Hawn and Gere will be observers at the five-day conference. Both are prominent supporters of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who fled his homeland after a failed uprising against Chinese communist troops who occupied the Himalayan territory in 1951.
The actors also will join Buddhist philosophers, Nobel-winning physicist Steven Chu and other scientists, for the forum on "The Nature of Matter, The Nature of Life."
Held in Dharmsala, 265 miles northwest of New Delhi, the conference aims to bring Tibetan Buddhist and Western scientific perspectives to issues of modern ethics and science. It's part of an ongoing dialogue - which the Dalai Lama has long encouraged - between Western scientific thought and the analytical tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Dharmsala has served as the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile since the Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959.