If you were chattering instead of attending to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s visit to the U.S. last week, I can begin to interpret it for you. (Sounds like he had a cold, unfortunately; one reporter complained that he kept blowing his nose into his microphone.) If any readers in Washington D.C. heard him speak on November 13th (16 thousand people were in the MCI stadium!), please post and tell us more!

It appears that the mostly-Chinese neuroscientist protesters did not spoil His Holiness’s opportunity to repeat his belief that Buddhist practice and compassionate philosophy have much to contribute in our understanding of the human brain.

He had time to appear on Larry King Live, something he’s done at last twice before, and I’ll send you the link to the transcript as soon as CNN puts it up.

You will also find the whole text of a speech he gave November 12th on the MindandLife.org website. This address is something I encourage you to print out and take to bed with a highlighting pen (and your hot water bottle).

What follows is the last few paragraphs of his salient remarks:

Today, I believe that humanity is at a critical crossroad. The radical advances that took place in neuroscience and particularly in genetics towards the end of the twentieth century have led to a new era in human history. Our knowledge of the human brain and body at the cellular and genetic level, with the consequent technological possibilities offered for genetic manipulation, has reached such a stage that the ethical challenges of these scientific advances are enormous. It is all too evident that our moral thinking simply has not been able to keep pace with such rapid progress in our acquisition of knowledge and power.

Yet the ramifications of these new findings and their applications are so far-reaching that they relate to the very conception of human nature and the preservation of the human species. So it is no longer adequate to adopt the view that our responsibility as a society is to simply further scientific knowledge and enhance technological power, and think that the choice of what to do with this knowledge and power should be left in the hands of the individual.

We must find a way of bringing fundamental humanitarian and ethical considerations to bear upon the direction of scientific development, especially in the life sciences. By invoking fundamental ethical principles, I am not advocating a fusion of religious ethics and scientific inquiry. Rather, I am speaking of what I call ‘secular ethics’ that embrace the key ethical principles, such as compassion, tolerance, a sense of caring, consideration of others, and the responsible use of knowledge and power – principles that transcend the barriers between religious believers and non-believers, and followers of this religion or that religion.

I personally like to imagine all human activities, including science, as individual fingers of a palm. So long as each of these fingers is connected with the palm of basic human empathy and altruism, they will continue to serve the well-being of humanity.

We are living in truly one world. Modern economy, electronic media, international tourism, as well as the environmental problems, all remind us on a daily basis how deeply interconnected the world has become today. Scientific communities play a vitally important role in this interconnected world. For whatever historical reasons, today the scientists enjoy great respect and trust within society, much more so than my own discipline of philosophy and religion. I appeal to scientists to bring into their professional work the dictates of the fundamental ethical principles we all share as human beings.