What is the Contemplative Primate?

For those unfamiliar with martial arts, jiu-jitsu is a style of grappling that is known as the “gentle art” (despite being quite aggressive much of the time). 

Being good at jiu-jitsu requires more than just strength and a repertoire of moves. It also demands patience, a sensitivity to your opponent’s energy, and the ability to exploit the smallest openings in your opponent’s defense.

The deepest possible mental jiu-jitsu would demand not just intellectual ability and knowledge of the world and human nature, but also patience, a sensitivity to your interlocutor’s state of mind, and an ability to identify openings in your interlocutor’s “intellectual superstructure.” To what end? Helping them open up to new (and more fulfilling) ways of living and seeing the world.

In some sense, none of us need to rediscover what it means to be human. All of us are living out some aspect of the human experience at all times. And yet, viewed differently, most of us are living an increasingly narrow version of that human experience. 

Over the last few decades, humans have spent more and more time online, on their phones, and in front of screens, engaging with one another in increasingly disembodied ways. With the advent of AI and VR, this trend is likely to accelerate, as we’re presented with increasingly personalized, immersive, and engaging forms of content.

And this isn’t merely a decades-long trend. It’s a continuation of a multi-milllenia shift away from the deep engagement with the natural world practiced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Since the advent of agriculture civilization and the invention of alphabetic writing systems, and through the industrial revolution and invention of the printing press, radio, television, and digital computers, we have spent more of our time in synthetic, human-made environments engaging in abstract, conceptual reasoning at the expense of direct experience and reliance on our physical senses.

While these changes have brought material prosperity that would have once seemed unfathomable, it’s hard not to mourn what has been lost. Have too many of us sacrificed our birthright to our most precious inheritance – our primal awareness, or what in Buddhism is called our True Nature? And as the last hunter-gatherers disappear from the planet, are we at risk of losing it forever? Is the sacrifice worth what we have gained? And what can we do to preserve it for future generations? 

The Contemplative Primate deeply interrogates these questions from every perspective – mental, physical, and spiritual. In that sense, we can safely say that a core mission of the Contemplative Primate Academy is to rediscover and preserve what it means to be human.

Imagine that an ancient Greek philosopher, a Buddhist monk, and one of our hunter-gatherer ancestors were given the entire corpus of modern knowledge and asked to design a training program with the goal of cultivating a deep sense of spirituality. I believe that the result would be something like the Contemplative Primate Academy.

The Greek philosopher represents a love of wisdom and a belief that intellectual knowledge can contribute to spiritual development.

The Buddhist monk represents an intense dedication to the spiritual path and the development of awareness through breath-based meditation.

The hunter-gatherer represents our animal nature untouched by civilization and a vigorous, physical life intimately entwined with our family and the natural world.

Each informs the other and helps enrich and deepen their understanding of what it means to live a spiritual life.

Those three influences give life to the name Contemplative Primate. The word primate refers to our hunter-gatherer ancestors and the recognition that our physiology and psychology were shaped through evolution by natural selection, a fact that we ignore in the modern world at our peril. The word contemplative has a dual meaning, connoting both intellectual and spiritual inquiry and therefore referring to both the Greek philosopher and Buddhist monk.