Download Retreat Title: Zen Brain

Retreat Title: "Zen Brain: The Self and Selflessness in Neuroscience, Buddhism,
and Philosophy "
Dates: January 21 - 24, 2010
Description:
Buddhist practice involves the cultivation of the realization of selflessness and
interdependence and, as well, powerful insights into how we create the illusion of a
separate and unchanging self. In recent years, philosophy, cognitive science, and
neuroscience have contributed new and important perspectives on these core teachings of
Buddhism. In this retreat, prominent scientists and scholars will explore Buddhist,
philosophic, and neuroscientific perspectives on the self and selfless, and the implications
of these areas for Zen practice. We as well will look at how we apply the research in
neuroscience in the areas of identity, causality, and mental function. Talks, discussions,
and explorations with participants are embedded within Zazen practice throughout each
day.
Faculty & Presentation Topics:
Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin) “Meditation and Selflessness:
Insights from Neuroscience”
John Dunne, Ph.D. (Emory University) “Selflessness and Experience: A Conundrum in
Buddhist Philosophy”
Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D. (Upaya Zen Center) “Zen Practice and the Cultivation of
Selflessness”
Al Kaszniak, Ph.D. (University of Arizona) “Self-Awareness and the Brain:
Contributions from the Study of Neurological Illness”
Evan Thompson, Ph.D. (University of Toronto) “Self-Awareness: Insights from
Phenomenology, Neuroscience, and Meditation”
Biographies:
Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D.
Richard J. 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.
John D. Dunne, Ph.D.
Dr. 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.
Joan Halifax Roshi, Ph.D.
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).
Alfred W. Kaszniak, Ph.D.
Al Kaszniak, received his Ph.D. in clinical and developmental psychology from the
University of Illinois at Chicago in 1976, and completed an internship in clinical
neuropsychology at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago. He is
currently Head of the Department of Psychology, Director of Clinical Neuropsychology,
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. His
research, published in over 150 journal articles, chapters and books (including edited
volumes on consciousness and science), has been supported by grants from the NIH,
NIMH, and several private foundations. His work has focused on the neuropsychology of
Alzheimer's disease and other age-related neurological disorders, memory selfmonitoring, the biological bases of emotion, and emotion response and regulation in
long-term Zen and mindfulness meditators.
Evan Thompson, Ph.D
Dr. 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.
Bibliography:
Davidson, R.J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J., Rosenkranz, R., Muller, D., Santorelli,
S.F., Urbanowski, F., Harrington, A., Bonus, K., & Sheridan, J.F. (2003). Alterations in
Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation. Psychosomatic
Medicine, 65, 564-570.
Dunne, J. D. (2006). Realizing the Unreal: Dharmakirti’s Theory of Yogic Perception.
Journal of Indian Philosophy, 34, 497–519.
Farb, N.A.S., Segal, Z.V., Mayberg, H., Bean, J., McKeon, D., Fatima, Z., & Anderson,
A.K. (2007). Attending to the Present: Mindfulness Meditation Reveals Distinct Neural
Modes of Self-reference. SCAN, 2, 313-322.
Feinberg, T.E., & Keenan, J.P. (Eds.) (2005). The Lost Self: Pathologies of the Brain and
Identity. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
Halifax, J. (2008). Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the
Presence of Death. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Kaszniak, A.W., & Edmonds, E. (in press). Anosognosia and Alzheimer’s Disease: Behavioral
Studies. In G. Prigatano (Ed.), The Study of Anosognosia. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lutz, A., Dunne, J.D., & Davidson, R.J. (2007). Meditation and the Neuroscience of
Consciousness. In P. Zelazo, M. Moscovitch, & E. Thompson (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of
Consciousness (pp.499-551). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lutz, A., Slagter, H.A., Dunne, J.D., & Davidson, R.J. (2008). Attention Regulation and
Monitoring in Meditation. Trends in Cognitive Science, 12, 163-169.
Nielsen, L., & Kaszniak, A.W. (2006). Awareness of Subtle Emotional Feelings: A Comparison of
Long-term Meditators and Non-meditators. Emotion, Vol. 6, pp. 392-405.
Pannu, J.K., & Kaszniak, A.W. (2005). Metamemory Experiments in Neurological Populations:
A Review. Neuropsychology Review, 15, 105-130.
Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap/Harvard University Press.