study of mental experience was essential to a science of mind. He also
appreciated that the investigation of mental experience requires a
sustained focus of attention internally—on the contents of one’s own
mind—and such sustained focus is no easy task:The faculty of bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again,
is the very root of judgment, character, and will. ... An education which
should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. But it
is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions for bringing
it about.Indeed, this may now be more difficult than ever before, given all the
distractions inherent in our technology-sodden, contemporary world.
However, sophisticated methods to train attention, coupled
with introspective observation and analyses of the mind, have been
explored for millennia by contemplative traditions. This is perhaps
most evident in Buddhism. Beginning in the 1980s, the Dalai Lama (b.
1935), spiritual leader of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, began what
has become an ongoing series of conversations between Tibetan Bud-
dhism and the scientific community. Initially taking place among the
Dalai Lama, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists,
the dialogue has become formalized and expanded to include physi-
cists, educators, and environmental scientists. While new research in
the neuroscience of meditation and in the psychology of emotion has
been spawned by these dialogues, part of their original motivation
was to address really big questions related to the nature of mind and
the nature of reality. Much remains to be explored regarding the ways
in which Buddhist contemplative practices might contribute to an
expanded science of mind and reality. May this dialogue continue to
flourish and expand!