It's my favorite time of year - the annual Zen Brain Conference at Upaya Zen Center, hosted as always by Roshi Joan Halifax. Among the regular attendees who were there again this year were Richard Davidson, Evan Thompson, Al Kaszniak, and John Dunne.
This year's topic was Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation.
In this intensive program, we explore our lived experience of awareness in relation to our living bodies and brains seen as complex adaptive systems. We focus especially on the themes of “embodied cognition,” “emergent processes,” and “enaction” (cognition as embodied action). Neuroscientists, philosophers, Buddhist scholars, and Zen teachers explore these themes through presentations and discussion interspersed with periods of meditation practice throughout each day.This is the kind of stuff I get excited about - so I look forward to listening to all of these.
01-30-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 1)
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Recorded: Thursday Jan 30, 2014
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Series Description: Increasingly, cognitive science presents us with a vision of mind as grounded in the complex transformative processes of life, while neuroscience presents us with a vision of the brain as a complex adaptive system that constantly reshapes itself in response to context, experience, and practice. How can this vision of complexity and transformation enrich our understanding of consciousness—the felt experience of awareness across waking, dreaming, sleeping, and dying? In this intensive program, we explore our lived experience of awareness in relation to our living bodies and brains seen as complex adaptive systems. We focus especially on the themes of “embodied cognition,” “emergent processes,” and “enaction” (cognition as embodied action). Neuroscientists, philosophers, Buddhist scholars, and Zen teachers explore these themes through presentations and discussion interspersed with periods of meditation practice throughout each day.
Episode Description: Al Kaszniak kicks off this opening session of Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation by stating that this program is intended to “push the boundaries” of knowledge and will touch upon “new thinking” in relating complex systems theory to areas of inquiry such as neuroscience, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and contemplative practice. The Zen Brain faculty then briefly introduce themselves before handing the floor over to Neil Theise. Neil presents a wide-ranging introduction to consciousness and complex systems theory that draws upon ideas in physics, biology, and spirituality. After presenting the basics of complex systems theory, Neil unfolds some very novel thinking on how the emergence of the universe can be viewed in terms of three overlapping processes: complementarity, recursion, and sentience.
BIOs:
Richard Davidson received his Ph.D. in Personality, Psychopathology, and Psychophysiology from Harvard University. He is currently Director for the Laboratory of Affective Neuroscience as well as the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research is focused on cortical and subcortical substrates of emotion and affective disorders, including depression and anxiety, using quantitative electrophysiology, positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to make inferences about patterns of regional brain function. A major focus of his current work is on interactions between prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in the regulation of emotion in both normal subjects and patients with affective and anxiety disorders. He has also studied and published several papers on brain physiology in long-term Buddhist meditators, and in persons receiving short-term training in mindfulness meditation. Among his several books is Visions of compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature (2002, Oxford University Press), co-edited with Anne Harrington.
Evan Thompson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He received his B.A. from Amherst College in Asian Studies, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. He is the author of Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007), and the co-editor (with P. Zelazo and M. Moscovitch) of The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, 2007) He is also the co-author with F.J. Varela and E. Rosch of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991) and the author of Color Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (Routledge Press, 1995). He is currently working on a new book, titled Waking, Dreaming, Being: New Revelations about the Self from Neuroscience and Meditation. Thompson held a Canada Research Chair at York University (2002-2005), and has also taught at Boston University. He has held visiting positions at the Centre de Récherch en Epistémologie Appliqué (CREA) at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
John Dunne is an associate professor in the Department of Religion at Emory University, where he is Co-Director of the Encyclopedia of Contemplative Practices and the Emory Collaborative for Contemplative Studies. He was educated at the Amherst College and Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. from the Committee on the Study of Religion in 1999. Before joining Emory’s faculty in 2005, he taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and held a research position at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Support from the American Institute of Indian Studies sustained two years of his doctoral research at the Central Institute for Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarnath, India. His work focuses on various aspects of Buddhist philosophy and contemplative practice. In Foundations of Dharmakirti’s Philosophy (2004), he examines the most prominent Buddhist theories of perception, language, inference and justification. His current research includes an inquiry into the notion of “mindfulness” in both classical Buddhist and contemporary contexts, and he is also engaged in a study of Candrakirti’s “Prasannapada”, a major Buddhist philosophical work on the metaphysics of “emptiness” and “selflessness.” His recently published work includes an essay on neuroscience and meditation co-authored with Richard J. Davidson and Antoine Lutz. He frequently serves as a translator for Tibetan scholars, and as a consultant, he appears on the roster of several ongoing scientific studies of Buddhist contemplative practices.
Neil Theise is a diagnostic liver pathologist and adult stem cell researcher in New York City, where he is Professor of Pathology and of Medicine at the Beth Israel Medical Center of the Mount Sinai Health System. He is considered a pioneer of multi-organ adult stem cell plasticity and has published on that topic in Science, Nature, and Cell. Beginning with applications of complexity and emergent self-organization to stem cell behaviors, his work has expanded into include cross-cultural models of biology and medicine, quantum behaviors in biological systems (biological complementarity, uncertainty), and parallels between contemplative insights into reality and contemporary scientific understandings. Most recently, his efforts have focused on the nature of consciousness and the role of sentience to the development and organization of the universe. His teaching efforts regarding all these themes (text and video, for lay and academic audiences) can be found on his blog, neiltheise.wordpress.com. Additional writings can be found at his website at neiltheise.com.
Rebecca Todd focused her doctoral work on mapping neural activation patterns underlying affective processing as well as cognition/emotion interactions associated with individual differences and normative development of self-regulation in childhood. Current research interests include investigating the effects of emotional arousal on the subjective experience of perceptual vividness and its link with memory vividness in healthy young adults and in post-traumatic stress disorder. She is also interested in the influence of emotional state on perceptual processing and higher-order cognitive processes, and the neural mechanisms underlying such influences.
Al Kaszniak received his Ph.D. in clinical and developmental psychology from the University of Illinois in 1976, and completed an internship in clinical neuropsychology at Rush Medical Center in Chicago. He is currently Director of the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium Education Core, and a professor in the departments of psychology, neurology, and psychiatry at The University of Arizona (UA. He formerly served as Head of the Psychology Department, and as Director of the UA Center for Consciousness Studies. Al also presently serves as Chief Academic Officer for the Mind and Life Institute, an organization that facilitates collaborative scientific research on contemplative practices and traditions. He is the co-author or editor of seven books, including the three-volume Toward a Science of Consciousness (MIT Press), and Emotions, Qualia, and Consciousness (World Scientific). His research, published in over 150 journal articles and scholarly book chapters, has been supported by grants from the U.S. National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Mental Health, and National Science Foundation, as well as several private foundations. His work has focused on the neuropsychology of Alzheimer’s disease and other age-related neurological disorders, consciousness, memory self-monitoring, emotion, and the psychophysiology of long-term and short-term meditation. Al has served on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, and has been an advisor to the National Institutes of Health and other governmental agencies. He is a Past-President of the Section on Clinical Geropsychology and fellow of the American Psychological Association and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. In addition to his academic and administrative roles, he is a lineage holder and teacher (Sensei) in the Soto tradition of Zen Buddhism.
Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She received her Ph.D in medical anthropology in 1973. She has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions, including Harvard Divinity School and Harvard Medical School, Georgetown Medical School, University of Virginia Medical School, Duke University Medical School, University of Connecticut Medical School, among many others. She received a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, and was an Honorary Research Fellow in Medical Ethnobotany at Harvard University. From 1972-1975, she worked with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center on pioneering work with dying cancer patients, using LSD as an adjunct to psychotherapy. After the LSD project, she has continued to work with dying people and their families and to teach health care professionals as well as lay individuals on compassionate care of the dying. She is Director of the Project on Being with Dying and Founder and Director of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. For the past twenty-five years, she has been active in environmental work. She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on applied Buddhism. Her books include: The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof); Shamanic Voices; Shaman: The Wounded Healer; The Fruitful Darkness; Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America; Being with Dying; and Wisdom Beyond Wisdom (with Kazuaki Tanashashi).
01-31-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 2)
Bagaimana Menarikkan Article Pada Hari Ini . BLUE.Jangan Lupa Datang Lagi Untuk Membaca Article Yang lebih Menarik Pada Masa Akan Datang/Episode Description: In this second session of Zen Brain, Evan Thompson follows on what Neil Theise introduced in the first session (Part 1 of this series), in a wide-ranging exploration of complexity and consciousness. Evan touches upon concepts such as autopoiesis, sense-making, the Buddhist idea of dependent co-arising, enaction, sentience, and the emergence of mind. Podcast: Play in new window | Download
01-31-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 3)
Episode Description: Following Evan Thompson’s talk (Part 2 of this series), the Zen Brain faculty field questions from the program participants.
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01-31-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 4)
Episode Description: In this segment of Zen Brain, Rebecca Todd discusses the processes of affect-biased attention and affective enhancement of perception in relation to the complex adaptive system of the human brain. Affect-biased attention refers to how our emotional states bias what we pay attention to in the world before we are even exposed to a stimulus, while affective enhancement refers to how an emotionally-laden perception is made more vivid by our brain. Rebecca discusses these concepts in relation to genetics, epigenetics, and also offers some clinical implications of the data she shares.
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01-31-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 5)
Episode Description: Following Rebecca Todd’s talk (Part 4 of this series), the Zen Brain faculty field questions from the program participants.
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01-31-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 6)
Episode Description: After a full day of presentations, the Zen Brain faculty address questions submitted by the program participants.
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02-01-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 7)
Episode Description: In this segment of Zen Brain, which coincides conceptually with Neil Theise’s talk (Part 1 of this series), John Dunne presents an elegant overview of the evolution of several Buddhist philosophical systems. The goal of all Buddhist systems is the elimination of suffering, suffering which arises due to confusion about the nature of “something.” As we progress from early Buddhism, to the Sautrantika system, to Yogacara, then to Madhyamika, and finally to Mahamudra and Dzogchen, that “something” about which we are confused changes. Each system presents a slightly subtler “cause” for our confusion. Importantly, however, no single system can claim to have the best account of reality. No explanatory system is ultimately true. A system is “better” than another only insofar as it is better at eliminating suffering, at leading us to freedom.
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02-01-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 8)
Episode Description: Following John Dunne’s talk (Part 7 of this series), the Zen Brain faculty field questions from the program participants.
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02-01-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 9)
Episode Description: In this wide-ranging session of the program, Richie touches upon the topics of complexity and consciousness, gamma oscillations, synchrony, and consciousness, the consequences of unconsciousness, epigenetics, contemplative practice in children, and ends with a beautiful “call for humility” in the face of the extraordinary complexity of the human brain.
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02-01-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 10)
Episode Description: After a full day of presentations, the Zen Brain faculty address questions submitted by the program participants.
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02-02-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 11)
Episode Description: On the final morning of the program, the Zen Brain faculty offer some concluding thoughts before the final Q&A.
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02-02-2014: Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Systems, and Transformation (Part 12, last part)
Episode Description: In this final session of Zen Brain, the faculty address remaining questions from the program participants.
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