Dialogue-based learning is an inclusive pedagogy that leverages epistemological pluralism in the classroom to enhance cross-cultural education, encourage critical thinking across modes of inquiry, and promote novel contributions in applied ethics. The framework emerged from the Buddhism-science dialogue and our experiences teaching science courses for Tibetan Buddhists in India through the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. Buddhism and science are two modes of inquiry that emphasize critical inquiry and empiricism, yet navigating complementarities and points of friction is challenging. Our proposed framework aims to raise awareness of onto-epistemological assumptions to convert them from obstacles into assets in dialogue. In drawing attention to epistemological orientations, our framework demonstrates that receptivity to other ways of knowing fosters clarity in one’s own views while creating space for new and enriching perspectives. In this article, we contextualize the Buddhism-science dialogue, explore the development of our dialogue-based learning framework, and demonstrate its application to a novel exchange about the COVID-19 pandemic. Broader aims of the framework include increasing scientific literacy and advancing transdisciplinary research.

IMPACT: The findings of this study could lend us insights into behavioral intervention that could potentially prevent or slow the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. OBJECTIVES/GOALS: This study examines the association between cognitive and physical resilience and Alzheimer’s disease in a Tibetan Buddhist monastic community in southern India. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: The study will employ mixed methods of semi- and unstructured interviews and surveys. The interviews will be conducted among 60 monks of age 50+ in six Tibetan monastic colleges in southern India. The interviews will comprise general questions related to monks’ monastic educations and practices, as well as clinical cognitive interviews. Interviewees will be randomly sampled from a census of monks at the six monasteries. Owing to COVID-19 crisis, we will begin data collection, starting with interviews via zoom in mid-December 2020. The survey, which includes demographic information, cognitive assessments, meditative practices, health, memory and physical activity, will be conducted among 400 monks. The survey will be performed onsite and is tentatively scheduled in the summer of 2021. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: The study will help to identify factors associated with physical and cognitive resilience and develop measures to quantify and describe meditative and cognitive practices. These data will be used to both adapt validated measures developed in Western populations for use with this unique population and to develop new items on physical and cognitive resilience to include in the planned survey. Furthermore, the study will provide information about the prevalence of Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias in this population and development of the survey to capture culturally appropriate measures, including on meditation. The findings could eventually lend us insights into behavioral intervention that could potentially prevent or slow the onset of Alzheimer’s in wider population. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF FINDINGS: Cognitive and physical resilience are understood to confer significant benefits to health outcomes and healthy aging. However, the factors related to resilience, particularly in older adults, are poorly understood. This study will estimate the link between frequency and intensity of meditative practices and physical and cognitive resilience.

This paper explores how conceptions of death and the ways in which such conceptions shape responses to death determine ways of living as well as valued approaches to dying. The paper posits the question: can a fundamental understanding of death contribute to the development of adaptive social traits that lead to more sustainable phenomenological experiences of happiness and flourishing? Employing an anthropological lens, this work starts from the initial inquiry of “what is death?” by looking at cross-cultural historical and theoretical accounts of death and comparing the modern (medicalized) death to the Tibetan Buddhist notion of death. It examines how the practice of a “medicalized death” has shaped the understanding of contemporary death and the ways in which dying is approached. It employs the hermeneutic of a biopsychosociospiritual death to gain a holistic understanding of human mortality. This analysis, based on an 18-month ethnographic study among a Tibetan refugee community in southern India, explores the conception of death for this community using biological and cultural lenses. Moreover, it presents conceptions of death in Tibetan Buddhist culture, paying particular attention to how death is employed as an adaptive cultural tool in pursuance of positive behavioral changes and happiness at both individual and societal levels. In doing so, the paper presents both the theoretical conception of death and dying as well as its role in animating Buddhist cultural values and beliefs. Importantly, it presents a general landscape of Tibetan Buddhist cultural models that facilitate multiple ways of dying that are specifically dependent on an individual’s familiarity with practices related to death and dying and his or her own level of engaging such spiritual practices.

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