For a Week, D.C. Focuses on Meditation

Winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama has long been interested in science and in demonstrating through research that meditation can cause the brain to generate feelings of compassion. In 1987, he and R. Adam Engle, a Colorado-based lawyer and entrepreneur, co-founded the Mind and Life Institute, which has regularly sponsored discussions between scientists and meditators aimed at finding "a way for Buddhism and science to be in dialogue, share findings and collaborate," Engle said.

Buddhism is uniquely well suited to this dialogue, Engle added, because "while it is a path of liberation, [it] is not based on a theology or belief. It does not postulate a supreme being."

At the conference at Constitution Hall, which is co-sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute, Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins, scientists will explain the results of clinical trials and research studies suggesting that meditation not only relieves stress but may also produce long-term changes in the workings of the brain. The meditation experts at the conference, based on what their tradition teaches about the mind-brain-body connection, will help identify new lines of research.

About 2,000 people have bought tickets to the event, which is open to the public and, Engle said, will be conducted "at a level that non-scientists can understand."

Georgetown President John J. DeGioia will introduce the Dalai Lama at the conference's opening. The university is co-hosting the event "because it goes to the heart of what Georgetown is about, which is to explore the intersection of science and religion," said Aviad Haramati, professor of physiology at Georgetown Medical School.

Applying scientific methods to the study of religious practices, he added, "isn't something people need to fear. Quite the contrary."

Panelists will include neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin, who reported on his study of meditating Tibetan monks a year ago in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Davidson, who conducted his experiment in collaboration with the Dalai Lama, found that during meditation, the monks' brains produced unusually high rates of gamma waves in the left prefrontal cortex, an area just behind the forehead that is associated with happiness and positive thoughts and emotions. Even before they started meditating, the monks had considerably more gamma-wave activity than a control group, he said.

He said the findings showed that the monks' mental practice "is having an effect on the brain in the same way golf or tennis practice will enhance performance."

The experiment drew intense interest from scientists, although many remain skeptical.

"From a scientific viewpoint, all that the Davidson article suggests is that individuals trained in meditation have altered brain wave patterns during meditation when compared to normal individuals. However, that is not striking, since any act of training alters activity in the brain," Sridhar Raghavachari, assistant professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical School, wrote in an e-mail. He compared it to the change in brain activity that occurs when someone learns to ride a bicycle or play the piano.

The workshops and talks to be held as part of Meditate DC were organized by local meditation activists, such as the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, after they became aware of the Dalai Lama's planned trip to Washington.

One of the events is a presentation Friday night at Washington National Cathedral titled "Meditation on the Move From Monastery to Lab to Main Street." Among the speakers will be the Rev. Thomas Keating, a Catholic priest who is a prominent teacher of "centering prayer," a type of contemplation in which a person quietly repeats a word such as "amen" or "Jesus" as a method of becoming more receptive to God's presence.

Tomorrow afternoon, Bethesda psychotherapist and meditation teacher Tara Brach will give a free public presentation at the Library of Congress.

A full schedule of events is available at http://www.meditatedc.org .

Washington is a particularly stressful city in need of meditation, said District resident Hugh Byrne, an immigration consultant and meditation trainer involved in the week's activities.

"You have the federal government here. You have the September 2001 attacks," Byrne said. "There is a lot of pressure to achieve, to produce, to succeed. . . . Having a way of coming back to ourselves, coming back to the present . . . can be a beneficial approach."