About the Center
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society works to integrate contemplative awareness and contemporary life in order to help create a more just, compassionate, reflective, and sustainable society.
Contemplative practices, including prayer, meditation, yoga, and many contemplative arts, help individuals regain balance and calm in the midst of challenging circumstances. This state of calm centeredness provides effective stress reduction and can also help address issues of meaning, values, and spirit. Contemplative practices can help people develop greater empathy and communication skills, improve focus and concentration, reduce stress and enhance creativity. In time, with sustained commitment, they cultivate insight, wise discernment, and a loving and compassionate approach to life.
While personal transformation does not guarantee the transformation of social institutions, the Center is grounded in the belief that contemplative awareness can assist individuals and groups in identifying the root causes of social problems and finding creative approaches to eliminating them.
Our primary area of focus at this time is Higher Education. We hold annual retreats, conferences, and intensive summer sessions; create publications and identify useful resources; and connect like-minded individuals and organizations through initiatives such as the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education.
Please visit our FAQ page for answers to commonly asked questions about our organization. Or, feel free to contact us by email at info@contemplativemind.org.
Our Vision
We envision an education that promotes the exploration of meaning, purpose and values and seeks to serve our common human future. An education that enables and enhances personal introspection and contemplative awareness cultivates the realization of our inextricable connection to all beings, opening the heart and mind to true community, deeper insight, sustainable living, and a more just society.
The experiential methods developed within the contemplative traditions offer a rich set of tools for exploring the mind, the heart, and the world. When they are combined with the powerful set of traditional practices in higher education, an enriched research methodology and pedagogy become available for deepening and enlarging perspectives, leading to lasting solutions to the problems we confront. None of these methods require an ideology or creed and are available equally to all.
We envision higher education as an opportunity to cultivate a deep personal and social awareness, stimulating inquiry into what is most meaningful to us as interconnected human beings. Through the inclusion of contemplative modes of teaching and learning, we seek to recast the traditional foundations for education into a truly integrative, transformative, and communal enterprise that is wholly open and inclusive of all backgrounds and that cultivates each person in the fullest possible way.
Our Mission
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society transforms higher education by supporting and encouraging the use of contemplative/introspective practices and perspectives to create active learning and research environments that look deeply into experience and meaning for all in service of a more just and compassionate society.