When we started putting this list together it seemed like it was going to be nothing more than a shallow, trivial — although perhaps welcome — distraction from all the news about disastrous wars and sordid political scandals, but as we dug deeper into the web we found that we felt at times inspired by reading about the practice of famous Buddhists, some of whom have had their trials. We hope that you too will be inspired — and entertained — by Wildmind’s Top Ten List of Celebrity Buddhists.

Our criteria were simple. To be a celebrity Buddhist a nominee had to be alive, a celebrity, and — wait for it …

The Dalai Lama always stirs up plenty of karmic excitement when he comes to town. But a sold-out conference-”Investigating the Mind: Exchanges Between Buddhism and the Biobehavioral Sciences on How the Mind Works”-held last week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had a bunch of Western scientists downright giddy.
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Can concentration be controlled? Can attention be practiced and perfected? These are questions that are of increasing interest today to scientists, but which Buddhist monks have been exploring for thousands of years.

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The 14th Dalai Lama is simultaneously the exiled monarch of Tibet, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning statesman and Buddhism’s most renowned world leader – aspects that are all evident during his current U.S. tour. But a private event, carrying out his religious role, may be the most significant moment in the India-based lama’s visit – a conference in the upstate New York community of Garrison for 300 leaders of local Buddhist centers in the Western Hemisphere.
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