November 19, 2021
In this episode, Wendy speaks with researcher, translator, and Buddhist teacher, Cortland Dahl. Cort’s work integrates science, psychology, meditation, and Tibetan Buddhism. This conversation covers many topics, including:
- how meditation helped with his social anxiety as a young person;
- benefits and challenges in the dialogue between Buddhism and science;
- customizing meditation practice in the Healthy Minds app;
- understanding the diversity of contemplative practice;
- analytical meditation;
- meditation as a treatment for mental health problems;
- transcending the conceptual mind, and loosening concepts of self;
- seeing the limits of science;
- looking at well-being through the lens of learning;
- the key role of social connection;
- and moving forward with intellectual humility (knowing that we don’t know).
Cortland Dahl is a scientist, translator, and meditation teacher. His eclectic background includes eight years spent living in Tibetan refugee settlements in India and Nepal and cutting-edge research at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the lead author of a new scientific framework for well-being and the creator of the Healthy Minds Program, a freely available app-based tool based on the Healthy Minds framework. He has published numerous scientific articles, released twelve books of translations of ancient Tibetan meditation manuals, and is the cofounder and Executive Director of Tergar International, a global network of meditation groups and centers.
Resources
Faculty page at Center for Healthy Minds
Tergar International
- Paper: The plasticity of well-being: A training-based framework for the cultivation of human flourishing. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020)
- Paper: Mindfulness and the contemplative life: Pathways to connection, insight, and purpose. (Current Opinion in Psychology, 2019)
- Paper: Reconstructing and deconstructing the self: Cognitive mechanisms in meditation practice. (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2015)
- Book: Steps to the Great Perfection: The Mind-Training Tradition of the Dzogchen Masters. (Snow Lion Publications, 2016)