R. Adam Engle


R. Adam Engle is an American social entrepreneur who initiated and developed the Mind and Life Dialogues between the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet and panels of prominent scientists in the 1980s. Over the 22 years of his subsequent tenure as chief executive of the Mind and Life Institute, which he co-founded in 1990, his work contributed significantly to the establishment of contemplative science as a new field of research.

Original concept of Buddhism-science dialogues

In 1983 the Harvard educated lawyer Engle, from Boulder, Colorado, came to know of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama's interest in modern science and, realising from his personal Buddhist studies that the concept of a Buddhism-science interface was potentially an important new scientific field to be researched, he contacted the Dalai Lama's office in India offering to arrange a dialogue for him with selected western scientists. The Dalai Lama accepted and authorised Engle to set one up and Engle arranged the first dialogue to take place between him and five scientists in 1987. Over the next 25 years Engle organised dozens of international conferences between meditators and scientists and oversaw the publication of 11 top-selling books in a successful strategy to establish and popularise the new field of the Contemplative Sciences.

Development of Mind and Life Institute

The initial meetings in the 1980s were so successful that Engle registered and funded the Mind and Life Institute in 1990 in the US as a not-for-profit 501 organisation dedicated to exploring the interface between science and Buddhism. His two other co-founders were Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet who would chair the dialogues and Francisco Varela the late Chilean neuroscientist, who until his untimely death in 2001 would coordinate the teams of scientists with relevant specialisations for each conference according to its theme.
On the institute's formal establishment in 1990 Engle, as its creator, became its Chair and CEO, a post he held for 22 years until his retirement in 2012. By then he had guided its development into "a worldwide and influential organisation bringing together the highest standards of modern science and contemplative practice".

Launch of formal scientific research programmes

In 1998, to optimise the potential for societal benefits, Engle broadened his institute's initial mission to include carrying out formal scientific research. At the next dialogue in 2000 Engle proposed that a series of scientific investigations should be carried out under laboratory conditions with the aim of establishing whether Buddhist contemplative practices could be of significant benefit to modern society. This proved to be the case and so Engle's next task was to develop ways of teaching the subject in a secular environment.
As an outcome of his organisation's next dialogue, held at MIT in 2003 and entitled ‘Investigating the Mind’, Engle took the initial steps to launch the first formal scientific research programme on this subject. Participanting scientists included Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and Eric Lander, Director of the MIT Center for Genome Research. This conference marked the birth of Contemplative Neuroscience.
In 2004, Engle announced the launch of the annual Summer Research Institute at the Garrison Institute offering a new curriculum on contemplative neuroscience to graduates, post doctorates and members of the science faculty. He also launched the annual Francisco J. Varela Research Awards, to provide pilot study funding to suitable applicants. In 2005, Engle's second public dialogue was held in Washington DC, 'The Science and Clinical Applications of Meditation', co-sponsored by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Georgetown University Medical Center.

Establishment of Contemplative Sciences

In 2012 Engle's strategy to establish the new field of Contemplative Sciences was completed when he initiated an International Symposium on Contemplative Studies in Denver Colorado, with 700 representatives from Contemplative Science and Studies research bodies in attendance.
By the time Engle retired from Mind and Life Institute in 2012 he had directed the organisation of 27 international dialogues, both private and public, between the Dalai Lama and other meditators and prominent scientists. To document the discussions and outcomes of the first 13 of these events, by 2012 eleven books had been published under his oversight and videos or DVDs had been released covering most of the others.

Publications produced during tenure

While chief executive of Mind and Life Institute, Engle oversaw the publication of the following books to document its work: