Alan Wallace's Biography(Books)(Photos)

Born in Pasadena, California in 1950, Alan Wallace was
raised and educated in the United States, Scotland, and

assist in leading a one-year group contemplative retreat
near Castle Rock, Washington, during which ways were

Switzerland. In 1968, he enrolled in the University of
California at San Diego, where for two years he prepared for

explored for refining and stabilizing the attention.

a career in ecology, with a secondary interest in philosophy
and religion. However, during his third year of

In the autumn of 1989, he entered the graduate program in
religious studies at Stanford University, where he pursued

undergraduate studies at the University of Gottingen in West
Germany, his interests shifted more towards philosophy and

research in the interface between Buddhism and Western
science and philosophy. These studies are closely related to

religion; and he began to study Tibetan Buddhism and the
Tibetan language.

his role as an interpreter and organizer for the "Mind and
Life" conferences with the Dalai Lama and Western scientists

In 1971, he discontinued his formal Western education to go

beginning in 1987 and continuing to the present. In 1992,
sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute, which he helped to

to Dharamsala, India, where he studied Tibetan Buddhism,
medicine, and language for four years. During his first year

found, he traveled widely in Tibet, conducting a preliminary
survey of living Buddhist contemplatives. In 1995, he

in Dharamsala, he lived in the home of the Dr. Yeshi
Dhonden, personal physician of H. H. the Dalai Lama.

completed his doctoral dissertation on attentional training
in Tibetan Buddhism and its relation to modern psychological

Throughout his stay in Dharamsala, he frequently served as
interpreter for Dr. Dhonden, and under his guidance he

and philosophical theories of attention and consciousness. A
modified version of his dissertation has been published

completed a translation of a classic Tibetan medical text.
In 1973, he began training in the Institute of Buddhist

under the title The Bridge of Quiescence: Experiencing
Tibetan Buddhist Meditation (Open Court Press, 1998).

Dialectics, in which all instruction, study, and debate were
conducted in Tibetan.

During the period 1992-1997, he served as the principal

In 1975, at the request of the Dalai Lama, he joined the

interpreter for the Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche, a senior
Lama of the Nyingma Order of Tibetan Buddhism. During this

eminent Tibetan Buddhist scholar Geshe Rabten, in
Switzerland, first at the Tibet Institute in Rikon, and

time, he translated five classic Tibetan treatises on
contemplative methods for exploring the nature of

later at the Center for Higher Tibetan Studies in Mt.
Pelerin. Over the next four years, he continued his own

consciousness. From 1995-1997, he was a Visiting Scholar in
the departments of religious studies and psychology at

studies and monastic training, translated Tibetan texts,
interpreted for Geshe Rabten and many other Tibetan Lamas,

Stanford University. During this time, he and his wife, Dr.
Vesna A. Wallace, produced a new translation from the

including the Dalai Lama, and taught Buddhist philosophy and
meditation in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, France, and

Sanskrit and Tibetan of the classic text A Guide to the
Bodhisattva Way of Life (Snow Lion, 1997), and he also

England.

conducted research for his primary academic work thus far,
The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of

At the end of 1979, he left Switzerland to begin a four-year
series of contemplative retreats, first in India, under the

Consciousness.

guidance of the Dalai Lama, and later in Sri Lanka and the
United States.

From 1997-2001, alan Wallace taught in the Department of
Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa

In 1984, after a thirteen-year absence from Western

Barbara, where he held classes on Tibetan Buddhist studies
and the interface between science and religion. His most

academia, he enrolled at Amherst College to complete his
undergraduate education. There he studied physics, Sanskrit,

recent academic books are The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward
a New Science of Consciousness (Oxford University Press,

2000) and Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground
(Columbia University Press, 2003), and his latest popular

honors thesis was subsequently published in two volumes:
Choosing Reality: A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind

book is Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-Point
Mind-Training (Snow Lion 2001). After leaving UCSB in June

(Snow Lion: 1996) and Transcendent Wisdom: A Commentary on
the Ninth Chapter of Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva

2001, he spent six months in a solitary contemplative
retreat in the high desert of California. He now lives in

Way of Life (Snow Lion, 1988).

Santa Barbara, where he is the president and founder of the
Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, and he

Following his sojourn at Amherst, he spent nine months in
contemplative retreat in the high desert of California. Then

teaches Buddhist philosophy and meditation throughout Europe
and North America.