[WEBCAST ONLY] Coping in the Time of Coronavirus

The world is facing a pandemic that inevitably comes with health problems. However, we are facing much more than that: COVID-19 has brought a wave of xenophobia, a new culture of social distancing, and economic uncertainty.

What can help us transcend all these hardships? Compassion meditation may be one method that grounds the mind and boosts the immune system. In the face of xenophobia, meditation shows compassion to others. In the midst of social distancing, meditation highlights the principles of interconnectedness. And in the face of quarantines, lockdowns, and stay-at-home orders, people would benefit from becoming more disciplined and finding peace through meditation.  But how can we gain the discipline to meditate?

Join Asia Society in an interview with Thupten Jinpa Langri, a Tibetan Buddhist Scholar and a practitioner of Western and Eastern philosophy and religious studies.

Thupten Jinpa Langri is a Tibetan Buddhist scholar, former monk, and an academic of religious studies and Eastern and Western philosophy. He has been the principal English translator to the Dalai Lama since 1985 and has translated and edited more than ten of Dalai Lama’s books including the New York Times bestseller Ethics for the New Millennium (1999). He received his early education and training at Zongkar Choede Monastery in South India and then joined the Shartse College of Ganden Monastic University in South India to achieve his Geshe Lharam degree. He taught Buddhist epistemology, metaphysics, Middle Way philosophy, and Buddhist psychology at Ganden for five years. He then received his B.A. Honors degree in Western Philosophy and his Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Cambridge University. Jinpa established the Institute of Tibetan Classics at Girton College, Cambridge and is currently the president and editor-in-chief of the Institute’s translation series in Tibetan Classics. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Mind and Life Institute which is dedicated to fostering creative dialogue between Buddhist tradition and Western science. Jinpa is the main author of CCT (Compassion Cultivation Training), an eight-week program developed at Stanford University and disseminated through the Compassion Institute.