PREFACE
The talks published here were originally delivered at a symposium called Mind
Science: A Dialogue between East and West. Part of a program of Harvard Medical
Schools Department of Continuing Medical Education, the symposium took place
on March 24, 1991, at the Kresge Auditorium, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, under the joint aupices of the Mind/Body Medical
Institute and Tibet House New York. It gathered together experts from the
fields of medicine, psychiatry, psychobiology, neurobiology, education,
comparative religion and Indo-Tibetan Buddhism in open dialogue and exchange on
the various concepts, approaches and understanding, East and West, of the
science of mind. Guest of honor was His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate.
The symposium celebrated more than a decade of collaborative research between
the Tibetan Buddhist community and Harvard Medical School. This work had its
genesis on October 18, 1979, when I met with His Holiness the Dalai Lama during
his first visit to Harvard University. On this occasion, I had explained our
laboratorys experiments on the physiological effects of simple meditative
techniques, and requested permission to study several of the advanced
meditative techniques of Tibetan Buddhism.
The rationale was straightforward: if simple meditative techniques resulted
in such notable physiological changes as decreased metabolism, heart rate,
blood pressure and rate of breathing, as well as distinctive brainwave
patterns, what could the effects of advanced meditative techniques be? Could
they possibly demonstrate even more striking mind/body interactions? We had
been attempting to investigate these advanced techniques for several years, but
could find no practitioners who would consent to be studiedthey had little
interest in the scientific documentation of their practices.
I had just finished reading Alexandra David-Neels Magic and Mystery of
Tibet, which contained her early-twentieth-century accounts of gTum-mo yoga
being performed by Tibetan Buddhist monks. In this practice, an internal heat,
which is generated for religious purposes, has demonstrable effects on the
body. David-Neel described what she saw in a midwinter encounter:
The neophytes sit on the ground, cross-legged and naked. Sheets are dipped in
the icy water, each man wraps himself in one of them and must dry it on his
body. As soon as the sheet has become dry, it is again dipped in the water and
placed on the novices body to be dried as before. The operation goes on [in]
that fashion until daybreak. Then he who has dried the largest number of sheets
is acknowledged the winner of the competition.
Besides drying wet sheets on ones body, there exist various other tests to
ascertain the degree of heat which the neophyte is able to radiate. One of
these tests consists in sitting in the snow. The quantity of snow melted under
the man and the distance at which it melts around him are taken as measures of
his ability.1
I hoped that with the permission of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, I would be
allowed access to study the remarkable alleged mind/body effects of gTum-mo.
Our October 1979 meeting place took place in the living room of the
Dana-Palmer House in Cambridge, an 1823 building in which William James had
lived and where he is believed to have conceived his idea of pluralistic
universe. After I had explained my rationale for requesting to study
practitioners of gTum-mo, His Holiness replied, It will be very difficult to
measure these abilities. The people who practice this meditation do so for
religious purposes. It must be experienced in order to feel the benefits. You
must experience it first. Then he added, Still, our culture is undergoing
many changes. We have been forced out of our homeland into exile...perhaps
there is some worth in allowing this study to be done.
Several months later I received a letter from His Holinesss office inviting
us to study three gTum-mo practitioners who lived near Dharamsala, India. Some
of the successful and striking results of these studies and others are
described in this book. We determined through scientifically-based
investigations that advanced meditative techniques do indeed lead to profound,
hitherto unrecognized human mind/body capacities.
In the autumn of 1990, we believe that it was time to take stock of where
these experiments had brought us, and thus the Mind Science Symposium ws
conceived. His Holiness agreed to attend, and the dialoque was further expanded
to embrace Eastern and Western concepts of the mind.
I am grateful to all those who attended and made the symposium such a succes.
My hope is that it will not only act as a watershade for the decade of fruitful
mind science interactions between East and West, but also point to future
advances in our continuing collaboration.
Herbert Benson M.D.
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School;
President, Mind/Body Medical Institute
Boston, 1991
Komunitas Praktik Dharmajala mengundang Saudara/I seDharma tuk bersama
Belajar, Berlatih & Berbagi pada : MALAM PRAKTIK NGONDRO Rabu,
11 April 2007
Pukul 19.00 Selesai
Vihara Ekayana Grha, Baktisala Utama
Jl.Mangga 2 No.8 Tj.Duren,Jakbar
Difasilitasi oleh Konchok Tashi
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