2012 Templeton Prize awarded to Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama is flanked by St.Paul's Cathedral Canon Pastor Reverend Michael Colclough (left) and Bishop of London Richard Chartres (right) at St. Paul's Cathedral in London after being awarded the 2012 Templeton Prize on May 14, 2012. The press release from the Templeton Prize follows below:

Monday, 14-May-2012 14:10:39 EDT
WEST CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. – The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader whose long-standing engagement with multiple dimensions of science and with people far beyond his own religious traditions has made him an incomparable global voice for universal ethics, nonviolence, and harmony among world religions, has won the 2012 Templeton Prize.

For decades, Tenzin Gyatso, 76, the 14th Dalai Lama - a lineage believed by followers to be the reincarnation of an ancient Buddhist leader who epitomized compassion - has vigorously focused on the connections between the investigative traditions of science and Buddhism as a way to better understand and advance what both disciplines might offer the world.

Specifically, he encourages serious scientific investigative reviews of the power of compassion and its broad potential to address the world's fundamental problems - a theme at the core of his teachings and a cornerstone of his immense popularity.

Within that search, the "big questions" he raises - such as "Can compassion be trained or taught?" - reflect the deep interest of the founder of the Templeton Prize, the late Sir John Templeton, in seeking to bring scientific methods to the study of spiritual claims and thus foster the spiritual progress that the Prize has recognized for the past 40 years.

Photo credit: Sang Tan / AP