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Author

Joseph Arpaia, M.D.

Joe Arpaia was born in New York and raised in a rigidly Catholic household. His upbringing did not include any exposure to meditation, yet Joe has been interested in the subject since he was a child. He believes it may be related to a near-death type experience he remembers when he had his tonsils removed at age three. Meditation has had a powerful attraction for him, and he began to study it as part of his martial arts training at age thirteen. Joe has also studied Christian contemplative practice and Kundalini Yoga and has explored a number of other meditative systems. His goal has been to find out how meditation works, and how to make it work better.

Joe has a strong background in Western science and medicine. He graduated with a degree in chemistry from CalTech in 1982, and then did molecular genetics research for four years. He then completed medical school and specialty training in psychiatry, emphasizing medical hypnosis, at UC Irvine. During that time he also did research on brain waves and studied applications of chaos theory to psychiatry.

Joe currently runs a private practice in psychiatry and addiction medicine in Eugene, Oregon, where he uses meditation to help his clients. He is also doing corporate consulting work focusing on enhancing individual and team performance. He prefers to do the consulting work with individuals or small groups in order to give each participant individual attention. Joe is working on improving and developing practical methods for transforming individuals, organizations and society. He uses the mathematical training he received to guide his thinking in developing such techniques, and the clinical experience to make the techniques practical. Tibetan Wisdom for Western Life is his first book.

Author

Lobsang Rapgay, Ph.D.

Lobsang Rapgay was born in Lhasa, Tibet. When he was four years old, he and his family fled the Chinese in a seven day trek across the Himalayas on foot and horseback. His family settled in Dharamsala, and Lobsang was sent to a Catholic boarding school. Upon graduating, he attending Delhi University and also began training as a Buddhist monk. He received his masters degree in history from Delhi University, and then began to study Tibetan Medicine. Lobsang also became a Deputy Secretary and translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1978. Lobsang continued to work for His Holiness and study Tibetan Medicine.

He received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1986, but he was increasingly convinced that he needed to understand the Western mind better, in order to best help his people. He decided to come to the United States and study psychology. He discussed this with His Holiness, who was sad to see him go, but who agreed that studying Western psychology was extremely important. He came to the United States in 1988, and has since completed his training.

Lobsang is working on being a monk and simultaneously living in Western society. He is trying to find a balance between these two worlds. By doing this he hopes to make life meaningful for his people in spite of what has happened to their homeland. He works as a psychologist at UCLA and as a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and has written several books on Tibetan healing, including Health for Life (Healing Series), May 1998. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Lobsang and Joe met and began working together because they both saw meditation as something to explore and understand. They believed that most of the depth, complexity, and power of meditation to transform people was still not really known in the West.

Reprinted with permission of Beyond Words Publishers

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