Designing curriculum and teaching a course on contemplative inquiry and holistic education

• In Event: Highlighted Session: The Power of Contemplative Learning for Integrating our Body, Heart, Mind and Spirit, and for Radical Re-envisioning of Education

Proposal

As faculty engaged in teaching contemplative and holistic education courses, we will share how we strongly feel the pending crises in the world given the current trend of climate change and global conflicts, and how we believe a contemplative turn in education is crucial, that is, we need to turn inward for solutions. We will share our own meditation experience which gave us a much broader perspective and higher awareness about our life and the world. We will share how we realize that when knowing becomes love (Zajonc, 2009), you want to take action. In our teaching, we guide students to explore various kinds of practices such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, journaling, arts, dance, etc., looking into many genres of practices in various cultural traditions. We explore the benefits of contemplative inquiry meeting various kinds of challenges students and teachers face. The scientific mechanism behind meditation is also explored, such as quantum physics which posits that we participate in the reality we create, and using the notion of quantum entanglement, we explore the power of love, forgiveness, humility, letting go, and gratitude in spiritual teachings of the world. Most importantly, we understand ourselves as holistic beings and are interconnected with nature and the whole universe, and that all are energies and spirits, and what we do to others comes back, and that inner peace and happiness play a huge part in our wellbeing and intellectual development. We also designed our courses to focus on healing, as traumas and mental problems from wars, conflicts, and lethal capitalist competition are severely traumatizing human relationships and our body, mind and heart.

References:

Zajonc, A. (2009). Meditation as contemplative inquiry: When knowing becomes love. Lindisfarne Books.

Author

• Jing Lin, University of Maryland, College Park