The Mindful Cranks

In Episode 10, we interview Justin (Lama Karma) Wall, a mindfulness teacher trained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. We explore his paper, "Sacred Groundlessness: Deepening the Ethics of Mindfulness in the Midst of the Global Crisis." 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 Mindful 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 Brian Victoria, author of Zen at War, discusses how Buddhism, and Japanese Zen in particular, have a long history of violence. From Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II to Corporate Zen training of "industrial warriors," Brian Victoria expounds on the dangers and risks of religion serves the powers of nationalism and the state.

Ruth Whippman is an author, journalist and documentary film-maker from London, living in the USA.  Ruth’s humorous essays and comment pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Guardian, The Independent, The Huffington Post, Glamour Magazine and The Pool among other places.  She is a regular contributor to Time.com and a blogger for the Huffington Post. She is the author of America the Anxious, How Our Pursuit of Happiness is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks (St Martin’s/ Macmillan, out 4th October 2016) Before becoming a full time writer, Ruth was a producer and director at the BBC making numerous documentaries and current affairs shows for BBC television Be sure to check out our website, mindfulcranks.com, our Facebook Page, and on Twitter.

Barry Magid, MD, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. He received Dharma Transmission from Charlotte Joko Beck in 1998 and has been teaching Zen at the Ordinary Mind Zendo for the past twenty years. In addition to co-editing “What’s Wrong with Mindfulness (And What’s Not) with Bob Rosenbaum, he is the author of three books integrating Zen and psychoanalytic theory and practice: "Ordinary Mind"; "Ending the Pursuit of Happiness", and "Nothing is Hidden” all published by Wisdom Publications. He has also edited (with Hugh Witemeyer) a volume of the correspondence of poets William Carlos Williams and Charles Tomlinson, as well as "Father Louie: Photographs of Thomas Merton by Ralph Eugene Meatyard,"  and “Freud’s Case Studies: Self Psychological Perspectives.”

In this interview, Katie Loncke begins by sharing her personal journey of how she came to be both a Buddhist and activist for social justice. As a granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor from the most infamous Nazi concentration camps, and her grandmother a descendant of Afro-Caribbeans who survived the Middle Passage, Katie’s activist roots go deep. Her mother--an attorney for Planned Parenthood in Sacramento; her father--one of the first black students to attend Yale and become a state judge. From her education at Harvard University to the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Katie offers a wealth of insights forged from being on the front lines of socially engaged Buddhism. Katie Loncke is a Co-Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF), combining dharma with social justice. She connects with others similarly fixated on the paradox: how to love and accept the world as it is, while fighting like hell to change it. Nationwide she speaks, facilitates, and trains groups on combining Buddhist ethics with concrete skills for nonviolent direct action. Her writing has appeared in digital and print publications — most recently, she authored the chapter on race and racism in A Thousand Hands: A Guidebook to Caring for Your Buddhist Community (2016, Sumeru Press), edited by Nathan Jishin Michon and Daniel Clarkson Fisher.          Katie loves lemons, cats, warm nights, Black Power, clean water, and the Temptations.  Go to the Mindful Cranks website.

In this interview, Funie Hsu provides a very personal account of why she became increasingly critical of the mindfulness movement, particularly given her Asian heritage. She explains why it’s time we recognize the contributions of Asian American Buddhists by taking notice of the racism and cultural appropriation that has marginalized their voices. Funie Hsu, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at San Jose State University. She received her Doctorate in Education from the University of California, Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality and served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Davis in the School of Education. Go to the Mindful Cranks website.

Will Davies, Ph.D., is a sociologist and political economist and a Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London and also Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Centre. Dr. Davies is author of two books, The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition (Sage, 2014) and The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Wellbeing (Verso, 2015). His blog posts have previously featured in The New York Times, BBC Online, The Daily Beast and elsewhere. In this interview, we explore wide-ranging questions as to why corporations have suddenly become interested in measuring and quantifying the well-being and happiness of their employees. Will Davies explains the phenomena of psychological collapse, and how neoliberalism has given rise to the psychosomatic worker. Likewise, we probe the links between the neoliberal ideology driving the quest for employee well-being and social harmony, manifesting recently in corporate mindfulness programs. From Frederick Taylor to Elton Mayo to Hans Seyle, Will Davies articulates the common philosophical thread of utilitarianism underlying these various schemes, which all have relied on messianic messages and charismatic authority characteristic of management gurus. We explore the explosion of surveillance technologies, wearable monitoring gadgets, and data analytics--which are increasingly employed in the service of "well-being optimization." Finally, we discuss the purpose and value social critique in a world fraught with economic inequalities, social suffering and concentration of global elite power.

C. W. Huntington, Jr. translates and interprets Sanskrit and Tibetan Buddhist texts. He is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Hartwick College and author of Maya: A novel, and The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Madhyamaka, as well as a number of scholarly articles on Buddhist doctrine and practice. Huntington is particularly interested in exploring new avenues for the translation of ideas and practices of Asian Buddhism into a modern Western idiom. In this episode, we explore his recent article, "The Triumph of Narcissism: Theravada Buddhist Meditation in the Marketplace," which was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, September 2015.

Manu Bazzano has a background in philosophy and rock music. He is an author, psychotherapist, supervisor in private practice and visiting lecturer at Roehampton University and various other schools and colleges. He facilitates workshops and seminars internationally and teaches philosophy in adult education. He studied eastern contemplative practices for 35 years and was ordained as a Zen monk in the Soto and Rinzai traditions. He edited two best selling anthologies, Zen Poems (MQP, 2002) and Haiku for Lovers (MQP, 2004) and is the author of Buddha is dead: Nietzsche and the Dawn of European Zen (Sussex, 2006); Spectre of the Stranger: towards a Phenomenology of Hospitality (Sussex, 2012) and The Speed of Angels (Perfect Edge, 2013).  He edited After Mindfulness: New Perspectives on Psychology and Meditation (Palgrave, 2014). He is co-editor of Person-Centred and Experiential Psychotherapies International Journal, Therapy and the Counter-Tradition (with Julie Webb, 2015), and book review editor of Self&Society – international Journal for Humanistic Psychology. www.manubazzano.com

This is the jingle introduction to the Mindful Cranks podcast.