WHO: Jonas Mago (McGill University), Justus Wachs (McGill University)
WHAT: The Challenge
In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, individuals and communities must cultivate resilience, adaptability, and deeper awareness to navigate uncertainty. Our world is more connected than ever, with information readily available at unprecedented scales, and ever closer political, cultural, and economic global interdependencies. While this expanded exposure to diverse perspectives offers immense opportunities for learning and transformation, it also presents challenges: How do we navigate a vast landscape of information, much of which may be contradictory? How can we engage in conversations that embrace and integrate diverse, even opposing, viewpoints? Can we make meta-meaning from this complexity rather than becoming overwhelmed or fragmented?
Both traditional contemplative practices and cognitive science provide complementary tools for fostering attention, awareness, and mental resilience in the face of uncertainty. Yet, structured spaces that bring these disciplines together in a practical, evidence-based manner remain scarce. This project seeks to bridge that gap by exploring how contemplative practices—particularly Buddhist meditation—and cognitive science can cultivate cognitive flexibility, mental resilience, and the capacity to engage with complexity in a way that is both rigorous and open, allowing the emergence of deeper and deeper levels of human flourishing. This endeavor spans both practice and science, the experiential and the theoretical. It calls for both lived exploration and structured analysis and seeks to integrate all of these dimensions—drawing from contemplative traditions, cognitive science, interdisciplinary dialogue and cultural studies research—to provide tools that help individuals and communities navigate the evolving landscape of information, culture, and meaning.
WHY: Motivations & Intentions
This project brings contemplative traditions into dialogue with insights from cognitive science and complexity theory to explore how we can jointly learn to navigate the challenges of the contemporary world. The project will facilitate recurrent eight-week online courses in different contemplative communities to create a vibrant collective where participants learn secular attention and awareness practices and exchange methods from various other contemplative traditions. This exchange will center attention and awareness training as a connecting tissue and techniques from different traditions as living branches to foster cognitive flexibility and mental resilience necessary for thriving in today’s complex, interconnected world.
Through the courses and online forum, we aim to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue across humanities, sciences and contemplative traditions with the joint aim of navigating complexity through learning and practice. Encourage interdisciplinary dialogue across humanities, sciences, and contemplative traditions with the joint aim of navigating complexity through learning and practice.
Develop innovative models for understanding how contemplative practices impact cognition and emotional well-being.
Enhance cognitive flexibility and mental resilience for participants.
Initiate conversations between scholars researching contemplative practices across various cultures and periods, as well as practitioners, and cognitive scientists
HOW: Methods & Tools
- Course Development
- Develop an eight-week course that teaches attention and awareness based on the convergence of cognitive science and Buddhism.
- Create a framework that allows participants to integrate their own contemplative traditions and explore how they enable navigation of metamodern complexity
- Community Building & Education
- Host recurring eight-week courses to cultivate a diverse contemplative community.
- Establish an online platform for exchange across contemplative traditions.
- Organize residential retreats for further exploration and exchange.
- Exploring Contemplative Practices
- Engage with contemplative traditions worldwide.
- Investigate how these practices build resilience and openness in complex cognitive and emotional landscapes.
- Examine neurophysiological mechanisms underlying different contemplative techniques.
- Modeling Complexity
- Utilize neuro-computational simulations to understand the mechanisms of contemplative practice and its impact on cognitive flexibility.
HOW CAN I JOIN? Activities & Events in 2025
- February 21, 2025: Inaugural GHI Forum on Pillar: Cognition, Learning, and Human Flourishing
- Invite participants to explore how contemplative practices foster resilience, cognitive flexibility, and meaning-making in an uncertain world
- An interactive discussion where we invite you to explore how the pillar’s themes relate to your own work
- Spring 2025: Inaugural Virtual Eight-week Living in Complexity course
- Validated 8-week course curriculum integrating the science and practice of meditation to foster human flourishing in a complex world
- Spring 2025: Inaugural GHI Global Comparative Dialogues
- A living exchange of contemplative practices, co-created by participants and hosted on an interactive online forum
For further details, contact the project leaders.