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As we have seen, scientists are actively studying contemplative practices to understand how they can affect the brain and body. However, these practices are also being used in diverse applied contexts to increase well-being, most commonly in health care and educational settings. Sona Dimidjian has studied both traditional and contemplative based therapies for promoting wellness and alleviating problems such as depression throughout the United States and in India.

One important alternative to “interpretations” of quantum theories is to forego the desire to have a representation of the world at all. “No view” is a well-established tradition within certain schools of Buddhist philosophy. Thupten Jinpa, as the Buddhist respondent, will take up this and related issues in his response to the presentations.

One important alternative to “interpretations” of quantum theories is to forego the desire to have a representation of the world at all. “No view” is a well-established tradition within certain schools of Buddhist philosophy. Thupten Jinpa, as the Buddhist respondent, will take up this and related issues in his response to the presentations.

The traditional view of reality seeks to identify the intrinsic or “real” properties of things such as their size, location, velocity, and mass. Physics has increasingly come to appreciate the futility of such an undertaking, and instead realizes that properties only exist relative to measuring instruments. This deprives properties of any absolute status. Modern theories of relativity and quantum mechanics underscore the necessity of replacing all absolute properties with relational “observables.”

Thupten Jinpa began the afternoon with a presentation establishing conceptual links between the two investigative traditions of Buddhist thought and contemporary science, drawing especially on key aspects of classical Buddhist epistemology. Questions in the philosophy of science, such as the relationship between scientific claims and truth, scientific method and its legitimate scope, and the central role of observation, hypothesis and experiment verification in science will be addressed and contrasted with relevant notions in classical Buddhist philosophical inquiry.