The spiritual leader of the Tibetan form of Buddhism, known as Gelug, the term Dalai Lama is an honorific title. In Tibetan, Dalai means oceanic or expansive, and Lama means master or guru. The Tibetan way of writing Dalai Lama is ཏཱ་ལའི་བླ་མ་. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Dalai Lamas who were spiritual leaders also headed the Tibetan government as regents. Various degrees of Chinese control, notably under the Qing dynasty, have been established over Tibet since then. The Dalai Lama continues to advocate for Tibetan people and Buddhists more generally since the People's Republic of China took over Tibet in 1951. However, he wields no direct political power. In terms of his spirituality, the Dalai Lama teaches Lamrim, the stages towards Enlightenment, and Sunyata, a word that relates to meditation, meaning openness or emptiness.
Born in New York City in 1944, Jon Kabat-Zinn is a professor who works at the Medical School at the University of Massachusetts. He is an emeritus professor of medicine who has a particular scientific focus on the role of certain aspects of Buddhism, in particular, mindfulness within a Western tradition of medicine. He founded the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine at his medical school in 1979. He is also a powerful advocate for stress reduction programmes that allow patients to treat a wide range of conditions themselves. Jon Kabat-Zinn has been recommending that professionals in the US healthcare system take the role of mindfulness more seriously, which, he claims, can assist patients who are coping with stress, anxiety and pain. He also says that certain mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) methods that can be learned by following traditions in Buddhism are also able to help deal with certain conditions and illnesses.
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