Siblings Juan and Juliana Santoyo received funding from Mind & Life in 2017 to hold a Think Tank to design and plan the implementation of a contemplative practice-based program for ex-combatants in Colombia’s peacebuilding process (members of the program’s pilot pictured above). They believe that nourishing the ability to heal and transform individually and with …
Continue reading “Seeding Peace in the Heart of Conflict: A Think Tank Project in Colombia”
Attending Mind and Life’s first-ever International Research Institute (IRI) in Kyoto, Japan, was a career highpoint. The event bridged my past and present, my current studies in the U.S. with my roots in Japan, and my interest in exploring the connection between mind and body. Quite simply, I felt at home. As a child, I …
What role do context and history play in influencing meditation practice and outcomes? How can the contemplative practices of one culture be effectively studied and practiced by another? More than 75 scientists, scholars, contemplatives, and artists from 11 countries recently convened in Kyoto, Japan to explore these and related questions at Mind & Life’s inauguralInternational …
“Where Is This All Going, and What’s Love—and Insight, Embodied Wisdom, and Community—Got to Do With It?” with Jon Kabat-Zinn In this closing keynote, Jon will ask some hard questions about the mindfulness explosion and contemplative studies at the intersection and cutting edges of science, scholarship, society, and the larger world. As background, it might …
Continue reading “Jon Kabat-Zinn – Where Is This All Going, and What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
“To Be of Benefit: The Promise of Contemplative Research and Practice” with Sona Dimidjian In 2002, His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrote, “The desperate state of our world calls us to action…We all are responsible for creating a better future.” Over 15 years later, those words inspire and alarm. Enormous suffering exists in our world …
“It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own.”—Emma Goldman The relationship between contemplative …
Continue reading “Engaging in a Socially Unjust World with Love, Compassion, and Resolve”
Nourished. Connected. Validated. Protected. Challenged. Humbled. Grateful. These were just a few of the words used by participants at Mind & Life’s 2018 Summer Research Institute (SRI) to describe their experience. In keeping with the event’s theme, “Engaging Cultural Difference and Human Diversity,” Mind & Life’s 15th annual SRI was the most diverse ever, bringing …
Continue reading “2018 SRI Reflections: “I judge less. I understand more.””
Uncomfortable, even risky questions lie at the heart of the Mind & Life Institute’s 15th annual Summer Research Institute (SRI), which begins June 2. Given the human capacity for empathy and intrinsic interdependence with others, what is it that drives us apart? “If we’re all so good at connectivity and inclusivity, then why are we …
Continue reading “Why It’s Time: “Engaging Cultural Difference and Human Diversity””
Paying attention, asserts famed meditation teacher, best-selling author, and Mind & Life Fellow Sharon Salzberg, isn’t a skill one is simply born with. Like flexibility and physical stamina, it’s developed over time: a muscle to strengthen; a practice to nurture; a series of neural pathways to establish and expand. But it takes very real work …
“I’m imagining a golden string that is connecting Everything but especially, beings where love has been. I’ve imagined it again and again so often, it isn’t even imagining, it is making it happen.” -Devon Sproule At the Mind & Life Institute, we greet 2018 ever more committed to our mission and its relevance to healing …
