In the last twenty years, a sharp increase in contemplative research has created the need for an academic home for interdisciplinary scholarship, community, dialogue, and collaboration. This special Think Tank grant goes to a multidisciplinary group of leading contemplative researchers to begin the development of a new professional society for the field. This is a …
Continue reading “International Society for Contemplative Research”
The slow meltdown of Earth’s capacity to sustain much of life, as we know it, poses an urgent challenge for both spiritual traditions and science. These two ways of knowing have developed distinctive responses, which are potentially synergistic. The goal of the meeting is to provide an opportunity to articulate an engaged environmental ethics. This …
The present research uniquely sheds light on the practices of Humanistic Buddhism (a form of Engaged Buddhism most prevalent in modern Taiwan), which have been completely neglected in contemplative science. It also explores the social and ecological implications of contemplative practice, another under-investigated area of research. By investigating the effects of a Buddhist monastic retreat …
How do we motivate people, especially young adults, to deal with climate-change issues when they are remote from its effects, leaving them unmoved, or conversely, when they are on the receiving end of a catastrophe, leaving them overwhelmed? The standard motivator for climate activism has been fear, but it cannot sustain our actions in the …
The first session of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s conversations with key thought leaders on “Compassion, Interconnection, and Transformation” organized by the Mind & Life Institute at his residence in Dharamsala, India on October 30th and November 1st, 2019. Participants
Part 4 in a weeklong series of blog posts written by undergraduate students from the 2017 spring-semester class, “Mindfulness & Compassion: Living Fully Personally and Professionally” at the University of Virginia. Introduction Sitting on the beach, hearing the waves lap gently against the sand as the stars make their appearance into the sky, it is …
Part 2 in a weeklong series of blog posts written by undergraduate students from the 2017 spring-semester class, “Mindfulness & Compassion: Living Fully Personally and Professionally” at the University of Virginia. Introduction As a second year student at the University of Virginia, I started to notice myself living in a state of frenzy. I was …
Continue reading “An Exploration of Nature, Mindfulness and Well-Being”
The main goal of this presentation is to explore the entanglements betweentechnologies of the self and ecology. I am particularly interested in the ways in which the modern self — characterized by Elias as the homo clausus and by Watts as the skin-encapsulated ego — can be suspended, eroding the dualism between self and others, …
Education for Ethical and Compassionate Leadership
Education for Ethical and Compassionate Leadership We live in a time of increasingly fragile social institutions: a political system distorted by increases in inequality; financial markets that create unsustainable debt; and an economy that drives a scarcity mentality and ever-escalating consumption, diminishing the quality of time-starved and stress-filled lives. We have crises in health care, …
