For people seeking to improve their health, the US surgeon-general advises putting aside an hour, several times a week, for “compassionate” meditation.

Actually, he doesn’t. He prescribes 60 minutes of physical exercise. But noted molecular biologist Eric Lander, a leader of the Human Genome Project, believes the change is coming.

“It is certainly not inconceivable that 20 years from now the US surgeon-general might recommend 60 minutes of mental exercise five times a week,” Lander told a conference of renowned scientists and Buddhist scholars at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) at the weekend.

Such a prediction, from a man of Lander’s stature at a venue like MIT, is an indication of mainstream science’s growing fascination with Buddhism, and especially with the preliminary but …