Mission
The Garrison Institute is a not-for-profit, non-sectarian organization whose mission is to tap the power of contemplation, wisdom traditions, and contemporary science to help build a more compassionate, resilient future.
We work with diverse collaborators to explore and operationalize insights from a wide range of contemplative practices, Indigenous and exogenous worldviews and wisdom traditions, and scientific disciplines. Together, we weave and apply them in evidence-based ways to today’s urgent social and environmental challenges, in order to meet the moment and leverage the deep, transformational changes we need.
Vision
We envision a future in which contemplation, wisdom traditions, and contemporary science inspire widespread awareness that we live in a relational world, where everyone and everything is connected and interdependent.
This awareness is transformative; it changes everything. It will increasingly animate our behaviors and mindsets, and shift the current dominant paradigms towards more holistic, interconnected, sustainable ones.
People
Our work is inspired and made possible by a wide network of collaborators. Our board, staff, faculty, supporters, and advisers work together with diverse contemplative teachers and practitioners, scientists, thought leaders, and changemakers to advance new thinking and build emerging fields. Learn More
We welcome you to join us in building a more compassionate and resilient future for all. Explore our career opportunities.
Values
The Garrison Institute is guided by the fundamental values of compassion, ethics, contemplative reflection, and evidence-based scientific rigor. From these we derive a commitment to justice, diversity, equity, inclusion, and sustainability.
Sustainability is integral to all our operations. The Institute is committed to understanding, measuring, and minimizing its environmental footprint. Working with our staff and guests, we implement best practices for maintaining energy and water efficiency, serving sustainable food, eliminating toxic chemicals and pollution, and managing solid waste. Our 77,000 square foot facility has been retrofitted with renewable energy systems and other sustainability upgrades.
The Garrison Institute realizes that the vision, mission, and programming of the Institute is ambitious and noble. We are also committed to creating a workplace environment and culture that is worthy of that nobility. In other words, how we do things is as important to us as what we do. We intend to infuse the following values into our work and your stay at Garrison Institute.
To recognize the interdependence of all things and the compassionate action that flows from that recognition, we hold the following core values:
Contemplation: a central aspect of our life and work at Garrison Institute is to practice daily some form of contemplative discipline. This provides the space, strength, and openness of mind for true dialogue and inspired thinking.
Generosity: We practice generosity as the foundation of a spiritual life and the most direct expression of concern for other beings.
Patience: We practice patience with ourselves, with our coworkers, with all who come to Garrison Institute, and with the work itself.
Dedication: We commit ourselves to work wholeheartedly for the benefit of society and the natural world with sustained resolve.
Ethical Behavior: We reflect continually on the implications of our thought, words, and deeds; and seek to always realize what leads to well-being and what does not.
Wisdom: We cultivate the insight that comes from practicing all these values in order to cut through the fog of greed, hatred, and delusion; in ourselves and in our society.
Contemplation
Contemplative practices are not passive or theoretical; they are active and practical, and confer real-world benefits. Scientific research shows that contemplation modulates fear and cultivates insight, intuition, empathy, and morality – qualities that can enable effective social and environmental change work, even in difficult times.
Insights emerging from science are increasingly intersecting with the insights from Indigenous wisdom and contemplative traditions. They teach us that we aren’t separate, atomized, or selfish by nature. Everyone and everything is interconnected, “interdependent” (a systems theory term), “entangled” (a quantum physics term) in a deeply reciprocal, non-dual relationship with one another and the Earth. As our collaborator Yuria Celidwen writes, in Indigenous cultures, “contemplation entails becoming acquainted with the relationships among all beings as a part of the larger, responsive system of Mother Earth.”
Contemplative practices are methods human beings in diverse cultures evolved to hone this awareness, which can help us address today’s crises and form the basis for a transformative action strategy. They can help change agents of all kinds become more insightful, innovative, and effective. And they support people working in especially challenging fields — from caregivers on the front lines of the pandemic to humanitarian workers in disaster zones — to be more compassionate, self-caring, and resilient, so they don’t burn out or internalize trauma, and are able to thrive in their work.
Theory and Practice of Change
From climate change to racial and social injustice, deep, systemic problems require transformative solutions. 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.
The multiple crises we face today – from climate change and other environmental threats to political discord and racial and social injustice — are also opportunities, full of latent potential, crying out for positive, 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.
Contemplation opens fresh possibilities for personal insight, evolution, and transformation. It also affords insight into real-world problems. Our programs use contemplative techniques to cultivate such insights, combining them with new learnings from science, and weaving them collaboratively into new strategies for social and environmental transformation.
Meaningful change results from a complex interaction between evolving systems and evolving individuals. The Institute is part of an emerging social field of innovative contemplative-based change movements. 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 others.
History
Garrison Institute was founded in 2003 to explore the intersection of contemplation and engaged action in the world. Since then it has launched multiple groundbreaking initiatives to bring contemplative tools to educators, climate advocates, and front-line helping professionals, and hosted hundreds of contemplative retreats led by world-class teachers from diverse traditions.
Founded in 2003 by Diana Calthorpe Rose, Jonathan Rose, and their colleagues, in the last two decades the Institute launched a series of impactful program initiatives that bring contemplative tools and insights to key social and environmental change fields, including the Initiative on Contemplation and Education, the Climate Mind and Behavior Program, and the Women’s Wellness Project, a five-year pilot program working with domestic violence shelters, which grew into the Institute’s signature program on Contemplative-Based Resilience (CBR) for front-line caregivers and humanitarian relief workers.
The Institute has hosted a vast array of contemplative retreats with leading teachers in diverse wisdom traditions—including three-time visitor His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Yuria Celidwen, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Father Thomas Keating, Sharon Salzberg, Rabbi Zalman Schechter, and many hundreds of others. Our groundbreaking contemplative retreats for people of color and the LGBTQ+ community established the Institute as a leader in diversity and inclusion.
In 2012, the Institute launched its international sister organization, Garrison Institute International, based at the Hague in the Netherlands, to administer Garrison Institute programs abroad, including the CBR program’s work with humanitarian aid organizations, and international compassionate leadership programs.
The Garrison Institute logo
The Endless Knot or Auspicious Knot is an important symbol in Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism. It is also found in Celtic and Chinese civilizations. Among its many interpretations are the intertwining of wisdom and compassion, and the union of wisdom with method.
The Knot is very ancient, appearing as early as 2500 BC in the Indus Valley Civilization. The “G” woven into the center of it in the Garrison Institute’s logo signifies the role Garrison Institute aspires to play, applying contemplative traditions and practices to generate transformative social and environmental change. The Knot branches out of the G, as we intend wisdom, compassion, and methods of positive change to radiate outward from the Institute’s work.