Terms & Definitions

“[A] state in which cognitive resources are focused on certain aspects of the environment rather than on others and the central nervous system is in a state of readiness to respond to stimuli” (APA, 2024). A Buddhist definition: “Attention has the unique function of causing the mind, along with its concomitant and associated processes, to remain focused on its object without forgetting (or losing) it. Intentionality moves towards an object in general, while attention moves the mind towards the particularities of an object and holds it there, so they are not the same. Attention is the basis for mindfulness and introspection, through its function of firmly holding its object of focus without moving to something else. It is also the unique cause for increase in the power of familiarization. Attention can be divided into two types: wrong attention and authentic attention.” (Gyatso, p. 131) A person achieves attentional balance when their attention avoids the imbalances of hyperactivity, deficit, and dysfunction. A person achieves attentional balance by cultivating and employing their attentional intelligence.

American Psychological Association. (2024). Attention. APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved March 25, 2024 from https://dictionary.apa.org/attention

Gyatso, Lobsang. A Compendium of Key Points on the Modes of Cognition (Rigs lam che ba blo rigs kyi rnam gzhag nyer mkho kun btus). In Mkhas dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i blo rigs, by Phu khang dge bshes blo bzang rgya mtsho. Lhasa: Ser gtsug nang bstan dpe rnying ’tshol bsdu phyogs sgrig khang, 2009.

The cultivation of relaxation, mindfulness, and introspection to develop the stability and vividness of attention, where stability refers to the mind’s ability to remain focused on its chosen object of attention, and vividness refers to the precision and clarity with which the mind can apprehend details of its chosen object of attention.

See attention (Sixfold Matrix factor).

See attention (Sixfold Matrix factor).

“[A]ll forms of knowing and awareness, such as perceiving, conceiving, remembering, reasoning, judging, imagining, and problem solving. Along with affect and conation, it is one of the three traditionally identified components of mind” (APA, 2024). A person achieves cognitive balance when their cognition avoids the imbalances of either hyperactivity, deficit, and dysfunction, thus allowing them to know the world of experience without omission, projection, or distortion. A person achieves cognitive balance by cultivating and employing their cognitive intelligence.

American Psychological Association. (2024). Cognition. APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved March 25, 2024 from https://dictionary.apa.org/cognition

See cognition.

See cognition (Sixfold Matrix factor).

“The proactive (as opposed to habitual) part of motivation that connects knowledge, affect, drives, desires, and instincts to behavior. Along with affect and cognition, conation is one of the three traditionally identified components of mind” (APA, 2024). A person achieves conative balance when their conation avoids the imbalances of hyperactivity, deficit, and dysfunction. A person achieves conative balance by cultivating and employing their conative intelligence, which allows them to discern which desires and intentions lead to their own and others’ well-being and then adopt them while releasing desires and intentions that undermine their own and others’ well-being (Wallace, 2006).

American Psychological Association. (2024). Conation. APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved March 29, 2024 from https://dictionary.apa.org/conation 

Wallace, B. A. (2006). The attention revolution: Unlocking the power of the focused mind. Wisdom Publications.

See conation (Sixfold Matrix factor).

See conation.

Awareness, which is not physical, and which is defined by the two characteristics of (1) luminosity, by which all sensory and mental appearances are made manifest, and (2) cognizance, by which all objects are known.

Contemplative education encompasses practices to heighten learners’ awareness of conative, ethical, cognitive, and attentional balance and their capacity for emotional regulation and spiritual equilibrium in daily life.

Teaching methods that incorporate academic rigor, experiential learning, and contemplative practice to deepen and cultivate awareness, concentration, discernment, and insight. It incorporates principles of both Eastern and Western scholarship to produce a learning experience beyond the mere transmission of knowledge. By integrating academic study with experiential learning and contemplative practice, it helps learners discover their authentic selves and develop the skills and insights they need to flourish in a rapidly changing world.

The empirical, first-person, subjective investigation into the nature of the mind and its role in Nature, which uses methods for developing refined attention, mindfulness, and introspection to directly observe states of consciousness and mental functions in their relationship with the body and the physical world at large. Discoveries made by way of such first-person inquiry can be intersubjectively validated or repudiated by highly trained contemplatives and through collaborative research using the third-person methods of behavioral and cognitive psychology and of cognitive neuroscience.

One who has trained their attentional skills with shamatha to such an extent that they can validly and directly make observations about the nature of reality through subjective inquiry. Such observations are contrasted with observations made with an untrained, ordinary mind, which are obscured by mental afflictions such as ignorance and craving.

The CCR bases its definition for a contemplative scientist on the classical definition of a yogin, or “one who has yoga” – that is, samādhi that is characterized by the non-objectification of all phenomena.*

* Paraphrased from the Pañjikā commentary on A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life by Prajñākaramati; cf. Dégé Tengyur, Vol. 105, Toh D3872, 388.

A set of abilities — including highly trained attention, mindfulness, and introspection — that are continually cultivated and refined by professional contemplatives to enable rigorous, replicable observations of, and valid inferences regarding, mental processes and states of consciousness that can be intersubjectively validated or repudiated.

A type of result in evidence synthesis in which different kinds of empirical methods yield individual lines of evidence that support the same hypothesis. For example, complementing EEG studies with highly trained contemplatives’ first-person reports allows for greater convergence of evidence because two disparate empirical methods — EEG and introspection — can be used to provide evidence about mental phenomena.

See also: Convergence of Evidence (Essay)

Conscious mental responses that are subjectively experienced as feelings, engaged or directed towards a specific object or event, and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body (Wallace, 2024). A person achieves emotional balance when their emotional states avoid the imbalances of hyperactivity, deficit, and dysfunction, and they exhibit adequate emotional responses via emotional awareness of themselves and others that arise from conative, ethical, attentional, and cognitive balance. A person achieves emotional balance by cultivating and employing their emotional intelligence.

Wallace, B. A. (2024, January 21). Severing the Roots of Our Discontent – The Buddhist Way. Lion’s Roar

See emotion (Sixfold Matrix factor).

See emotion (Sixfold Matrix factor).

“A broad-based philosophical position grounded on the fundamental assumptions that all knowledge comes from experience” (Reber & Reber 2001, p. 240).

Reber, A. S., & Reber, E. S. (2001). The Penguin dictionary of psychology (3rd ed.). Penguin Books.

A “theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope” (OED, 2024). Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes among valid modes of knowing, justified belief, and opinion.

Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “epistemology (n.),” retrieved June 22, 2024 from https://www.oed.com/. 

See ethics (Sixfold Matrix factor).

Actions of body, speech, and mind that are guided by mindfulness, introspection, and conscientiousness, with the intention to deliberately avoid harmful actions, remedy any unwholesome, or non-virtuous, actions that may have occurred (Wallace, 2016), and to engage in virtuous behavior that is conducive to one’s own and others’ genuine well-being. See also ethics (Sixfold Matrix factor).

Wallace, B. A., Wilhelm, S. (2016). Tibetan Buddhism from the ground up: A practical  approach for modern life. Wisdom Publications.

See ethics (Sixfold Matrix factor).

“A branch of philosophy that concerns what is deemed acceptable in human behavior, with what is good or bad, right or wrong in human conduct in pursuit of goals and aims” (Reber & Reber, 2001, p. 251). A person achieves ethical balance when their ethics avoids the imbalances of hyperactivity, deficit, and dysfunction. A person achieves ethical balance by cultivating and employing their ethical intelligence.

See genuine well-being (eudaimonia).

A stimulus-independent sense of psychological flourishing that emerges directly from the cultivation of virtuous mental processes and impulses (Wallace, 2005). It is a quality of well-being that comes not from what we get from the world (as in hedonia) but rather what we bring to the world (Wallace, 2019). See also stimulus-driven pleasure (hedonia).

Wallace, B. A. (2005). Genuine happiness: Meditation as the path to fulfillment. John Wiley & Sons.

Wallace, B. A. (2019). Four kinds of intelligence for optimal mental health and balance (1 of 8). The Meridian Trust.

See stimulus-driven pleasure (hedonia).

Exploration of the deep parallels and differences between contemplative traditions, including their theory and practices. This exploration involves first-person knowledge (through study of traditional texts, practice, and experience) and second-person approaches (e.g., evaluation by teachers). It analyzes contemplative experience from an intersubjective viewpoint to reveal universal aspects of human experience in relationship to transcendent realities and the truths represented in human language and diverse conceptual paradigms.

A qualitative research method in psychology that involves analyzing both verbal and nonverbal data (e.g., from journal entries or interviews) to explore how people make sense of their experiences.

Accessible to or capable of being established by two or more knowing subjects.

A reflexive looking inward upon one’s own body, speech, and mind, with a special emphasis on observing mental states and processes. Introspection can be used to monitor the quality of one’s attention, recognizing when it has succumbed to dullness or distraction (Wallace, 2019).

Wallace, B. A. (2019). Four kinds of intelligence for optimal mental health and balance (1 of 8). The Meridian Trust 

A type of research design in which researchers repeatedly record the same types of measurements or observations over a period of time.

Mental processes that disrupt the equilibrium of the mind, and that entail a distortion of one’s ways of apprehending reality.

A mental faculty — distinct from the five senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell — that allows us not only to subjectively experience mental phenomena such as thoughts, dreams, and mental imagery but also to metacognitively access the sensory experiences that arise in dependence upon the five senses.

A research facility with favorable conditions that facilitate contemplative scientists’ empirical inquiry into mental phenomena, states of consciousness, and the origin and potentials of consciousness through direct, first-person observation. It is a place where contemplatives have few distractions and few other concerns and can dedicate themselves single-pointedly to cultivating refined states of attentional focus, applying mindfulness, introspection, and discerning intelligence to explore the nature of consciousness. This research is best performed by contemplatives who are professionally trained, just as other scientists require years of study before being regarded as experts within their disciplines. In mind labs, contemplatives-in-training and professional contemplatives work alongside psychologists, neuroscientists, and other scientists to combine contemplative first-person (subjective) and second-person (intersubjective) methods with the third-person methods of modern science.

The branches of science — including psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and neurology — that investigate mental phenomena such as consciousness, learning, memory, and sleep, as well as other phenomena that entail subjective, phenomenal experience, and how they relate to the brain and behavior. See also neurophysiology and neurophenomenology.

“The mental faculty of attending continuously, without forgetfulness, to an object with which one is already familiar” (Wallace, 2018, p. 218).

Wallace, B. A. (2018). Fathoming the mind: Inquiry and insight in Düdjom Lingpa’s Vajra Essence (E. Natanya, Ed.; B. A. Wallace, Trans.). Wisdom Publications.

A scientific research program aimed at addressing the hard problem of consciousness in a pragmatic way. It combines neuroscience with phenomenology in order to study experience, mind, and consciousness with an emphasis on the embodied condition of the human mind.

A branch of physiology and neuroscience concerned with the study of the functioning of the nervous system.

Expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. The “third-person” view that enables assertions to be publicly validated or refuted. See also subjective.

See “What is a Mind Lab?”

The study of “structures of conscious experience as experienced from the first-person point of view, along with relevant conditions of experience. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, the way it is directed through its content or meaning toward a certain object in the world” (Smith, 2018).

Smith, D. W. (2018). Phenomenology. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/

A regimen of 8–14 hours a day of formal meditation practice with as few distractions as possible from the outside world, designed to explore the nature of the mind and objective phenomena by means of refined faculties of mindfulness, attention, and introspection, motivated by the aspiration to draw forth the full capacities of the mind in order to be of greatest service to the world.

See also: attention training

A philosophical approach introduced by William James, one of the founders of American psychology. It refers to an open-minded investigation of the entirety of human experiences. Its essential feature is that, within the domain of science, it admits as inaccessible any claims that lie outside the range of human knowledge. At the same time, it forbids the exclusion of any phenomena within the range of human experience, including the experience of consciousness itself in all its varied manifestations.

śamatha (Skt.); zhi gnas (Tib.). “An advanced degree of meditative concentration in which attentional stability and vividness have been developed to the point that one can fully engage in the cultivation of insight, or vipaśyanā” (Wallace, 2018, p. 223).

Shamatha may be translated as “calm abiding” or “meditative quiescence.” The practice of shamatha primarily employs two mental faculties: mindfulness and introspection.

An integrated matrix of conative, ethical, attentional, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual intelligence by which to identify the primary causes of and contributing conditions for imbalances of these six mental faculties, including methods to restore balance and to develop these faculties to their fullest extent.

See also “A Matrix of Mental Balance.”

See spirituality.

See spirituality.

A quality of well-being that carries one through all the vicissitudes of life and death and which derives from knowing ourselves and our relation to reality as it is — liberation through insight. A person achieves spiritual balance when their spirituality avoids the imbalances of hyperactivity, deficit, and dysfunction. A person achieves spiritual balance by cultivating and employing their spiritual intelligence.

Refers to any sense of well-being, happiness, or joy we experience in response to pleasant stimulation. It can be positive (e.g., basic food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education), neutral, or negative (e.g, Schadenfreude) (Wallace, 2019). See also eudaimonia.

Wallace, B. A. (2019). Four kinds of intelligence for optimal mental health and balance (1 of 8). The Meridian Trust 

Arising out of or identified by means of one’s perception of one’s own mental and sensory states and processes. The “first-person” view. See also objective.

vipaśyanā (Skt.); lhag mthong (Tib.) “Lit. ‘superior vision,’ contemplative insight into fundamental aspects of reality, such as impermanence, suffering, identitylessness, and emptiness” (Wallace, 2018, p. 228).

Actions of the body, speech, and mind that are conducive to one’s own and others’ genuine well-being. The opposite of virtue, non-virtue, consists of any of those three kinds of action that undermine one’s own and others’ genuine well-being, and they are invariably aroused, directly or indirectly, by one or more of the three fundamental mental afflictions of attachment, hatred, and delusion.