Overview
According to the Dalai Lama-Tenzin Gyatso, science and Indo-Tibetan thought both share a commitment to empirical means and a willingness to discard dogma. “It may well be that the question of whether consciousness can ultimately be reduced to physical processes, or whether our subjective experiences are non-material features of the world,” he says, “will remain a matter of philosophical choice. The key issue here,” Gyatso explains, “is to bracket out the metaphysical questions about mind and matter, and to explore together how to understand scientifically the various modalities of the mind.”
Recently a growing number of professionals within the medical community have exemplified this attitude of inquiry and innovation and have contributed new findings on the salubrious effects of certain meditative practices. However, far less attention has been given to the indigenous theoretical underpinnings of these contemplative arts—in particular their philosophies of mind. Much like traditional western science, these ideas rely upon experiment and empirical application, namely, meditation and embodied experience. Therefore their full import and potential contribution to western contemporary consciousness studies requires a multidisciplinary approach that traverses the intellectual geography of human arts and sciences. The Mind & Reality Symposium is thus a sharing of maps and an attempt to better chart the contours of human thought and experience.
Commencing with a keynote address from philosopher Owen Flanagan, Saturday’s panels are collectively geared toward theory—an investigation of mind from the perspectives of epistemology (Panel I: Knowledge), phenomenology (Panel II: Experience), and ontology (Panel III: Wisdom).
Sunday morning, Buddhologist B. Alan Wallace will deliver a keynote address entitled “Naturalizing the Mind.” Panels on this day will consider the methodological side of consciousness studies. Participants in Panel IV: Meditation will draw on new research in psychology and neuroscience, as well as first person experience, to examine the application of meditation as a therapeutic tool for understanding the nature of mind. Panel V: Ethics will examine the relationship between moral action and subjective experience.
In addition to its unconventional subject matter, this project breaks new ground by utilizing online technology to enhance preliminary communication between participants. Recently we've launched a password-protected discussion board which can host text files participants may wish to upload. For the general public we’ve built a website that provides detailed information about the event and will allow for online registration in January. For those interested in learning more about the issues and topics that will be discussed at the Symposium, we've created a weblog (blog), designed to highlight relevant online resources and disseminate news on Indo-Tibetan mind science. The blog helps to publicize the event and supports our larger goal of building community within otherwise disparate traditions of thought.
