The Institute of Buddhist Studies provides graduate level education in the entirety of the Buddhist tradition with specialized instruction supporting Jodo Shinshu Buddhist ministry.
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Make your next Facebook status: "Just meditated to ensure that I care about all you people."
A recent study, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, has found that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than they were in 1979, with the steepest decline coming in the last 10 years. From Keith O'Brien at the Boston Globe, “The empathy deficit: Even as they become more connected, young people are caring less about others”: Perhaps more than any other characteristic, one’s capacity for empathic concern dictates how much one cares about others. Those who score high in empathic concern, according to past research, are more likely to return incorrect change to a cashier, let someone else ahead of them in line, carry a stranger’s belongings, give money to a homeless person, volunteer, donate to a charity, look after a friend’s pet or plant, or even live on a vegetarian diet. And what’s alarming, Konrath said, is that empathic concern has fallen more than any other aspect of empathy. Between 1979 and 2009, according to the new research, empathic concern dropped 48 percent. The results have led to the obvious follow-up questions: What cultural changes may have shaped children in the 1980s and ’90s, giving rise to a less empathetic generation? Why do we care less? And is there any way we can reverse the trend? Read the rest of “The empathy deficit” here. Although they don’t mention this in this article, other recent studies suggest that meditation works as a way to reverse this trend. This from a 2008 msnbc.com article “Neuroscience may explain the Dalai Lama: A new study reveals that meditation may increase empathy, benevolence”: More » -
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Dalai Lama donates $50,000 to Wisconsin research center
Today's New York Times announced the Dalai Lama's generous financial gift to the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, a research institute in Madison, Wisconsin: The Tibetan spiritual leader recently announced plans to donate $50,000 to the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at Madison, a new research lab founded by Dr. Davidson, which is studying whether meditation can promote compassion and kindness. The center has just started a project to teach meditation skills to fifth graders in Madison — focusing on charitable thoughts toward loved ones, strangers, even enemies. More » -
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Meet the doctor who wants to measure your consciousness
Dr. Giulio Tononi has devoted his life's work to developing a theory of consciousness. A distinguished chair in consciousness science at the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Tononi's interest in consciousness began when he was a teenager. According to a recent profile published in the New York Times, Dr. Tononi was "initially interested in ethics, but he decided that questions of personal responsibility depended on our consciousness of our own actions. So he would have to figure out consciousness first. 'I’ve been stuck with this thing for most of my life,' he said." Now, after years of research (sometimes even using himself as the test subject), Dr. More » -
Buddhism's crumbling past
Not to be an alarmist, but preserving Buddhism's past is an increasingly challenging endeavor. And while the truth of impermanence is fundamental to the Buddhist teachiings, no one said it's easy. Bamiyan was a heartbreaker, and recent news that the Chinese may blow up the ancient ruins of a newly discovered monastery in order to mine for copper raised another alarm. More »
