May 4, 2023
View or download a transcript of this episode
In this episode, Wendy speaks with Buddhist scholar and contemplative educator and researcher Brendan Ozawa-de Silva. Brendan has been studying and teaching mindfulness and compassion for over a decade, and has lately been focusing on integrating trauma-informed and embodied practices into his work. This conversation covers many topics, including:
- his interest in contemplation (and an introduction to the Japanese practice of Naikan);
- adapting contemplative training to a variety of settings;
- the capacity of young people for compassion, mindfulness, and conceptual frames;
- what’s missing in contemplative research;
- empathy/compassion as something that arises between people;
- the embeddedness of researchers in the systems they study;
- the SEE Learning program;
- trauma in the body & nervous system regulation;
- understanding different forms of trauma;
- healing and forgiveness;
- barriers to compassion, misunderstandings about the meaning of compassion;
- how the world is built on compassion;
- and new teaching endeavors with experiential learning.
Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, PhD, is an Associate Teaching Professor at the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. From 2017-2021 he served as Associate Director for SEE Learning, an international k-12 and higher education social emotional learning program. He was also the founding director of the Chillon Project at Life University, a higher-education degree program for incarcerated women and correctional officers at the Lee Arrendale State Prison in Georgia, and a founding board member of the Alliance for Higher Education in Prison. His research focuses on the scientific study of compassion, empathy and other prosocial emotions and their cultivation in educational, carceral, and other settings.
Resources
Faculty profile, Life & Emory University
SEE Learning and free training and resources
Emory’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics
- Paper: Contemplative Science and Secular Ethics, Religions, 2016
- Lecture: Secular Ethics in Education, Practical Matters Conference, 2018
- Video on nervous system regulation: Introduction to Building Resiliency, SEE Learning Project
- Chillon Project: Bringing higher education to prison systems in Georgia
- Article on bringing mindfulness and compassion to young children: Mind Over Matters, Emory Magazine, 2011