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These lectures by B. Alan Wallace were recorded in
MP3 format at the Unity Church in Santa Barbara. Feel free to download
them. Paths to Perfection: Contemplative Practices Jesus counseled his followers to be perfect as their Father in heaven is perfect, and for centuries, mystical union with God—understood as perfect love and omniscient wisdom—was the ideal of Christian contemplatives. Buddha counseled his followers to realize perfect freedom from suffering by irreversibly dispelling all the afflictions and obscurations of the mind. The ideals of personal liberation and perfect enlightenment have been pursued by Buddhist contemplatives over the past 2,500 years. While these two contemplative traditions appear to have had little contact throughout their long histories, they did exhibit remarkable parallels as well as differences. Ideals of perfection and the means to realize it will be explored in this lecture, with the hope that the vitality of both the Christian and Buddhist contemplative traditions may be revitalized in the modern era, which could so deeply benefit from their insights and wisdom.
THE CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE Recorded at Unity Church, Santa Barbara, CA , Jan. 16, 2008 Physicists have long assumed that the universe is fundamentally composed of matter and energy and that life and consciousness are accidental byproducts of configurations of matter. But a growing number of distinguished physicists are now suggesting that consciousness may play a much more fundamental role in nature than scientists previously believed. In this lecture Alan Wallace will review some of the most provocative theories presented by such leading physicists as John Wheeler, Stephen Hawking, and Andre Linde that challenge many of the materialist assumptions based on outdated19th-century physics. And he will discuss how these theories may relate to Buddhist theories and practices, including those of the Theravada, Mahayana, and Dzogchen traditions. THE SHAMATHA PROJECT Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind During the spring and fall of 2007, 70 people participated in two 3-month, intensive meditation retreats, during which the effects of their 8-10 hours per day of practice were meticulously studied by a team of psychologists and neuroscientists. With a wide array of psychological and physiological measurements taken toward the beginning, middle, and end of this training, this was the first longitudinal scientific study of its kind. Alan Wallace originally conceived of this project and has been working closely with this team of cognitive scientists for four years, and he served as the resident instructor for these retreats. In this lecture he will give a preliminary report of the findings of this historic study.
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© 2005 Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies |