Sharon Salzberg + Lawrence Barsalou

Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg explores mindfulness, meditation and the awake state with cognitive scientist Lawrence Barsalou.
“All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream” –Edgar Allen Poe
Lawrence Barsalou is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology at Emory University. He received a Bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego and a PhD in Psychology from Stanford University in 1981. Since then he has held faculty positions at Emory University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Chicago, returning to Emory in 1997. Barsalou’s research addresses the nature of human conceptual processing and its role in perception, memory, language, and thought. Barsalou has held a Guggenheim fellowship; served as the chair of the Cognitive Science Society; won an award for graduate teaching from the University of Chicago; and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Mind and Life Institute.

Sharon Salzberg has been a student of Buddhism since 1971 and leading meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. She teaches both intensive awareness practice (vipassana or “insight” meditation) and the profound cultivation of lovingkindness and compassion (the Brahma Viharas). She is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Sharon’s latest book is Real Happiness – The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program, published by Workman Publishing. Her other books include The Kindness Handbook, The Force of Kindness, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, and co-author with Joseph Goldstein of Insight Meditation: A Step-by-Step Course on How to Meditate (audio). Most recently Sharon has contributed to The Huffington Post as one of the site’s bloggers.