Introduction: a confluence of streams and a flowering of possibilities -- Session 1. Meditation-based clinical interventions : science, practice, and implementation. How Buddhist meditative practices can inform our understanding of pain and suffering, the potential for healing, the relief of suffering, and the underlying nature of the human mind and body / Ajahn Amaro. Some clinical applications of mindfulness meditation in medicine and psychiatry : the case of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) / Jon Kabat-Zinn. Mind-brain-body interaction and meditation / Richard J. Davidson. Session 1 dialogue -- Session 2. Possible biological substrates of meditation. Synchronization of brain rhythms as a possible mechanism for the unification of distributed mental processes / Wolf Singer. The neurobiology of the adaptive and deleterious features of stress / Robert Sapolsky. Session 2 dialogue -- Session 3. Clinical research 1 : meditation and mental health. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and the prevention of relapse in recurrent depression / Zindel Segal. Paths to recovery : neural substrates of cognitive and mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of depression / Helen Mayberg. Session 3 dialogue -- Interlude preceding session 4. The Buddhist science of human flourishing / Alan Wallace. Interlude dialogue -- Session 4. Clinical research 2 : meditation and physical health. Mindfulness-based stress reduction and cardiovascular disease / David Sheps. Neural-immune interaction / John Sheridan. Session 4 dialogue -- Session 5. Integration and final reflections. Meditation and the future of health care / Ralph Snyderman. Some reflections on the evolution and nature of mind and self and their implications for humanity / Wolf Singer. Session 5 dialogue

"Evolving Dharma is a next-generation book about meditation, Buddhism, and the contemplative path. It explores how the dharma (the path, the way, the teachings of the Buddha) has evolved in astonishing ways and how dharma practice evolves in one's own life. Instead of approaching the dharma as spirituality, therapy, or self-help, scholar and practicing Buddhist Jay Michaelson presents it as a set of technologies for upgrading the brain, for physically enhancing its capacity for wisdom and compassion. In the last twenty years, Buddhism has exploded well beyond its former boundaries. Meditation is being taught to prisoners, cancer patients, and children. It is being practiced online--by geeks, hipsters, and punks; by atheists, Christians, and Jews; by people who are not "spiritual." It's not even "Buddhism" anymore, having evolved out of its original religious context and into dozens of new ones. Evolving Dharma is the first book to take stock of these trends, and to speak in real-life terms about how they affect the practice of meditation and the path to upgrading the mind. Michaelson is fearless, unorthodox, and irreverent, yet his book is also based on his decade of meditation practice and teaching as well as his ten years of work as an LGBT activist. Including forays into neuroscience and cultural criticism and Michaelson's personal stories of his five months spent in silent retreat, life-changing realizations, pain, joy, and insight, this is not an ironic, wading-into-spirituality memoir but a thoughtful, important work that takes its subject seriously, both as discipline and as individual narrative. Chapter titles include "The Dharma Evolves By Disappearing," "The Evolution of Enlightenment," and "When Every Mystical State You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough.""--

The Buddha said that everything we need to know about life can be found inside this fathom long body. In this text, readers can gain a deeper understanding and acceptance of their physiological nature and its important role in their spiritual evolution.