Groundless Ground Podcast

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...

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-opt...

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 t...

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 Pa...

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. Tej...

Eric Garland, PhD, LCSW, is a rare combination of rigorous researcher and compassionate clinician. His unique integration of CBT and mindfulness led him to create  Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement ( MORE ) , an integrative group intervention for treating chronic pain, stress, and opioid misuse. His attention to detail and methodology has made him a trusted researcher. In 2019 he was appoi...

Are non-human animals conscious? Do non-human animal minds have concepts, intelligence, memory, intentionality, ethics, and social behavior? Kristin Andrews, professor of philosophy, author, and pioneering researcher in moral cognition, discusses non-human animal consciousness and the ethical problems of using non-human animals, like rats, as research subjects. To celebrate the newly released Seco...

Psychedelic-assisted interventions appear to be all the rage these days. Though there are many psychedelic evangelists I wanted to find a credible medical resource to discuss these treatments. Deep gratitude to my friend Ron Purser who introduced me to my esteemed guest, Sylver Quevedo, MD, a pioneer in integrative family and internal medicine, assistant professor of medicine at Stanford and UCSF,...

Lisa Dale Miller, psychotherapist and dharma teacher, shares three invaluable daily practices for maintaining sanity in our “new normal” of staying at home all the time.  1) Three Gratitudes Practice 2) Awareness Breaks for when you feel agitated or anxious 3) Diligence and Renunciation Practice as helpmates to get good sleep, exercise everyday, and eat healthy food. Lisa's website: https://lisada...

The COVID-19 outbreak is the very time for meditative practice because chaos and uncertainty are the rich soil of awakening! Of great help is to shift your mindset into a compassionate stance with respect to social distancing and spending more time at home. Lisa Dale Miller, psychotherapist and dharma teacher, shares advice and easy practices for doing this right now, in your life, in the midst of...

Psychiatrist James S. Gordon pioneered a mind-body methodology widely used around the world for healing psychological trauma. His latest book,  The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma , offers a comprehensive evidence-based program anyone can use to reverse the psychological and biological damage caused by traumatic experience. Dr. Gordon interweaves the latest scientifi...

Depression is a relapsing disease and preventing future depressive episodes is critical for lifelong mental health. Psychiatrist and UCSF Professor Emeritus Stuart Eisendrath’s new book, When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough: Harnessing mindfulness to alleviate depression , is a layperson’s guide for depression relapse prevention. His book offers detailed psycho-education on depression and anxiety (s...

Last week a patient greeted me with these words, “2020. Clear vision.” That declaration of clear knowing, exemplifies every wish I have for our world as we step into a new decade. See clearly, care deeply, act wisely. Though I infrequently feature two dharma talks in a row on this podcast, this one epitomizes the power of imparting wisdom at a time when our world is in such disarray. As part of a...

Welcome to the end of the year, the end of the decade, and the last episode in GG Season Two . From the creator’s side, GG Season 3 looks like the best is yet to come. It’s been a challenging year globally in so many ways. And certainly climate disruption tops the list of 2019’s human failures: We utterly fail to comprehend the consequences of our continued denials, delayals and complacency. Ameri...

If it is not by now fully apparent how much I love science, this conversation, well more accurately this rare chance to sit at the feet of a science master, is proof that there is nothing more surprising and profound than the physics of space, time, information, and quantum reality. Cosmologist, UCSC physics professor, science activist, and author Anthony Aguirre , generously discusses the intrica...

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...

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 a...

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 suffe...

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 a...

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 o...

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...

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...

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...

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 b...

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...