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This little boy's death has served to bring together two cultures. Since 1996, Beth Israel Medical Center, on Manhattan's Upper East Side, has maintained a dialogue with experts in alternative and Eastern medicines, including the Dalai Lama, in an effort to provide its patients with more compassionate care. The hospital took a step toward furthering that goal with the unveiling of the Jonathan Parker Abramson Safe Harbor, a monument to one courageous little boy, in a space consecrated by the controversial spiritual leader of Tibet.

The new initiative began three years ago, when Dr. Fred Epstein, a neurosurgeon, joined the staff of Beth Israel. With Dr. Alex Berenstein and Dr. Matthew Fink, he created the Institute for Neurology & Neurosurgery (INN). Among their goals was to facilitate compassionate healing with holistic care and to marry traditional Western medicine with ancient healing techniques from around the globe. After contacting professor Robert Thurman, a noted Buddhist scholar and friend of the Dalai Lama, Epstein and the other INN doctors invited his holiness to attend the landmark East/West Medical Conference in New York last May. Their goals were simple yet lofty: to develop studies on the clinical applications of meditation, and to research how these two traditions might be integrated to provide the most compassionate care for patients, their families and health-care professionals. "I had learning disabilities when I was young," Epstein says. "So I understand what it's like, and I'm not afraid to look dumb or to try something new."

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It was while he was at this conference that the Dalai Lama agreed to consecrate the 14th-floor terrace, which previously had been used to store machinery. It was chosen because Jonathan's father, Alan Abramson, a real-estate entrepreneur and Beth Israel Medical Center trustee, saw how fitting it was that the site overlooked Carl Schurz Park, and the Esplanade that had provided Jonathan with so many hours of joy. After a tour of Beth Israel's pediatric ward and playroom, the Dalai Lama performed a brief ceremony in Tibetan, blessing the space as a sanctuary for healing. The Safe Harbor was underway.

Since the conference, health-care professionals from both East and West have been working out the details of these groundbreaking scientific studies. In conjunction with Tibet House and Columbia University, meditation practitioners will cooperate with scientists to measure meditation's effects in varying therapeutic contexts, including stress management for patients, their families and the nurses who care for them, as well as pre-surgical relaxation and post-surgical recovery. The timelines for these experiments are being finalized now.

In the year since the Dalai Lama's visit, Beth Israel has engaged Dr. Lobsang Rapgay, a leading practitioner of Tibetan medicine and professor of psychology at the Norman Cousins Center at UCLA, to design a series of workshops that would teach meditation techniques to staff nurses. Rapgay finds that the healing meditations he teaches, based on the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, can help sick children to be receptive to their own condition and less susceptible to distractions as they move through treatment.

Patients sit quietly in a cross-legged posture, their palms resting on their thighs. With eyes open, meditators are urged to simply watch the thoughts that move through their minds, not judging or labeling them. In time, the mind becomes more restful. "Meditation helps both the practitioner and the patient to move into a state of mind that is restful but also alert and aware," Rapgay says. "It helps people to be attuned to each other, and they're more likely to understand what's going on with their treatment. It's very important for these sick children."

Next page | "When you lose someone, meditation helps you deal with the pain"