CCR & SBI

From left to right: CCR co-founders Dr. Eva Natanya and Dr. B. Alan Wallace with SBI Executive Director Michelle Victoria at CCR North America in Crestone. 

In the spirit of invigorating your familiarity with our work, whether you’ve known us for some time or are new to our community, today we’d like to address a common point of curiosity about the difference between CCR and SBI. 

 

Impact and Mission

The ultimate aims of both CCR and SBI are to equip humanity with the capacity to achieve a new era of flourishing through contemplative science, to help us understand the nature of mind and well-being, and thereby facilitate both the alleviation of suffering and the increase of mental balance in our world. However, the two organizations differ in the avenues by which they work to achieve this shared goal.

 

Santa Barbara Institute (SBI)

The Santa Barbara Institute (SBI), founded in 2003, has long been the primary vehicle for the transmission of teachings in the Buddhist tradition by Dr. B. Alan Wallace, in keeping with the distinct lineages in which he has trained extensively with his mentors and guides, and in which he is authorized to teach. The teachings offered through SBI have been offered as lecture series and meditation retreats ranging in length from a weekend to eight weeks. SBI has also served as a vehicle for sharing knowledge from other teachers within the Buddhist tradition.

For decades, Dr. Wallace invited the growing SBI community to share in a vision of creating physical laboratories where students of contemplative methods could engage in the intensive, full-time practice of contemplative science, while collaborating with researchers and representatives of other disciplines and traditions. Conducive environments designed for both sustained contemplative practice and controlled scientific exploration had never before existed together in a single place, and SBI was the venue in which the vision for bringing such environments into being was incubated. 

“Just as astronomers need observatories and neuroscientists need laboratories to conduct their research, so do contemplatives need supportive environments, companions, and mentors to optimally develop the contemplative technology of shamatha and the contemplative science of vipashyana.”

– B. Alan Wallace, Epilogue to Fathoming the Mind: Inquiry and Insight in Düdjom Lingpa’s Vajra Essence

 

The Center for Contemplative Research (CCR)

This vision for such “mind labs” has come to fruition first through the Center for Contemplative Research (CCR) North America, in Crestone, CO, and will soon come to fruition through the CCR Europe, in Tuscany, Italy. These are physical places of retreat that directly apply the wisdom gained through Dr. Wallace’s lifetime of charting the course, and are made possible with the extraordinarily generous support of sangha, board members, and committed benefactors. SBI’s offerings have, for many years, disseminated the verbal and written wisdom that has inspired and trained the cohorts of contemplatives who have become the CCR’s first long-term meditators, through whom contemplative science becomes possible. 

 

 

CCR and Expanding the Applications of Wisdom

In an environment where contemplatives and scientific experts can bring time-tested approaches from contemplative traditions into contemporary disciplines, CCR seeks to help humanity better understand and position itself for survival and flourishing through the resonant language of our time—language that includes that of reason, empiricism, and science. 

The CCR embraces dialogue with contemplative traditions from around the world, and invites a broad range of individuals into contemplative experience. Deeply rooted in the Buddhist traditions of India, Tibet, and Southeast Asia, the CCR’s offerings are also informed by a variety of wisdom and knowledge traditions, both ancient and contemporary. Personal commitment to Buddhist tradition or practice is not necessary to engage deeply with the work of the CCR, while openness to and respect for these traditions of practice is at the core of our contemplative and scientific exploration. 

The CCR’s educational offerings are meant to resonate in a secular context, while retaining fidelity to the validated insights and practices shared by ancient wisdom traditions, including but not limited to Buddhism. The CCR does not ignore the prodigious contributions of contemporary academic and applied disciplines, but rather collaborates with them in a manner that can bring about the broadest possible impact. 

Because the CCR operates physical centers, conducts research (which includes managing relationships among researchers and institutes), and also develops educational offerings that seek to introduce rigorous training in contemplative practice to the secular world, the organization has a pressing need for more staff. Thus the CCR is preparing for the fundraising needed to increase our organizational capacity. In order to maintain smooth operations in the wake of important construction investments, and in order to grow judiciously, apace with its impact aspirations, CCR will continue to hire and contract with skilled professionals, assign the best expertise to our research projects, and ensure excellence in its educational offerings. 

 

A Symbiotic Relationship

SBI continues to host and disseminate the Buddhist retreats taught by Lama Alan, and manages publishing relationships and distribution channels for his previous and forthcoming books, thus unfurling the deep teachings of Buddhadharma for those drawn to them, and cultivating a sangha community of teachers and practitioners. SBI will continue to enrich our world by sharing the foundational Buddhist teachings and guidance that set the stage for contemplative transformation, and nurture contemplatives-in-training. 

The CCR is the fruition of SBI’s steady effort, now instantiated through the CCR’s three domains of global impact:

• Mind Labs: Retreat centers for contemplative science, where aspiring contemplatives complete thousands of hours of full-time training to achieve exceptional attention skills and introspective acuity
• Research: A research program that views full-time contemplatives not as mere participants in other scientists’ studies but as true colleagues—co-investigators—who can produce empirical evidence and make genuine discoveries of their own.
• Education: Curriculum and training modules in reflective and contemplative methods, grounded in deep pedagogical and psychological expertise, that span the six domains of mental balance: conative, ethical, attentional, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual.

These projects are mutually informative and closely aligned, and you will continue to see SBI and CCR working together intimately, with our shared belief that together we can nudge our world toward mental and ecological balance.