--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Buck" <dhamiltony2k5@...> wrote:
>
> Yep, Phil Goldberg.
> It was interesting how upset he was with the Catholics
> for taking from TM to teach their 'Centering Prayer'
> without attribution. I guess it is the dishonesty in
> so doing.
Proprietary thinking.
Compare and contrast to a technique I found myself
writing about the other day, called Cognitively-Based
Compassion Training (CBCT), which includes the practice
of mindfulness meditation. It is a secularized form of
meditation practices developed at Emory University and
their School Of Medicine's Emory-Tibet Partnership, and
is based on the work of a real Tibetan lama, Lobsang
Tenzin Negi. The practice draws upon the lojong ("mind
training" or "thought transformation") tradition of
Tibetan Buddhism. It's based on the idea that self-
centered thinking and behavior causes distress and
dis-ease, whereas other-centered, altruistic, or
empathic thinking creates benefits to oneself and
to others.
And therein lies the difference. CBCT has been shown in
now dozens of clinical trials to produce tremendous
benefits to those practicing it. But neither Emory nor
Lobsang Tenzin Negi benefits from it financially. They
secularized a useful set of techniques and *gave them
away for free*.
As I've said many times, what is the *actual* mindset
of an organization that believes it has invented the
"solution to all problems" that then insists on
profiting from that invention forever -- at *hugely*
inflated prices -- rather than making it available
to as many people as possible? What is the mindset
that would view another organization's teachings and
feel *upset* about them borrowing a few useful things
from their own?
Seems to me that if an org had really invented a set
of techniques that they felt would benefit people,
and that org had a real desire *to* benefit people,
they'd make them available, for free if necessary.
To hang onto them as if the techniques were their
*property*, and *have* to be paid for or "attributed?"
That strikes me as kinda weird.
