Over the next five days, for five and a half hours a day, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and 10 scientists, philosophers, scholars and contemplatives from North America, Europe and India will sit together in an intimate dialogue entitled: Mind and Life XVIII: Attention, Memory and Mind: A Synergy of Psychological, Neuroscientific, and Contemplative Perspectives.

This historic meeting is the 18th in a series of international science dialogues that have been organized by the Mind and Life Institute,  which was co-founded by the Dalai Lama in 1987.  From very modest beginnings, the Mind and Life Institute has become a world leading organization, stimulating the scientific research on the effects of meditation and contemplative practice on the mind and brain and in the prevention and treatment of disease.  These dialogues have also contributed toward a deep engagement between modern science and the world’s living contemplative traditions, especially Buddhism.

Eleven of these Mind and Life dialogues have taken places in the Dalai Lama’s private audience room in Dharamsala, and seven have taken place in Europe and the United States, and were co sponsored by world renowned research universities and hospitals such as: MIT, Johns Hopkins Medical School; the Mayo Clinic; Innsbruck; Wisconsin, Georgetown and Emory Universities.

Future Mind and Life dialogues are planned for Washington DC in October, 2009 (www.EducatingWorldCitizens.org); Zurich, Switzerland in April 2010 and New Delhi in November 2010.

In addition to organizing these science dialogues with the Dalai Lama, the Mind and Life Institute also organizes the Mind and Life Summer Research Institute, a week long annual residential science retreat; the Mind and Life Education Research Network; and provides research funding for young scientists to study the hypotheses developed at Mind and Life meetings.

What sets the Mind and Life dialogues apart from other meetings between science and Buddhism is the focus on in-depth, cross-cultural dialogue.  In this meeting, the morning presentations by cognitive scientists will be 60-90 minutes in duration, followed by up to 90 minutes of dialogue; and the afternoon sessions by cognitive scientists and Buddhist scholars and contemplatives will be 30-45 minutes in duration, with the rest of the two hours devoted to dialogue.  Topics to be covered are:

•    Multi-tasking, Meditation, and Contemplative Practice
•    The Buddhist Contribution to First-Person Cognitive Science
•    Mental Processes Underlying Attention, Visual Perception, and Cognitive Control
•    Paying Attention to Awareness: “Attention” (manasika – ra–), “Mindfulness” (sati) and “Clear Comprehension” (samapajañña)
•    Mental Processes for Attention and Cognitive Control in Children and Adolescents
•    The Utility of Improving Attention and Working Memory with Mindfulness-Based Training
•    Attention-Emotion Interface
•    Results of the Shamatha Project
•    Embodiment and Intersubjectivity: Empirical and Phenomenological Approaches
•    Education, Application, Buddhism, and Technology

Dialogue leaders and participants for this meeting are:

Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness, the XIV Dalai Lama

Adele Diamond, Ph.D., Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Shaun Gallagher, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, University
of Central Florida

Rupert Gethin, Ph.D., Director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies, University of
Bristol, UK

Amishi Jha, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania

David E. Meyer, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan

Elizabeth Phelps, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, New York University

Clifford Saron, Ph.D., Assistant Research Scientist, Center for Mind and Brain,
University of California, Davis

Anne Treisman, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Princeton University

B. AlanWallace, Ph.D., President, Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness
Studies

Interpreters

Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., President of the Institute of Tibetan Classics in
Montreal

B. AlanWallace, Ph.D., President of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness
Studies

Conference Coordinators

David E. Meyer, Ph.D., Scientific coordinator
B. AlanWallace, Ph.D., Buddhist coordinator

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