When Richard Davidson told his advisers at Harvard that he planned to study the power of meditation in the 1970s, they winced. But Dr. Davidson would one day find a mentor with a different frame of mind: the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan spiritual leader recently announced plans to donate $50,000 to the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at Madison, a new research lab founded by Davidson that investigates whether meditation can promote compassion and kindness. The center has just started a project to teach meditation skills to fifth graders, focusing on charitable thoughts toward loved ones, strangers, and even enemies.
