Groundless Ground Podcast

Jeremy Lent’s new book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe offers a coherent worldview of deep interconnectedness by integrating ancient Taoist and Buddhist views of humanness and awakening, with a modern scientific, conceptually-oriented view of human capacity. Jeremy makes the case for reigniting lost ethical values that can shift the disconnection that has led humanity to the brink of ecological and societal destruction. We discuss deep intelligence, wise action, how to expand collective concern to include all humans, our animal and plant brothers and sisters, and our planet. Our practical and philosophical dialogue moved me at the core of my being. May it be an inspiration for shift in all who hear it! 

The US edition is available mid-July but you can get the UK edition now. 
Visit the book website. Visit Jeremy's website 

Jeremy Lent received a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and was a former internet company CEO. His award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning, explores the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present day. He is founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the Earth. 

This is a very special episode featuring Anne C. Klein, PhD, aka Lama Rigzin Drolma; Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, Buddhist Studies scholar and Tibetan translator, author, and Tibetan Buddhist teacher. It was such an honor to discuss Dr. Klein’s groundbreaking book, Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse Foundational Practices and the Transmission of the Longchen Nyingthig. We speak frankly and deeply about Nundro; its practice and relevance for Western Tibetan Buddhist practitioners. Dr. Klein also generously shares her rich history of engagement with Buddhist academia and her long-standing relationship with Tibetan Buddhism as a practitioner and guiding teacher of Dawn Mountain Tibetan Temple and Institute. May this episode be dedicated to the welfare and benefit of all beings everywhere.

Anne Carolyn Klein is Professor and a former Chair of the Department of Religion, Rice University, where she helped developed a contemplative studies concentration for graduate students. Co-founder of the Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism. She is a Lama in the Nyingma (ancient) Buddhist tradition.

Psychiatrist, renown mindfulness and habit change researcher, Jud Brewer, MD, PhD once again disrupts conventional framing of mental health disorders and their treatment. This time the target is anxiety. Jud says you cannot think your way out of anxiety.  Because anxiety is actually a habit loop—an unrewarding reward that experientially and neurobiologically mirrors addiction. Jud unpacks this brilliant and effective revisioning of anxiety and a radically beautiful treatment model, which is featured in his NY Times Bestselling new book, Unwinding Anxiety.  Then Jud and I switch gears and discuss the intersection of meditation and psychedelic research. How these treatment models can complement each other and what top academic psychedelic researchers are learning from seasoned meditation researchers like Jud. This jam-packed episode delighted us both and we expect you too will love being along for the ride. 

Unwinding Anxiety Book
Unwinding Anxiety App

Jud Brewer, MD PhD is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and associate professor in psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University, as well as a research affiliate at MIT. Before that, he held research and teaching positions at Yale University and the University of Massachusetts’ Center for Mindfulness. Read more about his research here. Dr. Jud also serves as the executive medical director of behavioral health at Sharecare. He has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including both in-person and app-based treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and anxiety (Eat Right Now, Unwinding Anxiety and Craving to Quit). Dr. Jud is passionate about understanding how our brains work, and how to use that knowledge to help people make deep, permanent change in their lives — with the goal of reducing suffering in the world at large.

Kathy L. Kain, PhD returns to share her unparalleled expertise on effective use of somatic interventions in in-person and online psychotherapy. She gets very specific about what interventions work and don’t work, and the kind of patients that may benefit or be underserved when the medium of contact is screen-only. And Kathy gives in-depth analysis of the interplay of awareness and points of contact in somatic interventions; regardless of whether the clinician has physical contact with a patient or not. We also take a deep dive into the role of intersubjectivity in somatic work—the importance of viewing the patient as the expert, and how to skillfully navigate somatic counter-transference while keeping in mind the patient’s benefit and maintenance of therapeutic and relational connection. This episode is appropriate for both somatic practitioners as well as novices who may be interested in the mechanics of this work, particularly in the psychotherapeutic process. Here is the link to hear Kathy's first GG episode.

Kathy L. Kain has practiced and taught bodywork and trauma recovery skills for nearly 40 years. She teaches in Europe, Australia, Canada, and throughout the United States. Kathy is a senior trainer in the Somatic Experiencing training program, an adjunct faculty member of Sonoma State University, and was a senior trainer for 12 years in the Somatic Psychotherapy training program based in Sydney, Australia.

Soul initiation is an essential and hazardous spiritual adventure that most modern cultures have forgotten. Eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin discusses this mythopoetic, life-altering journey which he beautifully explicates in his new book, Journey of Soul Initiation. I chose to commence GG Season Four with this riveting, deep and edgy dialogue on the transformative and profound path of forging a true adult. Bill’s wisdom, humility and radical honesty shine through as he describes his own soul journey and the evolvement of guiding others through the mind-heart-and-life-transforming process of preparation, descent, metamorphosis and enactment. His book also features an in-depth exploration and radically new understanding of Carl Jung’s Red Book. May this episode inspire and awaken all who hear it.

Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural evolution. As founder of western Colorado’s Animas Valley Institute in 1981, he has guided thousands of seekers through nature-based initiatory passages, including a contemporary, Western adaptation of the pan-cultural vision quest. Previously, he has been a research psychologist (studying non-ordinary states of consciousness), professor of psychology, psychotherapist, rock musician, and whitewater river guide. Bill is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (an experiential guidebook), Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (a nature-based stage model of human development through the entire lifespan), Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche (an ecocentric map of the psyche — for healing, growing whole, and cultural transformation). He has a doctorate in psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In this year of radical loss, Opening to Grief: Finding your way from loss to peace is an essential guidebook for anyone navigating grief and loss. Claire B. Willis, author, clinical social worker, ordained lay Buddhist chaplain and yoga teacher talks about her journey writing this book and shares expert counsel about the many ways to honor any form of loss you might be experiencing as 2020 comes to a close. This is an invaluable episode for closing a horrifically strange year, and doing what we can to bravely move into 2021 renewed and ready for change. 

https://openingtogrief.com/

Claire B. Willis is a clinical social worker and an ordained lay Buddhist chaplain and yoga teacher. She has spent over two decades working with oncology patients with a focus on end of life issues, therapeutic writing and bereavement counseling. A co-founder of Facing Cancer Together: A Community of Hope, Claire is also an adjunct faculty member at the Andover Newton Theological School and a former group facilitator and instructor at The Wellness Community. She earned an M.A. from Episcopal Divinity School and a MSW and a M.Ed from Boston University. Claire lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

My second dialogue with Evan Thompson covers his latest and most controversial book, Why I Am Not A Buddhist, which spotlights conceptual and functional problems with Buddhist modernism, Buddhist exceptionalism, Buddhist Empiricism, and neural Buddhism. With philosophical adeptness, Evan argues a cosmopolitan view of not-self and enlightenment, and skillfully slays popular one-dimensional co-options of the Buddhist teachings by Robert Wright and Sam Harris. This episode is dedicated to Evan’s father, writer and scholar William Irwin Thompson who recently passed away; a man who profoundly impacted my life particularly during my 20’s, when I was deeply interested in the cultural evolution of patriarchy and modern human’s loss of connection with the natural world.

Evan Thompson is a writer and professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He works on the nature of the mind, the self, and human experience by combining cognitive science, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Asian philosophical traditions. The best place to find out more about Evan's work is his website.  

This episode is a dharma talk I gave online at Marin Sangha on 9/13, when we were experiencing insane wildfires burning throughout our area. The talk uses the Fire Sutta to explore collective conduct and personal responsibility in the midst of extreme life circumstances such as 2020 continues to bring many of us. My intention in releasing it now is to incline every eligible American to vote with the preservation of our democracy foremost in mind. Our President and Senate leaders have failed us in so many ways: 200,000 unnecessary deaths from COVID-19, their complete lack of interest in the obvious effects of climate disruption such as the massive wildfires here in the West, and their direct attempts to undermine voting and American democracy. Every American must wake up and out of complacency. It is time to remove these harmful, self-serving leaders from power. We each have the power to restore our nation to sanity, restore our government to health, and restore wisdom, intelligence and collective care as the central motivation for our nation. May every voter have an easeful, meaningful voting process! 

Lisa's website

Lama Rod Owens, African-American author and Tibetan Buddhist teacher, describes himself as, “black, queer, cisgender, and male-identified, fat, mixed class, Buddhist teacher and minister, yoga teacher, and s**t-talking Southerner.” When I contacted Lama Rod more than a year ago to have him on the show, his assistant told me he was deep into writing his newly published book, Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger, and to check back in the Spring of 2020. Well, America has been through so much since then, and I am so happy Lama Rod and I got to have this dialogue now, in the midst of a pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and America’s ever-intensifying political turmoil. Love and Rage is a must-read for anyone seeking to grapple with identity: how to know it and the suffering it causes, and use that pain and understanding to walk the path of liberation from human suffering. This is a radical GG dialogue unlike any other. May it be of benefit to all who listen.

This episode is a celebration of Teja Bell, a lifelong practitioner and teacher of Aikido, Taijiquan, Qigong, Neigong, Buddhism and Taoism. I have studied qigong with Teja for many years and delighted in QigongDharma and Radiant Heart Qigong, his unique integration of Buddhist meditation and qigong. He is an Aikido master (6th degree black belt) and a roshi in the Rinzai Zen Buddhist lineage. Teja shares his remarkable introduction to martial arts as a young teen in Iowa, and long history of study with renown teachers in judo, kung fu, yang style taijiquan, qigong, Liu He Ba Fa, Buddhism, Taoism and hatha yoga. He also describes the evolution of Chinese Internal Arts as they moved throughout Asia and the mechanics of qi, the subtle body and mind. This is special episode, one born from the shared heart/mind of precious teacher and humble student.

https://www.qigongdharma.com/