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Varela 2026: A Conversation with Michael Pollan (Part 9) Sep 01, 2026

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In Part 9 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Roshi Joan Halifax introduces a pre-recorded conversation with author Michael Pollan on the value and limits of mystical experience. Drawing on William James’s pragmatic test — treat mystical insight as a hypothesis, not proof — Pollan traces what these states teach us: chiefly, that self and consciousness can be disaggregated.

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Varela 2026: Ethical Considerations in an Age of AI – Panel Discussion (Part 8) Sep 01, 2026

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In Part 8 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Adam, Molly, John, and Roshi Joan open the floor to important questions of our time. Following Molly’s session on AI and Buddhist ethics, she is asked whether AI models that claim consciousness deserve moral consideration. Molly cautions against the language itself: “There’s no reason that it’s necessary to use words that we use to describe…

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The Metta Sutta: What’s Love Got to Do with It? Aug 31, 2026

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In this Wednesday Night Dharma Talk, Sensei Koshin Flint Sparks explores the Metta Sutta as a practice that asks far more of us than simple sentiment. Quoting two lines of Louise Glück’s poem, Koshin highlights the sharp and sometimes frightening edge of love: “Why love what you will lose? — There’s nothing else to love.” We naturally appreciate the full and sincere love from others…

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Varela 2026: In the Grove of Mortality (Part 7) Aug 31, 2026

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In Part 7 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Molly Crockett turns to a question with real stakes in the race of AI development: Can Buddhist ethics be taught to a machine? Drawing on Francisco Varela’s concept of ethical know-how, she distinguishes “knowledge that” — facts and principles a system can represent — from “knowledge how,” the embodied wisdom that “requires embodied experience…

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Varela 2026: Kensho, Joriki, and Ordinary Mind in Zen Practice (Part 6) Aug 31, 2026

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In Part 6 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Roshi Joan Halifax leads a guided sitting before turning to what she calls the four often-conflated categories of contemplative experience: mystical states, insight, awakening, and realization. Drawing on her own decades of exposure to entheogens and psychedelic research, she distinguishes intensity from accuracy — mystical experience is a…

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Varela 2026: Re/cognizing the Mystical (Part 5) Aug 31, 2026

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In Part 5 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, John Dunne returns for his second talk of the program, tracing “mystical experience” to its roots as a 19th-century, largely American invention — one with no real equivalent in Buddhist, Hindu, or indigenous traditions. He walks through the influential accounts of William James and W.T. Stace, whose model of a universal, unitive, inward…

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Varela 2026: The Blind Spot – Part B (Part 4B) Aug 31, 2026

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In Part 4B (the 2nd half of Part 4) of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, astrophysicist Adam Frank, PhD., turns to what comes after: a “new physics of life” built on autonomous agency and the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā — not emptiness as void, but the total absence of independent, self-existing things. As he puts it: “You don’t really have a boundary… this set of processes organizes…

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Varela 2026: The Blind Spot – Part A (Part 4A) Aug 31, 2026

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In Part 4A (the first half of Part 4) of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, Molly Crockett opens with a guided meditation on the breath, exploring impermanence and boundarilessness to prepare the room for astrophysicist Adam Frank, PhD. Frank lays out “the blind spot” — his term for the philosophical assumptions smuggled into modern science: that only the fundamental and measurable are real…

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Varela 2026: Panel Discussion – Time, Perception, and Not-Knowing (Part 3) Aug 30, 2026

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In Part 3 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, the faculty explores the nature of experience in this Day 1 panel session — reflexive awareness, the distortions of the “perception box,” and the intimacy of not-knowing. John Dunne frames the core teaching: “we already know what the nature of our experience is. We already have that capacity. We already have non-dual awareness… it’s…

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Varela 2026: Reflexive Awareness and Encountering Reality (Part 2) Aug 30, 2026

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In Part 2 of the Varela Contemplative Science Retreat, John Dunne, PhD, opens with a guided meditation on reflexive, non-dual awareness before turning to a central question of Buddhist epistemology: what is real? Testing the room with a white mug — is its color in the object, the brain, or somewhere else? — he distinguishes a transparent mode of perception, which sees through experience to act in…

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