David Lynch: Fight school violence with meditation

Maverick American filmmaker David Lynch overnight called for schools around the world to adopt transcendental meditation to help avoid a repeat of last month’s US university shooting in which 33 people died.

“I think rules about guns being in schools will never stop school violence,” Lynch said in a webcast to promote the brand of meditation he has been practicing for more than 30 years.

“What is causing this rage and this imbalance that would cause a student to want to harm another student or many other students?” asked the 61-year-old, whose dark and disturbing movies include Blue Velvet and Eraserhead.

“The cure for this is a very, very beautiful cure, a very beautiful technique … that allows any human being to dive within and experience this deepest level of life,” he said.

In 2005 Lynch launched the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-based Education and World Peace, which has provided nearly $US5 million ($6 million) to support in-school meditation programs for thousands of students.

His foundation now wants to see one million students worldwide taught meditation to reduce stress and enhance creativity, intelligence and energy.

“When I started meditating I had a real anger in me and I would take this anger out on my first wife,” he said, recounting his own experience. “Two weeks after I stared meditating, this anger lifted.”

Lynch, a Hollywood outsider and free-thinker who also paints and plays the guitar, bases his beliefs on the teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who became a guru to celebrities such as the Beatles during the 1960s.

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