I am just back from the Southern California Mediation Association annual conference and was both intrigued and pleased by the large number of times I heard the words "meditation" and "mindfulness." So today I smiled when I received an announcement of the upcoming Zen Brain conference; it is the second annual event focusing on the brain and meditation put on by Upaya Institute. This year's conference is titled "ZEN BRAIN II: Open Presence, Selflessness, and Compassion: Perspectives from Buddhism, Neuroscience, and Complexity Theory."
Some of the presenters I have blogged about in the past: Sandra Blakeslee, James Austin, and Richard Davidson. All the presenters are introduced here.
An excerpt from the Upaya Web site:
In recent years, neuroscientific studies of Buddhist meditators who practice the cultivation of compassion and non-referential presence, and the application of mathematical complexity theory in biology and neuroscience, have provided interesting perspectives on the Buddhist concepts of emptiness, impermanence, codependent arising, selflessness, and nonduality. In this retreat/seminar, Zen teachers, leading scientists who have contributed to this growing field of research (and are each long-term meditation practitioners), a Buddhist scholar, a philosopher, and a neuroscience writer, interactively share their perspectives on the relationships between Zen practice, Buddhist philosophy, neuroscience, and complex systems theory. Talks and discussion examine how these areas of scientific research are relevant for practice, and how experienced meditation practitioners can help sharpen the research questions being asked.
This program is probably not for all of you but I wanted to make sure those with an interest learned about ZEN BRAIN II.
Note (added January 12, 2009, 3:15PM Mountain): Link to a summary of what occurred at the conference.
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