my mind on books

While I was working on my taxes the last few days, there was a big “Seeds of Compassion” Conference in Seattle (April 11-15, 2008) which fortunately has a great webcast of the event, that I’ve just been watching. The Dalai Lama was there, and the opening session is a discussion of “The Scientific Basis for Compassion,” similar to the Mind and Life Institute events. The focus appears to be on compassion in child development.

There is an associated wiki with a reading list and some interesting mind-map style sketches from the conference.

Some of the participants also contributed to the 2001 book Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature, one of the Mind and Life Institute books.

I also saw that the Dalai Lama is at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, today (April 16) for Mind and Life XVI, Investigating the Mind-Body Connection: The Science and Clinical Applications of Meditation, which is also supposed to have a webcast, but I wasn’t able to connect to that one today.