Now I realize why they call it the thinker...
This isn't fully fleshed out, but I am curious what people think of this idea, and excuse the mess as I sort of wrote it up in a hurry -- perhaps I should clean it up a bit but I feel lazy today.
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Create a website dedicated to spreading meditation, mindfulness and methods for removing afflictive emotions and delusional states of mind in a nonsecular way as to benefit society at large.
I think for society to improve in any meaningful way, it's going to take a collective effort of removing afflictive emotions and delusional states of thinking at an individual level. Since eastern religions have already developed efficient methods for doing these things, I think it's one of the best ways to achieve this. Thinking about it more, I think it may be what the dalai lama has been doing by having western science study mediators and meditation in general, and also what thich nhat hanh has been doing by spreading mindfulness.
While it has spread quite well, the vast majority of people I know do not meditate, and I think it should be designed for people like this. People who have no interest in religion, spirituality, etc. I think if its presented in a scientific way, with well documented medical studies, people would be more willing to try it.
Perhaps present it as a community, where people can find support, sort of the way in which weight loss communities work and it could be almost social-networking based like facebook/myspace.
Ideas:
-Clearly establish and present what meditation and mindfulness can accomplish for people in their lives
-features for tracking meditation sessions, 'progress' and what-not.
-Introductory meditation video's done by well experienced meditators
-Video's of medical studies, etc.
-A very extensive documentation/help/support section, and also question-answer type features. Which could take the form of volunteers like Wikipedia. It would be difficult to find that many experienced meditators though.
