The Buddhist Geeks Conference is an annual in-person gathering exploring emergent trends relevant to practitioners in the 21st century, as well as for those interested in what Buddhism offers their particular fields of knowledge.
This August, Tricycle is teaming up with Buddhist Geeks to explore the interplay of Buddhism and technology. As part of this partnership, Tricycle will be livestreaming the entire event from August 16th – 18th, as well as showing videos of the best speakers and panel discussions from past Buddhist Geeks conferences throughout the month of August. You can buy tickets to the livestream here.
Here’s your guide to the Buddhist Geeks Conference. Check out who’s going to be there, what they’re talking about, and how we can best serve the convergence of Buddhism, technology, and emerging culture…together.
Keynotes: Opening and closing addresses from leaders in the field
Rick Hanson | Neurodharma : Practicing with the Brain in Mind
The Buddha taught the mental causes of suffering and peace. What could be the neural cases of those causes? And how could we use the mind to affect those neural causes? This talk will explore the impact of the brain’s evolved negativity bias, how to cultivate a brain with minimal craving, and how to skillfully use everyday positive experiences to build up the neural substrates of virtue, mindfulness, wisdom, peace, contentment, and love.
Reggie Ray | The Transmission of Mind and the Passing of Lineage via the Web
Can we offer transmission via the internet? Does it work and does it stick? This keynote address will explore transmission, the internet, and Buddhist lineage.
BG Live: Power-punched TED-style talks
Marianne Elliott | Zen Peacekeeping: When Practice Isn’t Enough
We know the practice of meditation leads to an increased desire for the well-being of all, but what next? What are the limits of practice? And how can we bridge the gap between practice, and practical social change?
Lodro Rinzler | Spider-Man and the Role of the Teacher in the 21st Century
With great power comes great responsibility. This talk will explore the role of the teacher in the 21st century.
Kate Johnson | The Dharma of Difference: Waking Up to Power and Privilege in our Sanghas and Communities
The Buddhist concept of anatta, or “not self,” suggests that our sense of self is not fixed, not solid, not even “ours.” And yet, our individual and social realities often include powerful personal experiences of race, class, gender, sexuality, and dis/ability. Placing Buddhist teachings on not-self and interdependence in conversation with anti-oppression practice, Kate Johnson will examine the lived experiences of “self” and “other” as they pertain to our contemporary American Buddhist sangha, and to our own freedom from suffering.
Martin Aylward | Intimacy and Infinity: The Dharma of Sex
In this talk, Martin Aylward invites us into an honest exploration of sex as spiritual practice, looks for an authentic 21st century sexual morality, and gropes his way through the intimacy of both sex and meditation, toward the infinity of consciousness wherein our lives unfold.
Shinzen Young | The Meaning of Life: A 3D Model for Spiritual Growth
Spiritual maturity is proportional to how clearly an individual understands the mutually complementary nature of the three dimensions. This represents a generalization of something Einstein said about the nature of human worth.
Sofia Diaz | Subjective Space: The Final Frontier
Using the recent scientific discovery that our bodies are actually more space than matter, Sofia Diaz will point to the feeling experience of embodiment as unbounded consciousness.
Kenneth Folk | Contemplative Fitness
Drawing parallels between sports and meditation, Kenneth Folk offers a new way to understand spiritual awakening.
Jerry Colonna | Eat Me If You Wish: The Dharma of Uncertainty in Business
Megan Miller | Mindful Media: A New Culture of Immersiveness on the Internet
Humans are creating and consuming more information than ever before—in fact, 90% of all the world’s data has been generated in the last two years alone. But a funny thing is happening on the way to information overload: the next wave of digital media technologies are being built to focus, rather than distract, our attention.
Gary Weber | Upgrading the Mental Operating System
Our current, 75,000 year old operating system (OS-ME) is clearly not meeting today’s needs with its high user suffering and low satisfaction scores, high power and bandwidth consumption, and low signal/noise ratios. A new OS (miniME) is introduced offering much lower power and bandwidth consumption, high signal/noise ratios, increased functional capabilities and significantly higher user satisfaction and reduced suffering.
BG Roundtable: Stimulating and provocative panel on the key conference themes
Diane Hamilton, Shinzen Young, Sofia Diaz, Kenneth Folk, Michael Zimmerman | Getting a Handle on Scandal
This roundtable discussion will use the latest Sasaki Roshi incident as a case study to explore and dialogue about scandals in Buddhist communities and what we can do about it.
BG Dialogue: Relevant conversations at the intersection of Buddhism, technology, and global culture
Shinzen Young & David Vago | Mapping the Meditative Mind
This 2-person dialogue will explore and reveal for the very first time, the results from The Harvard Brain Study—a meditation study that looks at what happens in the brain when one applies Shinzen Young’s meditation techniques.
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