Emotional States and Health

Dialogue 3|Session 7

Emotional States and Health

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Overview

The session explores whether physical health can provide a secular basis for ethical living by showing how harmful and beneficial states of mind affect the body. Lee Yearley begins with Thomas Aquinas’s account of virtues and vices, describing how compassion, courage, wisdom, justice, moderation, faith, hope, and charity guide human flourishing, while anger, envy, greed, pride, and spiritual apathy can undermine it. Daniel Goleman then reviews early scientific research suggesting that chronic anger, depression, stress, repression, pessimism, helplessness, and social isolation are associated with poorer immune function, illness, and earlier death, while calm, optimism, confidence, social connection, joy, and loving-kindness may support recovery and longevity. He proposes that these findings could encourage ethical behavior among people without religious beliefs by showing that caring for others also benefits oneself. The discussion concludes with an important caution that this research was still young, relied largely on broad biological measurements, and could suggest relationships without always proving direct causation.

Speakers

Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman, PhD, is a psychologist and science writer best-known for his worldwide best-seller Emotional Intelligence, published in 40 languages. He taught at Harvard University before becoming an editor and journalist, covering the brain and behavioral science for the New York Times. He is a co-founder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning at the University of Illinois, and co-director of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. For two years he traveled in India studying Buddhist and other spiritual systems of psychology, the first year as a Harvard Traveling Fellow, the second as a Research Fellow of the Social Science Research Council. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has received many awards for his writing. He is the author of numerous books, including The Meditative Mind, Destructive Emotions, Social Intelligence, and, most recently, Ecological Intelligence.

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His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Tenzin Gyatso, the14th Dalai Lama, is the leader of Tibetan Buddhism and a spiritual leader revered worldwide. He was born on July 6, 1935, in a small village called Taktser in northeastern Tibet. Born to a peasant family, he was recognized at the age of two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lamas are manifestations of the Buddha of Compassion, who choose to reincarnate for the purpose of serving human beings. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1989, he is universally respected as a spokesman for the compassionate and peaceful resolution of human conflict. He has traveled extensively, speaking on subjects including universal responsibility, love, compassion and kindness. Less well known is his intense personal interest in the sciences; he has said that if he were not a monk, he would have liked to be an engineer. As a youth in Lhasa it was he who was called on to fix broken machinery in the Potala Palace, be it a clock or a car. He has a vigorous interest in learning the newest developments in science, and brings to bear both a voice for the humanistic implications of the findings, and a high degree of intuitive methodological sophistication.

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Lee Yearley

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