'60s Pop star to open Meditation U. in Scotland

Sixties pop star Donovan is working on a plan to open a university in Scotland to be devoted to transcendental meditation.

The 'Mellow Yellow' singer says TM guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi asked him to build the university while the pop star was on pilgrimage to India back in 1968. But it wasn't until he met famed film director David Lynch in recent years that he decided to fulfill the Maharishi's request.

Lynch and Donovan plan to contact education officials in Scotland to make the school a legitimate place of learning and Lynch says the effects could be outstanding.

http://www.nme.com/news/nme/32146

Dalai Lama discusses meditation with scientists

Nearly four thousand people filled the gymnasium of Emory University in Atlanta to listen to a conversation between scientists and the Dalai Lama about the effects of meditation on depression.

Several top experts on depression indicated that meditation can play a big part in treating people suffering from the condition.

The one-day conference was sponsored by Emory University and the Boulder, Colorado-based Mind & Life Institute. It was part of a weekend of events with the Dalai Lama, who has accepted a distinguished professorship at the prestigious private college.

On Friday, the exiled Tibetan leader was presented with a science curriculum designed by Emory faculty and translated into Tibetan. The faculty will teach the curriculum to thousands of Tibetan monks living in India starting in January 2008 and part of a program requested by the Dalai Lama to improve monastic education.

http://tinyurl.com/3b6tq6

Filmmaker Promotes Meditation on Israel Trip

David Lynch, on a five-day visit to Israel to encourage transcendental meditation, met with Israeli President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres.

The 61-year-old director, who has received Oscar nominations for "The Elephant Man," "Blue Velvet" and "Mullholland Dr.," is visiting Israel to encourage transcendental meditation as a new approach to eliminating violence in schools and creating a peaceful world.

"Real peace is not just the absence of war, but the absence of all suffering, all negativity," Lynch said at the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. "Change comes from within. From the first meditation, boom, you're there."

Lynch has been meditating for more than 30 years. He started the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace to promote transcendental meditation as a way to aid students in violence-ridden schools and bring about world harmony.

http://tinyurl.com/2t8v47

No one can patent ancient yoga techniques, says spiritual leader

Mystic master and spiritual guru Anandmurti Gurumaa on Wednesday described the practice of yoga as an ancient all-encompassing discipline to be enjoyed by people from various walks of life, and said no person or country had any business to patent it.

Interacting with select media persons here ahead of a five-day-long camp on ways to promote the management of stress on a day-to-day basis, Gurumaa, who originally hails from Amritsar, criticised moves in the United States to patent yoga.

"Knowledge is not anyone's property. Everyone has a right to it. Yoga is a discipline that has been handed down through the ages, through time, and it has taken generations of people to understand it, propagate it and derive individual benefit from it," she said.

She apparently was reacting to Bikram Yoga founder and US-based Bikram Choudhary's move in May this year to get a copyright for his method of teaching yoga, which has shocked yoga enthusiasts and experts in India.

There is a unanimous feeling in India that the idea of patenting knowledge like yoga is absurd and violates the ancient Indian art.

Anandmurti Gurumaa is the latest to join a bandwagon of critics against this move to patent yoga, even as the U.S. Patent Office has officially issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 trademarks on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks.

www dailyindia com

Mantra and Meditation

Much effort has been put into finding the "right" mantra for a particular person -- and the meaning is taken to be all-important. In fact the meaning of a mantra is of much less importance than how it feels to you. Even more important is the amount of energy and focus one puts into the recitation of one's mantra during meditation. With the right intention and focus, one can enter into pure meditation and the actual mantra chosen becomes a secondary issue.