There is an urgent need for a rigorous empirical qualitative description of African contemplative practices in terms of the current science and Buddhist frameworks, in order to bring the African academic community into the global research efforts to alleviate suffering and enhance human flourishing. The discussion over the 3-day retreat will center on defining contemplative …
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Designing and implementing a contemplative practice-based program for ex-combatants in Colombia’s peacebuilding process
This think tank will develop a meditation-based curriculum for peacebuilding along with guidelines for its implementation as a component of Colombia’s ongoing peacebuilding process. We will draw on Mind & Life’s model to bring together scholars, scientists, and contemplatives across institutional and geographical boundaries for this immediate opportunity to promote individual and societal flourishing in …
Embodiment, Contemplative Practice, and Equality: Developing a Programmatic and Research Agenda for Reducing Ingroup Bias through Embodied Inquiry and Contemplative Practice
Prejudice and discrimination have destructive consequences in contemporary society. Discrimination based on social categorization (e.g., by gender, age or ethnicity) is thought to stem from implicit and explicit expression of in-group bias, a preference for others who belong to one’s own salient social categories. Existing theories are limited in explaining how to limit the effects …
Nonattachment, group identity, and memory of historical injustices
The aim of this project is to extend my previous work on nonattachment by assessing its role in group identity and memory of historical injustices. I will assess individual differences in nonattachment in the general American population and test the effect of nonattachment on (1) previously known effects of group identity on biases in memory …
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Socially-Engaged Mindfulness Interventions (SEMI) and the Promise of Making Refuge
This Think Tank brings together engaged Buddhist and secular mindfulness practitioners, teachers, scholars, and activists from areas like minority rights and struggles, environmentalism and sustainability, critical pedagogy and liberal arts education. We draw on Buddhist and feminist and posthumanist thinking for inspiration to formulate our working questions: What is refuge? Where or when do we …
Session V – Reparative Humanism: Exploring the Meaning of Ubuntu
A spirit of Ubuntu gestures towards both an embrace and a challenge that holds Others to greater moral accountability, and calls on them to be ethical subjects. Ubuntu is fundamental in both ethics and politics, and is relevant to the embodied politics of forgiveness after mass trauma and violence. I will elaborate on this notion …
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Session IV – The Role of Botho/Ubuntu in Modern Responses to Children’s and Women’s Rights Issues in Africa
How can the role and nature of Botho/Ubuntu in African societies be reconciled with the many incidences of violations of women and children’s rights we witness in modern society? How have African societies travelled from historical perspectives that highlighted definitions of integrated individual and collective humanity of all peoples to current violations that include far …
Session IV – The Biology of Care and Conflict in Groups
Relations between groups can be peaceful and mutually beneficial. Human groups co-exist, trade goods and care for one another. But relations between groups can also be competitive, and sometimes violent. Indeed, the human ability to care for “us” (our in-group) often seems to coincide with an ability to compete against “them” (out-groups). In our work …
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Session I – The Concept of Botho/Ubuntu: its Expression and Resilience in the Lived Experiences of Batswana and Other Indigenous Africans
The concept of Botho/Ubuntu encapsulates the fundamental values, belief systems, cosmological worldviews and livelihood practices of indigenous Africans generally and Batswana in particular. Botho/Ubuntu is manifested in the Botswana internal and external environment, and it guides the manner in which communities interact with one another and with their external environment. Tswana idioms and proverbs, and …
Session II – Traditional Healer as Medium for Addressing Afflictions and Restoration of Wholistic Order within Botho/Ubuntu Cosmology
My presentation develops an understanding of the art of traditional healing as one pillar of the lived community experience of Botho/Ubuntu cosmology. Such healing holistically addresses afflictions at multiple levels — self, community, 11 nature and spirit. It signifies the co-agencies of God (creator/life-giver), ancestors (guiding/protecting), spirit-mediums (messengers between spirit/ material worlds), chiefs (custodian of …
