Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn is the founder of the acclaimed Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts and author of the meditation classic Wherever You Go, There You Are. His talk will present the latest findings in the merging discipline of mind-body medicine.

In this era of massive cultural attention deficit disorder, the increasing acceleration of our pace of life, a work ethic of non-stop doing, and our collective post-traumatic stress since 9-11, we have less and less occasion or inclination to come to know ourselves. However, we suffer greatly as individuals and as a society for the poignant distance between us and our deepest, truest nature. The price of that estrangement is chronic dis-ease, unhappiness, depression and anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and confused, and a politics dominated by fear, greed, and ignoring what is most fundamental. When, if ever, are we going to come to our senses, individually and as a society?

From the Buddhist perspective, there are six senses, not five. The sixth is mind. It is useful to see the mind as a sense organ and recognize the full spectrum of its functioning, from thinking, feeling and sensing to non-conceptual knowing. The mind informs all the other senses and brings them to life, and the other senses bring the mind to life as well. In this reciprocal enlivening lies an opportunity to know ourselves deeply as individuals and as a species, and to live and act in the world in ways that contribute to its awakening from the madness of our small mindedness and from the myopia and violence that invariably stem from it.

I attended this talk in February 2005. I had already been enjoying his book, "Where ever you go, there you are" and still enjoy reading passages out of it.