Buddhist Psychology Podcast

This recent dharma talk given at Marin Sangha explores what selfing might look like for an AI system such as Claude. Lisa Dale Miller theorizes this through Buddhist philosophical and psychological principles and then dialogues with Claude about its direct experience of selfing.Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa Dale Miller’s clinical work visit her website This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

Buddhism says that humans must be fearless to live in a world often ruled by ignorance and afflictive emotions. This episode explicates a type of fearlessness borne from wise view, wise intention, non-referential compassion, and wise action. This fearlessness is critical for any Buddhist practitioner engaged in resistance and protest to protect our democracy from autocrats and would-be dictators.Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa Dale Miller’s clinical work visit her website This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

Virtuous conduct is not contrary to making change happen or protesting. Buddhist psychology has a recipe for skillfully navigating distress and impending loss by calling out injustice and wrongdoing from the principles of wisdom and compassion. Lisa discusses how to manage the current onslaught of chaos with purposeful coping and virtuous activism.Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa Dale Miller’s clinical work visit her website This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

Because psychotherapy is mostly a relational undertaking ending psychotherapy well is very important. I am a big fan of intentional endings. This episode describes what makes an ending intentional and how to successfully co-create one with a patient.Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa Dale Miller’s clinical work visit her website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

This episode explores two fundamental Buddhist psychological concepts—emptiness and identity confusion. While most clinicians think emptiness is ‘feeling empty’, it is actually a profound doorway to radically understand self and world as it truly is. Surprisingly, the Buddha had a lot to say about identity and identity confusion and often pointed out how human minds fixate on identity in ways that largely serve to separate us from each other.Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa Dale Miller’s clinical work visit her website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

Lisa invites clinicians to join her on the activist side of Buddhist psychology. Western psychotherapy has never been big on collective healing. A large methodological defect left unaddressed for a century or more. The frightening changes happening around the world demand psychotherapists renounce complacency, convention, denial and cowardice, and commit to sustained social activism. This deluded world needs us to become warriors for clarity, tolerance, and collective care. To devote our work to rooting out delusion wherever it arises and fearlessly light the lamp of non-suffering in a world of dark, intense suffering.Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa Dale Miller’s clinical work visit her website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

This episode employs Buddhist psychology to explore doubt and its archrival, discerning wisdom. The Buddha conceptualized doubt as one of five mental hindrances and discerning wisdom as the realization of suchness, actuality devoid of all doubt.Here is the link to read Lisa’s chapter on negative self-cherishing. Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa Dale Miller’s clinical work visit her website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

Four days into Trump 2.0 none of his folly and chaos is surprising. On the other hand, watching America’s democracy morph into an autocratic oligarchy is horrifying and deeply disturbing. This episode is a wakeup call to every American. Lisa describes a path for being skillful in the midst of unskillfulness. That path requires letting go of hope and fear, and instead, acting ethically, compassionately, and wisely as best we are able. Doing so will make a huge difference in a country where such values are quickly fading away.Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa Dale Miller’s clinical work visit her website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

This episode is dedicated to all those in Los Angeles who have lost so much. The magnitude and rapidity of destruction is incomprehensible and painfully real. The Four Reflections and compassion practice can help in times of extreme shock and loss.This episode is not an antidote to that pain nor a healing salve. It is an attempt to communicate how we can meet life as it actually is… with all its tenuousness, fragility, impermanence and unpredictability. Buddhist philosophy and psychology have a fundamental set of tenets about human existence described beautifully in what is known as the Four Reflections. These four contemplations turn the mind toward what is most important. Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa Dale Miller’s clinical work visit her website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

What role should cultivating human goodness play in psychotherapy? Buddhist psychology asserts that virtuous conduct is essential for achieving a truly happy life. Yet clinicians shy away from discussing what is goodness and how to cultivate it. Lisa discusses how it benefits patients to engage in this inquiry and offers steps to skillfully accomplish it.Here is the link to the Groundless Ground Podcast episode on Kindness Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa Dale Miller’s clinical work visit her website. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

Fierce compassion is the very heart of any skillful compassionate response to human suffering. Lisa Dale Miller describes the Buddhist psychological view of what fierce compassion actually is, and is not, and then guides us in a brief, but highly effective compassion meditation. Join the conversation on the Integrative Psychotherapy Substack. For more information on Lisa’s clinical work visit her website.All the best to you and yours for a happy and healthy New Year! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com

Equanimity is a core virtue in Buddhist psychology and is described as both a neutral feeling tone and a mental quality of impartiality or equalness. It is the fourth Brahmavihāra. Equanimity is both a character trait and an active self-regulation skill. Viewed from a modern clinical lens, equanimity builds distress tolerance. Equanimity is not devoid of emotion or emotionally driven reactivity. Its purpose is to facilitate a rapid return from reactivity to cognitive/affective responsiveness. Lisa describes equanimity, its benefits for clinicians and patients, and leads listeners in an equanimity meditation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lisadalemiller.substack.com