Conference Day 2

The second day of the conference started with a tour of three exhibits developed by the Science for Monks and Nuns program.  The first exhibit, “The World of Your Senses” describes the five senses through the western science perspective and the Tibetan Buddhist prospective.  The second exhibit, “My World, My Responsibility focuses on climate change the environment.  The newest exhibit, “Particles” explores particles from the quantum mechanics perspective and Tibetan Buddhist perspective. I spent most of my time at the Senses exhibit.

My presentation was to be held later in the day and I thought I could use a necktie.  I went from store to store looking for a tie, but could not find one anywhere. My nice shirt and clean black pants would have to do.

As the time of my session approached, I was asked to come up to the stage with two Tibetan geshes who were also going to speak. Like the day before, I was given a FM radio for real-time translation of Tibetan into English.  This geshe spoke about his involvement with the development of the Senses exhibit.  After his talk, it was my turn.  I was fitted with a headset microphone and a computer with my PowerPoint presentation in English.  Another computer with the Tibetan version of my PowerPoint displayed my slides to the audience.

My talk focused on the importance for everyone to learn about their brain.  I think the presentation went over well and saw people nodding their heads in agreement when I made a certain point. It was time for a tea break after my talk.

In the evening, a group of monkeys gathered outside my window.  I had been wondering what was making a loud noise at random times of the day.  Then I saw the monkeys shaking a metal sheet, creating quite the racket.  They have visited me several times this week, sometimes waking me up at 5 am.