Future Directions (In Tibetan) Part II - Mind & Life Institute

Dialogue 26|Session 27

Overview

The Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI), a collaborative undertaking between Emory University and the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA), was established in 2006 in order to fulfill a long-standing vision of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to bring modern science into the core curriculum of Tibetan monastic institutions. The first phase of this program involved the development of a five-year curriculum and supporting scientific textbooks and materials in three scientific disciplines: physics/astronomy, life sciences/biology, and neuroscience. The first cohort of monastics graduated in 2012, and the second cohort will graduate in 2013. The implementation phase of the program, which will begin in the summer of 2014, involves integrating this program into the curriculum of the major Tibetan monastic institutions. In August 2012, the Geluk International Foundation voted unanimously to integrate the ETSI science program into the Geluk University curriculum. Integrating a modern science curriculum into this centuries-old monastic education program is unprecedented and will require significant reorganization of the existing monastic curriculum for participating institutions. Geshe Lhakdor and Geshe Lobsang Negi, director of LTWA and ETSI, respectively, outlined the implementation phase of ETSI and discussed the steps that will be taken to carry out this groundbreaking educational initiative.

Dialogue 26
27 sessions
January 22, 2013
Drepung Monastery, Mundgod, India
share

Speakers

Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD, is the founder and director of Drepung Loseling Monastery, Inc., in Atlanta, GA, and a Senior Lecturer in Emory University’s Department of Religion. He also serves as director of the Emory-Tibet Partnership, a multi- dimensional initiative founded in 1998 to bring together the foremost contributions of the Western scholastic tradition and the Tibetan Buddhist sciences of mind and healing. In this capacity, he serves as co-director of both the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative and the Emory Collaborative for Contemplative Studies. He also developed Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), a compassion meditation program that is currently utilized in a number of research studies, including an NIH-funded study examining the efficacy of compassion meditation on the experience of depression. Geshe Lobsang, a former monk, was born in Kinnaur, a small Himalayan kingdom adjoining Tibet. He began his monastic training at The Institute of Buddhist Dialectics and continued his education at Drepung Loseling Monastery in South India, where he received his Geshe Lharampa degree, the highest academic degree granted in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, in Geshe Dadul Namgyal Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi 1994. Gehse Lobsang completed his PhD at Emory University in 1999; his interdisciplinary dissertation centered on traditional Buddhist and contemporary Western approaches to emotions and their impact on wellness.

dialogues