This presentation will outline the Buddha’s basic approach to understanding our cognitive processes, focusing on dependent arising or radical interdependency. William Waldron will discuss the factors involved in the dependent arising of cognitive awareness and the co-arising of our “world” as first articulated in the early teachings. He will then present how these basic analyses …
Continue reading “Interdependency: the Buddha’s Central Insight”
In the last decades, plasticity research has suggested that training of mental capacities such as attention, mindfulness and compassion is effective and leads to positive changes in socio-affective and cognitive functions. Tania Singer will show first results of the ReSource Project, a large-scale multi-methodological one-year secular mental training program in which participants were trained in …
This panel will examine the growing role of social media and handheld technology uses in various relationships, individual and group health, intergroup dynamics, and its effects on prosocial behavior. Panelists will discuss the opportunities, misbeliefs and dangers of increased connectedness through technology, with reflections on current research findings and will raise important questions for future …
Pete Fleming has built a multidisciplinary research team at Facebook, responsible for studying social interactions and developing products to make Facebook a safer and more supportive space for people to connect with others. The team is made up of researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including social psychology, clinical psychology, human-computer interaction, sociology, demography, …
Continue reading “Advancing Prosocial Interactions on Facebook Through Interdisciplinary Research”
High-quality social relationships help us live longer, happier and healthier lives — facts that hold true, as far as anyone knows, regardless of geography or culture. Although links between relationships and health have been observed for decades (if not millennia), the mechanisms responsible for them remain speculative. In this talk, Jim Coan will first describe …
Continue reading “The Other as Part of the Self: Empathy, Understanding and Support”
Academic psychology and neuroscience have typically centered viewpoints of the dominant culture (WEIRD: White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic), which has influenced both the process and content of contemplative neuroscience. By incorporating more diverse perspectives through a lens of social justice, Helen Weng will present new lines of work that center viewpoints of meditators who belong …
Continue reading “Contemplative Neuroscience through the Lens of Diversity and Social Justice”
It is well known that human beings are both profoundly interdependent and profoundly unconscious—a dangerous mix. In our conscious and unconscious desires to protect ourselves, we “need” an enemy whom to fight against, control, or withdraw from. In Polly Young-Eisendrath’s decades-long professional experience as a Jungian psychoanalyst and a couples therapist, as well as her …
The 2018 Mind & Life Summer Research Institute extends the arc from the 2016 and 2017 programs that addressed themes of context, social connectivity, and intersubjectivity by engaging critical topics relevant to cultural difference and human diversity. The weeklong immersive program will examine social and psychological patterns, both implicit and explicit, to discuss how difference is constructed at personal, interpersonal, and socio-structural levels. Scientific, humanistic, and first-person contemplative perspectives will give attention to processes of othering and how we can overcome conflict by embracing difference.
Othering and Belonging is the problem of the 21st century. In this talk, the presenter will describe how the changes in the world are creating deep stress and anxiety. This process is likely to increase for the foreseeable future. This stress is both biological and ontological. The way we respond is social. The underlying issue …
This Mind & Life Digital Dialogue is an interactive multimedia site with video, presentations, and discussions from the 32nd Mind & Life Dialogue, Botho/Ubuntu: A Dialogue on Spirituality, Science, and Humanity, held in Gaborone, Botswana in August 2017. In this unique event, the Mind & Life Institute convened leading African humanitarian and spiritual leaders, scholars, …
