Mind Games: The Dalai Lama Takes Harvard
This is a good article on the Dalai Lama’s visit to Harvard. He was visiting to be a part of a conference on the changes that meditation and mindfulness techniques are bringing to psychology. There is one portion of this report from Time Online that I found informative for our denomination and the changes we are living through with the MACC report and those to the Order of Ministry.
Other researchers also seemed to puzzle the Dalai Lama. Conference organizer Christopher Germer, author of the forthcoming book The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself From Destructive Thoughts and Emotions, asked His Holiness whether he would “lead us in a brief meditation that the therapists in this room could practice at home to cultivate compassion for themselves as well as for their patients.” The Dalai Lama shot him a skeptical look that got everyone laughing. He was sweet about it, but meditation isn’t a “brief” trick.
As I think about all the borrowed ancient practices, music fads, new church, emergent, “tricks” that Discipledom has tried, endured, and improved a few during the last two decades I think the Dalai Lama’s words are informative for our denomination. Spirituality isn’t a quick fix. New Churches are not a fix to decreasing membership, decreasing funding, or a missional way to keep up with the Baptists. Like mindfulness and meditation, our way of practicing faith is something a person does, a discipline we practice, for a lifetime. It is a way of living and seeing the world. Our western culture looks for the quick fix, next spiritual high, but really, we know it doesn’t work that way for the long term.
Read the entire article to learn about how the Dalai Lama puzzled the Harvard crowd.