This gathering was inspired by a shared interest in developing constructive comparisons between Buddhists’ and neuroscientists’ ways of comprehending mind and consciousness. Such comparisons can contribute multidimensionally to both of these rich, yet remarkably dissimilar and traditionally separate, cultural approaches to mind and life.

Buddhism and neuroscience have parallel but quite distinct traditions for examining consciousness and its relation to the body. These traditions go back at least 2500 years to the Buddha and Hippocrates. Both disciplines place great emphasis on experience and reason, but their methods of research and verification are radically different. While neuroscience examines mind-brain processes largely objectively, using increasingly sophisticated technology; Buddhism pursues its research chiefly by enhancing stability and clarity of subjective awareness, and directs that awareness toward the exploration of cognitive events and other phenomena. Each discipline has its own clearly prescribed techniques for testing hypotheses. However, due to their radically different methodologies and isolation from one another, their views have remained quite disparate and incommensurable all these centuries.