History

The CCR has its roots in the work of B. Alan Wallace, PhD, scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, world-renowned meditation teacher, and pioneer of the discipline of contemplative science.

Early Influences (1970–1984)

Dr. Wallace’s deep engagement with Buddhism began in 1970 with his intensive study of Tibetan Buddhism and language in Germany and Switzerland and continued from 1971 at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives and later at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala, India, under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other senior lineage-holders in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
Dr. Wallace was ordained as a monk in 1973 and continued his immersion in Tibetan Buddhist training through intensive study and meditation retreats in India, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, and the United States for over a decade. He also served as interpretor for numerous Tibetan lamas in Europe and the United States, while becoming a teacher in his own right as well.
Dr. Wallace’s first love as a youth in the Western world was science, particularly the field of ecology. Having then experienced the transformative practices taught in Buddhism, he began to understand the importance of seeking dialogue and integration across these cultures and disciplines.

Return to Western Academia (1984–2001)

After a 4-year period of meditation retreats in Asia and the U.S., Dr. Wallace dove straight into focused study of the “fundamental science”—physics—and completed research on the interface between the foundations of physics and Buddhist philosophy. He coined and explained the term “contemplative science” in his undergraduate honors thesis at Amherst College, which was completed in 1986 and on the basis of which he published the books Choosing Reality: A Contemplative View of Physics and the Mind (1989) and Transcendent Wisdom: A Commentary on the Ninth Chapter of Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life (1988).
Dr. Wallace was a founding member of the Mind & Life Institute (1987), where he has served as a Board member or Fellow for over three decades, and as a frequent interpreter for His Holiness the Dalai Lama in his engagement with scientists and other academics.
Continuing his interdisciplinary education, Dr. Wallace earned a PhD in religious studies at Stanford University (1995), producing two manuscripts that would be published as the books The Bridge of Quiescence: Experiencing Tibetan Buddhist Meditation (1998) and The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness (2000). These texts address two of the central themes of Dr. Wallace’s career: the cultivation of sustained, voluntary attention through the contemplative practice known as shamatha, and the way in which this training can inform scientific investigations of consciousness and other mental phenomena.
From 1997 until 2001, Dr. Wallace taught in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. During that time, he taught a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses on classical and spoken Tibetan language, Tibetan Buddhist culture, philosophy, and meditation, as well as on the interface between Buddhism and modern science.

Expanding Contemplative Science (2001–2010)

After leaving academia in 2001, Dr. Wallace returned to solitary retreat for six months and in 2003, he established the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, seeking greater convergence between contemplative traditions and scientific inquiry.
At the request of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in 2003 Dr. Wallace worked with Prof. Paul Ekman to develop the Cultivating Emotional Balance program, which uses our experience of emotions as a path for developing genuine well-being.
Dr. Wallace published a series of seminal works in the growing discipline of contemplative science, including The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind (2006), Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge (2007), Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (2007), and Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity (2009).
In collaboration with principal investigator Prof. Cliff Saron, Dr. Wallace led the Shamatha Project (2007), which examined the impact of three-month intensive meditation retreats on measures of attention, health, and well-being. The Shamatha Project has yielded over a dozen peer-reviewed research articles and has been deemed by Dr. Daniel Goleman and Prof. Richard Davidson to be the “among the best direct tests of a meditation-induced altered trait in attention we have so far.”
Dr. Wallace’s collaboration with Prof. Paul Ekman, Prof. Richard J. Davidson, and Dr. Matthieu Ricard resulted in a 2005 paper in Current Directions in Psychological Science, followed by a 2006 paper with Prof. Shauna Shapiro in American Psychologist. Both papers, among Dr. Wallace’s most frequently cited, address the integration of Buddhist concepts with modern psychology.
Dr. Wallace lectured internationally to advance the growing dialogue around contemplative science, including presentations at the University of Oxford, the Sorbonne, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Caltech.

Seeds of the CCR (2010–2020)

Through the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, Dr. Wallace developed contemplative training programs, including leading regular one-week and eight-week meditation retreats in Buddhist philosophy and practice.
SBI began seeking a physical location for a “contemplative research observatory” dedicated to contemplative science, ultimately purchasing conducive land in Tuscany, Italy and Crestone, Colorado, USA and developing plans for a center in New Zealand.
Eva Natanya, PhD, a scholar of comparative religion, Christian theology, and Tibetan Buddhism, emerged as a key collaborator and co-teacher with Dr. Wallace.

The CCR Takes Root (2020–Present)

The CCR is officially co-founded by Dr. Wallace and Dr. Natanya in 2020, when the CCR North America mind lab launches in Crestone, Colorado, with an initial cohort of full-time contemplatives-in-training entering long-term residential retreat.
The CCR’s multi-year pilot study launches, employing an innovative mixed-methods design that combines first-, second-, and third-person data collection involving a cohort of long-term retreatants at CCR North America.
The CCR’s board and leadership team expands to include experienced operational and academic personnel. Ongoing renovations and operational improvements refine the CCR North America mind lab setting into a particularly conducive environment for research in contemplative science.
To complement its Mind Lab and Research programs, the CCR develops an Education program that offers retreats, monthly educational offerings, community gatherings, and secular curriculum development.