So i know its been a bit since I've last posted, but we've been doing tons of stuff this past week. Every day we have reading and research to be doing for our papers and giong out and seeing things. So its been kind of crazy. I'll start with today and work backwards.

June 3rd

Today I got to teach neuroscience to monks! It was awesome. They were working iwth simulations and animations of how action potentials in neurons work. So we got to explain how with more sodium channels, it takes less energy to make the action potential fire and with less sodium channels it takes more energy for hte action potentials to fire. Somewhat intuitive... if you think about it haha. But yeah.. with the simulations it was difficult to explain since we didnt have animations of cells that were giong at the same time as the simulations of what teh firing looked like.. so it was difficult. But aweesome.

Earlier today we got to see a woman oracle/medium (medium is the person that the god goes through and the oralce is the name for the person when deity is in the medium). I know I've talked a lot about the other oracle I've seen (which has been twice- once while he was in trance and once while he wasn't, where he did a healing cereomony on our whole group). This woman is more of a local oracle who answers more personal questions. The other oracle is the Nechung state oracle, who is one of the two-three main oracles that the Dalai Lama consults once a year. But so this woman will answer questions about your life and things. I didn't ask a question but some people did. We all got to offer her a kata (a scarf that is used as like a welcoming present/offering especially for like lama's or oracles or people of that type). So that was pretty cool to watch her go into trance. I'll have a video of it at some point hopefully and I'll be able to post it.

Later tonight we get to have "Dharma" night which is a debate/question time where we get to go ask the monks any question we want about Buddhism and what they think and if tehre is there is anything we don't get about what or how they believe what they believe. Which is aweesome.

June 2nd

Yesterday spent the day researching/recovering/sleeping/talking about life. There's been a lot going on, and every day teh topics are hefty ones, that all have to relate to buddhism and stuff. This program I feel like is a lot mroe personal than a lot of other study abroad programs, especially becuase how we have to meditate every day. It makes you think a lot about yourself and how you conduct yourself. Which espeically when there are few other distractions is good, becuase honestly when am I going to have a chance like this again?

Also, we got to go to a Tara ritual ceremony earlier that morning. Which is from what I understand its a some sort of offereing ritual ceremony thing. They have sweets and whites they offer, and make like butter sculptures. Its interesting stuff.

June 1

That day we had of course a lot of reading and class and stuff. Learned all about Buddhism now. Pretty much a master at Tantric buddhism now. ha. Not really. But I'm definitely way more informed now than I used to be.

Also that night was "Science Night", where we sit down across from all the monks here that are learning science and they can ask us any questions about science. Some of the questions, we weren't quite sure how to answer. For example "What is the theory of relativity. and what are the differences between special and general relativity?" Yeahhhhhhh. One of the biology professors had to answer that one. But I have answered a few about biology. I would say they are most interesting in stuff like evolution, from the biology subject. (They are also studying neuroscience, math, and physics - one subject per week with like 6 or 7 hours of classes each day) But theirquestion that I most remember from their questions was "There are many different kinds of plants and flowers that can survive in all kinds of different climates. If you have one plant, can that one plant adapt to all different environments, like hot, dry, wet, marshy, etc?" I think its a pretty legitimate question and I think really, really interesting. My response to the question was something like: Yes, its possible for one plant to be able to adapt to all of those different environments, but to be able to test it you would have to have many many different plants, in each of hte those locations and watch them for many many generations to see if they survive/evolve (either stay the same or evolve to create a new species). One of hte other people brought up the point too, that in one generation being able to adapt to an environment is not the same as evolution, so a plant can change to its environment, but that doesn't necessarily mean evolution. Evolution is natural selection of genes/traits that give an organism a higher fitness over another. Pretty good stuff. That's probably my most favorite part of the days we spend here.

At science night we also had a pretty cool question asked: Does Life mean consciousness? The qeustion arose out of a discussion we were asking what beigns have consciousness. And it came up that Buddhists believe that plants don't have consciousness, which obviously conflicts with science's view of life. So the monks learned from a science perspective what it takes to be alive which something like seven characteristics (what I copied from wikipedia)

1. Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
2. Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
3. Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
4. Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
5. Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
6. Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism) and by chemotaxis.
7. Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.

So then it made us wonder, why doesn't life mean consciousness. So the monks were kind of able to answer our questions, and it basically more or less had to do wtih having a brain/emotions. All animals they believe are conscious and therefore have some degree of emotions. Which I guess can be proved by science. Although, there does seem to be debate (how warranted it is, I'm not sure) about if plants have emotions. Becuase technically they can responsd to stimuli, like on the cellular level, which is really what any reaction is (although that obviosuly isn't quite the same thign as emotion). But at least... Some food for thought. Its pretty interesting stuff.

Last Weekend

We were able to go into town and eat at some pretty good restaurants. We went to this place called Carpe Diem that we got to sit on teh roof and eat. It was pretty cool to have the Himilaya's in the background while we ate dinner.

SO yeah, basicaly thats been what has happened so far. I'm sure I'm missing a whole bunch of stuff that I've done. If i remember anything else I'll be sure to post it.