Episode 29: Paula Haddock - Mindfulness For Social Change

Paula Haddock is the co-founder of the Mindfulness and Social Change Network which is a collective of international academics, activists, humanitarian workers and socially engaged mindfulness practitioners who are exploring the potential for secular mindfulness training and practice to contribute to more sustainable, caring and socially just societies. Prior to teaching mindfulness, Paula spent ten years working in international development – initially for Oxfam GB, and later joined INTRAC (a civil society strengthening organisation) as their Training Manager, working with specialists to support hundreds of civil society organisations worldwide with their capacity building needs. For the last few years, Paula has been delivering on a range of courses, including Mindfulness for Social Change and Transformative Collaboration with the European-based training organisation The Ulex Project which delivers training on movement building, impact and resilience for European based change makers and activists. She has delivered social-mindfulness related sessions for the Atlantic Fellows Programme, University College London, The Mindfulness Association and written for the Transformation Series of Open Democracy: Mindfulness and Social Change and Don’t wait for the future of Mindfulness – it’s already here

Episode 28: Laurence Cox - The Irish Buddhist

Laurence Cox is a long-time social movement activist and practicing Buddhist who has been involved in many different movement struggles in Ireland and internationally since the 1980s. He co-edits the activist/academic movement journal Interface, works with the Buddhist-based Ulex activist training centre in Catalonia and with low-impact child-friendly meditation retreats in SW England. He is an  Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Ireland Maynooth and the author/editor of ten books and many other academic and activist pieces on social movements, revolutions, modern Buddhism and new religious movements, including Why Social Movements Matter; Buddhism and Ireland: from the Celts to the Counter-culture and Beyond; and Voices of 1968. With Alicia Turner and Brian Bocking he has just published The Irish Buddhist: the Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2020) about the extraordinary life of the hobo, anti-colonial activist and early western bhikkhu U Dhammaloka.

Episode 27: Daniel Nehring - Mindfulness And Therapeutic Cultures

In this Episode, I spoke with Daniel Nehring, who is an Associate Professor of Sociology at East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai. Daniel is, in my opinion, an ascending and prolific scholar in the field of critical sociology, and an amazing networker who has brought together a diverse group of international collaborators from multiple disciplines who are doing cutting edge research on therapeutic cultures across the globe. Our conversation explores how therapeutic discourses have not only penetrated a range of institutional regimes, but also how such discourses have a global reach, with mass consumption in China, for example. We talk about the rise of the “self-help entrepreneur,” and how such figures as Jon Kabat-Zinn utilized various rhetorical and discursive strategies to bolster his narrative authority and commercial success. We also talk about the relevance and important of C. Wright Mills and his classic work, The Sociological Imagination, in contrast to what Daniel calls “the psychological imagination” which informs the self-help genre and the mindfulness literature – focusing on an article he recently published this year with Ashley Frawley in Sociology of Health and Illness. Our mutual admiration of C. Wright Mills is evident in that we both share in the view that academics have become beholden to a bureaucratic ethos and the stranglehold of neoliberal audit culture – and that academics need to wake up, speak up and become actively engaged as public intellectuals. 

His recent publications in this area include Transnational Popular Psychology and the Global Self-Help Industry (Palgrave, 2016), Therapeutic Worlds (Routledge, 2019), The Routledge International Handbook of Global Therapeutic Cultures (2020), Imagining Society (Bristol University Press, ). He is also the convenor of several international academic networks ‘Popular Psychology, Self-Help Culture and The Happiness Industry’ and Open Minds. Daniel is an editor of  the book series Therapeutic Cultures for Routledge and hosts  the Global Therapeutic Cultures podcast.

Episode 26 - Matthew Ingram - Retreat: How The Counterculture Invented Wellness

In this Episode, I spoke with Matthew Ingram, author of, Retreat: How the Counterculture Invented Wellness – recently published this summer by Repeater Books. Reading Matthew’s book was like taking a walk down memory lane for me, revisiting many of the key figures of the counterculture – and discovering many unknown connections between such figures, as well as hidden histories, shadow elements, and colorful vignettes. We covered a lot of ground – from Mohandas Gandhi to RD Laing – from the German Nature Boys to the Dalai Lama being asked what he thought about LSD.  We uncover and shed light on some the simplistic and naïve views of the counterculture, particularly how the ego was made into a boogeyman – and how the whole movement devolved into a kind of hedonism and attachment to a romantic sense of the mystical.

A fanatic record-collector, Matthew Ingram started blogging as WOEBOT in 2003. The cult blog featured in articles in The Guardian, Slate, FACT and The Wire. He ended up writing features and reviews for The Wire and a column for FACT. In this period Matthew co-founded the Dissensus forum with Mark "k-punk" Fisher and released critically-acclaimed music as WOEBOT. His last project was an animated documentary about Vitamin C.

Episode 25: Christopher Titmuss - The Political Buddha

In this Episode, I spoke with Christopher Titmuss, who is perhaps the most senior teacher of Vipassana and Insight Meditation in the Western modern world.

Christopher Titmuss left England to travel Asia in 1967. After three years, he became a monk spending six years in Thailand and India from 1970 to 1976. During that time, he resided for three years in a monastery with Ajahn Dhammadharo, his Vipassana (Insight Meditation teacher) and Ajahn Buddhadasa.   He completed a full journey around the Earth and arrived back in England after 10 years in 1977.

We focused primarily on the themes in his insightful book, The Political Buddha, which offers a deep exploration of Christopher’s lifelong dedication to transform society. Even at the age of 14 years old, Christopher had radical political leanings having joined the labor party. He twice stood for the Green Party in general elections in 1987 and 1992, where he got the highest vote of any Green candidate in Britain for his constituency.

We explored a wide range of themes including the just how central the role of critical inquiry is in the Dharma, Buddha’s position on wealth and war, the privatization of spirituality, corporate mindfulness, ethics and institutional change, and the importance of the community.

Christopher is especially known for being a steadfast exponent of socially-engaged Buddhism in fact, that is how I first discovered his work when I read his book The Green Buddha back in the early 1990s. After I published Beyond McMindfulness essay in the Huffington Post seven years ago, Christopher actually reached out to me on email and we have continued having vigorous conversations regarding the Dharma and the problems with contemporary mindfulness. This interview is the first time Christopher and I had a chance to actually speak with each other, and it was delightful and penetrating.

It was a real privilege to be able to talk to Christopher  who has been teaching annual retreats in the Thai Monastery in Bodh Gaya since 1975 and in Sarnath, India, where the Buddha gave his first teachings after his enlightenment. His teachings focus on insight meditation (vipassana), the expansive heart and inquiry into emptiness and liberation. He encourages participants to be Agents of Change. He travels every year to Australia, India, Israel and Germany. He has made numerous trips to Palestine since 1993.

Episode 24: Miguel Farias - The Buddha Pill

In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Miguel Farias from Coventry University in the UK on his seminal book, The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change You? (2nd ed. Watkins Media, 2019) (co-authored with Catherine Wikholm). Miguel was one of the first academic researchers to expose the dark side of meditation. Our conversation touched on the history of Transcendental Meditation (TM), the use of science as a means to justify the legitimacy of meditation, and the many parallels between TM and the modern mindfulness movement.

Miguel Farias received his doctorate in experimental psychology from the University of Oxford where he was a lecturer until 2014, and a research associate at the Psychology of Religion Group at Cambridge University. He currently leads the Brain, Belief and Behaviour research group at Coventry University. Dr. Farias  has pioneered research on the analgesic effects of religious beliefs and the stress-buffering effects of science beliefs. He led the first randomized-controlled trial on the effects of yoga and meditation in prison and is the lead author of The Buddha Pill: Can Meditation Change  -- a book that examines the science and myths about the effects of these practices, now in its 2nd edition published by Watkins Media. Dr. Farias is chief editor of the forthcoming Handbook of Meditation, to be published by Oxford University Press.

Episode 23: Evan Thompson - Why I Am Not A Buddhist

How many times have you heard people claim that Buddhism isn’t really a religion, that it’s a philosophy, a way of life, that its spiritual but not religious, or even that it’s a “science of mind”? These familiar tropes are a legacy of Buddhist Modernism, what Evan Thompson aptly has coined “Buddhist exceptionalism.” In this episode we explore these common claims, especially how they have been taken up by Secular Buddhists, mindfulness teachers and even scientists.  We explore in this interview the historical reasons for why Buddhism has received special treatment, with its modernist claim that it is fundamentally different than Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism.  We dive into the confused understandings of mindfulness meditation which has been portrayed as a privatized “inner telescope” to objectively view our interior minds (brains), along with the misguided attempt to map meditative experiences onto brain states and neural correlates (Neural Buddhism).  Evan challenges the popular view that Buddhism is compatible with science, and that science can validate Buddhist insights. Drawing on his intimate friendship and collaboration with the late Francisco Varela (a key founder of the Mind & Life Institute) he takes aim at how the so-called Buddhism – Science “dialogue” has been one-sided and stifling of mutual learning.

We spoke with Evan about his new book, Why I Am Not A Buddhist, published by Yale University Press in 2020.

Evan Thompson is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He writes about the mind, life, consciousness, and the self, from the perspectives of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy (especially Buddhism and other Indian philosophical traditions). As a teenager, Evan was home-schooled in Southampton, NY and Manhattan at the Lindisfarne Association, an educational and contemplative community founded by his parents, William Irwin Thompson and Gail Thompson. He received his A.B. in Asian Studies from Amherst College (1983) studying with Robert Thurman, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto (1990). Evan has been actively involved as one of the leading researchers and advisers for the Mind & Life Institute.

He is the author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2015); He is also the co-author with Francisco J. Varela and Eleanor Rosch, of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991, revised edition 2016).

Episode 22 - Michael Ungar - Change Your World

Dr. Michael Ungar, is a Professor of Social Work at Dalhousie University and Canada Research Chair in Child, Family and Community Resilience, as well as a family therapist. We talk about his new book, Change Your World: The Science of Resilience and The Path to Success (Sutherland House Book, 2019). Michael dispels the myths of the self-help industry with its victim-blaming messages which has emulated the rugged individual and by espousing a cruel optimism that success, wellbeing and happiness can all be attained by simply pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and changing yourself.

Based on his years of research on children, families and communities, Michael sets the record straight, telling us that resilience has more to do with the resourced individual – and changing the environment. Whether that means being supported by nurturing spouses and families, supportive employers, and effective institutions -- these are the real differences between success and failure in our lives. The good news is that it is easier to change your world than it is to change yourself, or simply to be more mindful of daily affairs. Our conversation touches on how the current Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of neoliberalism, and how resilient systems are even more important to our collective health and wellbeing.

Episode 21: Rabbi Michael Lerner - Revolutionary Love

In Episode 21, I speak with Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World and editor of Tikkun magazine. Lerner's social activism goes far back to when he was a leader of the Free Speech Movement at UC, Berkeley in 1964. Rabbi Lerner shares with us his vision for a Caring Society, and how to address the unmet psychological and spiritual needs that the Left has ignored. He explains the importance of developing 'prophetic empathy' as a means for building a progressive movement infused with love and caring for all.

Cornel West, professor of African American Studies at Harvard U. and author of Race Matters wrote: “Lerner is one of the most significant prophetic public intellectuals and spiritual leaders of our generation. Secular intellectuals and those who yearn for a major change in the direction of American society can learn a lot from reading his books.” Rabbi Lerner’s legacy of political activism was launched in 1964 when he attended UC Berkeley.

The failures of the social change movements of the 60s and 70s inspired him to study psychology to gain a deeper understanding of the psychodynamics of American society. Intellectual wisdom and curiosity as well as spiritual depth have always been the foundation of his work and efforts, giving rise to many articles, books, and ultimately, Tikkun magazine.

 After completing his second Ph.D. (in clinical and social psychology at the Wright Institute, Berkeley), Lerner founded the Institute for Labor and Mental Health, and became principal investigator of a major NIMH research project on stress at work and family life. In the course of that work, he and his colleagues uncovered the spiritual crisis in American society. From 1980-85, he served as Dean of the Graduate School of Psychology of New College of California training future psychotherapists about the connection between personal psychological challenges and societal pathologies. Rabbi Lerner pioneered “the Politics of Meaning” and later founded the Network of Spiritual Progressives. His ideas gained influence and reached a larger public audience after the NY Times magazine published an article about Lerner entitled “This Year’s Prophet”.

Mentored by Abraham Joshua Heschel at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Lerner became controversial for his unwavering support of Palestinians and his insistence on seeing the humanity of both peoples in the Holy Land. For his courageous stands, on one hand, his house was attacked four times by Right wing extremist Jews and on the other hand, he received the PEN (Oakland) Award and the Martin Luther King, Jr./Mahatma Gandhi Peace Award from Morehouse College, Atlanta. His theology book Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation became a national best seller. 

To help educate progressives around the world about the spiritual and psychological needs that the Left often ignored and the Right addressed in a distorted fashion, Lerner founded Tikkun Magazine in 1986.

 Utne Reader called him one of America’s 100 Most Significant Visionaries and the Dalai Lama honored him for his peace work. His book The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right, which draws from his research at the ILMH, became his second national best seller in 2006.

He has been a guest on both national and international radio and television, including Larry King Live, CNN News, Meet the Press, Bill Moyers Journal, Terry Gross’ Fresh Air and more. His other books include:  Embracing Israel/Palestine, Surplus Powerlessness: The Psychodynamics of Daily Life, Spirit Matters, The Socialism of Fools: Anti-Semitism on the Left, and in 2019: Revolutionary Love: A Political Manifesto to Heal and Transform the World.

Muhammad Ali Memorial Service Video

Marianne Williamson’s Sister Giant Conference

Cornel West and Rabbi Lerner “Blacks & Jews”

Episode 20: Winton Higgins - Politics Matters: Becoming A Dharmic Citizen

In Episode 20, I speak with Winton Higgins, a scholar of political science and Dharma Insight Meditation teacher in Australia and New Zealand. We explore the importance of politics within Western Buddhism, socially-engaged Buddhism, the limits of the modern mindfulness movement, and the notion of becoming a “dharmic citizen.”

Winton lives in Sydney, Australia, and began meditating and practicing the dharma in 1987. He took up teaching (mainly vipassana) meditation in 1995, in city classes and in silent residential retreats in rural venues. In 2003 he became one of the regular teachers of the Bluegum Sangha – an ongoing commitment. These days he also teaches regularly for Golden Wattle and Kookaburra sanghas in Sydney. He is a senior teacher for the umbrella body Sydney Insight Meditators, and One Mindful Breath in Wellington, New Zealand. Winton’s meditation teaching has developed towards non-formulaic insight practice based on the Buddha’s original teachings, while his dharmic orientation inclines towards secular Buddhism. He fosters interest in the original teachings and their affinity with modern streams of thought and progressive social commitments. He is a social science academic (specializing in genocide, social democracy, and political theory) and a novelist. He and his partner, Lena, have two daughters, a grandson and two small granddaughters – all living in Sydney too.

To explore more of Winton’s writings, please go to his website at www.wintonhiggins.org In addition, the Tuwhiri Project also provides a range of materials for further reading.

Episode 19: Candy Gunther Brown - Debating Mindfulness In Public Schools

In this episode, we speak to Candy Gunther Brown about her new book, Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? In our wide ranging conversation, we explore the the debate over whether mindfulness in public schools is secular or religious. We begin by examining the early history of public schools as site of moral education, as well as the legal criteria that the US courts have used to make such judgment calls. Candy walks us through some seminal legal cases, such as Malnik v. Yogi, as well as others - including legal challenges to yoga and Transcendental Meditation in public schools. We examine some of the most prominent mindfulness programs in public schools - MindUp, Mindful Schools, and Calmer Choice - unpacking the rhetorical strategies and code-switching these programs have used to frame their practices as “scientific” and wholly secular. We explore the ramifications of how such practices can instill a worldview and lead to religious effects that are often downplayed by mindfulness cheerleaders. Candy explains why simple “opt out” options are insufficient, especially when mindfulness is presented as part of a school culture, arguing for more intensive forms of informed consent and “opt in” choices.

Candy Gunther Brown has a Ph.D. from Harvard University and is Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University. Dr. Brown is the author or editor of six books, most recently Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion? published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2019. Professor Brown has served as an expert witness in four legal challenges to school meditation and yoga—testifying for both parents and school districts—and has consulted with program leaders of Calmer Choice, Inner Explorer, Inner Kids, and the Institute for Mindfulness-Based Wellness & Pedagogy. Brown has addressed international audiences in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Singapore. Media coverage includes The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Religion Dispatches, The Conversation, Huffington Post Live, Psychology Today, Mindful Leader, National Catholic Register, Atheist Yoga, Interfaith Voices, and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. 

Episode 18 - David Forbes (With Nomi Naeem) Mindfulness And Its Discontents

In this episode, we join David Forbes and special guest host Nomi Naeem to discuss David’s book, Mindfulness and Its Discontents: Education, Self and Social Transformation, published by Fernwood Press (2019).  The first half of the interview was recorded at the Brooklyn Public Library, so the audio quality is not quite up to par, but it’s acceptable. Our wide ranging discussion examines the shortcomings and problems of how mindful school programs that have fallen prey to a neoliberal agenda, reinforcing individualistic skills of “self-regulation” of anger and stress. We explore how mindful school programs have failed to resist the sources of stress that stem from racist, inequitable, social unjust systems. David also provides a sketch of a “counter-program” that offer a way to make mindfulness a force for democratic education.

David Forbes, PhD, is an emeritus in the Urban Education Doctoral Program at the CUNY Graduate Center where he teaches a course on critical mindfulness in education. He has written on and consults with K-12 educators about pivoting from neoliberal to transformative integral social mindfulness practices in schools. He is coeditor, with me, of the Handbook of Mindfulness: Culture, Context, and Social Engagement (Springer 2016) and co-host of this podcast, The Mindful Cranks.

As a counselor educator David taught School Counseling at Brooklyn College/CUNY for nineteen years and wrote Boyz 2 Buddhas: Counseling Urban High School Male Athletes in the Zone (Peter Lang 2004) about his experience practicing mindfulness with a Brooklyn high school football team. At Brooklyn he was co-recipient of a Contemplative Program Development Fellowship from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and is a member of the Mindfulness and Social Change Network based in the UK from which he is featured on a website, "Being Mindful of our World: A Collection of Social Mindfulness Voices."

Muhammad Naeem, Nomi, is a Senior Librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Episode 17: David Loy - EcoDharma

David Robert Loy is a professor, writer, and Zen teacher in the Sanbo Zen tradition of Japanese Zen Buddhism. David began Zen practice in Hawaii in 1971 with Yamada Koun and Robert Aitken, and continued with Koun Roshi in Japan, where he lived for almost 20 years. He was authorized to teach in 1988 and leads retreats and workshops nationally and internationally at places such as Spirit Rock, Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, Omega Institute, Upaya Zen Center and many others.  David was a formerly a professor of Buddhist and comparative philosophy, and recently received an honorary PhD from his alma mater, Carleton College for his scholarly work on socially engaged Buddhism. David Loy is one of the founding members of the new Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, near Boulder, Colorado.

In this episode, we discuss David Loy’s latest book, ECODHARMA: Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis, available from Wisdom Publications. EcoDharma  is a landmark work that is simultaneously a manifesto, a blueprint, a call to action, and a deep comfort for troubling times. David masterfully lays out the principles and perspectives of Ecodharma—a Buddhist response to our ecological predicament, introducing a new term for a new development of the Buddhist tradition. Our conversation explores why both Western Buddhism and the modern mindfulness movement have given little serious attention to the ecocrisis. Even socially-engaged Buddhism has operated primarily in terms of a one-on-one “service” model. David comments, “Buddhists have become much better at pulling drowning people out of the river, but-and here’s the problem – we aren’t much better at asking why there are so many people drowning.” Our dialogue ventures into tracing seedlings of social-engagement by the Buddha, the radical expression of the sangha as counter-cultural force, and other related strands of thought. EcoDharma is not afraid to take a moral stand and is not afraid to act. In fact, it demands it.

Some of our favorite books by David Loy include:

Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism and Buddhism

A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack

The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory

A New Buddhist Path: Enlightenment, Evolution and Ethics in the Modern World

Money, Sex, War, Karma

Episode 16 - Steven Stanley: Mapping Mindfulness In The UK

Dr. Steven Stanley is a critical psychologist in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, Wales. He is interested in the history and philosophy of psychology and its intersection with Buddhism and is currently studying the therapeutic culture of late modernity with a particular focus on the mindfulness movement. Alongside his academic research, Stanley has a 20-year meditation practice, and has undertaken the two-year Committed Dharma Practitioner Programme at Gaia House, Devon, and Pāli Summer School at Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, Oxford. He is leading co-editor of the Handbook of Ethical Foundations of Mindfulness and the Principal Investigator of a three-year research project Beyond Personal Well-Being, a landmark study which is mapping the mindfulness movement in the United Kingdom, funded by The Leverhulme Trust.

In this episode, Steven Stanley shares with us the critical research he has been conducting on the mindfulnesss movement, ranging from his historical scholarship of meditation and mindfulness, particularly as applied to ethical and moral issues, to his qualitative analyses of what contemporary mindfulness teachers actually do in their interactions with students MBI courses, as well as his innovative breaching experiments that incorporate contemplative methods.  A recipient of a prestigious grant from The Leverhulme trust, Steven provides an overview of his fascinating empirical research that is “mapping” the mindfulness movement in the United Kingdom. Steven introduces us to Max Mindpower, the Mindfulness toy bear.

Music credit on outro: Steve Stanley, “Noah’s Ark.”

Links to various resources discussed in the interview appear below:

 Mapping Mindfulness

 Being Mindful of Our World: A Collection of Social Mindfulness Voices

Mindfulness and Social Change Network

Music by Steven Stanley:

I Am Spartacus!

 Steven Stanley Songs

Episode 15: Wakoh Shannon Hickey-Mind Cure: How Meditation Became Medicine

Wakoh Shannon Hickey has been an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Notre Dame of Maryland University in Baltimore. Her research interests include American religious history, particularly minority traditions and women leaders; Buddhism in East Asia and the West; religion and medicine; and inter-religious dialogue, with particular interests in Buddhist-Christian dialogue and issues of race and gender. Wakoh currently is a Spiritual Support Counselor (chaplain) in Sonoma/Napa, California, for Hospice by the Bay, one of the oldest and largest non-profit hospice agencies in the United States. Wakoh was ordained in 2003 as a priest of Sōtō Zen Buddhism, which she has practiced since 1983.

In this Episode, we interview Wakoh Shannon Hickey, author of Mind Cure: How Meditation Became Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2019), as she traces the 18th and 19th century Mind Cure and New Thought movements, and how this early history shaped and paved the ground for the modern self-help and mindfulness movements. Many of the first Americans to advocate meditation for healing were women leaders of the Mind Cure movement, which emerged in the late nineteenth century. They believed that by transforming their consciousness, they could also transform oppressive circumstances in which they lived, and some were activists for social reform. Trained by Buddhist and Hindu missionaries, these women promoted meditation through personal networks, religious communities, and publications. Some influenced important African American religious movements, as well. For women and black men, Mind Cure meant not just happiness but liberation in concrete political, economic, and legal terms. The Mind Cure movement exerted enormous pressure on mainstream American religion and medicine, and in response, white, male doctors and clergy with elite academic credentials appropriated some of its methods and channeled them into scientific psychology and medicine. As mental therapeutics became medicalized, individualized, and then commodified, the religious roots of meditation, like the social justice agendas of early Mind Curers, fell away. After tracing how we got from Mind Cure to Mindfulness, Wakoh tells us what got lost in the process.

Episode 14: Jaime Kucinskas - The Mindful Elite

Jaime Kucinskas is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hamilton College. Her research interests span sociology of religion, social movements, organizational and cultural change, and inequality. Her work centers on how people mobilize for, as well as resist, change within and across organizations and fields. She also studies spiritual experiences across different settings.  Jaime is the author of The Mindful Elite: Mobilizing from the Inside Out (Oxford University Press, 2019) and has published in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Sociology of Religion.   

In this Episode, Jaime Kucinskas discusses her book, The Mindful Elite (Oxford University Press, 2019), as she draws on first-hand accounts of the elite mindfulness circuit and describes how white, affluent and privileged networks became co-opted and beholden to institutional and corporate interests. In their efforts to "scale" mindfulness and make it accessible to the masses, Jaime tells us how this messianic movement led to a glaring social myopia, coming to reinforce the problems the Mindful Elite aspired to solve.

Episode 13: Glenn Wallis - A Critique Of Western Buddhism: Ruins Of The Buddhist Real

Glenn Wallis holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies from Harvard University's Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies. His training was mainly philological, concentrating on Sanskrit, Pali, and Tibetan Buddhist literature. Glenn has been concerned with how to make classical Buddhist literature, philosophy, and practice relevant to contemporary life. Since the early 1990s, Glenn has taught in the religion departments of several universities, including the University of Georgia (where I received tenure), Brown University, Bowdoin College, and the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Won Institute of Buddhist studies.

Glenn Wallis is the founder and director of Incite Seminars. As he describes it, “Glenn founded Incite Seminars as a very personal response to the escalating social inequality, intensifying racial unrest, and eviscerating techno-consumer capitalism that he increasingly witnessed all around him.” Incite Seminars was thus founded on the conviction that education in the humanities offers us a means to recognize, resist, and counter the forces of personal alienation and social division—forces such as hopelessness, bigotry, passivity, and self-delusion.

In this episode, David Forbes and I discuss with Glenn the ideas in his recent book, “A Critique of Western Buddhism” (Bloomsbury, 2018). We cover a wide range of topics, some from his provocative blog, Speculative non-Buddhism, such as the “Elixir of Mindfulness.”

Our conversation dives into a critique of Western Buddhism via Laurelle’s “non-philosophy” – in our case, “non-Buddhism.”  Glenn helps us to understand  such notions as the Principle of Sufficient Buddhism, “decision,” the “organon,” and how Western Buddhism backs away from the potency of the Real.  Typical Western Buddhist concepts such as wisdom, emptiness, anatta (no-self), “the Dharma” – ideas which could be forces for thought and transformation – are turned around, and returned to the safe and familiar shores of the already known. Western Buddhism seems to suffer from a perpetual parapraxis – a series of misturnings – that relegates it to a form of spiritual self-help, ensuring its entrapment in a self-sealing echo chamber. Thinking things through is itself a form of practice/praxis. Glenn joins us in challenging the common tropes of the mindfulness movement – particularly Jon Kabat-Zinn’s diagnosis that our ADD Nation is suffering from a so-called “thinking disease.” Turning this nonsense on its head, we discuss how thinking – how a force for thought – can cut through the tendency to stay ensnared in the World, liberating thinking for a counter-subject formation that resists capitalism and the neoliberal order.

Photo credit - Karen Kirchhoff/LOUD! FAST! PHILLY! from Joseph A. Gervasi’s interview.

Music credit - Rule Worshipper, from Ruin’s album He-Ho/Fiat Lux

Episode 12: Deborah Rozelle And David Lewis - Are Mindfulness-Based Interventions The Essence Of The Buddhadharma?

Dr. Deborah Rozelle is a clinical psychologist who trains widely on psychological trauma and its rela­tion to contemplative practice. She is co-director of the Jewel Heart Buddhist Chaplaincy Program, co-editor of Mindfulness-Oriented Interventions for Trauma: Integrating Contemplative Practices, and was Senior Fellow for the Initiative for Transforming Trauma at Garrison Institute. She is a long-time Buddhist practitioner under the tutelage of the late Gelek Rimpoche.

Dr. David Lewis is a student and independent researcher of western and eastern philosophical and psychological traditions. David is a retired computer scientist, mathematician and software development manager, and served on the faculty of Brown University, Cornell University and Ithaca College. He is a long-time Buddhist practitioner under the tutelage of the late Gelek Rimpoche.

In this episode, Deborah and David begin by discussing their work with trauma and its relationship to contemplative practice. We then examine mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) such as MBSR and MBCT, comparing these often beneficial psychological self-help programs to the fundamental tenets and ultimate goals of the Buddhadharma. Deborah and David employ a unique analogical methodology to compare both trauma and MBIs with the Buddhadharma teachings and practices, focusing on commonly used terms as suffering (dukkha), impermanence, and no-self. Our discussion takes aim many of the claims put forth by Jon Kabat-Zinn – the MBSR (and other MBIs) embody the essence of the Dharma. This discussion is based on their chapter, "Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Clinical Psychology, Buddhadharma, or Both? A Wisdom Perspective," which was published in the Handbook of Mindfulness: Culture, Context and Social Engagement (Springer, 2016). Some of their work relating trauma and Buddhadharma can be found at a 2015 Harvard Divinity School symposium.

Episode 11 - The Cranks Are Back

After a summer hiatus, Ron Purser and David Forbes, discuss what they have been up to on our summer break, as well as make mention of upcoming episodes.

After a long hiatus, Ron Purser and David Forbes, discuss what they have been up to on our summer break, as well as make mention of upcoming guests and episodes.

Episode 10: Justin (Lama Karma) Wall - Sacred Groundlessness: Taking Mindfulness Deeper

Justin Wall (Lama Karma) has over seven years of teaching experience, both as a facilitator of Mindfulness training through Clear Light Mindfulness and in more traditional contexts.  He graduated with honors from Columbia University with degrees in English Literature and Religious Studies and completed two three-year retreats and one six-month retreat in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.  He completed a year-long certification course in Mindfulness Facilitation through the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at UCLA.

He is also an accredited facilitator of the 8-week Open Mindfulness Training through the Altruistic Open Mindfulness Network, as well as the Tibetan Inner Yoga Training.  He is the spiritual director of the Milarepa Retreat Center in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, and founded the Earth Vase Pilgrimage project in the Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountain region.

In this episode, we explore his paper, "Sacred Groundlessness: Deepening the Ethics of Mindfulness in the Midst of the Global Crisis" which will be published in the Handbook of the Ethical Foundations of Mindfulness, (Eds.) S. Stanley, R. Purser & N. Singh, Springer Publishing, 2018.  We discuss the limits of therapeutic mindfulness interventions, and how mindfulness can be taken deeper through a new infusion of the teachings on emptiness from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Facing the nihilism and despair of our current global crisis requires learning to die in the Anthropocene, by embracing uncertainty, vulnerability and ultimately, groundlessness. Embodying groundlessness is key to activating spontaneous and unlimited compassion.