The Power of Belonging

Leverage your biology to support the healing of anxiety, isolation, deep sadness, and conflict with this research-tested program for actively practicing compassion and unlocking the emotional and physiological benefits, in the tradition of Buddha’s Brain and Why Buddhism Is True.

Many years ago, former Tibetan Buddhist monk and Emory professor, Dr. Lobsang Tenzin Negi was tasked by the Dalai Lama himself to find new ways of sharing ancient Tibetan wisdom with the modern world. Dr. Negi turned that mission into a research project to find scientific and biological evidence that compassion is an essential tool for building resilience. The result is an eight-step program known as CBCT (Cognitively-Based Compassion Training), developed in the Dalai Lama’s Compassion Center at Emory University. The Power of Belonging presents a revolutionary marriage between Western science and Eastern thought.

In CBCT, the eight meditative steps help us grow our essential skills for building resilience and finding peace: an abiding sense of safety; a clear and focused mind; self-awareness; loosening the grip of self-blame; finding opportunity in difficult times; learning to love without bias; discovering our warm and tenderhearted connection to others; and compassion. These tools are the antidote to isolation, unrest, and personal suffering. And for the Dalai Lama and Dr. Negi, the stakes could not be higher: By cultivating our capacity for compassion, we become able to participate in building a more just and equitable world.

Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, PhD, (a.k.a. Satya Dev Negi) is the cofounder and director of the Emory-Tibet Partnership, a multi-dimensional initiative founded in 1998 to bring together the foremost contributions of the Western scholastic tradition and the Tibetan Buddhist sciences of mind and healing. He is also professor of practice in Emory University’s Department of Religion. Dr. Negi is the founder and spiritual director of Drepung Loseling Monastery, Inc., in Atlanta, Georgia. In this capacity, he serves as codirector of both the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative and the Emory Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion Based Ethics. In 2018, he launched, with the Dalai Lama, SEE Learning, a free compassion curriculum for children. Called by Daniel Goleman ＂SEL 2.0,＂ it has reached educators and parents around the world.

Geshe Lobsang, a former monk, was born in Kinnaur, a small Himalayan kingdom adjoining Tibet. He began his monastic training at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics and continued his education at Drepung Loseling Monastery in south India, where he received his Geshe Lharampa degree in 1994, the highest academic degree granted in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.