Alfred Kaszniak, PhD received his doctorate in clinical and developmental psychology from the University of Illinois in 1976, and completed an internship and postdoctoral training in clinical neuropsychology at Rush Medical Center in Chicago. He is currently Director of the Neuropsychology, Emotion, and Meditation Laboratory, Faculty and Advisory Board member of the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, Faculty Advisory Board Member of the Center for Compassion Studies, and a professor in the departments of Psychology, Neurology, and Psychiatry at The University of Arizona (UA). He is the co-author or editor of seven books, and over 160 journal articles and chapters, on topics including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, healthy aging, consciousness, memory self-monitoring, emotion, the psychophysiology of long-term and short-term meditation, and contemplative pedagogy. He has also received dharma transmission in Zen Buddhism, and serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Upaya Zen Center.
James Henry Austin was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1925. He attended Brown University, graduated from Harvard Medical School (1948), and did his medical internship at Boston City Hospital, where his first year of residency was in neurology. Austin’s neurology teachers were Derek Denny Brown, Raymond Adams and Joseph Foley.
Austin’s two years of naval reserve service in neurology were spent in Yokohama, Japan and in Oakland, California. In 1953, he began a neuropathology fellowship at Columbia University in New York, and then completed his neurological residency at the Neurological Institute of New York.
From 1955 to 1967, he held successive academic appointments in Neurology at the University of Oregon Medical School. In 1967, he was appointed Head of the Division of Neurology at the University of Colorado Medical School, then Chair of the Department from 1974 to 1983, and Emeritus Professor in 1992. During retirement, his appointments have included Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Idaho and Courtesy Professor of Neurology at the University of Florida College of Medicine.
His earlier research was in clinical neurology, neuropathology, neurochemistry, and neuropharmacology. His first sabbatical was spent at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. During the second sabbatical at Kyoto University Medical School in 1974, he began Zen meditative training with Kobori-Roshi, an English-speaking Rinzai Zen master. As a Zen practitioner, he has since become keenly interested in the ways that neuroscience research can help clarify the meditative transformations of consciousness.
Austin’s interest in the psychology of the creative process led him to write Chase, Chance, and Creativity, published first by Columbia University Press in 1978, and then revised in 2003 as an MIT Press edition.
His interest in Zen Buddhism has led to four MIT Press books. Zen and the Brain (1998), currently in its 7th printing, was followed by Zen Brain Reflections (2006), Selfless Insight (2009), Meditating Selflessly (2011), Zen Brain Horizons (2014), Living Zen Remindfully (2016).
His marriage to Judith St. Clair has been blessed with three children (Scott W. Austin, Lynn S. Manning and James W. Austin) and three grandchildren (Nicholas Manning, Katharine Manning and Elizabeth Manning). His wife passed away from Alzheimer’s disease in 2004. Austin lives in Columbia, Missouri.
Rick Hecht is Research Director of the Osher Center, and Professor of Medicine at UCSF. He received his MD from SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn, and completed Internal Medicine residency at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine Residency Program in Social Medicine. He received training in clinical research methods during a fellowship in Clinical Epidemiology at UCSF. Following fellowship, Dr. Hecht developed a multidisciplinary research program investigating early (primary) HIV infection. He has served as co-director of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research Behavioral and Epidemiology core, a board member of the HIV Medicine Association, and an Associate Editor of “AIDS Clinical Care.”
At the UCSF Osher Center, Dr. Hecht has built a research program that focuses on mind-body interventions, particularly meditation and yoga, using a psychoneuroimmunology approach to studying the effects of these practices on the endocrine, metabolic and immune systems. He is the author of over 200 peer-reviewed articles, and has been the principal investigator of eight grants from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including two Center for Excellence in Research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine grants. He directs the UCSF Training in Research in Integrative Medicine fellowship program, funded by NCCIH.
Jessica Morey is the executive director, lead teacher and cofounder of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme), a nonprofit organization that offers mindfulness meditation retreats for teens, young adults and parents and professionals who work with teens. She has been leading retreats for ten years through iBme and with Against the Stream and Insight communities for the past five years. She began practicing meditation over two decades ago on teen retreats offered by the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) and then participated in the IMS young adult mentoring group for ten years. She is currently part of the IMS teacher training. She and the work of iBme were recently featured on the December 2016 cover of
“Mindful Magazine” and she was interviewed on Dan Harris’ podcast “10% Happier” about her lifelong meditation practice and work with youth. Before joining iBme, she worked in clean energy and climate policy and finance. She holds a BA in Environmental Engineering from Dartmouth College and a master’s degrees in Sustainable Development and International Affairs. Her published works range from the chapter “Ordinary Awakening” in “Blue Jean Buddha” to “Conflict Resolution of the Boruca Hydro-Energy Project: Renewable Energy Production in Costa Rica.” She wrote about the relationship between her climate policy work and Buddhism in “Bodhi Trees,” a review in “Shambhala Sun.”
Lama Thupten Dorje Gyaltsen Rinpoche (Jerry Gardner) has studied the Buddhist Dharma for over 45 years with an emphasis in the Long-chen Nying Thig tradition of the Nyingma sect and the Chokling tradition. In 1970 he began his formal training with Geshe Wangyal in New Jersey and with Lama Sonam T. Kazi in New York City. In 1988 Lama Thupten Rinpoche traveled to Nepal and became a disciple of the late Venerable Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Over the past 27 years Lama Thupten Rinpoche has traveled annually to Nepal and India to study and do retreats with Chatral Rinpoche, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, Konchok Monlam Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Dzogcehn Khenpo Choga Rinpoche, Dupsing Rinpoche
and Lama Dawa Rinpoche. Lama Thupten Rinpoche was ordained as lama in 1997 by the late Khenpo Thupten Oser Rinpoche of Ngagyur Samten Chokhorling Institute in India and was recognized as Rinpoche in 2013 by Konchok Monlam Rinpoche and Dupsing Rinpoche. In 1993, under the guidance of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, Lama Thupten Rinpoche established Urgyen Samten Ling Gonpa in Salt Lake City and is presently the resident teacher there. He is also a theatre professor at the University of Utah where he teaches dance, movement and theatre; and is master instructor of Wing Chun Kung-Fu, T’ai Chi Chu’an, and Qi Gong at his Red Lotus School of Movement in Salt Lake City.
Arthur Zajonc is the former President of the Mind & Life Institute. He is also emeritus professor of physics at Amherst College, where he taught from 1978 to 2012, and former director of the Center for Contemplative Mind, which supports appropriate inclusion of contemplative practice in higher education, from 2009 to 2011.
He was a visiting professor and research scientist at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, and the Universities of Rochester and Hannover. He was a Fulbright professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. His research includes studies in electron-atom physics, parity violation in atoms, quantum optics, the experimental foundations of quantum physics, and the relationship between science, the humanities, and contemplative traditions.
He has written extensively on Goethe’s science work, and is the author of Catching the Light: The Entwined History of Light and Mind. He coauthored The Quantum Challenge, and co-edited Goethe’s Way of Science. In 1997, he served as scientific coordinator for the Mind & Life dialogue published as The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama; organized the 2002 dialogue “The Nature of Matter, the Nature of Life;” and acted as moderator at MIT for the “Investigating the Mind” dialogue in 2003. The proceedings of the Mind & Life-MIT meeting were published under the title The Dalai Lama at MIT.
As director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, Zajonc fostered the use of contemplative practice in college and university classrooms, and developed the foundations for contemplative pedagogy. He coauthored The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal with Parker Palmer. Out of this work and his long-standing meditative practice, Zajonc authored Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry: When Knowing Becomes Love, and contributed to the Psychology Today blog on meditation. He served as general secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America, was a co-founder of the Kira Institute, president of the Lindisfarne Association, and a senior program director at the Fetzer Institute.
Zajonc served on the Mind & Life Board of Directors from 1998 to 2006. He served as Mind & Life President from 2012 to 2015.
