Groundless Ground Podcast

Loch Kelly’s new book, The Way of Effortless Mindfulness, is a practice manual for living a fully embodied, open-hearted life. Loch insists the goal of effortless mindfulness is not to escape or transcend, but to recognize and embody wakeful pure awareness, which is ever-present in the midst of the full range of human experience. To help listeners directly know effortless mindfulness, Loch offers a few mindful glimpse practices along with in-depth structural descriptions of what differentiates effortless mindfulness from mainstream mindfulness, or what he calls, deliberate mindfulness. The Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism says nature of mind or pure awareness is hard to recognize precisely because it is so close, so subtle, so simple, and so good! Our dialogue cuts though the esoteric clouds of confusion which often pervade instructions on how to recognize this extraordinary yet, so completely ordinary mind. Loch shares the unique framework explicated in The Way of Effortless Mindfulness: The Eight Types of Awareness, the Five Foundations of Effortless Mindfulness, and what he calls no-self Self. And because we are both clinicians, Loch and I also discuss how effortless mindfulness skills can be delivered in clinical contexts to alleviate cognitive, affective and physical distress.

Listen to this episode on Lisa's YouTube Channel

Loch Kelly, M.Div., LCSW has been teaching seminars, supervising clinicians and practicing awareness psychotherapy in NYC for 30 years. Loch is a graduate of Columbia University and Union Theological. He was awarded a fellowship to study forms of non-dual meditation in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal from 1981-1982 and has studied with teachers from around the world. He studied Buddhism with Professor Lily de Silva at the University of Kandy, Sri Lanka, Insight Meditation with Godwin Samararatne and at the Theravada monasteries, Inter-Spiritual Contemplative Meditation with Fr. Bede Griffiths and Anthony de Mello, Advaita at Sri Ramana Ashram, and Dzogchen and Sutra Mahamudra with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche in Nepal. Loch spent 10 years establishing homeless shelters and community lunch programs and working in a community mental health clinic in Brooklyn, New York. He also served as Coordinator of Counseling and Interspiritual Chaplain at Union Theological Seminary and worked extensively with families recovering from the trauma of 9/11.

This episode is a dive deep into the extraordinary Tibetan Buddhist teachings on Dream Yoga, Sleep Yoga, and the Bardos, with Andrew Holecek; a longtime Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and expert in offering these teachings via contemporary language and authentic practices. Andrew’s methodology goes way beyond lucid dreaming. He believes that shamatha and vipashyana meditation are foundational to all the advanced practices he teaches, and his purpose for sharing this knowledge is facilitating awakening from suffering, rather than feeding a student’s unconscious or conscious need for power or non-ordinary experience. We talk openly about these profound yogas and their ultimate aim—revealing the ever-present continuity of pure awareness underlying waking, dreaming, sleeping and even death.

Andrew's Website

Andrew's Online Dream School

Global Dental Relief Website

Mingyur Rinpoche's extraordinary new book on the Bardo Teachings

• Listen to this episode on Lisa's YouTube Channel

This episode features a dharma talk given by Lisa Dale Miller at Marin Sangha in March 2019. The talk begins with a discussion of teachers and their fallibilities, and the ethical standards the Buddhist teachings require teachers to uphold. The second part of the talk focuses on human beings who spend their lives engaged in wrongdoing, realize their misconduct, endeavor to transform internal suffering, and consequently end further wrongdoing. How do we hold such individuals accountable for their actions without getting lost in generating hatred toward them and their wrongdoing? How can we develop a compassionate view of those who have been harmful are no longer a source of harm? The wisdom of how to accomplish this is a big part of the Buddhist teachings on wise view, wise intention, wise action and compassionate recognition of human suffering.

An example of the Buddhist teachings on transforming harm is found in a sutta featuring a teaching by Angulimala, a mentally disturbed murderer who became a monk, renounced violence, and then served as attendant to the historical Buddha.

"Who once did live in negligence

And then is negligent no more

Who checks the evil deed he did

by doing wholesome deeds instead

He illuminates the world

Like the moon freed from a cloud

There are some that tame with beatings

But I was tamed by such who has no rod nor any weapon

Harmless is the name I bear

who was dangerous in the past

The name I bear today is true

I hurt no living being at all."

My dialogue with Cuong Lu, Buddhist teacher and prison chaplain in the Netherlands, was by far the most moving experience of my podcasting life. Cuong’s wisdom and limitless compassion brought me to tears several times during our time together. He was born in Vietnam and grew up in the midst of war, only knowing fighting until his mother moved them to the Netherlands when he was twelve years old and he experienced friendliness for the first time. He spent many years as a monk with Thich Nhat Hanh and then became a lay Buddhist teacher in 2009. His is a deeply relational dharma characterized by complete embodiment of interbeing, the  empty inseparability of all beings. His remarkable new book, The Buddha in Jail: Restoring Lives, Finding Hope and Freedom recounts his unique application of the Buddhist teachings for prisoners who, he asserts “are often able to understand the Dharma more quickly than those whose lives have been easier.” Cuong is on book tour July 22 - Aug 2 in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Madison, and several venues in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can find his schedule in the show notes and I urge any of you who can, to attend and meet this remarkable man.

Cuong Lu's Links:

Mind Only School of Buddhist Psychology

Buy The Buddha in Jail

Disclaimer: The information in this episode or on groundlessground.com is intended for information and entertainment purposes only, and does not claim to be or constitute therapeutic advice or mental health treatment.

It seems the more mindfulness is mainstreamed, the more its claims are being questioned. Ron Purser, Professor of Management at SFSU and author of the new groundbreaking book, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality, has been a longtime critic of the widespread mainstreaming and overselling of mindfulness practices. He views mainstream mindfulness as an amplifier of Western consumerist individualism and a banal form of capitalist spirituality; one he claims utterly avoids cultivation of social and political transformation. Ron challenges the widely accepted narrative that stress is self-imposed and mindfulness is the cure-all, and offers ways for mindfulness delivery in healthcare and business settings to cast off its neoliberal shackles, and be redirected toward collective awakening.  Ron and I have known each other for quite some time. He is erudite and engaging. I"m sure you will enjoy this stimulating, thought-provoking conversation.

Ron's website

Ron Purser is Professor of Management in the College of Business and the Educational Doctorate in Leadership program in the College of Education at SFSU San Francisco State University. His scholarship currently focuses on mindfulness in organizations, and how Buddhist psychology and Buddhist social theory can inform social change and transformation. In addition, Prof. Purser writings have been exploring the challenges and issues of introducing mindfulness into secular contexts, particularly with regards to its encounter with modernity, Western consumer capitalism, and individualism. Dr. Purser is an ordained Zen Dharma Teacher in the Korean Zen Taego order of Buddhism. Tarthang Tulku Time, Space, and Knowledge

Disclaimer: The information in this episode or on groundlessground.com is intended for information and entertainment purposes only, and does not claim to be or constitute therapeutic advice or mental health treatment.

This episode features Anna Lembke, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University Medical School and author of the massively influential book Drug Dealer, MD. Dr. Lembke shares her immeasurable expertise in psychiatry, dual-diagnosis and chronic pain treatment, with a heavy dose of unmitigated truth-telling. Our dialogue is a thoughtful, no holds barred look at: The toyotaization of medicine; the devastating effects of opiate over-prescribing coupled with ineffective chronic pain treatments; the ongoing discontents of addiction and dual-diagnosis treatment; the problems with widespread naïveté about the use of cannabis and CBD; and the inequities and ineffectualness of our health care system. We share knowledge about integrative treatment and the need for psychiatry, psychology and general medicine to embrace it or become irrelevant. I think you’ll find this episode eye-opening, enlightening and timely.

Dr. Lembke's website 

Drug Dealer, MD

TEDx Stanford Lecture

Disclaimer: The information in this episode or on groundlessground.com is intended for information and entertainment purposes only, and does not claim to be or constitute therapeutic advice or mental health treatment.

Divorce is almost as much a part of life as marriage. Yet most couples are in the dark about pro-social, non-toxic approaches to divorce. Enter Gabrielle Hartley, attorney, mediator and co-author of Better Apart, a practical guide for skillfully executing a divorce and emerging a wiser, more compassionate and resilient human being. The uniqueness of this approach comes from expert integration of sound legal wisdom and teachings on skillful means from yogic and Buddhist philosophies. You will detect my deep appreciation for Gabrielle and this book, as it has radically simplified the way I counsel patients who find themselves in divorce pre-contemplation or ultimately deciding to separate and/or divorce. This episode is inspiring and informative. I ask many difficult questions, many of which I often hear as a Marriage and Family Therapist; particularly in Silicon Valley where divorce can be ugly, protracted and wreak financial devastation and emotional turmoil for all involved parties.

Website: https://gabriellehartley.com

Disclaimer: The information in this episode or on groundlessground.com is intended for information and entertainment purposes only, and does not claim to be or constitute therapeutic advice or mental health treatment.

This is a very special episode featuring Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, addiction psychiatrist, author, app developer, and associate professor of psychiatry at Brown University School of Medicine. Jud is a seasoned researcher of mindfulness interventions for addiction and developer of novel habit-change apps for abating anxiety and craving. A longtime Buddhist meditation practitioner Jud is a relentless data hound not an evangelist. He was among the first to use real-time neurofeedback and fMRI to study meditation and its effects. Our dialogue is devoid of hype and chockfull of useful insights on addiction, its true causes, and empirically-based self-applied applications for cessating craving, urges, unwanted substance use.

Jud's website https://judsonbrewer.com

Jud's lab Brown University School of Public Health Mindfulness Center

Jud's habit-change Apps

Craving to Quit 

Unwinding Anxiety 

Eat Right Now 

Jud's book The Craving Mind

Disclaimer: The information in this episode or on groundlessground.com is intended for information and entertainment purposes only, and does not claim to be or constitute therapeutic advice or mental health treatment.

Describing what is ultimately indescribable, that which transcends language, is really challenging. Yet psychologist John Astin accomplishes this daunting task so beautifully in his new book, This Extraordinary Moment. And John and I try our best in this rich dialogue to entice you into a process of profound inquiry into nondual reality and its usefulness in psychotherapeutic contexts for going beyond suffering, enlivening inner freedom and generating systemic well-being. I could not think of a better person to do this with. A lifelong meditation practitioner, John has had a long career in health psychology research on mind-body interventions and continues to teach in graduate psychology programs. This dialogue was a real treat for me. May it inspire you to land in the timeless wisdom of experience as it is.

John Astin is a multi-talented psychologist, researcher, professor, author, musician, artist, and life-long seeker. He spent many years researching mind-body interventions and has written extensively in the fields of integrative and mind-body medicine, publishing over 50 scientific papers that have appeared in such journals as American Psychologist, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Annals of Internal Medicine. From 2000 to 2010, his work was influenced by a number of nondual contemplative traditions that emphasized letting go of any attempt to manage or control the flow of experience and instead, simply relaxing into present moment awareness and making no effort to interrupt the flow of mental, emotional and bodily states. His new book is an outcome of that shift.

Disclaimer: The information in this episode or on groundlessground.com is intended for information and entertainment purposes only, and does not claim to be or constitute therapeutic advice or mental health treatment.

This dialogue with visionary psychotherapist Gina Ross—a pioneer in understanding and healing collective trauma—is both informative and deeply moving. A Syrian Jew with empathy for both Israeli and Arabic cultures, and founder of the International Trauma Healing Institutes, Gina has devoted her life’s work to resolving the societal and individual dysregulation that underlies trauma and ultimately feeds all forms of violence and hatred. 

Gina discusses the role of trauma in conflict zones such as the Middle East, and how to heal that trauma and bring about personal and collective peace using integrative methodologies. Her Ross Model and its practical application Emotion Aid, have been successfully deployed in Israel and Palestine, and other conflict zones to help heal traumatized citizens and military personnel. In collaboration with an Israeli clinical research team, Gina recently published a widely-read, peer-reviewed control-group study of Somatic Experiencing.

Gina Ross was on my 'podcast guest bucket list'. Her wisdom is a result of a lifetime of personal and professional experience with Middle East conflict and the trauma that underlies its seeming intractability. The episode starts with Gina’s personal history and how it informed her genuine understanding of collective trauma. She then offers in-depth information about successful treatment of PTSD using SE, somatic psychotherapy, Emotion Aid, and integrative medicine. We finish with a frank discussion about the lack of robust SE research and how that can unfortunate situation can be remedied.

Links and downloads for Gina Ross, MFCC, SEP International Trauma Healing Institutes

Peer-reviewed Somatic Experiencing Study in ISSTS Journal

Emotion Aid Brief Guide

Trauma Vortex in Action in the Middle East (article)

Gina's books on Amazon

Disclaimer: The information in this episode or on groundlessground.com is intended for information and entertainment purposes only, and does not claim to be or constitute therapeutic advice or mental health treatment.