In this episode, Wendy speaks with psychologist, contemplative researcher, and Zen Buddhist teacher, Al Kaszniak. Al has been in the contemplative science space since the earliest days, and his work has shed light on how meditation impacts our thoughts, emotions, and sense of self. This conversation covers many topics, including:
- his parallel interests in Buddhism and neuropsychology;
- research on meditation, emotion, and attention;
- how our view of self impacts what seems relevant to us;
- cognitive effort and emotion regulation;
- how his own experience of self has shifted through practice;
- attention and early emotion/affective tone;
- shifting out of the conceptual mind;
- the relationship of attention and emotion;
- how decades of practice have changed his daily life;
- free will vs. free won't (meditation as inhibition);
- increasing access to contemplative ideas and practices;
- mind as process, interaction, and context—and what that means for science;
- and the value of interdisciplinary dialogue and the "in-between" spaces.