Nawang Khechog – Be Kind to Each Other

The Varela Awardees at 2009 SRI

Nawang Khechog and Adam Engle set the tone for 2009 Summer Research Institute

Discussion with younger brother of HHDL and D. Meyer on consciousness and computers

David Meyer talks about conscious machines with Tendzin Choegyal: an intriguing question arose during the meeting concerning the possibility for an evolution of “consciousness” in machines/computers. The younger brother of HHDL, Tendzin Choegyal disagreed with David Meyer’s suggestion that machines will (and have been already) progressively evolve to develop their own form of consciousness. It [...]

Young Scientists’ Perspective on Benefits of Dialogue with HHDL

Mind and Life has been organizing dialogues between top scientists and His Holiness The Dalai Lama for 20+ years. The purpose of which has been to promote the creation of a contemplative, compassionate, and rigorous experimental and experiential science of the mind which could guide and inform medicine, neuroscience, psychology, education and human development. An [...]

Sensation, Feeling, Image, Talk

Dear friends, One of the enduring discussions of the meeting for me has been the “levels of processing” discussion between Buddhism and Modern science. There was a long series of conversations about different levels of experience and their inter-relations- those strands of phenomenal experience coming through the body and the senses, the emotions, cognition, and [...]

The Physical Place

Dear friends, To give you a sense of the physical surroundings, I start with far off shots of the temple and the meeting space. The temple is the large yellow complex. Above the temple you can (barely) see a green roof and to its right a silver roof. It was in this part of the [...]

Cultivation of Compassion

HHDL had an excellent commentary on the cultivation of compassion. He said that it depends on the 3rd deepest level of suffering. (I am not sure what the 1st two stages of suffering refer to). This stage of suffering is linked with a profound aspiration to achieve liberation and a fundamental vulnerability to suffering with [...]

Reflections on developments of Shamatha and distinction between concept and non-conceptual levels of mental experience

During the development of Shamatha, Alan Wallace describes 9 stages of development in which the quality and nature of mental activity changes. We are all familiar with the “monkey mind” and the sleepy mind that plague the meditator on the cushion. The monkey in our mind is a metaphor for what our mind does when [...]

Roshi Joan Halifax Reflections on Conference

Dear friends, To see some more post-conference reflections, please visit: http://www.upaya.org/newsletter/view/2009/04/13