QUESTION: "Why in the world would you do this?"

(outline to be filled in over time ... )

*BELIEF IN THE BROADER VALUE OF PROJECT

The practice is effective

1. Personal experience with meditation
2. Friends' experience with meditation
3. Intriguing validation of Buddhism's 2,500 year-old "outrageous claims" by science's cutting edge
4. Neurology/psychology
5. Physics

* SCIENCE CRITICAL TO BROADER ACCEPTANCE OF THE PRACTICE

* VALUE OF THE PRACTICE FOR PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FLOURISHING

* VALUE TO THIS MOMENT IN HISTORY

1. "The shape of history"
2. Golden Arches Theory and Samadhi
3. Meme theory
4. An unbounded religion
5. Dependent origination
6. Relationship to the natural environment
7. Affinity with science/empiricism
8. Example of Tibet before Communist era

* PERSONAL OPPORTUNITY

1. Connecting with a community
2. Privilege of Alan Wallace as teacher
3. LT value of practice's "trait effects" in the rest of our lives