B. Alan Wallace - Biography

Biography

Alan Wallace was born in Pasadena, California, in 1950, the son of Protestant theologian David H. Wallace, and was raised in the United States, Scotland, and Switzerland. In 1968, he began his undergraduate education at the University of California, San Diego, with an emphasis on biology and philosophy. He spent his third year abroad at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he shifted the direction of his studies to Tibetan culture and language. Wishing to immerse himself more fully in the study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism, in 1971 he discontinued his university education and moved to Dharamsala, India, where he enrolled in classes at the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, which was established in that year under the auspices of the Dalai Lama. In 1973, as a newly ordained Buddhist monk, he enrolled in the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics, where he trained until 1974. The following year he received full monastic ordination from the Dalai Lama, who then encouraged him to join the renowned Buddhist contemplative Geshe Rabten at the Tibet Institute in Switzerland. Two years later, he continued his training and also began teaching at the Center for Higher Tibetan Studies in Mt. Pelerin, Switzerland, still training under Geshe Rabten and many other Tibetan scholars and contemplatives. In 1979, with the encouragement of the Dalai Lama, he returned to India, where he began a series of solitary meditation retreats, first under the direct guidance of the Dalai Lama, and later in Sri Lanka and the United States. In 1984, he enrolled in Amherst College, where, as an Independent Scholar, he studied physics, the philosophy of science, and Sanskrit, completing his undergraduate degree summa cum laude and phi beta kappa in 1987 . His undergraduate honors thesis was published in two volumes, Choosing Reality: A Contemplative View of Physics and the Mind and Transcendent Wisdom: A Commentary on the Ninth Chapter of Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life. In 1987, with the permission of the Dalai Lama, he formally returned his monastic vows, and two years later married Vesna A. Wallace, an accomplished Buddhist scholar in her own right. In that same year, he enrolled in the graduate program in religious studies at Stanford University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1995. During these years at Stanford, he also continued his studies of the philosophy of science and of the mind. His main research centered on integrating Buddhism with Western science and philosophy with the aim of achieving a more comprehensive understanding of consciousness. His dissertation was published under the title The Bridge of Quiescence: Experiencing Tibetan Buddhist Meditation, and during this time he also wrote The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness. In 1997, he joined the faculty of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he taught courses on Tibetan Buddhism, language, and culture, as well as the interface between science and religion. In 2001, he left his position at the university and devoted himself to a six-month solitary meditation retreat in the high desert of eastern California. In 2003, Alan established the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, a non-profit institution concerned with synthesizing scientific and contemplative inquiry into the nature and potentials of consciousness.