UF Mindfulness Day 2019
"Mindfulness and Social Change"
Keynote Talks
Marisela B. Gomez "Interdependence: Social Change and Inner Change"
J. Wayne Reitz Union, UF. Room 2365. April 1, 2019
(5:45 pm to 7:00 pm).
Marisela B. Gomez is a community activist, author, public health professional, and physician scientist. She received a B.S. and M.S. from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, a Ph.D., M.D., and MPH from the Johns Hopkins University. As a social activist she has addressed issues of racism, segregation and community development, discrimination, and violence. Get to know her (Tedx talk): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSZEsPnhIXg. Her activism and social engagement are informed through inner development grounded in meditation practice. She is ordained in the Order of Interbeing in the Buddhist tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.
Abstract
This presentation will focus on the path of social change and its similarity to inner transformation. How do we currently understand the path to each and how do we practice with the understanding that they depend on each other, for sustainability of either. The practice of mindfulness, of stopping and finding stillness so as to be alert and aware, helps us remember the ethical framework we wish to guide our lives. How does mindfulness help us more easily intention and act into a life of inner and social transformation such that our activism is revolutionary: love in action.
Paul R. Fleischman
"The Universal Features of Meditation"
J. Wayne Reitz Union, UF. Room 2365. April 1, 2019
(2:00 pm to 3:00 pm).
Paul R. Fleischman, M.D. graduated from the University of Chicago and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and trained in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. For over thirty years he was in private practice in psychiatry and consulted to hospitals and clinics. He supervised psychotherapy trainees at Yale University where he also taught a course in Psychiatry and Religion, and he was honored by the American Psychiatric Association for his unique contributions to psychiatry and religion. He is the author of The Healing Spirit, Cultivating Inner Peace, Karma and Chaos, Wonder: When and Why the World Appears Radiant and other books. His articles have appeared in The American Journal of Psychiatry, the International Journal of Social Psychiatry, The Yale Review, The University of Chicago Magazine, Nature, Landscape and other magazines and journals. Paul R. Fleischman is a Vipassana teacher in the tradition of Mr. S.N. Goenka.
Abstract
Dr. Fleischman’s talk will discuss biological and psychological homeostasis as the basis of all meditation practices. The human mind and body have developed as processes that hold within them meditation as an incipient possibility. We are built for meditation. But we are also built for scheming, strategizing, adapting, fighting, and killing. The deep issue in all meditation practice is to activate a readily accessible biological predisposition to homeostatic, restful, and flourishing states of being, which are nested within disruptive alternatives.