Promoting Human Development Part II - Mind & Life Institute

Dialogue 26|Session 24

Overview

This session presented a number of training programs that have been developed using contemplative practices in educational and applied settings to encourage human flourishing at its highest level. Geshe Lobsang Negi discussed his work developing and teaching Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), a secular program that seeks to enhance prosocial skills, build character, and enhance basic human capacities for compassion, connection, and forgiveness. Geshe Lobsang shared positive findings from research on the effects of CBCT on biological, psychological and behavioral processes, and will discuss implications for such trainings on individual and social levels. Dr. James Doty spoke on CCT (Compassion Cultivation Training), a standardized compassion training program developed at Stanford University, and research findings so far on its effects. Situating this initiative at Stanford University within its larger context, Jim also spoke on the implications of the current scientific research in compassion and altruism for our understanding of human behavior, education and clinical therapeutic applications. Finally, Aaron Stern presented about his work with The Academy for the Love of Learning, which promotes a model for transformative learning that facilitates the emergence of a natural, shared, secular-based moral and ethical framework for learning and human engagement. Stern discussed the Academy’s core program, Leading by Being, which is the fullest expression of this model.

Dialogue 26
27 sessions
January 21, 2013
Drepung Monastery, Mundgod, India
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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.

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