The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Waisman Center will welcome His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama to its public grand-opening celebration Saturday-Sunday, May 15-16.

UW-Madison neuroscientist Richard Davidson established the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) to scientifically determine how healthy qualities of mind develop and to investigate interventions to cultivate those qualities in children and adults.

The Dalai Lama will join Davidson in a public dialogue at 2:15 p.m. on Sunday, May 16, at Madison's Overture Center for the Arts. Daniel Goleman, best-selling author of "Emotional Intelligence" and "Ecological Intelligence" will moderate the conversation, "Investigating Healthy Minds." Gov. Jim Doyle will deliver opening remarks, followed by a special musical performance by Madison Youth Choirs.

Tickets for this event are free and will be available to the public in mid-April. The conversation also will be available via live Web cast at http://www.investigatinghealthyminds.org.

The grand-opening weekend also includes a presentation by Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. His talk, "Mindfulness, Meditation and Health: Transformation and Healing
at the Confluence of Science and Dharma," will be available on the CIHM's Web site shortly following the event.

=

This will be the second time that the Dalai Lama has visited the university to discuss the work of Prof Davidson. It is interesting to see the different stances taken by Buddhists towards the neurosciences compared to the fideist monotheist religions obsessed with their metaphysical beliefs and the search for a 'God spot'. When Hellenic philosophy was trampled upon by Christianity the slogan "know thyself" was supplanted with "believe me"; time to go back to the former, even if that means through a neuro-buddhist collaboration. Indeed, the exchange of ideas between Greek and Indian philosophers 2,000 years ago and beyond has not been fully written, with only glimpses so far.