Photo: Zsolt Zsoló Kóté
“Contemplative education” is becoming an increasingly popular term in higher education in the United States. This doesn’t surprise me. Thirty years ago Chögyam Trungpa, a Tibetan meditation master who had been transplanted to this country, identified what wasn’t working in our educational system and as a consequence founded Naropa Institute. He perceived that education must speak to and train the whole person, body, mind and spirit and also train the body, mind and spirit’s relationship to its environment on as broad a scale as possible. This was true then and now and will continue to be true as we move further into the 21st century. It remains true despite innovations in computer technology or other devices that may pop up. Surprisingly it has taken American education some time to acknowledge this need for an education that transcends factual information within discreet areas of expertise and instead focuses on radically transforming the whole being and his or her world. Foundations such as the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and Fetzer Institute have recently begun to proclaim that, “a fully democratic society requires a system of higher education which trains students in reflective insight as well as critical thinking.”
This is learning that includes reflection as well as analysis, focus on personal growth as well as skill mastery, developing tolerance for ambiguity, openness to reframing, imagination as a way of understanding as important as rational argument.
While the mainstream may take time to catch up, at Naropa University and elsewhere this approach is gaining attention. The question is, how can we deliver such an education?
What comes up urgently and often in discussions at Naropa is a need to find a language to explain what we mean by contemplative education. How can we teach it or market it if we can’t talk about it, describe it, label it? How do we even know what it is if we can’t explain it in our catalogue and web pages? Some of us who were around Naropa in its early days have doubts about this categorizing and labeling process. Thirty years ago when we brought our raw recruit minds to the task of creating this educational model, we didn’t call it “contemplative education,” and we didn’t call Naropa a university. For the most part we were a bunch of disaffected teachers, philosophers and artists who had begun to meditate, or were at least thinking about doing so, and who were intrigued to explore what meditative mind might bring to the ways we approach our art forms or academic disciplines. Most importantly, we were interested to know if there was a way to alter both our minds and education for the better.
Excerpt from “The contemplating teacher: taking the long view”, by Lee Worley, next update of D/A Magazine, on August 22.
What are your thoughts or experience with contemplative disciplines and practices? How would you describe them? Make your comments or questions.
