In addition to being a scientific autobiography, the Dalai Lama's book The Universe in a Single Atom: the Convergence of Science and Spirituality highlights those issues he feels are most important in the "convergence of science and spirituality." These issues and questions form the focus of the Mind and Life XIV meeting, and become the foundation on which a group of scientists develop a deep dialogue with the Dalai Lama and other Buddhist scholar-practitioners.

April 9, 2007 - Day 1
Part 1: The Buddhism-Science Collaboration and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge: Exposing the Fracture Points.
Dialogue leader: Evan Thompson

Part II: Atomism, Emptiness, Interdependence and the Role of the Observer in Quantum Physics and Buddhism Dialogue Leaders: Anton Zeilinger and Arthur Zajonc 

April 10, 2007 - Day 2
Cosmology and the Relativity of Space and Time
Dialogue Leaders: George Greenstein and Arthur Zajonc 

April 11, 2007 - Day 3
Evolution, Altruism and the Fundamental Nature of Human Emotion
Dialogue Leaders: Ben Shapiro, Paul Ekman, Richard Davidson and Matthieu Ricard

April 12, 2007 - Day 4
Consciousness
Dialogue Leaders: Wolf Singer, Richard Davidson and Evan Thompson

PARTICIPANTS
Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., Vilas Research Professor and William James Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison

John Dunne, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Religion, Emory University

Paul Ekman, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco; Consultant

R. Adam Engle, J.D., M.B.A., CEO and Chairman of the Mind and Life Institute, and General Coordinator of the Mind and Life conferences

Martha Farah, Ph.D., Walter H. Annenberg professor in the Natural Sciences, Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania

George Greenstein, Ph.D., Sidney Dillon Professor of Astronomy, Amherst College

Matthieu Ricard, Ph.D., Author and Buddhist monk at Shechen Monastery in Kathmandu and French interpreter since 1989 for His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Bennett M. Shapiro, M.D., Biotechnology Consultant

Wolf Singer, M.D., Ph.D., Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt and Founding Director of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS)

Evan Thompson, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto, Toronto

Anton Zeilinger, Ph.D., Professor at the Physics Department of Vienna University and at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Arthur Zajonc, Ph.D., Andrew Mellon Professor of Physics and Interdisciplinary Studies, Amherst College

 
INTERPERTERS
Geshe Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., President and chief editor for The Classics of Tibet Series produced by the Institute of Tibetan Classics in Montreal; Adjunct Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, Montreal

Geshe Dorje Damdul, English interpreter for the Dalai Lama; Dharamsala, India

Organized by the Mind and Life Institute (www.mindandlife.org) and the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.