Hidden Happiness: What Science and Contemplative Practice Can Teach Us About Compassion and the Mind
A Conversation with Venerable Ani Choyang
This is a free, in-person event at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA.
Thursday, September 10, 2026
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge (LKSC)
Stanford School of Medicine
291 Campus Drive
Stanford, CA 94305
This event is part of the Conversations on Compassion series >>
What can centuries-old practices for exploring the mind teach us today? And what happens when we bring them into conversation with modern science?
As part of the Hidden Happiness Tour and the relaunch of the Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) Speaker Series, Venerable Ani Choyang joins CCARE for a conversation exploring compassion, consciousness, and the human mind.
Ani Choyang brings a rare perspective shaped by nearly two decades of contemplative study alongside formal science education and neuroscience training. Her current interests include lucid dreaming and dream yoga, offering an unusual window into how ancient practices and modern research can approach some of the same enduring questions about awareness, sleep, consciousness, and human experience.
The conversation will explore what science is learning about compassion and the mind, what contemplative practices may add to that understanding, and how different ways of knowing can generate new questions for scientific inquiry.
At its heart, this is a conversation about human potential: how we understand our minds, how we cultivate compassion, and what becomes possible when rigorous scientific inquiry and lived human experience inform one another.