From its inception Buddhism has refined meditation methods in order to probe the nature of mind, using the mind itself as the instrument of investigation. For a millennium, the cumulative results of these investigations have been analyzed in Buddhist monastic universities using exacting scholarly methods.

The Dalai Lama come together with scientists, academics, and Buddhist scholar-practitioners for presentation and dialogue at MIT. Building on nearly two decades of private meetings, Investigating the Mind: Exchanges between Buddhism and Biobehavioral Science on How the Mind Works aims to identify the common ground between two powerful empirical traditions - Tibetan Buddhism and biobehavioral science. Both traditions are deeply committed to understanding how the mind works even as they approach these challenges in very different ways.

Investigating the Mind is co-sponsored by the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT and the Mind and Life Institute. The MIT conference will be the eleventh Mind and Life meeting (Mind and Life XI) and the first one convening in the West with open attendance. Since 1987, the Mind and Life Institute has hosted small biennial meetings with western scientists and the Dalai Lama at his residence in Dharamsala, India.

Mind and Life XI: Investigating the Mind consist of sessions on three dimensions of mental functioning extensively investigated by both Buddhism and biobehavioral science: Attention and Cognitive Control, Emotion, and Mental Imagery. >from *Mind and Life XI: Investigating the Mind: Exchanges between Buddhism and Biobehavioral Science*. September 13-14, 2003

related context
> meditation' biological impact. february 18, 2003
> trance passages: explores science of altered states of consciousness. march 7, 2002

imago
> see your mind through a strobe light powered by a ritual tibetan incense
> see also the tibetan stroboscope by d.a. levy