Shinzen Young is an American mindfulness teacher and neuroscience research consultant.
His systematic approach to categorizing, adapting and teaching meditation, known as Unified Mindfulness, has resulted in collaborations with Harvard Medical School, Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Vermont in the bourgeoning field of contemplative neuroscience.
Shinzen’s interest in Asia began at the age of 14 when he decided to attend Japanese ethnic school in his native city of Los Angeles.
After majoring in Asian languages at UCLA, he entered a PhD program in Buddhist Studies at the University of Wisconsin. As a part of his thesis research, he lived as a Shingon (Japanese Vajrayana) monk for three years at Mount Koya, Japan. It was then that he received the name Shinzen (真善).
Also during that time, he became friends with Father William Johnston (author of Christian Zen). Fr. Johnston helped broaden Shinzen’s interests to include comparative world mysticism and the scientific study of meditative states.
Upon returning to the United States, his academic interests shifted to the dialogue between Eastern meditation and Western science.
Shinzen is known for his interactive, algorithmic approach to mindfulness, and often uses mathematical metaphors to illustrate meditative phenomena.
He is the author of The Science of Enlightenment, Natural Pain Relief and numerous audio offerings.
Shinzen leads residential retreats throughout North America. In 2006, he created the Home Practice Program. These phone-based mini-retreats are designed to make deep meditation practice accessible to anyone in the world regardless of their location, health situation, and time or financial constraints.
Shinzen gives us a reading of TS Eliot’s poem “The Little Gidding”. A great ending to a great interview.
This is the Shinzen’s Periodic table of happiness. Click Here.
Shinzen’s in depth look at Mindfulness. Click Here
A ruff transcript of our conversation:
Hello, I’m here with Shinsen Young an American mindfulness teacher and Neuroscience research consultant. Welcome.
Thank you. This is my favorite thing to do talk about meditation mindfulness and so forth. So I’ll yes, feel free to ask whatever you would like to ask.
I appreciate it. The first question is very basic.
Why meditate? I have a set answer to that question personally my favorite answer but then I think I would preface it by saying that the answer is Technical and therefore requires some explication. So in a word. Why should someone meditate? Or in afraid it’s the phrase would be in order to optimize happiness, but we’re going.
Be precise about what we mean by happiness. I have developed something that I call the Periodic Table of Happiness elements. It looks yeah, it looks a little bit like a periodic table of chemical elements except.