Coinciding fortuitously with the announcement of the award the Nobel Peace Prize to His Holiness, the two-day meeting was atypical for the Mind and Life Conferences both in its brevity and its Western venue. Mind and Life III was again held in Dharamsala in 1990. To facilitate such research, the Mind and Life network was created to connect other scientists interested in both Eastern contemplative experience and Western science. With seed money from the Hershey Family Foundation, the Mind and Life Institute was born. The Fetzer Institute funded two years of network expenses and the initial stages of the research project.
Research continues on various topics such as attention and emotional response.
We met for the fourth Mind and Life Conference in Dharamsala in October 1992, with Francisco Varela again acting as scientific coordinator. An Exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama. Mind and Life V was held in Dharamsala in October 1995. The topic was altruism, ethics, and compassion, with Richard Davidson as the scientific coordinator. The dialogue will be published by Oxford University Press in October 1999 as Science and Compassion.