EUGENE, Ore. - The Lane Community College Peace Center and the Palmo Center for Peace and Education are honored to announce that Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., highly acclaimed thought leader and the longtime English translator for the Dalai Lama, will present "Fearlessness and Compassion: Cultivating the Courage to Transform Our Lives and Our World," on Sunday, May 10, from 3:30-5:30 p.m., in the Ragozzino Hall, Building 6, LCC main campus, 4000 E. 30th Avenue in Eugene.
Two years ago, on May 10, 2013, the Palmo Center for Peace and Education along with the University of Oregon hosted international luminary, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, at Mathew Knight arena. The Dalai Lama spoke on "The Path to Peace and Happiness in the Global Society" expressing the importance of cultivating compassion in our quest for peace and happiness. His Holiness encouraged and inspired more than fourteen thousand participants to make beneficial impacts in their communities towards environmental stewardship, interfaith dialogue, and bringing about a more compassionate world. Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., was humbly by the Dalai Lama's side at every moment ready to finish a sentence or supply a translation.
Geshe Thupten Jinpa is now returning to Eugene to further our understanding of how powerful compassion can be, not just for others, but also for our own wellbeing. Geshe Thupten Jinpa will address questions commonly associated with compassion: Can compassion be cultivated? Shouldn't we be worried about the dangers of "compassion fatigue," the fear of being taken advantage of, or compromising our ambitions?
In Geshe Jinpa's afternoon presentation, "Fearlessness and Compassion: Cultivating the Courage to Transform Ourselves and Our World," Geshe Jinpa will share practical skills for developing the courage to be compassionate. Regardless of our compassionate ideals and impulses, as educators, doctors, therapists, business leaders, activists, and parents, we often resist this powerful instinct, even though it correlates strongly with happiness, stress reduction, and a true sense of purpose. In fact, extensive research shows that being compassionate can lead to better health and a longer life. Using new science and psychology sourced from both contemporary Western and classical Buddhist sources, Jinpa shows us how to train not only our "compassion" muscle, but also our "self-compassion" muscle.
Thupten Jinpa will teach, debate, and inspire his audiences, with remarkable stories of transformations that have resulted from the practice of compassion, including the author's extraordinary personal experience—from a monastery in India to fatherhood in Montreal, and all the lessons learned in between.
Tickets for the event are available online at:
https://www.applyweb.com/public/register?s=25L02AAK and at Star Gate, 1372 Willamette Street, Eugene. Students admitted free; general admission tickets are $15 and VIP reservations are $50.
Additional event information is online at:
http://www.lanecc.edu/peacecenter
About the Speaker—
Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., is a former monk and holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, where he also worked as a research fellow. Jinpa has been the principal English translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama for nearly three decades and has translated and edited numerous books for the Dalai Lama, including the New York Times Bestseller Ethics for the New Millennium, Beyond Religion, and Transforming the Mind. Jinpa is an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University, Montreal and Chairman of the Mind and Life Institute, which is dedicated to promoting dialogues and collaborations between the sciences and contemplative knowledge, especially Buddhism.
Geshe Jinpa is the author of the forthcoming book, "A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives" (Avery, $25.95; Hardcover). As the creator of the revolutionary Compassion Cultivation Training program at Stanford University School of Medicine, Jinpa also draws upon his childhood as a Tibetan, his many years in monasteries in India, and the time he has spent alongside His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself in this groundbreaking book.
About the Lane Community College Peace Center and the Palmo Center for Peace and Education—
In addition to being the anniversary of His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 2013 historic visit to Eugene, Geshe Thupten Jinpa will be in speaking in Eugene on Mother's Day.
This seems especially appropriate given that fact that the genuine seed of compassion is rooted in one's mother. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama himself spoke highly of the love and affection that he received as a child, attributing whatever sense of compassion he has to his mother. Furthermore, he encouraged women to take a more active role as leaders of the world to foster compassion in all of our affairs.
The Lane Community College Peace Center and The Palmo Center for Peace and Education joins Geshe Jinpa in celebrating the importance (and popularity) of the practices of compassion and mindfulness, in Buddhist and secular contexts, and its evidence-based benefits for person health and wellbeing including clinical interventions with populations suffering the effects of trauma, depression, disease, anger, eating disorders and more. In fact, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has funded over 5,000 grants for research in mindfulness, making it one of fastest growing topics in scientific research. In fact, an Amazon.com search for books on mindfulness returns over 11,000 results.
Building upon the foundation of mindfulness research, Lane Community College Peace Center and The Palmo Center for Peace and Education predicts that, along with the Dalai Lama, Thupten Jinpa, and others, the study, research and practice of compassion is the next step, with the potential to unleash tremendous individual and social benefits.
Over the past three years the two Peace Centers have established a mutual relationship with the goal to offer events that educate the heart and the mind by fostering compassion through creative learning, facilitating research and its application, and connecting people and ideas.
The Lane Peace Center was established in 2005 to meet the clear need to teach peace in a world beset by war, racism, poverty, and environmental destruction. The Peace Center's mission is to utilize education to foster peace in ourselves, our community, nation and world. The Center understands that peace is rooted in social, economic, political, racial and environmental justice.
The Palmo Center for Peace & Education http://palmocenter.org, a non-sectarian educational center was created to serve the three major commitments of His Holiness the Dalai Lama: the promotion of basic human values and secular ethics in the interest of human happiness; the fostering of inter-religious harmony; and the preservation of the endangered Tibetan Buddhist culture. The center is the vision of Venerable Naljorma Jangchup Palmo, affectionately know as Amala, and her honorable sons, His Eminence Ngalo Rinpoche and Venerable Jigme Rinpoche. This vision was shared with His Holiness the Dalai Lama when the center hosted His Holiness here in Eugene Oregon, May 2013. His Holiness gave his blessings to the inception of the center and agreed to return to consecrate and inaugurate the center when it is completed.
Lane Community College Peace Center: http://www.lanecc.edu/peacecenter
Palmo Center for Peace and Education: http://palmocenter.org
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