Zen Brain

Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Sytems, and Transformation:

with Richard Davidson, John Dunne, Evan Thompson, Rebecca Todd, Neil Theise, Al Kaszniak, Roshi Joan Halifax

I am pleased to announce what promises to be a wonderful retreat at the Upaya Zen Center, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend, but I would love to be there.

As you know, I am a fan of both Roshi Joan Halifax and Richie Davidson. I have written many articles about Richie’s work in affective neuroscience – a branch of neuroscience that he founded. Some of my articles about Richie are listed in the second tab below.

Roshi Joan Halifax became an instant friend of mine about 17 years ago when we attended a retreat with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh on the University of Santa Barbara campus. We happened to fall into a small group together and instantly had rapport.

The Zen Brain retreat is From January 30 – February 2, and promises to be outstanding. Here is what the program page states:

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. [Read More…]

You can register from the program page if you are able to attend.

By the way, I know very little about John Dunne, Evan Thompson, Rebecca Todd, Neil Theise, or Al Kaszniak. You can read about them on the program page.

Do you think you will attend Zen Brain: Consciousness, Complex Sytems, and Transformation?

This is a wonderful book.
I read it about a year ago.
Buy it now.