I would like to announce the Australian Institute for Consciousness Studies has become an official partner of the International Shamatha Project. AICS looks forward to our participation in this historic research project. With the endorsement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, which you can read here, and the backing of the Phuket International Academy, I am very excited by the possibility of the future for Australian Institute for Consciousness Studies, International Shamatha Project and contemplative science in general.
In that regard, AICS has begun two grass-root projects here in Australia—the Australian Contemplative Science Initiative and the Tasmanian Contemplative Observatory Project—in order to do our part to help make the International Shamatha Project a success.
The first of these is a project to help establish a genuine appreciation of contemplative science within the general scientific and academic communities here in Australia. Details on this project have not yet been finalized but, they are most likely to entail the publication of an article and perhaps literature to be given to academics throughout Australia, in which the methodologies and motivations behind contemplative science are explained.
While the second project—the Tasmanian Contemplative Observatory Project—is an important adjunct to the former, in which we hope to establish a suitable environment for people from all over the world who wish to refine their attentional skills. The land purchased will also serve as an educational institution and facility for group retreats and contemplative science conferences. Again, details on this project will be made available shortly.
What is the International Shamatha Project?
The International Shamatha Project is an international Buddhist research project modeled after the Human Genome Project, which was one of the most ambitious and successful scientific projects in recent history. It entailed the collaboration of many scientific laboratories throughout the world to map the human genome. Throughout the years that this project was conducted, researchers around the world shared their finding so that the project could be completed most effectively for the benefit of all of humanity. Like this great, collaborative, scientific project to explore the human genome, the International Shamatha Project will bring together dedicated Buddhist teachers and meditators from both Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism to collaborate in exploring the most effective methods and conditions for achieving shamatha in today’s world. Individual retreat centers will network with each other by way of the internet, sharing their experiences, problems, remedies, and insights. We will also collaborate with psychologists and neuroscientists conducting research on shamatha meditators to help discover which methods of shamatha are most appropriate for which kinds of people in the modern world. Scientists may also discover the objective psychological and neurological signs corresponding to the nine stages of development leading to shamatha, thus providing a scientific map of the gradual achievement of shamatha. We have begun such collaboration in the Shamatha Project, and I am proposing that this work now be expanded worldwide, to include multiple teachers and traditions.
