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SCHWARTZ: I notice that you move back and forth between the words
human being and sentient being. What is a sentient being and what
is the
range of sentient beings within the universe? DALAI LAMA: The Tibetan word of sentient being is sem-chen. This has a very definite meaning, it is 'a being with mind'. Nevertheless, the question of whether certain plants are sentient beings or not is a very difficult one to settle. I am not really sure what 'sentient being' means in English. One of my scientist friends, the neurobiologist Dr. Francisco Varela, once defined sentient beings as 'living beings that have the capacity to move from one place to another.' |
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| p. 26 | |||
| Bstan-'dsin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV, et al. |
"Dialogue: Buddhism, Neuroscience & the Medical Sciences" MindScience: An East-West Dialog Wisdom Books, 1994 |
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| MindScience: An East-West Dialog Wisdom Publications, 1991. Edited by Daniel Goleman and Robert Thurman. Carl E. Schwartz is an instructor in psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. | |||
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