Meditation Research
I am the founding Principal of the CIRCL, Contemplative Innovation + Research Co-Lab at the Contemplative Sciences Center, University of Virginia, where we study how diverse contemplative practices work in bodies, minds, and worlds. The CIRCL is an experimental collaboratory dedicated to understanding the underlying dynamics and mechanisms of contemplative practices and emergent experiences.
My work translates distinct practices from Tibetan Buddhist meditation manuals to discern underlying operations – contemplative know-how and phenomenology – so that historical techniques of “Tibetan inner science” (bod kyi nang rig) make meaning in dialogue with the humanities, cultural psychology, and the cognitive sciences. Drawing from over a thousand years of source literature, I translate and design practices in intercultural and empirical experiments to better understand newfound potentials of human consciousness and wellbeing.
I serve in different capacities on scientific meditation research studies:
THE NATURE OF MIND (NOM) RESEARCH PROJECT
As a member of an international consortium of researchers, we are studying the transformative training regimes of Tibetan Vajrayāna Buddhism within a traditional three-year meditation retreat. Using techniques such as mental imagery and compassion-based exercises, these practices aim to achieve a state of nondual awareness that transcends the dualistic perception of subject and object—often referred to as the “nature of mind” (NOM). This study uses a transdisciplinary approach to measure, interpret, and scientifically understand these nondual meditative practices in a 3-year retreat within the Mahāmudrā-Dzogchen tradition. The PI is neuroscientist Antoine Lutz at the University of Lyon, France.
NONDUAL AWARENESS
A discernible structure to human experience that reifies subject-object intentionality, moment to moment, is said to underly human consciousness and shape lived experience. This research investigates Tibetan Buddhist prescriptive techniques and descriptive phenomenologies from meditators who experience the collapse of this dualistic structure into nondual awareness (NDA). I am particularly interested in how models from the nondual meditative traditions of Tibet can engender further research at the boundaries of consciousness science.
- The Distinctive Mindfulness of Dzogchen: Jigme Lingpa’s Advice on Meta-Awareness and Nondual Meditation with Marc-Henri Deroche (Kyoto University, Japan)
DREAM YOGA
This project, Training in the Oneiric Life, studies neurophysiological and humanistic approaches to Tibetan Buddhist practices of dream yoga. We compare prescriptive techniques from historical Tibetan dream yoga manuals with neurobiological measures of dream yoga practitioners in the sleep lab, and micro-phenomenological reports of dream experiences. This is a collaboration with neuroscientist Ken Paller and his team at the Paller Sleep Lab, Northwestern University.
- Dreaming Oneself Awake: Psychological Flexibility, Imaginal Simulation, and Somatic Awareness in Tibetan Buddhist Dream Yoga
- Cognitive Illusion, Lucid Dreaming, and the Psychology of Metaphor in Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen Contemplative Practices
IMAGINAL PRACTICES
Conjuring Illusory Bodies is a project that compares contemporary tulpamancy practices with historical Tibetan Buddhist practices of conjuring illusory bodies. We study Tibetan manuals on the simulation of illusion-like experiences and the psychological anthropology of meditation to examine how tulpa practices shift as these contemplative technologies drift across cultural and temporal contexts with different ontological, psychological, and ethical orientations. This is a collaboration with neuroscientist Michael Lifshitz at McGill University, Canada.
Tibetan Studies
My scholarship includes a book (forthcoming, UVA Press) on the intellectual history of the little-known Jonang tradition of Tibetan Buddhism with a focus on its zhentong philosophy of emptiness, meditative practice, and the Kālacakra Tantra. The Other Emptiness book anthologizes the zhentong Buddhist discourse in Tibet.
I’m involved in several projects that compare contemplative practices and correlative visionary and nondual experiences in the Dzogchen, Mahāmudrā, and Zhentong meditative systems.
Jonang Foundation
In 2004, I founded the Jonang Foundation as a support organization, international network, and online educational resource for the Jonang tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. We advance research and scholarship on the Jonang, and host educational and cultural preservation initiatives that sustain and enliven this distinct tradition within contemporary contexts. Ongoing research is conducted on the sites, master biographies, and material culture of the Jonang tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, which involves documenting, curating, and translating texts from the Jonang tradition and making these resources available in the JF digital library.
