VERALA INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM 2023 

“Worldmaking/Sensemaking: Precariousness, Connectedness, Cooperation” 

In partnership with Upaya Zen Center 

• Date: May 25th-27th, 2023
• Location (hybrid): Online and in person at Upaya Zen Centre, Santa Fe, NM, USA 
• Register to participate in person here! 
• Register to participate online here! 

Event Description

How do we make sense of our experience and our place in this very precarious world? Powerful recent approaches have appreciated the mind as a complex system, deeply connected with the experienced world. Sensemaking, in this view, is interdependent worldmaking and includes the experience of intersubjectivity arising in complex, cooperative social interactions. Sensemaking as worldmaking is thus grounded in the interactions of a sensing, moving, living organism and its environment being and acting in the world. In this view, all of life is worldmaking and sensemaking, with the complex dynamic systems of life interdependently giving rise to the world in which each being exists. These complex dynamic systems are in constant flux, existing precariously on the edge of chaotic disorganization.

The remarkable faculty for the 2023 Varela International Symposium includes leaders in the philosophical, cultural, and scientific exploration of this view and its implications related to the precarious processes throughout the universe, the cultural embeddedness of worldviews, and the emergence of moral action.

The symposium honors, and is named for the seminal contributions of neuroscientist, philosopher, and Buddhist practitioner, Francisco Varela, who, with colleagues Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, initially challenged the then-dominant models in cognitive science, establishing the groundwork for the research and scholarship that the symposium faculty will explore.

Presentations and panel discussions occur along with contemplative practice during this unique program which is organized and sponsored by Upaya Zen Center and Institute, Santa Fe, NM and Mind and Life Europe.

Maximum Participants in person: 15
Tuition (Members): $585.00
Tuition (Non-Members): $650.00

Watch the recordings of all the sessions here!