June 1 – June 6, 2025 –
Join Hawah Kasat and the esteemed teaching faculty for the Mind & Life Institute’s Summer Research Program taking place at the historic Garrison Institute in New York (located 50 miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley).
Who Should Attend?
Anyone whose work and/or personal passions align with this year’s theme, “Reimagining Contemplative Education: Shaping a Collective Future” is welcome, including researchers (e.g., scientists, humanities scholars), educators, practitioners, contemplatives, and changemakers (e.g., leaders, policymakers, clinicians, activists).
This unique, international gathering offers the opportunity to deepen work and connections, and the potential to spark innovative and interdisciplinary collaborations and projects.
Contemplative education integrates academic study with practices that cultivate mindfulness, self-awareness, reflection, and compassion. It is based on the idea that education should not only focus on the development of cognitive skills and knowledge acquisition but on the inner development of individuals—emotionally, ethically, and spiritually.
This Summer Research Institute advances the idea that the adaptation of premodern wisdom is needed in post-modern educational institutions if we are to rise to the challenges confronting us as a species and a planet. Such premodern wisdom values the cultivation of attentional skills (mindful awareness), social-emotional skills (e.g., empathy, perspective taking, kindness, altruism), systems-thinking skills (e.g., seeing interdependence, our common humanity), and ethics (e.g., fairness, compassion) through targeted practices (e.g., focused attention) and purposeful activities (e.g., service with reflection).
Questions we may explore:
- How can insights from the sciences of the mind and wisdom traditions enhance the field of education?
- How can we create education systems that model excellence, equity, and engagement that shape individuals from early childhood through college, who are successful, happy, and ready to confront the challenges of a changing world?
- What a lifelong approach to education—blending scientific and humanistic education, artistic imagination, contemplative insight, and community service—could look like?