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Looking Ahead
As we strive to navigate an uncertain future, could it be that the root causes of some of our most intractable challenges lie in the human mind? And could solutions be found there, too? Such an audacious proposition lies at the heart of the Insights project, with its evolving collection of essays from leading scholars, …
2022 Mind & Life Conversation
The Mind & Life Institute and Mind & Life Europe are honored to host a free live stream event with His Holiness the Daila Lama. The program will explore insights on the increasing complexity of our world, catalyzed by climate change, rapid technological innovation, and mounting political divisions, which is calling us to change the way we live.
Building on a Rich Legacy: International Society for Contemplative Research to Host Inaugural Conference February 2-5, 2023
Mind & Life periodically invites guest writers to contribute their perspectives and experiences on the blog as a way of deepening dialogue and understanding around key themes related to our mission. Thirty years ago, people who studied contemplative practices were often marginalized in their own academic departments. Informally, they sought out colleagues at other institutions. …
Education and the Heart of Social Change
I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.― John Dewey As we reflect on our world today, we sense and see dramatic, interdependent global challenges—racial, political, economic, and ecological—all around us. This awareness leads many of us to feel an immediate need for action aimed at broad and deep systemic …
Well-being is a Skill
The short phrase—well-being is a skill—is a simple yet radical conclusion that comes from more than 25 years of research. Just like any other skill, if you practice it, you will get better. Plasticity, a Key Insight from the Biological Sciences The changes that come from any practice happen through learning. Neuroscience research has taught …
Transforming Minds
In the midst of growing global crises, including climate change, increasing polarization, inequality, and an overarching sense of disconnection from those around us and the natural world, it’s not a stretch to say that humanity needs change. Without question, the external systems and structures of our world need to be examined and adjusted. Yet a …
The Nature of Self
One of the most fundamental ways that we can be changed by contemplative practice relates to our sense of self. Both the Buddhist tradition and modern cognitive science have converged on core ideas suggesting that our everyday sense of existing separately from the world around us, and consistently over time, is mistaken. And realizing the …
Embodiment
Most of us grow up thinking the body is a flesh and blood organism made up of parts and systems. It is something that is described and researched, an object to be known. Rarely do we think of the body as something that knows things. Rarely do we ask the body for answers. Does the …
What is Mind?
Roshi Joan Halifax tells a story about witnessing a conversation in the early 1970s between Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine, and Gregory Bateson, an anthropologist and systems theorist, about the mind. Bateson asked, “Where is the mind?” Salk pointed to his own head. Bateson chuckled, shook his head, and pointed to the space …
