Proceedings

With an Honor Song ringing out, resonantly, at an AAR panel, it’s clear that contemplation as a category, as a way to collect voices, perspectives, and insights, is not just a recapitulation of tired and ingrained modes of academic pursuit. While Contemplative Studies as an organized and self-conscious field is still quite young, the study of contemplation is ancient. For millennia humans have queried the mechanisms of transformation…

The American Academy of Religion held its 2024 Annual Meeting in San Diego, CA, November 23-26. The Contemplative Studies unit sponsored or co-sponsored three panels exploring contemplative practices, experiences, and traditions. Topics ranged from Confucian contemplations for college students, to comparative theology, ethnographies of lay healers and nuns, accounts of adverse effects of meditation, and…

In April 2023, the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia hosted its first Generative Contemplation Symposium in Charlottesville, Virginia. This gathering convened experts in Contemplative Studies – scholars, philosophers, cognitive neuroscientists, artists, and Buddhist practitioners – to present their research, reflections, and theories on contemplative practices. In four thematic sessions on attention, non-dual…

The American Academy of Religion hosted its 2023 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX, November 18-21. Among the hundreds of panels and roundtable discussions were notable explorations of contemplative practice among scholars of religion, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and art history. These discussions were not only convened by the Contemplative Studies program unit of AAR but…

The Generative Contemplation Symposium was hosted by the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia in April 2023. The following is the video proceedings along with searchable transcripts of Session IV: Self-Emergent Visions which focused on the deliberate elicitation of effortless self-emergent visionary experiences. We invite you to watch these creative interdisciplinary explorations between…

The Generative Contemplation Symposium was hosted by the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia in April 2023. The following is the video proceedings along with searchable transcripts of Session III: Dream and Illusion Practices which focused on the induction of perceptual and cognitive illusions. Video proceedings from other sessions will be posted in…

The Generative Contemplation Symposium was hosted by the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia in April 2023. The following is the video proceedings along with searchable transcripts of Session II: Nondual Awareness Practices which focused on the subject-object dichotomy in meditation. Video proceedings from other sessions will be posted in subsequent posts. We…

The Generative Contemplation Symposium was hosted by the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia in April 2023. The following is the video proceedings along with searchable transcripts of Session I: Cognitive Effort and Control Practices which focused on issues of attention in meditation. Video proceedings from other sessions will be posted in subsequent…