Sunflower Sutras is a multimedia educational platform conceptualized within the UC Berkeley ecosystem, composed of students, alumni, researchers, leaders and healers from different traditions and backgrounds.
Our Mission
We nurture the exploration of consciousness by weaving ancient spiritual practices with modern scientific knowledge. We seek to amplify the voices of researchers, healers and experts from all traditions and backgrounds who work to preserve sacred knowledge or illuminate the complexities of human consciousness, to bring their communities closer to the realization of our ultimate nature and our interconnectedness with one another.
Our Vision
Our vision and dream is that people from all societies may openly and respectfully engage in dialogue around the spiritual traditions and practices that have composed the fabric of human experience throughout its history. We want to help bring forth a world in which an integrative exploration of consciousness and contemplative practices is accessible to all through their incorporation into education, health and media institutions, enshrining their practice as our most fundamental and inalienable human right
Our Projects
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Sunflower Sutras is carrying out several audiovisual research projects through which we attempt to share the wisdom and heart of elders, healers and leaders from different traditions through short-films, long-format documentaries, interview series and more. We hope that in this exercise, scientific research, heart-felt learning and sincere spiritual inquiry may coexist.
As we discover how to do so, we ask ourselves: Can sacredness be shared through the digital space? Or, as a Guaraní young leader told us once: "You cannot film the sun, only its reflection on the water."
Click below to dive deeper into our projects and
preview photos and videos of them. ​​​​
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Why Sunflower Sutras?
The name Sunflower Sutras is inspired by the 1955 poem by Allen Ginsberg, "Sunflower Sutra." The poem reflects on the state of industrial society and urges the reader to consider the inherent value of nature and our inner being.
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We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.
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- Allen Ginsberg, “Sunflower Sutra” from Collected Poems, 1947-1980. Copyright
Follow us on Instagram @sunflower.sutras
Meet the Team
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