![]() The project is designed for monks and nuns to learn science and for us to learn Buddhism and Tibetan culture, but also for us to simultaneously build the capacity for the Tibetans eventually to take over the science teaching and learning. We just completed our second year of a five-year pilot with 91 monks and nuns. Unlike for Westerners, it is relatively common for Tibetans to become monks (even today, 1 in 10 Tibetans do). Since the Dalai Lama was forced from China in 1959, India has graciously hosted him, the Tibetan government in exile, and thousands of Tibetans, including many monastics in new monasteries and nunneries. Several years ago, His Holiness the Dalai Lama requested that Emory University educators develop a modern science curriculum to eventually become part of the regular centuries-old curriculum of all Tibetan Buddhist monks in India. Even better, and ironically, this engagement is driven by scientists the very folks many blame for hammering personal belief out of intellectual conversation in the West in the first place. ![]() So, it’s refreshing to be part of a project, an experiment really, in which academics are actively engaging religious tradition and belief. To me this is an odd and disturbing social conundrum: let’s take our best thinkers and idea-people, theorizers, and policy developers and eradicate any discussion of personal belief, religion, or spirituality from their official discourse. But actually being religious or even discussing personal beliefs or spirituality at all, is rare and, if anything, discouraged. Of course academics have no problem studying religion and raising big money to establish endowed chairs, centers, and institutes devoted to just that. Religion often has a hard time of it, especially among academics, and especially among scientists. He sits there in Dharamsala, India, like his Buddhist monk colleagues, cross-legged on the floor in maroon robes, six hours a day learning science from a tall white Jewish guy from North Carolina. ![]() “Do bacteria require light?” Tashi, one of my best students, wants to know.
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