Today, the world needs more than just “change;” it needs transformation. Contemplation is key to discovering insights and innovations which lead to transformative action.
The Garrison Institute is part of an emerging field of innovative changemaking organizations working to apply the wisdom that arises from contemplation to new action strategies for transformative social and environmental change.
From climate change to racial and social injustice, deep, systemic problems require transformative solutions. Contemplation can help find and implement them. In contemplative or reflective mode, the mind shifts perspective from the illusion of a separate self to an awareness of our profound interconnectedness with each other and the planet. Grounded in that awareness, we can often put disparate elements together in new, illuminating ways, generating innovative insights into our most daunting challenges.
The Garrison Institute is about all of us. It’s about cultivating awareness of our interconnectedness as the basis of positive change. It’s about bringing disparate elements together, finding common ground, and taking collective action for the common good. It’s about leveraging the ability of contemplative practices to hone skills and insights, combining them with new learnings from science, and weaving them collaboratively into new strategies for social and environmental transformation.
The Institute is part of an emerging social field of innovative, changemaking organizations. It’s a field we helped start and continue to nurture, working to integrate contemplation, impactful action, and transformational change.
We offer ongoing learning hubs and exceptional opportunities for people and organizations working in this field to be in a supportive, empowering community. And we continue to advance the field through our own groundbreaking contemplative-based, secular programs in key social and environmental program initiatives: Contemplative Based Resilience, Pathways to Planetary Health, and Compassionate Leadership.
Mission
The Garrison Institute’s mission is to apply the skills and wisdom cultivated through contemplative practice, together with the insights emerging from science, to today’s urgent social and environmental challenges, leveraging transformational change and helping build a more compassionate, resilient future.
Vision
We envision a future in which contemplation is widely recognized and practiced as a pathway to social and environmental transformation. Contemplation infuses our actions with the awareness that we live in a relational world, where everyone and everything is connected and interdependent. Together with insights from science and ethics, this awareness will increasingly be cultivated and applied to changing behaviors and mindsets, shifting the current paradigm towards a holistic, interconnected one.