Every day thousands of people make the journey to work, and for many, this means sitting at an office desk for hours on end looking at a computer

While office work brings many benefits in addition to providing an income, including work satisfaction and social interaction, it can also cause ill health. Recent research studies have charted a number of conditions linked to work, including a rise in figures for dementia for people regularly working long hours, back problems from poor seating, stress linked to bad management and heavy workloads, plus the spread of viruses from shared office equipment.

However, there are ways to cope with the stresses and strains of office life.

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Actress Vinessa Shaw has flirted with Russell Crowe in 3:10 to Yuma, kicked around a soccer ball with Rodney Dangerfield in Lady Bugs, and shared a kiss with Joaquin Phoenix in Two Lovers.

She says Buddhism’s emphasis on compassion is almost a form of method acting - it helps her inhabit and relate to all kinds of characters. In this interview for Interfaith Voices (at 23:48) she reflects on how Nichiren Buddhism has kept her sane in the world of Hollywood.

Having seen that some scientists take a more expansive view of cognition and life as a whole, says Phil Becque, we are now going to move onto some ideas in Buddhism that may illuminate some of the relationships between mind, cognition, consciousness, perception, brain and matter.

We are going to look at an idea known as the 'Ten Worlds' and a concept known as 'The Nine Consciousnesses' along with the previously mentioned 'Oneness of Body and Mind'. With these under our belt we will be able to understand the subtle interplay of the many different aspects of being human.

And now an amazing dance duo!

In a world that is opening up at an astonishing speed, schools are recognising the need to equip young people with the skills to contribute to an increasingly global, interdependent society.

Yet in a world in which 4 billion people - two thirds of the population - are of faith, can we be sure that young people are equipped to participate as global citizens if they do not understand much about the world's major religions? How can we ensure that a lack of knowledge does not lead to prejudice, antagonism and tension?
 

As a result of private comments by email and a certain amount of enthusiasm for a more thorough explanation of the concepts covered in Part Two, I am going to continue with a fuller description of the mind/matter story from the physical and biological perspectives, writes Phil Becque