Emory Program Expands Monastic Education

By Shomial Ahmad

Atlanta, GA – Emory University is taking part in an educational project to teach science to Tibetan monks and nuns. This Sunday during his visit to Atlanta, the Dalai Lama will observe the progress of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. WABE's Shomial Ahmad reports.

There's a bunch of pre-med students and a couple of Tibetan monks in Alex Escobar's introductory biology class. A topic for today's class: cell structure.

"We've been talking about the extracellular matrix."

The main goal of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative is to develop science curriculum and textbooks for monastic education. Escobar's taught science to Tibetan monks and nuns in India. In the third year of the program, Escobar's seen some progress with the monks.

"They've already started teaching this material to other individuals, to other monks, as well as doing presentations to the village of Dharamsala."

It was the Dalai Lama's vision to expand the monastic curriculum. When he visits Atlanta in the coming week, he'll be observing the progress of a program that bridges cultures and disciplines. Escobar says science and Buddhism share some common ways of learning.

"Buddhism is very much an experiential type of philosophy. In fact, the Buddha is quoted as saying, 'Don't believe me, go ahead and prove this to yourself.'"

Three of the monks who've studied science in India are now taking biology with Escobar. They sit in their maroon clothes, and take notes with mechanical pencils. Ngawang Norbu says studying science lets him understand the whole human.

"Mostly when we study Buddhist philosophy, we mostly learn about the inner objects, inner minds, mental states. And science doing more research on the outer states."

Norbu says he started learning science because of his natural curiosity. Now he sees it as his responsibility to teach the subject to other monks.