David Lynch Foundation

The David Lynch Foundation For Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace (DLF) is a global charitable foundation based in Fairfield, Iowa. It was founded by film director and Transcendental Meditation practitioner David Lynch in 2005.

The foundation primarily funds scholarship programs for schools whose students and faculty volunteer for instruction in the Transcendental Meditation technique.

History

Kids come to school and they meditate together for 15 minutes in the morning. And before they go home they meditate for 15 minutes. A lot of them come from, you know, bad situations, and so this gives them this thing you know, at the beginning and the end of the day, the rest of the time you just watch the violence stop. Watch relationships improve. Watch happiness in the hallways, in the classroom, watch creativity flow more and more, watch that heavy weight that we are living under gently lift away.

Lynch, DLF President John Hagelin, and Maharishi University of Management researcher Fred Travis went on a lecture tour in 2005, giving free talks on TM titled "Consciousness, Creativity, and the Brain". Stops included University of Southern California, UC Berkeley, the University of Oregon in Eugene, the University of Washington, Emerson College, Yale University, and Brown University.

In 2006, six public schools in the U.S. were each awarded $25,000 by the David Lynch Foundation, and a total of twenty five public, private, and charter schools in the United States had offered Transcendental Meditation to their students. As of September 2006, the DLF had "helped approximately 500 students and 50 teachers learn how to meditate".In October 2006, the Foundation withdrew a $175,000 pledge to a San Rafael, California high school after the pro-separation Pacific Justice Institute threatened to sue for violating the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Lynch assigned all of the author royalties from his 2006 book Catching the Big Fish to the DLF. The DLF sponsored a presentation on the benefits of TM in education at the Harvard Club of Boston in 2006.

The 2009 "Change Begins Within" benefit concert, held at Radio City Music Hall, was hosted by David Lynch and Laura Dern. It featured performances by musicians Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Donovan, Moby, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, Paul Horn, Jim James, Bettye LaVette, Sheryl Crow, and Angelo Badalamenti, and appearances by Mike Love, Jerry Seinfeld and Howard Stern. It generated gross receipts of about $3 million.

The Foundation held its Second Annual Change Begins Within Benefit Event, titled "Operation Warrior Wellness", at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on 13 December 2010. In addition to David Lynch, participants included actor and director Clint Eastwood, designer Donna Karan, comedian Russell Brand and several veterans.

Programs

According to the DLF, it has funded school programs in Washington D.C, New York City, Hartford CT, Detroit MI, California, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Vietnam, Nepal, Northern Ireland, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Israel. According to its website in 2009, the Foundation has funded over $3.5 million in school programs aiding over 55,000 students in 26 countries. The David Lynch Foundation's mission to introduce Transcendental Meditation to public school students has been criticized by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, claiming that the Foundation's efforts undermine the constitutional separation of church and state.

In addition to funding in-school Transcendental Meditation programs in the USA and Canada, the Foundation has supported meditation instruction for over 35,000 students in South America. According to the DLF web site, Columbian priest, Father Gabriel Mejia, has founded 47 shelters for homeless children where thousands of young people practice the Transcendental Meditation technique.

The Transcendental Meditation technique has also been taught to soldiers with post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) as part of research at the University of Colorado.Other initiatives to teach the TM technique to war veterans who are at risk for PTSD, are ongoing.

The DLF has the long-term goal of raising $7 billion in order to establish seven affiliated "Universities of World Peace" in seven different countries, to train students to become "professional peacemakers".

Directors and advisors

Current Foundation Board of Advisor members are: Russell Simmons, Gary P. Kaplan, William R. Stixrud, Frank Staggers Jr., César Molina, George H. Rutherford, Carmen N’Namdi, Ralph Wolff, Ashley Deans, Linda Handy, Sarina Grosswald.

References

External links