B. Alan Wallace, PhD
Cultivating Genuine Happiness and Mental Balance
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What You'll Learn
Explore how to cultivate genuine happiness and the role that training the mind plays in true contentment
Hear Alan describe his four-fold model of mental balance and how you can use it to increase your own well-being
Consider the power of first-person introspection as a key leverage point in transforming our emotional landscape
About B. Alan Wallace, PhD
About Eve Ekman, PhD
To learn more about her work you can visit the Atlas of Emotions, an online website for emotional awareness commissioned by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and co-created by Eve and Paul Ekman. You can also learn more about a contemplative science training for learning emotional balance that was founded by Alan Wallace and Paul Ekman and is currently lead by Eve Ekman and a global teacher network at Cultivating Emotion Balance.
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NO SOUND
Hi Marsha, there are 5 little vertical bars at the bottom of the video box, to the left of the “CC” button. You should be able to click on the right side of those bars to turn the volume up. Hope that helps.
I also have no sound. Even though the volume on the video and on my computer is turned up all the way… Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks!
there is no sound – ive tried turning it up and down using volume thingy as ryan recommended.
This session was truly mind-blowing! I received great insight and have much to digest.
Thank-you!
Very, very interesting. So clearly articulated, with great intelligence and delightful passion.
I love your passionate attitude and your sense of urgency because a paradigm shift indeed holds our survival as a species and a planet. However there is such a deep duality in many people’s desire to do good and right and our attachment to a lifestyle that includes so many creature comforts: cars, extensive homes and properties, excessive food and clothing.
What I find distressing is that it is so difficult to wean ourselves off our addictions, while those who hold the most power through wealth and driven by rapacious greed for more money and more power ,make individual effort feel woefully inadequate. Intellectually, I realize that’s what is being promoted here, individual effort as a group, a community, a network. Trying to achieve balance in the shadow of our looming destruction, it really very challenging.
Also – a point I have to make the point on another subject – not to digress, but most pharmaceuticals do not provide cures; they only address symptoms.
Same with ADHD. The other-functioning brain lacks stimulation in the prefrontal cortex which impacts self-regulation and executive function. The medications provide the stimulation lacking however, in my experience this is a blunt and crude tool as they are not finely enough calibrated to serve individual
Thank you – that was extremely enlightening. I am a relative “newbie” to contemplative study. My therapist recommended this seminar to me, as we have been discussing these topics. It was the perfect introduction for me.
Yeah a truly mind-blowing/opening session, thank you!
super very fascinating conference
I am not receiving the audio component.
I really appreciated your talk! I am graduating in 2 weeks as a Psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and would love to know how I can learn more from you. Any recommendations on where to start?
While I’m not Alan I am a student of his and can offer some suggestions. If you’re interested in Cultivating Emotional Balance you can find an online course on wisdom experience taught by Eve and Alan alongside other courses he has done. Cheap if you can finish it in a month.
If you’re more interested in the buddhist side of things I would suggest starting with one of his retreats on shamatha, there’s one on wisdom experience but also free ones on the internet archive (audio), youtube and other places.
While I’m not Alan I am a student of his and can offer some suggestions. If you’re interested in Cultivating Emotional Balance you can find an online course on wisdom experience taught by Eve and Alan alongside other courses he has done. Cheap if you can finish it within a month.
If you’re more interested in the buddhist side of things I would suggest starting with one of his retreats on shamatha, there’s one on wisdom experience but also free ones on the internet archive (audio), youtube and other places.
wow! Wonderful! It’s so….nuturing? quencing? to hear such a wonderful mind
Thank you kindly for sharing so much wisdom to the masses! I’m inspired as a scientist and practicing Buddhist to help and work with this avenue of cultivating the mind and emotions. HHDL has been a leading figure in my life as well 🙂 Looking forward to listening and learning more so that I can better help all sentient beings be happy and free!!
This was a truly exceptional and inspiring interview. The investigation into mental perception of the emotional landscape and the other levels of consciousness is awesome and important. There are so many realms on the inner that we are only beginning to explore in the West….but they have been in the east. This is a great time to be alive! Looking forward to experiencing and learning more about this field of study. Thank you! Combining the 1st person attention with the 3rd person attention of emotional awareness will create a very interesting field of study, exploring the great unknown. I hope this summit atracts more people to investigate these subjects you speak of Dr. Wallace and Eve Ekman….you are both pioneers!
Really inspiring. Thank you!
thankyou so much ..it was really very knowledgable….
Tell me about it, Allan. The woman still gets pushed into traditionally female occupations.
It’s a jewel! Thank you Alan for this so much.
I found the elaboration on hedonia and eudaemonia helpful, and agree that it would be beneficial to teach children about these separate forms of happiness from an early age. The link between Western culture’s emphasis on hedonia -> excessive consumerism -> the destruction of the environment became clear, as well as the path forward: a focus on cultivating eudaemonia and growing our awareness of our interdependence- with one another and with nature.
I was surprised that Dr Wallace didn’t mention the body in his framework for cultivating balance and wellbeing, and got the feeling that his approach to cultivating the mind might be quite cerebral/ top-down, with less consideration for somatic/ bottom-up processes, which we are starting to understand as very important.
A reflection I had about “afflictive attention” was that this sounded more like a societal problem than an individual problem (examples given were objectifying women and selling tobacco to young people). The mind only adapts to its context and the messaging it receives, so perhaps more consideration of sociocultural influences could be helpful.
Overall, an interesting conversation that elicited some interesting thoughts.
No sound from the interview
Thank you very much from Italy. Beautiful interview. I studied in Pisa university and I could meet Prof. Alan Wallace during a conference at ILTK Pomaia. It’s interesting to partecipate to this event!
Thank you so much Dr. Wallace for throwing light on Contemplative Science and the four pillars of your model: conative, attentional, cognitive and emotional. The concept of the sixth dimension of perception, the mental perception is so relevant. More and more discussions around this and training modules for all age groups to enhance mental perception need to be designed.
While I sat engrossed in this conversation, there is a question that comes to my mind. Is there a possibility to add spirituality and spiritual practices as a tool to enhance mental perception ? Also towards the end of the conversation Eve talks about journaling and mindfulness as effective tools for first person introspection, what could be some other practical tools for this?
Alan’s session is simply brilliant! Such a pleasure to hear him talk about hedonia & eudemonia, about the new framework of psychology that involves… I will let you listen to the conversation and figure it out! He comes out clearly against continuing our current materialistic, hedonistic & consumption based economic framework which is leading to environmental disaster. HIs proposal to introduce contemplative science into primary education is brilliant and I hope it comes to fruition!
Thank you Alan & Eve!
Thank you. Easy to understand and follow. Really brought a few concepts to follow up on for myself
It is an eudaimonic happiness to be a CEB teacher in this world! Thank you for allowing that possibility and guiding us so compassionately. 🙏🏻
No sound with Dr Alan Wallace.
Consciousness cannot be created or destroyed. 🙏
The triad of materialism, hedonia and consumerism (and wealth, power and prestige) made me think of Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann’s thesis that the US is rampant with individualism, consumerism and militarism.
The child’s understanding of eudomania make me think of the “bucket filler” story,
Thank you, endeed a brilliant presentation. Motivation: my desires are democratic and so are my means. That anyone could have the right of privacy, freedoom of speech and thought and live on their values respecting others.
LAMA B. Alan Wallace Ph.D is always a joy to hear. His message is so simple yet so profound. I just wish humanity heard Lama Wallace’s message and took it to heart. I have seen the hedonism that he spoke about first hand. Y
Hello from South Africa,
Thank you so much. This is so good, for the world, for humanity, at this time. I’m inspired in a deep and good way.
Best wishes,
Khareen
Carl Jung also felt that there was a “cosmic consciousness” or a “collective unconscious” that we draw from and deposit into. FASCINATING!
Thank you very much. So inspiring, this talk.
I believe everything you are saying….so far 🙂
Sound Is very low in all videos…but this one has no sound ay all. It makes me sad not being able to hear well nor complete one session. It stops again AND again as if connection erre lost (Yet it Is a replay)
Alan’s conversation was profoundly moving and resonant. Thank you
The first thing I’ve tried to view is the speech by B. Wallis – just gives an error message. I hope you factor this into replay time – it’s not accessible
I am not getting any sound either. Had sound for the Kaira Lingo, intro and 1st panel but no sound for this segment. I went back to the 1st panel and now no sound there either. Any suggestions? Thank you
Hi Jim, there are 5 small vertical bars to adjust the volume to the left of the “CC” button on the bottom of the vimeo video box. It’s a small control but you can click on the right side of those bars to increase the volume.
Mind & Life is increasingly becoming a cognitive bubble like so many others these days. One just have to read through the comments. There is no dissention, no critical thinking, no hint of disagreement with some of the extreme statements made by Alan Wallace towards the end of the talk.
The style is more and more different from that of science. No data, no slides, no turn to ask questions. And more and more similar to that of religion: homilies by gurus appointed by the authorities to illuminate us.
Never mind. Nobody will read the comments, anyway.
Thank you, I found this talk wonderfully clear and gives rise to personal as well as societal introspection.
Ridiculously explosive!!! A definite to practice! Let’s save the world!!!
This was great, almost idealistic but actually so true. So simple and so powerful.We, who work with children, have to bring that idea to them.
Thank you for such an interesting conference! I enjoyed your new point of view about genuine happiness.
Evelyn from Vina del Mar, Chile.
What an interesting presentation, so passionately communicated. Thank you. I feel the need to reflect on much of the information which was completely new to me. What a wonderful gift.
Mindfulness lessons in every classroom! Thank you for the validation. Outstanding , rich model, presented in a clear, passionate delivery.
Love this topic ❤️👏🏻. Very explicit and simple to unferstand
Interesting analysis. No proof as proof. Proof as no proof. Not sure I buy it, but its a reasonable word based argument for science and against science, for a multidisciplinary path that hasn’t proven anything yet. Its a start, maybe an ending. We’ll see.
I have no sound either. My volume is all the way up, and the video sound is on all the way. I had sound on the first video but now it’s gone…. Any help? Thanks!
Wonderful sharing! Tq so much. Highly recommended. Metta.
Thank you – very thought provoking.
A couple of comments. Firstly the DSM (currently in version 5) was originally developed to make sure that we spoke the same language of psychiatric/psychological diagnosis, not to be used as a be all and end all for diagnosis. Ironically most of the world uses ICPD so we have to translate DSM categories to ICPD to compare incidence of illness, treatment trials etc. around the world.
That is why DSM changes over time. It is simply a tool, so we can look at how we look at and define mental health problems. Never meant to be perfect and not meant to be the be all and end all for diagnosis – it is just a way of communicating so we can learn from each other’s work and pool data across multiple sites and countries. As we learn, we adjust how we separate out and define the various categories used to describe what we are seeing. (The evolution of our understanding of autism/pervasive developmental disorders/ autism spectrum disorders is a good example of this process.) It is semi-planned change and growth, with no fixed end in sight. And we do occasionally take a step backwards or get sidetracked!
Many years ago we understood some aspects of infection but could not treat it – we hadn’t discovered antibiotics, so could only alleviate the symptoms and support the body to hopefully cure itself. That didn’t mean that our understanding about infections coming from outside of us and being catching was wrong, just that we didn’t have the tools we needed for a cure. Nowadays we don’t often see chronic infections the way we used to – but still don’t have cures for mental illness, just increasingly sophisticated ways to relieve the distress and impact on functioning that these states cause. This doesn’t mean that our understanding that these problems primarily arise in the organ we call the brain is wrong – it just means that out level of understanding of how that happens is not there yet. What we do know is that damaged brains result in a persons struggling to think and perceive, concentrate and reason, and this supports our assumption that mental functions and consciousness arise there. Personally I think our biggest challenge is our approach of considering the mind and body as separate entities. Maybe Descartes sent us off down a misleading path!
In the same way that we can now only treat the symptoms of many blood cancers, prolonging life but not often curing, but are getting to the point that a new process (CAR-T) may offer a cure (at vast expense) we may eventually get to the point where we can medically cure some mental illnesses and rebuild the underlying dysfunction that causes such distress. That is why we need DSM etc. so we can grope our way towards that end goal. And that is why we need the tools for emotional awareness and regulation, and to argue against the belief that your brain is a fixed and unchanging entity, that this conference offers. We will always need both approaches, and likely others too.
A photographer knows that to illuminate a subject from one light source only means that a lot of detail is lost in many areas. The more lights you have, used in a balanced and coordinated way, the better you can examine and portray your subject. What we are learning here gives us another light source as we examine our selves and our emotions. More gentle than the harsh flash of psychiatry and psychology – but all have a role to play!
Great points, Pippa! Thank you for clarifying these things.
So helpful 😊 thanks alot you both
Thank you so much Prof. Alan Wallace and Prof. Eve Ekman for yours explanation! It’s so amazing. 🙏🏻✨♾🌷
Paula Malucelli – from Brazil 🇧🇷