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.