If you want to actually look into esoteric beliefs about whether there is more to meditation than lowering stress, I’d suggest you investigage serious practitioners instead. For example, the following extract is fairly ‘new-agey’ but can be read as purely commonsensical:

Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us. When our community is in a state of peace, it can share that peace with neighboring communities, and so on. When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. And there are ways in which we can consciously work to develop feelings of love and kindness. For some of us, the most effective way to do so is through religious practice. For others it may be non-religious practices. What is important is that we each make a sincere effort to take our responsibility for each other and for the natural environment we live in seriously.

Given that it was a Noble Peace Prize acceptance lecture, keeping it more exoteric makes sense. The same tradition has much more overtly esoteric teachings however, such as described by Geshe Michael Roach in the Tantra courses, the book The Diamond Cutter : The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life, or the Dalai Lama’s book Advice on Dying: And Living a Better Life. Taken in that light, the above paragraph can be interpreted differently as well.

I guess all I’m getting at is that your post seems to be dismissive of the effects of meditation because of somewhat over-enthusiastic people and plainly dodgy groups. There are others who deserve more respectful investigation.

Enjoy,

Ralf

PS I assume you’ve heard about the Buddhist who refused novacaine during root canal work, wanting to transcend dental medication? :-) R.

I’d assume that the Talent Show’s willingness to actually research certain issues and topics before criticizing them or offering opinions would be considered an asset.

anyway, when you mentioned his department of peace and homeland security it reminded me of when he first introduced the idea of a dept of peace to congress. i wrote good ol dana rohrbacher and told him to jump on board. he wrote back to me saying we already have a department of peace and it’s called the department of homeland security.

I have heard the structure DNA resembles a “sloppy” program with lots of patches, rather than a “streamlined” program. As an electrical engineer, I have worked firsthand with PLC programs that have been modified and re-modified. Typically, a modified program is not as streamlined as it could be if designed from the ground up. If the DNA program is truly a patchwork then it is not unreasonable to accept that it has had many modifications, and the theory of evolution is consistent with such a result.

One may assert that the Bible states that “God created man” on a particular day and not “God created a highly dynamic process of organic chemistry that resulted in the evolution of man over thousands and thousands of years”. As a Catholic, I have been taught that the Church does not teach a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible. Thus, I need not believe that many early Hebrews lived to be hundreds of years old, but simply that the were blessed by God (long life was recognized by the Hebrews as an indication of God’s favor). While I have not discussed the Church’s position on creationism in a formal study group, I don’t believe it is inconsistent for me to believe that the story of creation was written in a manner that could be understood by the population at that time it was written, but that reality was a more complex dynamic.