Session 3 - Comments from the Dalai Lama with Panelists and Audience Q&A - Mind & Life Institute

Dialogue 16|Session 3

Overview

This session focuses on the practical role of compassion in medicine, with the Dalai Lama emphasizing that trust between patients and clinicians depends not only on medical expertise but also on genuine concern, affection, responsibility, and a compassionate attitude that can help patients cope with pain and illness. He describes health care itself as an “act of compassion,” arguing that recognizing the nobility and service inherent in caring professions can sustain clinicians’ motivation, joy, and sense of fulfillment while also contributing to their own happiness. The discussion broadens to secular methods for cultivating compassion, the idea of strengthening a kind of psychological “immune system” against anger, hatred, suspicion, and anxiety, and the importance of introducing compassion training into education—especially medical education—while carefully studying which methods are broadly applicable. In exchanges with Mayo physicians, the Dalai Lama stresses that compassion, forgiveness, resilience, and inner transformation develop gradually rather than instantly, and that shifting attention from one’s own suffering toward the suffering of others can sometimes help restore perspective and deepen compassion. He concludes by describing practical ways of handling distress: distinguishing problems that can be solved from those that cannot, opposing harmful actions while maintaining compassion for the person, and using practices such as tonglen—giving happiness and taking in others’ suffering—to cultivate steadiness, forgiveness, and compassionate concern.

Dialogue 16
4 sessions
April 16, 2008
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota
ML16_Session-3.stamped_doc |docx|
share

Speakers

dialogues

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.

dialogues

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.

Bio dialogues

dialogues