Emory economist Paul Rubin, during a guest appearance on the Canadian program “The Agenda” with Steve Paikin.

Rubin was part of a panel discussing the parallels between religious belief and devotion to the environment.

“Nuclear power is the cleanest power we know, and yet environmentalists will stand back in horror when they hear nuclear power,” Rubin said. “I think there are irrational aspects to environmentalism.”

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, called Rubin’s arguments “nonsense.” What do you think?

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Musical stars to appear at planetarium

Carina Nebula photo by NASA, ESA, M. Livio and Hubble 20th Anniversary Team.

The Emory Planetarium plans to celebrate the connections between Mother Earth and Father Sky with concerts under the stars. The performers are new age musician Jonn Serrie, a Billboard Top 10 artist, and Native American flutist John Winterhawk. The duo is known as "The Spirit Keepers."

Two performances will be held on Sunday, May 2, starting at 7:00 and 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 each, and may be reserved by emailing: spiritkeepersatemory@hotmail.com.

Earthy beliefs

Emory economist Paul Rubin marks Earth Day with an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal called “Environmentalism as Religion.” An excerpt from Rubin’s article:

Many observers have made the point that environmentalism is eerily close to a religious belief system, since it includes creation stories and ideas of original sin. But there is another sense in which environmentalism is becoming more and more like a religion: It provides its adherents with an identity. …

As the world becomes less religious, people can define themselves as being Green rather than being Christian or Jewish. …

There are no temples, but there are sacred structures. As I walk around the Emory campus, I am continually confronted with recycling bins, and instead of one trash can I am faced with several for different sorts of trash. Universities are centers of the environmental religion, and such structures are increasingly common. While people have worshipped many things, we may be the first to build shrines to garbage.

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The pursuit of happiness

From Emory Health Now and Emory Report:

The ancient Greeks batted around the subject of mental health and happiness, says Emory sociologist Corey Keyes. Some championed emotions and pleasures as a path to happiness, others tranquility, freedom and reflection.

But only during the last 10 to 15 years has there been a fresh focus on what good mental health, or happiness, means. “For me, the presence of good mental health and bringing together those two traditions of happiness, is to flourish,” Keyes says. “And to flourish means to feel good about life and to function well. But we have to start looking at people who feel good but aren’t functioning well, and that’s half of the adult American population.”

Keyes has studied the role of mental well-being in predictive health and disease prevention. He is affiliated with the Emory/Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute and “The Pursuit of Happiness” project run by Emory’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion.


Data suggests that lawyers have almost twice the rate of mood disorders and anxiety than other professionals, notes Edward Craighead, Emory chair of child psychiatry. He suspects that in law students, this is largely driven by high rates of dysfunctional perfectionism.

Craighead and Keyes recently participated in a forum for law students, to help them understand their risk for unhappiness.

“Students think that feeling good about life is far better than functioning well in it,” said Keyes, who urged professors and students to “prioritize flourishing” in their lives.

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The East-meets-West experiment

Tibetan prayer flags join the U.S. flag on the Quad during Tibet Week.

Word is spreading about the success of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative, said Geshe Lhakdor, director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, who is on campus for Tibet Week. “Now, when I travel around the world, people ask me about this initiative at Emory, and whether they can start something similar at their universities."

The program to bring the knowledge of Buddhist meditative and traditional healing practices to Westerners, and the knowledge of modern science to Tibetan monastics, is now in its third year.

As Geshe Lhakdor explained: “Spiritual traditions, like Buddhism, help us to cultivate a proper perspective and mental outlook. If you don’t have that, your problems can’t be solved through technology. We need both science and spirituality. That is extremely clear. We must walk together, share our knowledge, and help each other.”

The Emory-Tibet Partnership has inspired several innovative projects. A study abroad program in Dharamsala, India, immerses Emory students in Tibetan mind-body sciences. The Emory Mind-Body Program is investigating the mental health benefits of meditation. Emory biochemist Raymond Schinazi is heading a project to analyze Tibetan medical compounds for anti-viral and anti-cancer properties.

His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama plans to return to Emory Oct. 17-19 for a series of public talks, in his role as Emory’s Presidential Distinguished Professor.

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Where science meets spirituality
Tibetan monks contemplate science

Are labs creating mad scientists?

Photo by David Zeiger from Theater Emory's "Frankenstein."

“It seems scientists could use some religion, or at least some soul, or at least a moral compass to orientate themselves through the increasingly blurry lines that sketch out the day-to-day ethics of our labs and clinics,” writes biologist Arri Eisen in Religion Dispatches.

An excerpt from the article:

Army researcher Bruce Ivins commits suicide as the FBI closes in on him as a top suspect in the US anthrax mail deaths; University of Alabama biology professor Amy Bishop guns down her colleagues in a faculty meeting; top climate scientists’ hacked e-mail reveals childish bickering and apparent suppression of research that goes against global warming; Nobel-winning UN scientist Rajendra Pachauri accused of serious financial conflicts of interest; top university psychiatrists under Senate investigation for not disclosing significant cash payments from pharmaceutical companies whose drugs they are also researching.

Good Lord! Seems like hardly a week’s gone by lately without some new revelation about scientists gone mad or bad or both. What’s up?

First, top research scientists work in very intense environments that often ignore, or worse, reward narcissistic behaviors. In my quarter-century in science, I’ve seen many social behaviors (barely on the edge of what would normally be accepted) excused as long as those involved were bringing in a lot of money and prestige and publishing a lot of papers.

Second, and to add spice and challenge to this intense environment, the US Senate passed the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980. For the first time, universities and their researchers could financially benefit from their research and innovations. This is good, the reasoning went, because we not only want to keep our best minds in universities, but we also want scientists to reap the benefits of their own ideas. Of course, when big bucks are at stake humans have a tendency to behave badly and change priorities.

Read the full article.

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Can science keep the faith?

Breathe in, breathe out, be happy

Drawing by Erica Endicott shows Tibetan script for parts of the atom. The words were created for the Tibetan language by the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative.

Nascent Buddhist April Bogle writes in Emory Magazine:

"I want to be happy. Coming to the end of a terrible decade that has included two debilitating divorces, a wrenching child custody battle, and my beloved father’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, I’ve decided it’s time to figure out this happiness thing. ...

"The journey took me to Washington, D.C., where Buddhist monk and author Matthieu Ricard, actor Richard Gere, and Daniel Goleman, author of "Emotional Intelligence" and several other books on the science of the mind, were coming together to help raise money for the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. A joint project of the University and the Tibetan monastic academic system, the initiative is perhaps the boldest and most challenging program in the Emory-Tibet Partnership."

Read more in Emory Magazine about Bogle's first-hand experience with how Emory is applying modern Western science to ancient Eastern tradition -- and why Richard Gere thinks it will change the world.

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Richard Gere on Emory, Tibet and shyness
Dalai Lama supports science education
Where science meets spirituality