Body, Mind, Consciousness: A Science Day with Contemplatives

Science Day IV

A collaboration between the Foundation for Developing Compassion and Wisdom (FDCW), Jamyang London Buddhist Centre, and Science & Wisdom LIVE.

Body, Mind, Consciousness: A Science Day with Contemplatives

With: Prof. Anil Seth, Prof. John Vervaeke, Hilary McMichael, Mabel Odessey, Prof. Marjorie Woollacott, Geshe Tenzin Namdak, Scott Snibbe, and others.

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PROGRAMME:

TBC

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After the success of our first three Science Days, we are organising this fourth Science Day on the theme of Body, Mind, Consciousness.

During this fourth Science Day, scientists will go into an open dialogue with contemplative practitioners to discuss the relation of mind to body, and consciousness. They will touch upon the many questions around consciousness in our culture, share their knowledge about contemplative tools that might help us in making the connection between our body and our mind, and discuss the far-reaching debates about what consciousness is. 

We will update this page regurarly – ticket sale will start soon!

Join the conversation LIVE on Zoom! You will receive a link via email after registering for the event. After each dialogue, there will be plenty of time for questions and debate.

About our speakers:

Dr. Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness, an ERC Advanced Investigator, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness and a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow. He holds degrees in Natural Sciences (MA, Cambridge, 1996), Knowledge-Based Systems (MSc, Sussex, 1996), and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (Ph.D., Sussex, 2001).

He has published more than 200 papers and is listed in the Web of Science ‘Highly Cited Researcher’ index (2019, 2020, 2021).

His 2017 TED talk has been viewed more than twelve million times, and his new book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness was an instant Sunday Times top 10 bestseller, a Guardian book of the week and science book of the year, and a Financial Times science book of the year.

Find out more: www.anilseth.com, @anilkseth

Dr. John Vervaeke is an Associate Professor, in the teaching stream. He has been teaching at the University of Toronto since 1994. He currently teaches courses in the Psychology department on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on insight problem solving, cognitive development with an emphasis on the dynamical nature of development, and higher cognitive processes with an emphasis on intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and the Psychology of wisdom. He is the director of the Cognitive Science program where he also teaches courses on the introduction to Cognitive Science, and the Cognitive Science of consciousness wherein he emphasizes 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) models of cognition and consciousness .

In addition, he teaches a course in the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health program on Buddhism and Cognitive Science. He is the director of the Consciousness and the Wisdom Studies Laboratory.  He has won and been nominated for several teaching awards including the 2001 Students’ Administrative Council and Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students Teaching Award for the Humanities, and the 2012 Ranjini Ghosh Excellence in Teaching Award.

Vervaeke has published articles on relevance realization, general intelligence, mindfulness, flow, metaphor, and wisdom. He is first author of the book Zombies in Western Culture:  A 21^st Century crisis which integrates Psychology and Cognitive Science to address the meaning crisis in Western society.  He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

Geshe Tenzin Namdak first worked as an environmental researcher having graduated in hydrology from Van Hall Larenstein University, The Netherlands. He started studying Buddhism at Maitreya Institute in 1993 and took ordination from His Holiness the Dalai Lama before engaging in his formal studies in Buddhist philosophy and psychology at Sera Jey Monastic University, South India, in 1997. He completed the entire twenty-year Geshe program at Sera Jey in 2017 and the traditional one year Vajrayana study program at Gyume Tantric College in January 2019, the first Westerner to do so. Because of his deep interest and background in science and as a member of Sera Jey’s Education Department he spoke on and organized various dialogues and conferences on contemporary science and ancient contemplative wisdom of the mind and its philosophy.

Currently, he is the resident teacher at Jamyang Buddhist Centre, London, and teaches worldwide.

Scott Snibbe is our regular guest moderator of Science & Wisdom LIVE during talks and events. He is also the founder and host of the meditation podcast ‘A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment’.

Snibbe is a twenty-year student of Tibetan Buddhism whose teachers include Geshe Ngawang Dakpa, Choden Rinpoche, Ven. Rene Feusi, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Gyumed Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Jampa, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Inspired by his teachers, he leads meditations that infuse the pure lineage of the great Buddhist masters with science, humor, and the realities of the modern world.

Over the course of a career as a digital artist and entrepreneur, Snibbe has created bestselling art, music, and social apps, and collaborated with musicians and filmmakers including Björk, James Cameron, and Philip Glass. His interactive exhibits have been collected by both science and art museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.