Australian Institute for Consciousness Studies

Clarke Scott

AICS—Founder and Chairman
University of Tasmania
http://clarkescott.org

Clarke Scott is a fully ordained Buddhist monk trained in the Tibetan tradition. A student of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Clarke has received personal instructions on Madhyamaka philosophy  and meditation from His Holiness. Clarke also lived and studied with the Tibetan lama Geshe Thubten Loden of Sera Je monastery between 1995-2010. In that time he studied Buddhist epistemology, psychology, Madhyamaka philosophy, Buddhanature, Abhidharma and Vajrayana directly with Geshe Loden.

In 2010 Clarke moved to Tasmania to pursue a Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Tasmania. Where he is currently working on his PhD thesis entitled: From the Given to the Givenless: A Critical Analysis of No-Self and the Givenness of First-person Experience. Thesis submission date: February 2012.

Clarke’s area of research lies in Buddhist philosophy,  Philosophy of Mind and particularly in rigorous scientific investigation of the nature and origin of consciousness and its relation to dispositional narrative.

B. Alan Wallace Ph.D

President Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies
http://www.sbinstitute.com/

B. Alan Wallace began his studies of Tibetan Buddhism, language, and culture in 1970 at the University of Göttingen in Germany and then continued his studies over the next fourteen years in India, Switzerland, and the United States. Ordained as a Buddhist monk by H. H. the Dalai Lama in 1975, he has taught Buddhist meditation and philosophy worldwide since 1976 and has served as interpreter for numerous Tibetan scholars and contemplatives, including the Dalai Lama. After graduating summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he studied physics and the philosophy of science, he returned his monastic vows and went on to earn his Ph.D. in religious studies at Stanford University. He then taught for four years in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and is now the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. He has edited, translated, authored, and contributed to more than thirty books on Tibetan Buddhism, medicine, language, and culture, and the interface between science and religion.

His published works include Choosing Reality: A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind (Snow Lion, 1996), The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness (Oxford, 2000), Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (Columbia University Press 2003), Balancing the Mind: A Tibetan Buddhist Approach to Refining Attention (Snow Lion, 2005), Genuine Happiness: Meditation as the Path to Fulfillment (John Wiley & Sons, 2005), The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind (Wisdom 2006), Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge (Columbia University Press, 2007), and Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (Columbia University Press, 2007), and Embracing Mind: The Common Ground of Science and Spirituality (Shambhala Publications, 2008). He has participated in numerous scientific studies of meditation, including Cultivating Emotional Balance (UCSF), the Shamatha Project (UC Davis), Mindful Awareness Project (UCLA), Meditation for Epilepsy Project (UCLA and University of Vienna), and the Compassion and Attention Longitudinal Meditation Study (Emory).

Chris Kang Ph.D

Collaborative for Mind Science Innovations and Translational Research

Chris Kang began his studies of Buddhism in 1985 at various Buddhist centres in Singapore, and then continued his studies and practice with teachers from Sri Lanka, India, Tibet, Australia, and the United States.  Since the 1990s, he has practiced Vipassana under the guidance of prominent Sri Lankan lay teacher Acharya Godwin Samararatne (1932-2000). For the last eight years, he has studied under the Tibetan lama Geshe Tashi Tsering and most recently with B. Alan Wallace. After graduating in 1993 with first class honours in occupational therapy from The University of Queensland, he worked professionally as a clinical occupational therapist in physical rehabilitation, childhood development, mental and community health settings in Singapore and Australia. He went on to obtain a Ph.D. in Indian religion at the Department of Studies in Religion in The University of Queensland. By 2003, he was internationally certified in the coaching methodologies of neuro-semantics and neuro-linguistics. By 2009, he obtained a Graduate Certificate in international relations.

Currently an Honorary Research Advisor at the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at The University of Queensland, he is also founder and director of the Collaborative for Mind Science Innovations and Translational Research and works in private practice as a Mindfulness Coach and Consultant for health professionals, corporate staff, academics, and teachers in Brisbane, Australia.  He has conducted numerous mindfulness retreats, courses, and talks at universities, health care settings, and Buddhist centres since 1997.

His published works include The Meditative Way: Readings in the Theory and Practice of Buddhist Meditation (Routledge, 1997), Anatta and Meditation (Buddhanet, 1999), Psychospiritual Integration Frame of Reference for Occupational Therapy, Part 1: Conceptual Foundations (Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 2003), Buddhist and Tantric Perspectives on Causality and Society (Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2009), and Sarkar on the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths (Philosophy East and West, scheduled 2011).

Peter Boord Ph.D

Brain Dynamics Center & Director of the World Happiness Forum
http://www.brainresource.com/
http://www.worldhappinessforum.org/

Peter Boord began studying Buddhist philosophy and meditation at Buddhist centres in Adelaide in 1989. Since 1999 Peter has been a student and occasional teacher at the Vajrayana Institute in Sydney. Under the guidance of his teachers Geshe Thubten Dawa and Geshe Ngawang Samten, Peter has studied Buddhist epistemology, psychology, Abhidharma, and Madhyamaka philosophy. Peter is a director of the World Happiness Forum an international non-profit body established to promote dialogue on the tools and techniques that can be drawn from science, psychology, philosophy, economics and religion for the enhancement of human happiness”.

Peter’s EEG research has included: development and validation of algorithms for EEG analysis. Investigation of EEG spectral changes over the lifespan associated with changes in cerebral metabolic rate. Investigation of the timing (ERP latency) and location (LORETA) of threat stimuli compared to positive and neutral stimuli. Investigation of gamma phase synchrony associated with functional connectivity in temporo-amygdala networks. Investigation of phase-gradients in the EEG. Investigation of gamma phase synchrony changes in schizophrenia. And development of an algorithm for automatic ERP component identification. The algorithm reliably identifies ERP components by matching an individuals phase coherence across decomposed ERP trials with the phase coherence across subjects in the grand average ERP using a mahalanobis distance measure.

Peter is also involved in fMRI research where he has set up the new 3T MRI scanner for functional imaging. Design and development of custom hardware and software for visual and auditory stimuli presentation, skin conductance and button response measurement. FMRI sequence design and analysis, using SPM and Matlab, to optimize signal-to-noise ratio together with low signal dropout.

Advisory Board

Professor Robert A. Thurman

Jey Tsong Kapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Studies, Columbia University
http://www.bobthurman.com/

Robert Thurman is Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President of Tibet House US, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. The New York Times recently hailed him as “the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism.” He has a B.A., A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard and has studied in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in India and the United States.

Professor Thurman’s scholarly and popular writings focus on the “inner revolution” that individuals and societies successfully negotiate when they achieve enlightenment. He defines this inner revolution as accurate insight into the true nature of reality and determined compassion for the suffering beings. He also works toward what he terms a “Second Renaissance,” which he sees currently taking place as Western culture goes beyond the 14th century European discovery of the natural sciences of the ancient Greeks that catalyzed the “first renaissance” to discover and apply in practice the advanced “inner science” of ancient Indian culture.

Popularizing the Buddha’s teachings is just one of Thurman’s creative talents. He is a riveting speaker and an author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics and culture, including Circling the Sacred Mountain, Essential Tibetan Buddhism, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet, Infinite Life: Seven Virtues for Living Well, Inner Revolution, The Jewel Tree of Tibet and, most recently, Why the Dalai Lama Matters. He is credited with being at the forefront of making Tibetan art accessible and understandable in the West and, with distinguished art historians, he has collaborated in curating several important traveling exhibitions, including “Wisdom and Compassion,” “Mandala,” and “Worlds of Transformation,” which set a standard in the art world.

Professor Jeff Malpas

Profesor of Philosophy, University of Tasmania.
http://fcms.its.utas.edu.au/arts/philosophy/pagedetails.asp?lpersonId=2131

Jeff Malpas is an Australian philosopher, currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Tasmania. Known for his work across the analytic‚ and continental‚ traditions, Jeff has also been at the forefront of contemporary philosophical research on the concept of place. Jeff is also active in commenting on issues of contemporary ethics and politics in the Tasmanian and Australian media.

Jeff is one of a handful of contemporary philosophers who have addressed the nature and philosophical significance of the concept of place. While Jeff draws on phenomenological and hermeneutic resources, his work in what he has termed ‘philosophical topography’ is also heavily indebted to analytic approaches in philosophy of mind and language. Jeff’ work is distinctive in its detailed conceptual analysis of topographical and spatial notions, for the methodological implications that it associates with the focus on place, and for its topographical analysis of self and identity. Malpas’s topographical approach has been developed in two volumes, Place and Experience (1999)1 and Heidegger’s Topology – the latter providing an analysis of the thought of German philosopher Martin Heidegger that is centred on the ideas of place and ‘topology’.

Professor Shaun Gallagher

Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences, University of Central Florida
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~gallaghr/

Shaun Gallagher is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences, and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Simulation and Training, at the University of Central Florida (USA); he also has an appointment as Research Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the University of Hertfordshire (UK). He has had numerous appointments as invited Visiting Scientist at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge (1994), as Visiting Professor at University of Copenhagen (2005, 2006, 2007), and most recently at the Centre de Recherche en Epistémelogie Appliquée (CREA), Paris ((2009-2010), and at the Ecole Normale Supériure, Lyon (2008, 2010). In 2012 he will be Visiting Professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

His research is focused on embodied cognition and intersubjectivity. His books include How the Body Shapes the Mind (OUP 2005), Brainstorming (Imprint Academic 2008), and with Dan Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind (Routledge 2008). He is also the author of The Inordinance of Time (Northwestern 1998) and Hermeneutics and Education (SUNY 1992). He is co-editor of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, and editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Self. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the European Science Foundation, and he is currently a co-investigator on grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC) on the topic Embodied Virtues and Expertise; and the British Arts and Humanities Research Council [AHRC] on the topic The Nature of Phenomenal Qualities.

In 2009 he participated in the Mind and Life Institute’s conference on Attention, Memory and the Mind with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, and the Summer Research Institute on Scientific and Contemplative Perspectives on the Self. Professor Gallagher also serves on the advisory boards of the Danish National Research Foundation’s Center for Subjectivity Research (Copenhagen), the Marie Curie Research Network on Disorders and Coherence of the Human Self (Heidelberg), the Laboratorio di fenomenologia e scienze della persona (Milan), and the Association pour la Recherche Transdisciplinaire des Hallucinations et autres États Modifiés de Conscience, Paris.

Professor Graham Priest

Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy, University of Melbourne.
http://www.philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/staff/Priest/

Graham is Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is also Arché Professorial Fellow at the University of St Andrews. He is well known for his work on logic and metaphysics. His books include In Contradiction, Beyond the Limits of Thought, Towards Non-Being and Doubt Truth to be a Liar. Although much of his work is in Western philosophy, in recent years he has also been writing about Buddhist philosophy, and especially emptiness. He is a fourth dan in Shitoryu Karatedo.

Sonam Thakchoe Ph.D

Lecturer University of Tasmanian
Sonam’s academic webpage
Sonam Thakchoe is a former student of the Central Univeristy of Tibetan Studies, Sarnath India. After nine-intensive years of training in the History of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy, he was awarded Shastri and Acharya Degrees along with Gold Medal Recognition.

He obtained his PhD in 2002 from the University of Tasmania, and is currently lecturing in the areas Buddhist Philosophy (Mahayana, Theravada, Zen), Chinese Philosophy (Confucianism and Taoism) and Indian (Orthodox and Heterodox Schools), Ethics and Philosophy of Nonviolence (Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King). As the coordinator of the Tasmanian Buddhist Studies in India Exchange Program, Sonam takes a group of 15 Australian students every summer (Dec-Jan) for an intensive Summer Course at the Central University of Tibetan Studies. There he teaches to the Tibetan students and assists the CUTS in developing distance education program in the areas of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. Being a keen follower of the Vipassana tradition, he teaches philosophy combined with the mindfulness-based meditation technique in the local schools, health clinics, Buddhist centers and also for the prison inmates.

Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D.

Founder and Director Upaya Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico
http://www.upaya.org/

Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, medical anthropologist, social activist, and author. She holds a Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology and has been on the faculty of Columbia University, University of Miami School of Medicine, and the New School for Social Research in New York. She has taught at many educational institutions in the United States, including Harvard University, University of Connecticut Medical School, and the University of Virginia Medical School. She was an Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University in Medical Ethnobotany and one of the first NEA Fellows in Visual Anthropology. She worked for a year at the Museum of Man in Paris with the late ethnocinematographer Jean Rouch, and was also a researcher at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University and the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. She has done anthropological research in the Americas and Africa, is a pioneer in the area of compassionate care of the dying, and has done seminal work in bringing meditation into the prison system. She founded the Ojai Foundation, the Upaya Zen Center, the Project on Being with Dying, the Upaya Prison Project, and is a co-founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order.

Joan is currently the Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress. Her various academic honors have included a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, appointment as an Honorary Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum, Rockefeller Chair at California Institute of Integral Studies, and the Harold C. Wit Chair at Harvard Divinity School. 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 and Being with Dying: Compassionate End-of-Life Care Training Guide (with Dossey and Rushton); Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death. She is co-chair of the Lindisfarne Fellows, and is a Board Member and Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute. She is a board member of numerous other institutions as well.  She has practiced Buddhism since the 1965 and received Refuge Vows in 1976 from Zen Master Seung Sahn.  In 1980, she was ordained as a Teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. In 1990, she received the Lamp Transmission from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. In 1997, she was ordained as a Soto Priest by Bernard Glassman Roshi. In 1999, she received Dharma Transmission and Inka from Glassman Roshi.

Diego Hangartner, Pharm.D.

Chief Operating Officer and Director of Research Programs of the Mind and Life Institute
http://www.mindandlife.org/

Diego Hangartner completed his studies in Pharmacology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, specializing in psychotherapeutic and psychoactive substances. Having worked with drug addiction, he became interested in understanding the workings of mind and consciousness. After encountering Buddhism, he then spent 11 years in Dharamsala, India, where he first learned Tibetan and then studied for 7 years at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics. During those years, he did several retreats and worked as a translator and interpreter, translating Tibetan into English, German, French and Spanish.

After returning to Europe in 2003, he taught widely, was General Secretary and Project Manager of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama’s visits in Switzerland 2005 and in Hamburg 2007.

Diego has been associated with the Mind and Life Institute since the late 1990′s. Presently, he is Mind and Life Chief Operating Officer, and Director of Programs, Research International.