4-week series on Mondays; 6:30-8:30pm EST

February 15th, 22nd, March 1st, 8th

Registration fee: $75 full course, $20 single session

Given the unprecedented crisis we face today, the recent dialogue between modern science and Buddhist science seems more promising and more vital than ever. The fact that Western science has confirmed many of the discoveries Asian Buddhists made in astrophysics, evolutionary biology and neuropsychology, and has even shown the effectiveness of Buddhist techniques in shifting our minds and brains out their of survival rut into thriving has inspired a growing movement towards mindfulness and compassion. Yet surprisingly little attention has been given to the inside story of how this dialogue looks from the perspective of Buddhist contemplative scientists like H.H. the Dalai Lama. We rarely ask how Buddhist scientists learned so much with such radically different methods and instruments, or how they did so without the incalculable harm inflicted on humanity and our planet by the West’s forms of materialist science and imperialist technology. In this four session course, Buddhologist-translator Robert Thurman and psychiatrist-researcher Joe Loizzo share their nearly fifty year dialogue on how Buddhist science can help humanize and awaken its modern counterpart to become an effective partner in the real aim of all science—to better understand reality in order to care for living beings.

4-week series on Mondays; 6:30-8:30pm EST

February 15th, 22nd, March 1st, 8th

Registration fee: $75 full course, $20 single session

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Robert Thurman is Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University as well as co-founder and President of Tibet House US and its Menla Retreat & Spa. A world-wide lecturer on Tibetan Buddhism, activist for the plight of the Tibetan people, translator of Buddhist texts, and writer of popular Buddhist books, he recently has been awarded the Padma Shri Award, India’s fourth highest civilian honor for achievement in enriching Indian education and literature. His most recent book is the 300 page graphic novel, Man of Peace: the Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. For more information, visit: bobthurman.com.

Joseph (Joe) Loizzo, M.D., Ph.D., Founder and Director of The Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and Columbia-trained Buddhist scholar with over thirty years' experience studying the beneficial effects of meditation on healing and learning. He is is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry in Integrative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he researches and teaches mind/body health. He has taught science and religion, the scientific study of religious experience, and the Indo-Tibetan mind sciences at Columbia University, where he currently is adjunct Assistant Professor of Religion at the Columbia Center for Buddhist Studies.