Celebrities join David Lynch for Charity Gala following $1 million donation
Ellen DeGeneres, Katy Perry and Russell Brand were among celebrities joining David Lynch and leaders in science, medicine, finance and the military for a charity gala in Los Angeles to celebrate the work of the David Lynch Foundation (DLF) in teaching Transcendental Meditation to many thousands of children and at-risk individuals around the world.
This third annual "Change Begins Within" benefit followed the announcement by David Lynch on December 2nd that he was donating $1 million via the foundation to teach Transcendental Meditation to war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
The host of the star-studded evening was comedian Russell Brand – himself, a practitioner of TM – but it was American chat show host Ellen DeGeneres who opened the evening, introducing Brand as the man who had turned her on to Transcendental Meditation a year before, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Brand, in turn, introduced filmmaker David Lynch who established the DLF as a charity in 2005 with the aim of teaching 1 million schoolchildren to practise Transcendental Meditation worldwide. Though best known as the director of atmospheric films like Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and the television series Twin Peaks, Mr Lynch has also been an avid meditator for over three decades and credits Transcendental Meditation as the source of his creativity and the ideas that become his films.
As well as teaching over 60,000 schoolchildren to meditate worldwide, the David Lynch Foundation has also taught the stress-reducing TM technique to over 10,000 war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in the USA. The further $1 million in grants announced at the press conference will be used to teach TM to active-duty military personnel and veterans and their families suffering from post-traumatic stress.
Speaking at the gala, Lynch summed up his thoughts about Transcendental Meditation by producing a painting of a tree and explaining to the audience, which included actors like Kristen Bell (Brand’s co-star in Get Him to the Greek) and Kelly Le Brock and hip-hop legend Russell Simmons, that the key to meditation was to “water to root” of the mind and “enjoy the fruit” of the ensuing knowledge.
War veterans and high school students described how TM had personally affected their lives, and Bob Roth, vice president of the David Lynch Foundation, spoke about the collective effects of widespread teaching of TM: “We have been planting the same seed year after year, but now it is sprouting like never before. As the fog clears, people can hear and appreciate in a new and fresh way -- and this is a great gift from Maharishi [Mahesh Yogi].”
Russell Brand, who credits the meditation technique for helping him beat addiction, rounded off the evening by interviewing quantum physicist John Hagelin – a situation that seemed to fill the actor full of glee, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The highlights of the show can be seen on video. Read the full Wall Street Journal review at WSJ website.
