WHAT IS CONTEMPLATIVE EDUCATION?

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We would like to offer a working description of what we, as a network, currently understand by “Contemplative Education”—a definition that remains open to further reflection and development.

“Contemplative Education” is a broadened view in the field of Education that considers the philosophies and applies the practices that are included in the emerging field of Contemplative Studies and in the various wisdom traditions.

The approach of Contemplative Education, along with its related research, leads to the integration of a range of contemplative, creative, and embodied practices - such as focused meditation, yoga, taiji (Tai Chi), etc. - in different educational settings. These practices, both conceptual and non-conceptual, aim to enhance individual awareness and support collective learning.

Contemplative Education can also be regarded as a field of application within the broader domain of Contemplative Studies, exploring how contemplative practices and their associated ways of knowing can be studied, examined, and transmitted within interdisciplinary spaces of knowledge exchange and cultivation, such as kindergartens, schools, universities, and research institutions.

Rooted in an awareness of interconnectedness, Contemplative Education aims to foster transformative personal and interpersonal growth by cultivating compassionate, attentional focus, sustained inquiry and reflection, and a broader perspective on the various contexts in which one is embedded. These include family, kindergartens, schools, lifelong learning environments, the workplace, communities, society, and nature.

Studies suggest that these approaches encourage an increased curiosity for learning and foster other-regarding virtues, including humaneness, compassion, and kindness.

It’s an emerging academic field that studies human contemplative experience across culture and across time from humanistic, scientific, and artistic perspectives, as well as the particular type of knowledge and the specific transformations it produces in the subject and the community.

We study the full range of contemplative experiences including not only those that are deliberately cultivated in many wisdom traditions but also those that human beings spontaneously experience.

We approach the study from four epistemological perspectives: 

– third-person (“objective”) found in research and scholarship; 

– second-person (intersubjective); 

– first-person (subjective); and 

– no person (nondualistic). 

Programs in Contemplative Studies have been established at many leading institutions of higher education including Brown University, the University of Michigan, Syracuse University, Oregon State University, Rice University, the University of Padova (Italy) and many others. 

The International Society for Contemplative Research was created in 2022 to serve as a professional association for independent and collaborative work of scholars, scientists, clinicians, and practitioners in the field.