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We are taught that no other system of knowledge-gathering, Western or not, has or ever will have a more realistic picture of nature than modern science. For decades, thanks to the dialogue Western scientists sought out with Buddhist scholars, and to the revolutionary research that emerged from it, we’ve heard that science has “proven” this or that Buddhist theory or practice. This course shines a light on the little known truth obscured by such highly publicized dialogues: that modern science—despite all its marvels—is fundamentally incomplete and flawed as a working picture of reality, including the reality of mind, brain and nature, in ways that Buddhist science is not.
In this brief course, contemplative psychotherapist, psycho-oncologist and meditation researcher-teacher Joe Loizzo shares three of the many lessons he has learned from Buddhist philosophy, psychology and science about why and where Western science and Western culture are stuck. These lessons touch on some of the most central and crucial realities of our lives and world.
Joe’s three weekly classes will revolve around three “hard problems” Western science has not been able to solve. First, we explore how the Buddha’s middle way, refined in the emptiness-relativity equivalence, allowed Buddhist science to solve the mind/body problem which continues to block Western science from any coherent theory of consciousness.
Next we address how the Buddha’s evolutionary theory of active development—karma-vipaka—avoids the flaws of the materialist theories of Neo-Darwinism and Social Darwinism that have failed to deliver the health, happiness and flourishing they’ve promised individuals and societies around the globe for nearly two centuries.
Finally, we unpack how the Buddha’s Four Noble Truth framework, refined in the embodied multi-disciplinary science of Tantric medicine, allowed Buddhist psychology and mind/body medicine to map and break the intergenerational cycle of stress and trauma which Western psychology and psychiatry are only now struggling to understand and treat.
In the final daytime retreat, we will put these three lessons from Buddhist science into practice, reviewing the steps that allow us: to identify and fully understand the nature of mind for ourselves; to recognize and familiarize ourselves with the world-making power of our moment-to-moment acts of mind, word and deed; and lastly, to feel into, embrace and care for the embodied traumatic memories and reactivities that lock us as individuals and communities in the prison of samsara. If you’re curious about what Buddhist scientists like the Dalai Lama really think about Western science, and how their time-tested wisdom and methods can transform our modern scientific worldview and way of life for the better, please join us!
$135 Jewel Heart Member (Become a Member)
$135 Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science Member
$160 Non-Member
Give what you can. No one turned away.
About Joseph Loizzo, M.D., Ph.D.
