The development of Contemplative Studies in the US since 1974 is in my view an initiative that takes up the torch of the Kyoto School, and provides a great complement to its philosophical project. This initiative has already gone through several stages, but I’d like to draw attention to the founding by Harold D Roth of the Department of Contemplative Studies at Brown University in Rhodes Island. Though it was created with the help of neuroscientist Francisco Varela, who was also a co-founder of the Mind and Life Institute, Contemplative Studies at Brown strive to explore the first-person (and even “no-person”) approach of teachers and students in parallel with the research of neuroscientists concerned with connecting contemplative states with the functioning of the brain. In other words, there is a “concrete” experiential side in addition to the scientific side, and therefore contributions from representatives of the main traditions – Buddhist, Daoist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Sufi, and indigenous spiritualities, where the roots of modern religions can be found. This is a large-scale interfaith cooperative effort, which highlights the way of thinking achieved when the ego-self is, as Dogen puts it, “forgotten.”
Please click on link for video recordings from several religious teachers/scholars at Brown University.