Keynote: B. Alan Wallace
President of the Santa Barbara Institute
for Consciousness Studies



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B. Alan Wallace trained for many years as a monk in Buddhist monasteries in India and Switzerland. He has taught Buddhist theory and practice throughout the world since 1976 and has served as interpreter for numerous Tibetan scholars and contemplatives, including H. H. the Dalai Lama. After graduating summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he studied physics and the philosophy of science, he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in religious studies at Stanford University. He has edited, translated, authored, and contributed to more than thirty books on Tibetan Buddhism, medicine, language, and culture, and the interface between science and religion.

His published works include Choosing Reality: A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind (Snow Lion, 1996); The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness (Oxford, 2000); Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (Columbia University Press, 2003); Balancing the Mind: A Tibetan Buddhist Approach to Refining Attention (Snow Lion, 2005); Genuine Happiness: Meditation as the Path to Fulfillment (John Wiley & Sons, 2005); and Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge (Columbia University Press, 2007).