Compassion Science - Bibliography

Academic, Professional Practice, (limited) Popular

Laura Galiana, Noemí Sansó (editors), The Power of Compassion, Nova, Jul. 2019, 408 pages.

Publisher description: Compassion is associated with feelings, emotions, expressions of care and comfort, derived from a place of love and relationship. However, as “The Power of Compassion” demonstrates, compassion is indeed based out of a position of power; a personal resource and strength to sustain people in complex and difficult times in their lives but also a concept which is meaningful at an organisational level and to society at large. Compassion has a growing scientific basis, notably within psychology and neuroscience but its application is increasingly evident across a range of health and social care systems.

This book brings together the wisdom of compassionate science through the exposition of work by international experts on the development of evidence in the field of compassion research and training. Divided into four sections, readers will find a comprehensive and contemporary review of current measures, opportunities for training into compassion and self-compassion and its application to different contexts (such as mental illness and end-of-life), as well as an understanding of compassion at a more global level. As a whole, it provides a comprehensive text for academics, researchers and scholars as well as students interested in this new and dynamic field of study. This new textbook, edited by Laura Galiana and Noemí Sansó, offers different facets of a complex concept and will no doubt lead to further debate and a better discourse on how compassion can be transformative. And that, is something truly powerful.

Laura Galiana, Head of Msc. Social and Health Care of Dependence, Department of Methodology for the Behavioral Sciences, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain.

Noemí Sansó, Department of Nursing and Physiotherapy, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain.

***

Christopher Germer & Kristin Neff, Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals, The Guilford Press, Aug. 14, 2019, 452 pages.

Publisher description: This is the authoritative guide to conducting the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) program, which provides powerful tools for coping with life challenges and enhancing emotional well-being. MSC codevelopers Christopher Germer and Kristin Neff review relevant theory and research and describe the program's unique pedagogy. Readers are taken step by step through facilitating each of the eight sessions and the accompanying full-day retreat. Detailed vignettes illustrate not only how to teach the course's didactic and experiential content, but also how to engage with participants, manage group processes, and overcome common obstacles. The final section of the book describes how to integrate self-compassion into psychotherapy. Purchasers get access to a companion website with downloadable audio recordings of the guided meditations. Note: This book is not intended to replace formal training for teaching the MSC program.
 
See also two related resources for MSC participants and general readers, The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook, by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer, and The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, by Christopher Germer.

About the Authors:

Christopher Germer, PhD, has a private practice in mindfulness- and compassion-based psychotherapy in Arlington, Massachusetts, and is a part-time Lecturer on Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School/Cambridge Health Alliance. He is a founding faculty member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and of the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion. His books include The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook and The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion (for the general public) and Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program, Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy, and Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, Second Edition (for professionals). Dr. Germer lectures and leads workshops internationally. His website is https://chrisgermer.com.
 
Kristin Neff, PhD, is Associate Professor of Human Development and Culture at The University of Texas at Austin and a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research. Her books include The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook and Self-Compassion (for the general public) and Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program (for professionals). She is also author of an audio program, Self-Compassion: Step by Step, and has published numerous academic articles. She lectures and offers workshops worldwide. Together with Christopher Germer, Dr. Neff hosts an 8-hour online course, "The Power of Self-Compassion." Her website is https://self-compassion.org.

***

Paul Gilbert, The Compassionate Mind, Constable, 2009, 513 pages.

Publisher description: Compassion and particularly compassion towards oneself can have a significant impact on our wellbeing and mental health. Developing our sense of compassion can affect many areas of our lives, in particular our relationships with other people. In this book, Professor Paul Gilbert explores how our minds have developed to survive in dangerous and threatening environments by becoming sensitive and quick to react to perceived threats. This can sometimes lead to problems in how we respond to life's challenges and scientific evidence has demonstrated that compassion towards oneself and others can lead to an increased sense of happiness and wellbeing - particularly valuable when we are feeling stressed. Based on evolutionary research and scientific studies of how the brain processes emotional information, this compassionate approach offers an appealing alternative to the traditional western view of compassion, which sometimes sees it as a sign of weakness and can encourage self-criticism and a hard-nosed drive to achieve.

Paul Gilbert is professor of clinical psychology at the University of Derby and, until his retirement from the NHS in 2016, was consultant clinical psychologist at the Derbyshire Health Care Foundation Trust. He has researched evolutionary approaches to psychopathology for over 40 years with a special focus on the roles of mood, shame and self-criticism in various mental health difficulties for which compassion focused therapy was developed. He has written and edited many books on psychology, therapy, and compassion. He was awarded an OBE by the Queen in March 2011 for services to mental health.

***

Paul Gilbert, Compassion Focused Therapy, Routledge, May 13, 2010, 248 pages.

Publisher description: Research into the beneficial effect of developing compassion has advanced enormously in the last ten years, with the development of inner compassion being an important therapeutic focus and goal. This book explains how Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) – a process of developing compassion for the self and others to increase well-being and aid recovery – varies from other forms of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.

Comprising 30 key points this book explores the founding principles of CFT and outlines the detailed aspects of compassion in the CFT approach. Divided into two parts – Theory and Compassion Practice – this concise book provides a clear guide to the distinctive characteristics of CFT.

Compassion Focused Therapy will be a valuable source for students and professionals in training as well as practising therapists who want to learn more about the distinctive features of CFT.Paul Gilbert is professor of clinical psychology at the University of Derby and, until his retirement from the NHS in 2016, was consultant clinical psychologist at the Derbyshire Health Care Foundation Trust. He has researched evolutionary approaches to psychopathology for over 40 years with a special focus on the roles of mood, shame and self-criticism in various mental health difficulties for which compassion focused therapy was developed. He has written and edited many books on psychology, therapy, and compassion. He was awarded an OBE by the Queen in March 2011 for services to mental health.

***

 

Paul Gilbert & Choden, Mindful Compassion: How the Science of Compassion Can Help You Understand Your Emotions, Live in the Present, and Connect Deeply with Others, New Harbinger Pubn, Jan. 4, 2014, 384 pages.

Publisher description: Are you ready to transform your mind and emotions? To cultivate compassion, stability, self-confidence, and well-being? If so, get ready to change the way you experience your life with this highly-anticipated approach using mindfulness and compassion.

Therapists have long been aware of mindfulness as a powerful attention skill that can help us live with greater clarity and awareness―but mindfulness alone is not enough to completely change the way a brain works. In order to fully thrive, we require motivation. Compassion, like anger or aggression, is an extremely powerful motivational force that can bring about real, lasting change.

Written by the founder of compassion-focused therapy (CFT), Paul Gilbert and former Buddhist monk, Choden, Mindful Compassion is a unique blending of evolutionary and Buddhist psychology. In this breakthrough book, you’ll learn how traditional mindfulness and compassion can work in harmony to offer a new, effective, and practical approach to overcoming everyday emotional and psychological problems.

If you are ready to end toxic self-criticism, heal trauma and shame, feel worthy and loveable, and be kinder to yourself and others, this book can show you the way.

Paul Gilbert is professor of clinical psychology at the University of Derby and, until his retirement from the NHS in 2016, was consultant clinical psychologist at the Derbyshire Health Care Foundation Trust. He has researched evolutionary approaches to psychopathology for over 40 years with a special focus on the roles of mood, shame and self-criticism in various mental health difficulties for which compassion focused therapy was developed. He has written and edited many books on psychology, therapy, and compassion. He was awarded an OBE by the Queen in March 2011 for services to mental health.

***


Paul Gilbert (Editor), Compassion: Concepts, Research and Applications, Routledge, May 4, 2017, 298 pages.

Publisher description: Paul Gilbert brings together an international line-up of leading scholars and researchers in the field to provide a state-of-the-art exploration of key areas in compassion research and applications. Compassion can be seen as a core element of prosocial behaviour, and explorations of the concepts and value of compassion have been extended into different aspects of life including physical and psychological therapies, schools, leadership and business.

While many animals share abilities to be distress sensitive and caring of others, it is our newly evolved socially intelligent abilities that make us capable of knowingly and deliberately helping others and purposely developing skills and wisdom to do so. This book generates many research questions whilst exploring the similarity and differences of human compassion to non-human caring and looks at how compassion changes the brain and body, affects genetic expression, manifests at a young age and is then cultivated (or not) by the social environment.

Compassion: Concepts, Research and Applications will be essential reading for professionals, researchers and scholars interested in compassion and its applications in psychology and psychotherapy.

Paul Gilbert is professor of clinical psychology at the University of Derby and, until his retirement from the NHS in 2016, was consultant clinical psychologist at the Derbyshire Health Care Foundation Trust. He has researched evolutionary approaches to psychopathology for over 40 years with a special focus on the roles of mood, shame and self-criticism in various mental health difficulties for which compassion focused therapy was developed. He has written and edited many books on psychology, therapy, and compassion. He was awarded an OBE by the Queen in March 2011 for services to mental health.

***

Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, Bantam, Sep. 26, 2006, 416 pages.

Publisher description: Emotional Intelligence was an international phenomenon, appearing on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and selling more than five million copies worldwide. Now, once again, Daniel Goleman has written a groundbreaking synthesis of the latest findings in biology and brain science, revealing that we are “wired to connect” and the surprisingly deep impact of our relationships on every aspect of our lives.

Far more than we are consciously aware, our daily encounters with parents, spouses, bosses, and even strangers shape our brains and affect cells throughout our bodies—down to the level of our genes—for good or ill. In Social Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explores an emerging new science with startling implications for our interpersonal world. Its most fundamental discovery: we are designed for sociability, constantly engaged in a “neural ballet” that connects us brain to brain with those around us.

Our reactions to others, and theirs to us, have a far-reaching biological impact, sending out cascades of hormones that regulate everything from our hearts to our immune systems, making good relationships act like vitamins—and bad relationships like poisons. We can “catch” other people’s emotions the way we catch a cold, and the consequences of isolation or relentless social stress can be life-shortening. Goleman explains the surprising accuracy of first impressions, the basis of charisma and emotional power, the complexity of sexual attraction, and how we detect lies. He describes the “dark side” of social intelligence, from narcissism to Machiavellianism and psychopathy. He also reveals our astonishing capacity for “mindsight,” as well as the tragedy of those, like autistic children, whose mindsight is impaired.

Is there a way to raise our children to be happy? What is the basis of a nourishing marriage? How can business leaders and teachers inspire the best in those they lead and teach? How can groups divided by prejudice and hatred come to live together in peace?

The answers to these questions may not be as elusive as we once thought. And Goleman delivers his most heartening news with powerful conviction: we humans have a built-in bias toward empathy, cooperation, and altruism–provided we develop the social intelligence to nurture these capacities in ourselves and others.

***

Daniel Goleman & Richard J. Davidson, Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, Avery Pub., Sep 5, 2017, 336 pages.

Publisher description: In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.

Sweeping away common misconceptions and neuromythology to open readers’ eyes to the ways data has been distorted to sell mind-training methods, the authors demonstrate that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result. But short daily doses will not get us to the highest level of lasting positive change—even if we continue for years—without specific additions. More than sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, all of which are missing in widespread versions of mind training. The authors also reveal the latest data from Davidson’s own lab that point to a new methodology for developing a broader array of mind-training methods with larger implications for how we can derive the greatest benefits from the practice.

Exciting, compelling, and grounded in new research, this is one of those rare books that has the power to change us at the deepest level.

Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., covered behavioral and brain sciences for The New York Times for twelve years and is co-director for the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University. He has taught at Harvard, his alma mater, and addresses groups and businesses around the world. He is the author of Emotional Intelligence, Working with Emotional Intelligence, and The Meditative Mind, and is co-author of Primal Leadership and Destructive Emotions.

Richard J. Davidson received his PhD from Harvard in psychology, and has been at Wisconsin since1984, where he directs the Waisman Brain Imaging Lab, the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds. He has been chosen as one of Time's '100 most influential people in the world'. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. 

***

 

Thupten Jinpa, A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives, Hudson Street Press, May 5, 2015, 304 pages.

Publisher description: The highly acclaimed thought leader and English translator of the Dalai Lama shows us how compassion works as a powerful inner resource that can yield surprising and compelling benefits—not just for others, but for ourselves.
 
The Buddhist practice of mindfulness first caught on in the West when we began to understand its many practical benefits. Now Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., introduces a practice with even greater life-changing power: compassion. Based on the revolutionary course in Compassion Cultivation Training at Stanford that Jinpa helped to create, A Fearless Heart shows us that compassion can be a path through suffering, a key to robust health, and even an effective way to reach our goals.
 
Yet we fear compassion. We worry that if we are too compassionate with others, they will take advantage of us, and too much self-compassion will make us slackers. Pulling from the latest Western research as well as traditional Buddhist psychology, Jinpa offers simple daily practices that will help readers train their compassion muscle for a greater meaning, connection, and fulfillment.

A former monk, Thupten Jinpa holds a PhD from Cambridge University and has been the principal English translator to the Dalai Lama for nearly thirty years. He is an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University and chairman of the Mind and Life Institute, which is dedicated to promoting dialogues and collaborations between the sciences and contemplative knowledge, especially Buddhism. He lives in Montreal with his wife and daughters.

***

Joe Loizzo, Sustainable Happiness: The Mind Science of Well-Being, Altruism, and Inspiration, Routledge, Sept. 10, 2012, 745 pages.

Today’s greatest health challenges, the so-called diseases of civilization—depression, trauma, obesity, cancer—are now known in large part to reflect our inability to tame stress reflexes gone wild and to empower instead the peaceful, healing and sociable part of our nature that adapts us to civilized life. The same can be said of the economic challenges posed by the stress-reactive cycles of boom and bust, driven by addictive greed and compulsive panic. As current research opens up new horizons of stress-cessation, empathic intelligence, peak performance, and shared happiness, it has also encountered Asian methods of self-healing and interdependence more effective and teachable than any known in the West. Sustainable Happiness is the first book to make Asia’s most rigorous and complete system of contemplative living, hidden for centuries in Tibet, accessible to help us all on our shared journey towards sustainable well-being, altruism, inspiration and happiness.

From the Author: Raised by an existential psychiatrist in the heyday of psychoanalysis, as a boy I saw firsthand the costs of cutting psychotherapy and medicine off from their roots in our ancient spiritual traditions. As I admired my dad's mission, I also watched him struggle with poor health, burnout, blocks to leadership and to nurturing and being nurtured by his family life. I vowed to reunite modern medicine and psychotherapy with our lost contemplative arts and sciences. Following Carl Jung, I entered the time-machine of Tibetan Buddhism, to find the world's most scientific system of contemplative living. As our research opens new horizons in evolutionary biology, brain science and positive health, we now trace the "diseases of civilization" to the panicked child and cornered animal in us all, writ large in our global crisis in economics, healthcare, terrorism and climate change. This book is the first to make the maps and tools of humanity's most rigorous and complete path of self-healing and interdependence, hidden for centuries in Tibet, accessible to help us on our journey towards wellbeing, altruism, inspiration and happiness.

***

Matthieu Ricard, Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World, Little, Brown and Company, Jun. 2, 2015, 864 pages.

Publisher description: In Happiness, Matthieu Ricard demonstrated that true happiness is not tied to fleeting moments or sensations, but is an enduring state of soul rooted in mindfulness and compassion for others. Now he turns his lens from the personal to the global, with a rousing argument that altruism -- genuine concern for the well-being of others -- could be the saving grace of the 21st century. It is, he believes, the vital thread that can answer the main challenges of our time: the economy in the short term, life satisfaction in the mid-term, and environment in the long term.

Ricard's message has been taken up by major economists and thinkers, including Dennis Snower, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stiglitz, and George Soros. Matthieu Ricard makes a robust and passionate case for cultivating altruistic love and compassion as the best means for simultaneously benefitting ourselves and our society. It's a fresh outlook on an ardent struggle -- and one that just might make the world a better place.

Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk, an author, translator, and photographer. He has lived, studied, and worked in the Himalayan region for over forty years. The son of French philosopher Jean-François Revel and artist Yahne Le Toumelin, Matthieu was born in France in 1946 and grew up among the personalities and ideas of Paris' intellectual and artistic circles. He earned a Ph.D. degree in cell genetics at the renowned Institut Pasteur under the Nobel Laureate Francois Jacob.  In 1967, he traveled to India to meet great spiritual masters from Tibet. After completing his doctoral thesis in 1972, he decided to concentrate on Buddhist studies and practice. Since then, he has lived in India, Bhutan, and Nepal and studied with some of the greatest teachers of that tradition. He is the author of several books including The Monk and the Philosopher, a dialogue with his father; The Quantum and the Lotus, a dialogue with the astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan; Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill; and Why Meditate? His books have been translated into over twenty languages.

***

Jacob A Sadavoy & Michelle L. Zube (editors), A Scientific Framework for Compassion and Social Justice: Lessons in Applied Behavior Analysis, Routledge, Jul. 22, 2021, 352 pages.

Publisher description: A Scientific Framework for Compassion and Social Justice provides readers with an in-depth understanding of the behavior analytic principles that maintain social justice issues and highlights behavior analytic principles that promote self-awareness and compassion.

Expanding on the goals of the field of applied behavioral analysis (ABA), this collection of essays from subject-matter experts in various fields combines personal experiences, scientific explanations, and effective strategies to promote a better existence; a better world. Chapters investigate the self-imposed barriers that contribute to human suffering and offer scientific explanations as to how the environment can systematically be shaped and generate a sociocultural system that promotes harmony, equality, fulfilment, and love.

The goal of this text is to help the reader focus overwhelming feelings of confusion and upheaval into action and to make a stand for social justice while mobilizing others to take value-based actions. The lifelong benefit of these essays extends beyond ABA practitioners to readers in gender studies, diversity studies, education, public health, and other mental health fields.

About the editors: Jacob A. Sadavoy, QBA, BCBA, has 20 years of behavior analytic experience improving socially significant outcomes in schools, centers, businesses, hospitals, and homes in more than 15 different countries. Michelle L. Zube, MA, BCBA, has been in the field of behavior analysis for over 15 years consulting for schools and businesses both locally and internationally. She believes in the utility of the science and its broader applications for meaningful and sustainable change.

***


Emma M. Seppälä, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Stephanie L. Brown, Monica C. Worline, C. Daryl Cameron, and James R. Doty, (editors), The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science, Oxford University Press, Sep. 2017, 552 pages.

Publisher description: There are few things more moving than an act of compassion and few things more necessary than compassion in today’s world. Fortunately, the science of compassion has emerged as a robust field of study. The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science is the first academic handbook on the science of compassion to date. It brings together well-established scholars and rising stars in the field—thereby bridging a wide variety of diverse perspectives, research methodologies, and theory. Together, these expert voices illustrate the mechanisms behind one of the most profound of human experiences: helping another human being out of suffering, even at one's own cost.

***

Tania Singer & Matthias Bolz (editors), Compassion. Bridging Practice and Science, multimedia ebook, Max Planck Society.

Publisher description: What is the difference between empathy and compassion? Is it possible to train compassion? Can it be measured? How useful is compassion training in schools, clinical settings, and end-of-life care? Can the brain be transformed through mental training?

The free eBook: Compassion. Bridging Practice and Science by Tania Singer and Matthias Bolz describes existing secular compassion training programs and empirical research as well as the experiences of practitioners. The state-of-the-art layout of the eBook includes video clips and a selection of original sound collages by Nathalie Singer, and artistic images by Olafur Eliasson.

In addition, the film “Raising Compassion” by Tania Singer and Olafur Eliasson brings together workshop participants in a remarkable exchange between science, art, and contemplative practice.

Free download: http://www.compassion-training.org/?page=download&lang=en

Prof. Dr. Tania Singer, Scientific Head, Social Neuroscience Lab, Max Planck Society, Berlin; Matthias Bolz, Dipl.-Psych., Media and Marketing Manager, Max Planck School of Cognition, Berlin.

***

 

Larry Stevens & Christopher Woodruff (editors), The Neuroscience of Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion, Academic Press, Jun. 19, 2018, 353 pages.

Publisher description: The Neuroscience of Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion provides contemporary perspectives on the three related domains of empathy, compassion and self-compassion (ECS). It informs current research, stimulates further research endeavors, and encourages continued and creative philosophical and scientific inquiry into the critical societal constructs of ECS. Examining the growing number of electrocortical (EEG Power Spectral, Coherence, Evoked Potential, etc.) studies and the sizeable body of exciting neuroendocrine research (e.g., oxytocin, dopamine, etc.) that have accumulated over decades, this reference is a unique and comprehensive approach to empathy, compassion and self-compassion.

***

Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, The MIT Press, 1991.

1991 edition -- The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience. The authors argue that only by having a sense of common ground between mind in science and mind in experience can our understanding of cognition be more complete. Toward that end, they develop a dialogue between cognitive science and Buddhist meditative psychology and situate it in relation to other traditions such as phenomenology and psychoanalysis.

Revised Edition, Jan. 13, 2017 -- A new edition of a classic work that originated the “embodied cognition” movement and was one of the first to link science and Buddhist practices. This classic book, first published in 1991, was one of the first to propose the “embodied cognition” approach in cognitive science. It pioneered the connections between phenomenology and science and between Buddhist practices and science—claims that have since become highly influential. Through this cross-fertilization of disparate fields of study, The Embodied Mind introduced a new form of cognitive science called “enaction,” in which both the environment and first-person experience are aspects of embodiment. However, enactive embodiment is not the grasping of an independent, outside world by a brain, a mind, or a self; rather it is the bringing forth of an interdependent world in and through embodied action. Although enacted cognition lacks an absolute foundation, the book shows how that does not lead to either experiential or philosophical nihilism. Above all, the book's arguments were powered by the conviction that the sciences of mind must encompass lived human experience and the possibilities for transformation inherent in human experience.

This revised edition includes substantive introductions by Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch that clarify central arguments of the work and discuss and evaluate subsequent research that has expanded on the themes of the book, including the renewed theoretical and practical interest in Buddhism and mindfulness. A preface by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the originator of the mindfulness-based stress reduction program, contextualizes the book and describes its influence on his life and work.

Author -- Francisco Javier Varela García (September 7, 1946 – May 28, 2001) was a Chilean biologist, philosopher, cybernetician, and neuroscientist who, together with his mentor Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology, and for co-founding the Mind and Life Institute to promote dialog between science and Buddhism.  Varela was trained as a biologist, mathematician and philosopher through the influence of different teachers, Humberto Maturana and Torsten Wiesel.

Varela wrote and edited a number of books and numerous journal articles in biology, neurology, cognitive science, mathematics, and philosophy. He founded, with others, the Integral Institute, a thinktank dedicated to the cross-fertilization of ideas and disciplines.  Varela supported embodied philosophy, viewing human cognition and consciousness in terms of the enactive structures in which they arise. These comprise the body (as a biological system and as personally experienced) and the physical world which it enacts. Varela's work popularized within the field of neuroscience the concept of neurophenomenology. This concept combined the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, with "first-person science." Neurophenomenology requires observers to examine their own conscious experience using scientifically verifiable methods.  Varela's 1991 book The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, co-authored with Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch, is considered a classic in the field of cognitive science, offering pioneering phenomenological connections and introducing the Buddhism-informed enactivist and embodied cognition approach. [Wikipedia]

***

B. Alan Wallace, Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge, Columbia University Press, Oct. 24, 2006, 256 pages.

Publisher description: Science has long treated religion as a set of personal beliefs that have little to do with a rational understanding of the mind and the universe. However, B. Alan Wallace, a respected Buddhist scholar, proposes that the contemplative methodologies of Buddhism and of Western science are capable of being integrated into a single discipline: contemplative science.

The science of consciousness introduces first-person methods of investigating the mind through Buddhist contemplative techniques, such as samatha, an organized, detailed system of training the attention. Just as scientists make observations and conduct experiments with the aid of technology, contemplatives have long tested their own theories with the help of highly developed meditative skills of observation and experimentation. Contemplative science allows for a deeper knowledge of mental phenomena, including a wide range of states of consciousness, and its emphasis on strict mental discipline counteracts the effects of conative (intention and desire), attentional, cognitive, and affective imbalances.

Just as behaviorism, psychology, and neuroscience have all shed light on the cognitive processes that enable us to survive and flourish, contemplative science offers a groundbreaking perspective for expanding our capacity to realize genuine well-being. It also forges a link between the material world and the realm of the subconscious that transcends the traditional science-based understanding of the self.

About the Author – B. Alan Wallace spent fourteen years as a Buddhist monk, ordained by H. H. the Dalai Lama. He then earned his undergraduate degree in physics and the philosophy of science at Amherst College and his doctorate in religious studies from Stanford University. His Columbia University Press books are Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness; Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity; and Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (editor). He is the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies (http://www.sbinstitute.com).

***

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Compassion Renaissance: Science, Mind & Spirit

Jesus’s Compassion Command : Excerpts from Timothy Keller

Christian Renewal & Visual Art: From Kitsch to Quality