Psychology: Meditating on Holistic Learning Joining the Heart and Mind

Changing education opens the world to real understanding. Here is a great journal article in part (see link for full article), contemplating education and personal development. To-date we educate the mind pushing information in, rather than extracting wisdom from a person. Deeper reflection and meditation opens to awareness which provides access to deeper knowledge. We do not have to work harder, we educate ourselves intelligently and holistically, and it is a new world we see.

http://journals.naspa.org

Journal of College & Character VOLUME VII, NO. 6, July 2006

Joining Hearts and Minds: A Contemplative Approach to Holistic Education in Psychology
Proceedings from the 2006 Institute on College Student Values
Peter G. Grossenbacher and Steven S. Parkin, Naropa University1
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Decades ago, Ashley Montagu told us that “Education should be the nourishing and causing to
grow and develop of the capacity for humanity. And by humanity I mean the ability to relate
oneself in a loving, creatively enlarging manner to all other human beings and oneself” (Montagu,
1962). Years of teaching at a contemplative institution reveal that Montagu’s highest aims for
education are well served by contemplative education, the central topic of this presentation.

Contemplative education includes the same four components found in other educational systems:
learning theory, curriculum, pedagogy, and learning assessment. Starting with a contemplative
theory about learning, Naropa University’s robust curriculum provokes learners to know
themselves and the world they inhabit. Through personal example (modeling) and numerous
other pedagogical methods, the teaching provided by contemplative faculty provokes deeply
transformative learning in our students. Procedures used to ascertain student learning and provide
feedback help to ensure that contemplative learning occurs. This talk addresses each of these
components within Naropa’s uniquely contemplative approach to holistic education.

Founded in 1974, Naropa University has gradually grown to about 1200 full-time, degree seeking students in bachelors and masters programs in psychology, writing, environmental studies, religious studies, and the arts. Today we will focus on psychology majors, currently over 100 students.

Naropa has provided leadership in contemplative education for over thirty years.
Contemplative education challenges and supports students in ways that greatly expand upon
traditional academic approaches. Education at Naropa University originated from a Tibetan
Buddhist education system founded in the training of mental skills involving mindfulness and
awareness. This innovative form of education equips students with perspectives and techniques
useful for bringing forth their own genuine way of connecting their heart and mind. Inevitably,
contemplative education brings students’ inherent compassion and wisdom into the light of day,
training them to be confident and creative leaders.

Blessed with religious roots, Naropa University has grown into a robustly secular and
pluralistic institution that for decades has emphasized spirituality by mixing Buddhist inspiration
with other approaches, ranging across religions and non-religious approaches as well. Naropa is
an institution rooted in world wisdom traditions that teach meditation, prayer, and other
contemplative practices. Pluralism amongst spiritual and religious paths is highly valued in the
Naropa community (including students, staff, and faculty). We have committed to the process of
deep, personal work with each other in diversity, as reflected in having recently instituted the
position of Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs for Diversity and Assessment, and in
now requiring six credits of diversity training for all undergraduate students. In a
transformational learning process, our students work to move beyond a limited concept of who
they are and what they can do. As a natural consequence of this fundamental shift toward
recognizing greater potential (open awareness), Naropa graduates work successfully to change
the world in positive directions.

We want to be sure you know what we mean by a few key terms. Spiritual concerns the
experience of vitality, life force, divinity, sacredness, and so on. Contemplative concerns a
person’s reflective approach to his or her experience. This can involve intention, attention,
attitudes, etc. The two are related in that spiritual experience is facilitated by engaging in a
contemplative activity or adopting a contemplative attitude. Relatively speaking, it’s even more
difficult to explain “open awareness,” a phrase we coined to refer to something that people
experience. Open awareness can be experienced directly, but is rather tricky to talk about. In fact,
before defining open awareness for you, we must invoke an important caveat. For any concept
that we use to trace actual lived experience, it would be a mistake to think that the referential
concept is the same thing as the experience itself. That would be analogous to thinking that when
somebody uses her finger to point something out to us, all we need do is look at her finger to find
out what we need to know. An ancient Buddhist teaching makes this point in terms of a finger
pointing to the moon, and Western culture has offered this same insight in the slogan “The map is
not the territory.” Please take in and heed this caveat. With that distinction in mind, here comes
the packaged concept that we can use to refer to the experience which itself may be ineffable.
Open awareness has the quality of being wakeful and alert, highly cognizant without necessarily
any hint of the anxiety or being on edge that so often accompanies vigilance; it is a thorough
resting that can be calm, relaxed, quiet, even serene; and it is imbued with a sense of opening or
expansiveness that has the capacity to extend beyond any boundary or limitation. Open
awareness is entirely compatible with a stable sense of clear contact with the physical world and
embodied presence in the here and now, unadulterated by machinations of thought.

This presentation concerns the processes by which a student comes to learn and embody
open awareness, and through which this awareness is brought to academic pursuits and life in
general. We address these ways of learning by presenting relevant theory, practical
implementation, and data regarding outcomes. There are two of us here today from Naropa.
First, you will hear from Peter Grossenbacher about the view and practice of contemplative
education in our Department of Contemplative Psychology. Next, you will hear from Steven
Parkin regarding outcomes of contemplative education that we have extracted from an ongoing
empirical study of the experience and effects of meditation.

Components of Contemplative Education

Contemplative education has the same four components as other educational systems: learning
heory, curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. An emphasis on open awareness distinguishes
the contemplative approach to holistic education from other alternatives. We speak from a
perspective in which open awareness is not segregated as a separate component, but rather
suffuses all parts of the educational system.

Contemplative Learning Theory

Let’s start with a theory of learning based on contemplative tradition. Here is a
contemplative learning model, inspired by a Buddhist approach to learning that identifies a fourphase learning sequence comprised of study, contemplation, meditation, and action. In this
model, the various phases are interconnected and overlapping, so there is not a sharp distinction
between one phase and next. Study involves receiving and storing information such as by reading
or lecture. Contemplation consists of careful consideration of this information, for example,
evaluation from one or more points of view, thereby leading to possible integration of the
material with previously acquired knowledge. Meditation enables an even deeper understanding
by relaxing the effort of study and contemplation, and allowing the topic of learning to resonate
through levels of processing that lie beyond conscious control. Community-based action, the
final phase, applies previous learning beyond the halls of academe by engaging with a larger
community. This four-phase model is ideally suited for whole-person learning environments that
take an inclusive approach to understanding our humanity.

Study is the first phase of contemplative learning. It consists of exposure to and ingestion
of something not already known. By receiving information, the student is given the raw material
needed for assembling, or reconstructing, a conceptual framework in which to think about the
topic. In terms of the learning model, study involves the encoding and storage of information,
including cognitive processes such as association with previous learning. The study phase should
be easily recognizable because it appears universal to higher education. It remains an open
question as to how learners in a contemplative learning environment may study in ways that are
not common in other settings. At an idealized level, we might say that material has been
exhaustively studied only when it has been both memorized and meaningfully interpreted.
The second phase of contemplative learning, contemplation, involves deeply mulling over
the subject at hand. This contemplation takes a variety of forms. One natural way to deepen
one’s engagement with a topic is to make it personal. For example, in a course that I teach on
Personality Theories, one of the theorists we cover is Rollo May, who approaches human
individuality from the perspective of existentialism. To drive home the seriousness of the aptly
named “existential crisis” that awaits each of us, I lead the students through a guided
contemplation in which we starkly encounter the potentially paralyzing angst that comes from
considering one’s own mortality, the unsurpassed importance of every act and decision that a
person makes, and the utter and daunting freedom that offers no guidance to the choices we make.

Education can help learners to accommodate perspectives other than their own, and may
even lead to skillful navigation among different points of view. Taking one’s own beliefs with a
grain of salt is not a new idea; Robert Thouless offered this over seventy years ago: “The ability
to adopt the attitude of partial belief or to hold propositions with less than full certainty is rare,
and its acquirement should be one of the aims of a liberal education.” (Thouless, 1935). A more
modern phrasing of this idea on a bumper sticker is “Don’t believe everything you think!” For
many of us, the process of adopting one perspective after another can be laborious and slow.
Contemplation provides a designated form for perspective taking, and does so by leveraging the
mind’s natural tendency to shift. Even without explicit instruction to consider disparate
perspectives, shifting among perspectives seems to naturally happen on its own within the context
of contemplative learning. By virtue of perspective taking and rational analysis, contemplation
often yields greater conceptual understanding of the studied topic, as well as making a personal
relationship with the topic.

As the third phase in this learning model, meditation brings greater awareness to the
process of encountering a topic. You may know something of the popular and scientific interest
in meditation that has been growing in recent years. Meditation training is a form of experiential
learning involving personal instruction. The traditions of meditation taught at Naropa University
primarily involve processes of attending that concern sustaining attention with clarity. By resting
in an upright posture and focusing attention for a period of minutes, the mind can relax. When
mental relaxation is combined with sustained attention, awareness becomes less obstructed. The
practice of combining relaxation and awareness leads to an extensive range of experiences. Many
classes begin with a few minutes of meditation, which allows students to arrive mentally as well
as physically within the classroom.

With extended meditation practice, a person’s unthinking tendency always to be thinking
and imagining becomes transformed into a more purposeful alternation between intentionally
thinking, and taking a relaxing break from thinking. Several outcomes of contemplative learning
depend on this third phase. First, by sequentially combining intellectual study and contemplation
with selfless awareness, contemplative learning trains the student to access open awareness in
ways that are compatible with thoughtful concerns. Ironically, it is by de-emphasizing the
perspective of one’s own self concept and by letting go of the need to control so stringently one’s
mental life, that this selfless approach makes room for all of the student’s capacities to come into
play. This deep mixing with open awareness leads to insight and realization. In this deepest
phase of contemplative learning, the student transforms. The person’s way of being in the world
changes by now embodying the full extent of a teaching. In this way, contemplative learning
does not stop with what a person knows. It actually impacts how a person manifests in the world.
Though difficult to speak about in a concise manner, the words “being” and “becoming” come
close to encapsulating this important facet of transformative learning.

The fourth phase of learning, community-based action (akin to service learning), brings
students into real contact with a community outside the college setting. This recent curricular
innovation in Western institutions parallels a many-centuries-old tradition of compassionate
action that can be found, for example, in engaged Buddhism. The utility of activity for furthering
one’s learning may be widely recognized. From the scientific perspective of neurobiology, this
can be understood as yet one more instance of the general rule that the more ways that a learner
works with material, the more facets become known, and the more interconnections are made. In
short, actively doing and pushing past one’s limits makes for more complete learning. From the
perspective of holistic education, it is of further importance that action contributes to
compassionate service and developing community.