Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 286: Meditation Class with David Nichtern

Episode Date: May 11, 2018

If you're interested in learning the basics of meditation them this DTFH is for you. David Nichtern is a senior meditation teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. He's also my friend and was kind enough to sit down with me and allow me to record a semi-formal meditation training. He's teaching some classes in Los Angeles this summer. I'll be at the one in June.

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. I'm dirty little angel. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Hello, my sweet children of Poseidon. It is I, D Trussell, and I'm recording this DTFH from Maui.

You might even hear the ocean in the background. I'm sitting in a little yurt right on the sea, where I have driven my van and where I've been hanging out for the last few days, communing with nature, but most importantly, communing with my surf bros who gave me a new name, Bonzo. I love surfing. I love catching shore breaks from the eastern side,

and I love the feeling of riding a wave in and sliding down that tube. And most importantly, I love the community of surfers that I've met out here in Hawaii. And I deliver to you, people of the mainland, a message. Wherever you may be, the surfers of Hawaii want you to come out and join them in the waves. They want you to know that the stories about them

being KG and territorial, potentially even violent, are completely not true. These surfers love nothing more than meeting new friends out there on the water, and many of these surfers would rather float out there in the water and chat with new surfers than actually surf. And they want you to know that the best thing you could do to make their day is to paddle out

on your brand new surfboard and get right in front of them. That's called the line, where you see them floating out there. Just bring that board right in front of them, give them that hang-tin symbol with your hands, and one of them will swim up to you, and they're gonna bring you back to the main line, and they're gonna teach you how to surf, which is how I learned how to surf

and how all of us learned how to surf. So don't forget, surfers love you, they're super cool, they're connected with nature, then they want you to join them out there in Hawaii. I gotta get back out to the waves, man. My dog just ran out there, and I've given up essentially all my material possessions, and all I wanna do is surf.

So I'm gonna head out into the waves and the sweet drink and the great toilet that is the ocean, and I'm gonna float out there, and I'm just gonna feel superior to all you fucking assholes. I just got back from the Ram Dass spring retreat in Maui, and here's my big epiphany from the Ram Dass spring retreat, and there couldn't be a more boring epiphany

that I can think of. And this epiphany is, I really have no idea how to meditate. And for some reason, all the various lectures I've heard on meditation and books I've read on meditation, they just haven't really stuck for some reason. And I've realized that all the other stuff, the ethereal stuff, the astral stuff, the woo-woo-ee stuff, and the really romantic,

exciting stuff is a way that I've been distracting myself from just picking up a basic meditation practice. I'm sorry, it's just so boring. It's so boring. I would rather tell you guys that I had some kind of out-of-body experience and started shaking and merged with some kind of extra-dimensional love intelligence

or that I realized that I was an infinite soul and that my body was a temporary wavering thing or that I connected with a satsang and merged with them. And sure, maybe that happened, but who cares? That's just a dream. The concrete thing I realized is I've been tricking myself into thinking that I have some kind of meditation practice

by creating the idea that just walking around as a form of meditation or doing the podcast as a form of meditation or performing as a form of meditation. And for some people, maybe it is, but I've been tricking myself. I don't have a meditation practice. And what I realized is that's

because I'd never had gotten really concrete meditation instruction from anyone. And so throughout this retreat, I've been talking with David Nickturn and he sat down with me one day and he taught me the basics of meditation. And it's very simple. And it's not really sexy or romantic or flowery.

It's just very basic, which is exactly what I needed. So I decided, well, I'm just gonna start taking lessons from David who's been teaching meditation for I think 30 years, I don't know, very long time. And he studied under Chogyam Trumpa, who is one of the great meditation teachers of our time, who wrote many, many books. But one of them that I really enjoy

is called Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, which is just a very basic and sometimes painful to read approach to what spirituality is and what Buddhism is. And David was lucky enough to spend many, many years studying with this person. And now he teaches meditation. And so I've decided to sort of formally

take him on as my meditation teacher. And I asked him if he would be willing to, instead of doing a regular podcast, give us a meditation class. And that's what this podcast is. It's just a basic meditation class. So if you've been wondering how to meditate, if you've realized that your meditation

is just some amalgamation of bullshit that you've threaded together on a string of lies, then this could be the podcast for you. Also, if you're a master practitioner or you're a professional meditator and you've been winning all the big meditation contests, then this, maybe this will help you in your practice. So we're gonna jump right into this episode,

but first, some quick business. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Simple Contacts. If you're somebody out there who wears contacts and you're sick of having to go to a doctor to get your prescription renewed, then Simple Contacts is for you. Now, here's the thing, I have 2020 vision.

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That would have been cool. That would have been cool. What color do you want my eyes to be? Black. Demon black. So you're wearing them now? You got the exact same brand that you got from your doctor. It's not like they're their own brand of contacts.

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With that ad, my sweet brothers and sisters, if you're fed up with these opening, rambling things and you're looking at the thing and you're thinking, my God, 11 minutes. I don't wear contacts. I don't surf. I don't care about meditation. I just wanna hear the interview about meditation.

Then there's a way out for you, which is to go to patreon.com forward slash DTFH. For a mere $5 a month, you will have access to early releases of every single interview that I do, along with access to our brand new Discord server, which is, it reminds me of the old forum. There used to be a DTFH forum.

I like this a lot better. Also, much thanks to those of you who continue to use our Amazon link. We have a shop with posters, t-shirts and stickers located at DuncanTrussell.com. All right, without further ado, let's get on with this podcast. Today's guest is my meditation teacher.

He's a senior meditation teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage of Chogyam Trumpa, Rinpoche and Sakyang Mifam Rinpoche. Probably pronounced that wrong. He plays guitar in Krishnadasa's band. That's what you call it. You call it a band. He also wrote a great book

called Awakening from the Daydream, Reimagining the Buddha's Wheel of Life. And he happens to be an Emmy winning, Grammy nominated composer, guitarist and producer. And aside from all that stuff, he is a really funny, beautiful person. And I feel really lucky that he's agreed to be my meditation teacher.

Feel sorry for him though. He's gonna be teaching a meditation class in Los Angeles and I'm gonna be taking that class. So if you wanna come and take a, it's basically a meditation teacher's training class. But you don't have to wanna be a meditation teacher to take the first class. The first class is a intro to meditation.

And we're gonna go over some of the stuff that you hear in this podcast, but we're also gonna go deeper than that. So if you're interested in this and you wanna take a meditation class with me, also there might be some dialogue with me and David during this class. I'm gonna be there June 8th through 10th.

The classes are happening June 8th through 10th and also August 3rd through 5th at the Samsara Center, which is the Los Angeles Samsara Center. You can find out about this by going to www.samsaracenter.com, Ford slash mindfulness path meditation. Also he's gonna be teaching some classes in New York. That's on May 22nd and June 12th.

That's gonna be at Studio Guyum. And I'll have all the links to these at dunkintrestle.com. If you're interested, if you wanna go a little deeper into a very grounded, powerful style of meditation, come out to these classes. I'm super excited about taking up a formal meditation class and I'd love to see you there. So without further ado, everybody,

please welcome to the Dunkintrestle Family Hour podcast, David Nickturn. The Dunkintrestle Family Hour. Welcome, welcome on you, that you are with us. Shake hands, they'll be to you blue. Welcome to you. Wow, wow, wow.

It's the Dunkintrestle Family Hour. Thank you, David, thank you so much for being on the show. We're in Hawaii, we're in, you know, it's a, well, no, it's raining. I was going to say we could go to the beach, but here we are. It will shift in any minute. If you want to understand impermanence, just study the weather in Maui.

Yes, it always is changing. It's always changing fast. The, the, what I want to talk with you about, and usually with the podcast, it's like, not that we won't have, it might go into strange tributaries and who knows where, but one of the things I'm very excited about in my life right now is I've decided to start taking meditation teacher classes with you.

And I've made the decision to do it and it's made me really happy. I'm excited about it. And you, we hung out the other day and you gave me what felt like a slightly formal instruction on how to meditate. And I realized, oh, I've never really gotten formal instruction in that way on how to meditate.

So I thought for this hour or so, we could kind of treat this as though it were a meditation class of people listening who are wondering how to meditate and have been hearing me talk about it on and off forever, can finally hear one of the ways that it's recommended to meditate. Yeah. Well, it's a great topic because of course,

there's a lot of interest these days. I would say maybe, maybe it's moving more into the mainstream in terms of something you'd consider trying. Right. So for example, in corporations and sports teams and fitness centers and things like that. So the question that is sort of surprisingly rarely addresses how to actually do the practice.

Right. You know, it's like there's, and there is then, you know, a question of how clear the instruction actually is and how easy or user-friendly it is for you to actually follow it and then to develop the discipline to actually do it. Right. Well, I mean, this is one of the things you were,

the comparison you made the other day to some, watching someone make an omelet, it doesn't know how to make an omelet. Yeah. It's an easy fix to tell someone, oh, actually, here's how you make an omelet. Yeah, it's an easy fix if two things are functioning. One is the person's curious in the first place.

Right. And the other is that they don't have a lot of ideas that you need to remove before you can do the omelet teaching. Like if somebody's convinced that the omelet should be done up on the roof, on a hot day, you know. Like on that. Yeah, on a tile, a Mexican tile on the top of your head,

you would obviously have to kind of disabuse them of that idea first or at least allow it to get aired out. Right. So let's start with what I would consider to be what many people think meditation is. So let's just start there and try to dismantle that. And I'll, even though after chatting with you, I have a different idea about it

and I've looked into other things, but let's just start with the basic one. Meditation, here's what you do. Well, even before you go there, I call this framing, you know, you're building a frame for this picture before you start painting, you frame it. And meditation means a lot of things.

Right. So the word meditation is a, you could say an umbrella term for a wide range of activities in which you are sort of working with the different elements of your mind and body to achieve a particular result. You know, I mean, it could be prayer, it could be mantras, it could be visualizing things,

it could be running. Some people say they meditate when they're swimming or running. Flotation tanks. Yeah, it could be the notion of some people would think it's the idea of blanking out your mind so that it's sort of void. Yes.

And therefore that would provide some relief to the activity in the mind, which might be stressful to that person. So there's so many variations. So the first thing it might be helpful to do is get an umbrella word. The word in Tibetan is gom, g-o-m, which just means to become familiar with something.

So wait, the word for meditation is gom. Gom, g-o-m. No shit. And it just means to familiarize yourself with something. So therefore, meditation's always going on on some level. Your mind is tuning into a television show. Your mind is reading a book. Your mind is looking at your girlfriend

and trying to figure out how many freckles she has on her face. Oh, yes. Or your wife in this case. Ha, ha, ha. You know, your mind is the part that's imagining how many freckles she may have had as a child.

Yes. Your mind is leaping forward in the time domain to think about where you have to be later today. Yes. Your mind is regressing back in the past time domain to think, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. Yes.

So that mind, that very mind that is creating some kind of object-subject relationship, is just becoming, tuning into a particular aspect of the experience and becoming familiar with it. That's the biggest definition of meditation. Wow. Wow.

That is so cool. It covers all the things that are going on here. That's so different. So different than what I have thought and what people think, which is that it's this strenuous, active pushing down of thought frequencies to achieve some kind of like complete state

of glorious, blissful, joyful happiness. This birds are landing on your shoulder. Oric fields are glowing. You know, this kind of, you know, there's a, if we look at like the, I don't want to say the TV version, the mythical version of it, it isn't something so simple. It's like, we're just getting familiar here

with what's going on. And many, some people would consider what you're talking about meditation, and that's fine. I would compare it to a football game. It's the fourth down in your punting, basically, because you have no idea how your mind works. You just have a wish that it was something,

somehow was different than it is and more pleasurable than it is. Right. You know, so there's not much sort of contact with the ball, with the fact that you have a bunch of downs. You could be moving the ball forward. Yeah. You're just punting.

I gotcha. Can't use sports analogies with me anymore, David. It's not gonna work. I barely watch sports. Okay, but does that, does that one make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. It does. And maybe like another, to move the frame back a little bit,

maybe you could talk a little bit about your particular lineage. So people understand that this is coming from a school, a Tibetan school. Is that what you would call it, a school? I think a school and lineage are both good ideas. The idea of lineage, let's just start there, is that somebody sort of discovered something

and then they passed it along. The next person took and sort of on their own, rediscovered that thing, but with a little bit of guidance and then that's passed along. And so that you have a number of taste testers along the way. And it's not just somebody putting a plate of food in front of you and then you eat it and die. Okay, sure.

Yeah, got it. So it's cumulative experience of a line of people who shockingly are very similar to us. It's, if you read the stories of the lineage people, they're not that different from us, even thousands of years ago. Really? Yeah, they're just, they got the same spilkis.

You know what that word means? No. It's Yiddish for like kind of trouble. Same trouble. Same issues, you know? Well, this is something though, I mean, not to get away from the meditation instruction, but this is something that I actually got a little,

not annoyed, or it bugged me, because they were, at the retreat, they were quoting Milarepa and they were talking about something about going up into a cave and looking out and then overcoming his fear of death or something. Do you remember that quote? Yes, and Milarepa, for those of people out there who don't know, was a famous Tibetan yogi,

probably I think about the 10th century AD, maybe a little later. And really, a much more powerful way to think about Milarepa was he was a troubled teenager. Okay. Yeah, he was a wreck. Okay. And he got screwed up by his family, karma, you know,

and his parents died and his uncle and aunt stole his inheritance. I mean, everybody wants to talk about the fact that he developed these miraculous powers and things like that. But really, his process with his teacher was just really working through some of his issues. So Milarepa was just basically like somebody

who could easily have been on Jerry Springer or something. That's right. It sounds like it's like Redneck family stealing his shit. He's pissed off. I think it's much more helpful to think that way because we tend to attribute the miraculous to others and the shit pile to ourselves. That's right.

So what about the middle way? What about working with what we have, seeing that has certain potential in it? There are certain issues. So this is a, you know, the Buddhist approach, which is yes, what my lineage is, it comes from the Buddhist tradition, specifically through the Tibetan evolution

of Buddha's Dharma in, you know, from the eighth century AD to the present, particularly in the context that they had for whatever cultural reason, isolation, and therefore these teachings got really focused on as the centerpiece of the culture. So that's what's unusual about it. And particularly in the context that, you know,

since 1959, Tibet has been, you know, spread, you know, because of the invasion of the Chinese, the Tibetan teachers who had been isolated are all over the world now. Right. So one of them was my teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, who left Tibet in 1959, had to leave.

It wasn't a choice, you know. He would have been murdered otherwise. Right. And, you know, so he was one of the first classically trained Tibetan teachers to come to the West in 1970. And so that's my lineage. I studied with that teacher and the continuity of that

through the school that he established. And your lineage is also Pima Chodron. Pima was also a student of Trungpa Rinpoche. Many other wonderful teachers have spawned off there. Some you've heard of, some you haven't. It was a relatively big school. I would say there are hundreds and hundreds of, you know, trained teachers.

Your son, Ethan Nicktern, who's been on the show. Same lineage. And this is Naropa? Naropa University in Boulder. Yeah. Was founded by Trungpa Rinpoche. But in the name of the school of Shambhala? Shambhala is the, if you are looking for this,

you know, the, to follow along on this lineage, it's called the Shambhala School. So you, I guess if you just went to Shambhala.org, you could see all of those. So was it always called Shambhala or did that name happen when Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche came to the West? Well, actually it happened a little after he came

to the West. And when we first started, it had more traditional Tibetan, Buddhist-y kind of names. In 1976, he started to write about the kingdom of Shambhala as his kind of metaphor for enlightened society. And he became, you know, very deeply connected with a hybrid really, I think a hybrid plant of the Buddhist plant, which is a way to present

the Buddhist teachings in the essence of those in a cultural envelope that would be very appropriate for this time and place. Very easy for people to access from a secular kind of side. Yeah, sure. You know, without thinking I have to go, if I don't go do a three year retreat

and join a monastery, I'm really not getting into the deep part of this teaching. Right, which is what I've thought in the past, many people have thought that, that that is the way that you really get in there because you have to go pure, shaved head, robes, incense, bye bye family, bye bye life. But that is-

That's not the Shambhala view. Right. The view is that you could do it right here in this context. And in fact, there are certain dimensions to living in the world that actually can promote a very kind of sophisticated understanding what meditation is and what compassion is

and what wisdom is. It's subtle. Because you and I could be here watching CNN or we could be actually talking to each other. It's as simple as that. Right. Yeah, that's what I've loved about chatting with you is that these things are just very, very simple.

There's nothing, there's just nothing in it that seems, it's so pragmatic and it's so basic in the best way possible and the best, most positive use of that term, basic. But I want to ask you about what that means to be classically trained. Chogyam Trumpa is classically trained. So what does his childhood look like?

And tell me a little bit about this training that he got and then let's talk about this very beginning phase of meditation that comes from that training. Yeah, that's great to understand. What classically trained meant in Tibet is like, I think the only equivalent that I can think of in the West is like Juilliard. Okay.

Where somebody is considered to be gifted. In this case, they're at birth or shortly thereafter, they're kind of recognized as a gifted child in the sense of considered to be a reincarnation of a previous teacher. It's quite literal. He was the reincarnation of who? Of the 10th Trumpa Tulkoo.

Okay. There were 11 of them. Okay. In some form of continuity from the previous ones. Do you believe that? I would say the simple answer is yes, because everything comes from somewhere. So it doesn't stretch my brain particularly to think

that he would come from that. I don't want to get into a long metaphysical debate, but just speaking on behalf of skeptics of the world, you hear this stuff and the idea that, that sometimes in Tibet, oracles grok that some being has been reincarnated in this village or that village, they go to the village, they go to the parents,

and they basically like take the child. It's a great honor. The parents are given some kind of benefit, I think, right? It's the equivalent of having a doctor or a lawyer. Right. There they wanted to grow up to be a Tulkoo. But in this case, in this case it's a, and please just let me do this.

I have to say it just because it is something that's troubled me. Here we have a patriarchal, essentially theocracy, that is using some kind of oracle to determine, in the way royal families do it just through birth, they're using some form of oracle to determine that this soul has returned, and through that they continue this power structure,

which was like ruling Tibet. And in there, do you remember one of my favorite parts in the Holy Grail is when Arthur comes upon those people in the mud who are like political in some way, and he says, you can't establish a monarchy just because of water he taught through his sword at you from a lake. Like how do you run a gun?

So in that, please help me dispel. Well, you know what? You know what? I'd like to just cut through completely this issue and tell you that as far as this conversation goes, as far as I'm concerned, none of that has anything at all to do with what I'm about to say.

Okay, great. Perfect. Beautiful. Great. In other words, that every, you know, you know, I went to Lucasfilm when they were first putting that studio together, and I was intrigued to think,

to know that they put a backstory together for the plays that was entirely fictitious. Wow. You know, up in Northern California. But there it is, this massive studio, and you can go there and mix your music or do your work. So from my point of view, none of that really matters. Gotcha.

Literally. It's sweet, it's intriguing, but I met this person, you see. Right. As one human being to another, and he could have been from the moon, as far as I'm concerned. And a lot of, he once said,

if you had just met me in a bar, would you still study with me, or do you need this whole pedigree? Ah. And my answer is definitely, if I had just met you in a bar, I would still have studied with you. Oh, wow.

That pedigree is, I don't wanna downgrade it or upgrade it. There's a lot of questions in the contemporary world about the whole Toku system, even among some of the Rinpoche's. But what we're talking about is verifiable in terms of one's own experience. Gotcha. And it's encouraged since the time of the Buddha

to do it that way exactly. So there's no blind faith in this tradition. Right. There's no blind faith. You have to chew, you have to swallow, you have to, it has to feel right to you. Well, I mean, by blind faith, you mean no blind faith in the sense of the practice itself.

But I mean, certainly you would have to have some. Any of it. Well, I mean, so in this case, it's just like some people are going to look at that Toku system as it's called and just think, it's a whole other conversation. My mind just thinks, okay, wait a minute, we've got some kind of soul network.

They know how to come back. They come back here. Can't, this implies a kind of, I don't know, some kind of metaphysical substrate that souls travel. Well, Duncan, you knew how to get to my room to have this podcast. Right. I have a physical body.

I have legs and arms and ears and a meat puppet. As Robert Thurman was saying, it's easy for me to shamble up here and sit down with the idea. But the meat puppet was getting directions from your mind, your consciousness, which knew you were going to room 136. It's not that, it's not that different.

Death and reincarnation. Well, think about it. I mean, you have some intentionality. You have some understanding of where you're heading. You know where you're coming from. You're making decisions every minute. You decided to get married, you know? Well, yes.

And sometimes I wonder if all of these decisions, who is making these decisions? I'm so glad it happened, all of them. And I'm so glad I came to the room. And I'm so glad to be here. But you know what? This is deeper metaphysics. And honestly, I only ask,

in my mind, I've created the illusion. And let me cut through it again. It's also in play within the communities you're talking about. In other words, Trungpa Rinpoche, a lot of what he established in the West was based on a feeling that that form of continuity was not going to be appropriate for this country.

Cool. Cool. There's a more merit-based system. That's pretty awesome. That's cool. I love that. And forgive me for any kind of accidental, I don't know, disrespect or not thinking it through whatever.

I don't mean to, I really love that story. I think it's beautiful. And I think there's something in it that's so incredibly cool. And I want it to be real. But again, this doesn't really apply to day-to-day meditation practice, which is what I wanted to chat with you about.

But it is the backdrop. It's fine to look in, it's fine to ask whatever question you want. Right. I come from a school, I could ask whatever question I wanted to. And I did. Right.

So that's my model. That's the model. And so this thing that we're going to talk about now is something that has been cultivated, refined, and it evolves. This is not a static thing. This is something that is constantly morphing through time. Well, and coming back to the conversation about gum,

you know, and just sort of becoming familiar with something, let's add one other dimension to what meditation is. Or how you could possibly look at this cultivation of something. In other words, it's when you cultivate something, you're putting time, energy, attention, and effort into that cultivation. Like if you're studying Qigong,

if you're studying martial arts, if you're studying guitar, if you're studying painting, you're actually cultivating quality. And in this case, with meditation, we're cultivating kind of, you could say basic qualities, not skill at playing guitar,

which is a very specific quality. But the qualities like focus, clarity, stability, insight, perspective, wisdom, compassion, empathy, energy, vitality, these kind of things. To cultivate those takes discipline and effort, because you're putting energy into it. To me, one of the exciting realizations I've had with this stuff is the realization

that some of these traits, I know they could be refined, clearly focused, stuff that athletes, things like compassion to hear that it is possible. I think a lot of people just think everyone is kind of born with the ability to love. And it's a kind of equal thing. We know how to do it.

And the way like a little turtle's not, it'll go into the ocean and swim. People just know how to love. People know how to like care. People, these things are not bicep style things. Like where your biceps can be like grown, or where you're... Yes, I understand.

You know what I'm saying? So to me, there's something so beautiful about the idea that, oh yeah, these traits can actually, are not something you just know how to do right away. Well, and they, probably most of them are considered to be native abilities, natural abilities that we have, but they can be strengthened. Right.

They can be cultivated. So one of the slogans we use in the teacher training program is, meditation has many benefits, but none at all if you don't practice. You know? And you sit around talking about it. You go like, okay, in what way did that strengthen anything other than your ability to talk?

That is so funny. You know? So I think, you know, practice is a really key element. Yes. And in the trainings that we do, we really emphasize that that's really, you're tuning up your ability to strengthen through your own practice.

And of course the view is important. So you're clear where you're shooting the arrow, you know, what your target is, but at the same time, it's not just theoretical. It's a sort of deliberate cultivation of these qualities. Okay, so let's go into. And one last thing on that. Yes.

It does resemble the bicep in the sense that repetition is required. Like if you're training your bicep to be stronger, you use small weights a lot of times. Right. You don't lift, power lift, that doesn't strengthen your bicep. Right.

So in the same way, meditation, mindfulness meditation by bringing your attention back to the breath in a simple, small way, many times, is how you develop the strength of attention. Okay. It's very similar, good analogy. Okay, got it. Great.

So this is, I just, what I love about this lineage is that it is so not romantic. It is not, you know, because for, and I mean that in the, you know what I mean? It's not like, because for me in past, you know, what I would do when I meditate, like one of the great gifts you gave me in fact, was to implode an experience I had had meditating,

which was that I had, you know, sort of sat down. Yeah. Summoned up, I did an internship at a Zen center when I was in college and I had this like, remembrance of doing that kind of. And so what I do is I go into a room, shut the door, sit down, try to kind of remember what the Zen thing was like,

sit down, stare at the floor. I can't remember what it is, my thumbs apart or my thumbs together. And then I sit there and then what happens is, I'll start doing like a kind of like deep breathing. And then I'll be doing these spiritual breaths, right? And then like, and then I'll be doing these spiritual breaths and then a feeling will come, maybe.

And then I'll be like, that's the feeling. Here we go, let's go into that feeling. And now I'm going to expand on that feeling. And then it's like, wait, no, you got to go back to your breath, forget that feeling. That has not, that's not what it is. It's something to do with your fingers or they apart where you could put a piece of paper through it.

Oh shit, my face itches, man. I want to itch my face. I move my legs. Does this still count now that I've moved my legs? Is it negated the practice itself? Ah, this fucking sucks. What am I, oh my God, I've blended in with the entire universe.

I'm becoming the universe. I have become the universe. Wait till I tell my friends about how I became the universe. That's- So when you do mindfulness, it's really simple. You notice you're in the middle of that particular kind of narrative. And when you notice, you label the thinking,

you come back to the breath. That's it. That's it. That's so cool, man. No matter what the narrative is. Cause the narrative will have all kinds of seductive dimensions to it. And you go, wait a minute,

I'm having a great thought here. I'm thinking about it getting enlightened. I'm thinking about, no, thinking, come back to the breath. Okay, so before we get into that, let's get into the structure of it. I want to talk about somebody listening to this, is going to turn this off maybe after they listen to it and they're going to go meditate.

Great. So let's talk to them, you talk to them and say, here's what you do. If you want to go meditate after you listen to this podcast. So again, since there are many types of meditation, even within Buddhism, there are thousands of meditations, different practices.

But the foundational practice is called mindfulness. That is kind of like, if you're building a house, that's the foundation. So you can't really be as effective with other types of cultivations if you do not create a proper solid foundation. The foundation is just your ability, raw ability to pay attention to what you're doing.

And bring your awareness to what you're doing. So this practice is called mindfulness, right? This is what popularly called, sometimes in the Tibetan Buddhism is called shamatha, which is a Sanskrit word for calm abiding or kind of settling the mind. And it's really great to just have a simple idea of what this particular practice is.

So mindfulness has just two very simple ideas. One is to bring the attention to one point, right? Our attention is usually, like when we were walking through the cafe here, you know, the restaurant, it's like, there's this person in there, but your mind is jumping around. Yes.

Now when we're sitting still, our mind keeps jumping around, which people call monkey mind, frog mind, I call it spaghetti mind, James Joyce mind, you know, it's a- James Joyce mind. That's actually the most accurate one. That is it.

Yeah. There's no periods. You know, it's just, it's just what you were just doing. Right. When you were portraying your own state of mind, it was, it was James, it was Joyceian. Right. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

No punctuation, no paragraphs, no indents, no nothing. Right. Stream of consciousness. Right. Now, so don't make war with that. You're going to lose. If you set up the meditation as I'm going to kill the monkey, you're going to lose.

The monkey's going to kill you. It's like a video game. You, ah, you lost, you know? Yeah. So instead, just, you take a very open attitude towards the whole current state of your mind, but you introduce the idea of a focal point. Okay.

Could be anything. It could be a picture or lamp, but we use the breath. Okay. The breath is always there. You don't need to remit, oh, I forgot to bring it. You know? Yeah, right. And it's also connected to your sort of present

kind of physical situation. So it brings mind and body together. Right. So you simply bring your attention to the breath. Okay. That's it. That's one point. Then the other point is whatever arises in your mind

while you're attempting to cultivate that capacity is considered to be, you could say fundamentally unproblematic. There's no fundamental problem with the process of thinking and creative mind and torturing yourself, whatever the heck you're doing. Right. It is helpful to acknowledge it and recognize it

without trying to reject it or without trying to act it out further. That's the key point. You have a thought like you had. You don't have to suppress it, as you said earlier. You also don't have to go, if you're thinking about chocolate ice cream, you don't have to get up from the cushion and go get chocolate ice cream.

Right. You just see the thought as it is with a kind of unbiased awareness and then label it thinking and bring your attention back to the breath. Over and over again. How am I sitting when I'm doing this? Where am I sitting?

Okay, so that's the theory of it, is that by bringing your attention to a more focused state, you achieve a kind of clarity of mind and a stability of mind. Okay. And it's verifiable. I think anybody who sits for 20 minutes a day for a month will experience this as part of the outcome.

So then we say there's just three steps to actually doing this kind of mindfulness meditation. The first one is taking your seat. That's what it's called. The seat is you kind of allowing your body to be in a stable relationship to the space you're in as opposed to moving around through it.

So the seat can be a cross-legged position on the floor. That's traditional or on a cushion. Helpful for most people to get your butt up a little higher. You can cross your legs simple style. Sorry, sorry. What's your take on like Zafu cushions, those rice cushions you can buy at shop? Is there one cushion preferable to another cushion?

I'm sitting on a hotel couch cushion. But obviously if you're gonna have a regular meditation, those Zafus are great. There's one called agamden, which is more rectangular. People have their own preferences. You should get your butt up high enough so that your knees are below your hip points. Because otherwise you'll stress your back out.

And you can sit either simple cross-legged position or one of the more yogic kind of postures like the half lotus or easy pose. Any of them is fine. Doesn't matter at all. And then if you're not comfortable sitting on the floor, i.e. you're a westerner and maybe you're not used to it, then sit on a chair, it's fine.

It's totally fine. So you mean sit on a chair with your feet on the ground? Put your feet on the ground in front of you like shoulder width apart. Try to sit up so that you have some kind of strength in your posture as opposed to kind of slumping back. Again, this depends on your body and your needs and any back injuries you have to take into account.

And then you can just rest your hands on your knees down, face down, hands down. This is a, there are many, now here again, there are many gestures, mudras that people use to meditate with the thumb and the index finger joined or the zen mudra, the cosmic mudra. They're fine if you know what they are. Go ahead, but otherwise I consider it mostly

it's like some extra thing that you don't even know why you're doing it and it's like am I doing that right? It looks cool. Well, yeah, I mean it's better to feel good than to look good when you're meditating. That's clear as a bell. So, you know, the simplest posture is just rest your hands

down on your thigh or your knee, depending how long your arms are. And then you might want to have a sense of extending your spine. We say lengthening the spine as opposed to straightening the spine, that's a yogic thing. Obviously the spine is not straight. Right. You want to have a nice long upright spine.

Okay. Relaxed shoulders, you know. We say the back is strong, but the front is soft and open. And then as you move into the head, there's a feeling of kind of lofty, you know, the head is kind of the peak of the experience of the mountain, you know, and there should be feeling good head and shoulders

like you're sitting upright, like a kind of, you know, warrior or, you know, somebody with a lot of confidence and well-being. That's cool. So as you move from this, go back to the slump. And now, if you take your seat, right, you feel different. That is cool. Yeah.

So there is a warrior image that works. There's a lot of different images. Wow. Then, Wait, I'm sorry. What is the, because you know, it's Buddhism. It's like one of the things someone said at the retreat is, what do they say?

Christians love God. Wait, wait, how does it, what do they say the thing about lists for God, for Buddha? I knew I was ruined it. What was it? Christians love God, Buddhists love lists, something like that.

I didn't hear that one. But, Oh, that's beautiful. That's funny. But it's the, you know, so it's usually pretty detailed here. Is there a more detailed description of this warrior position like who? Oh yeah.

I mean, each of these, I would say that if you start to get into any discipline, and that's the thing, people flit around, they never get into the depths of any of it. That's the problem with the new age approach, is you're at a supermarket and you're collecting,

or you're at a convention and you're collecting brochures from all these different traditions. I did ayahuasca and I went to the shaman and then you, and then I went to the Buddhist retreat. I did a Vipassana retreat. And now I'm going to this Christian thing. You'll never get into the depth of any of it, is my opinion anyhow.

Right. You know, now that doesn't mean you're biased and you're saying, well, this is the best one. You don't have to have that extra attitude. And you could stay curious about the other ones, but in our tradition, we say, you know, if you go deeper, it's going to be better for you. Gotcha.

You know. Choose a lineage and get into it more. The warrior, is there a specific being that you're supposed to picture here? Well, in Shambhala, the warrior image is a profound image. In that, the central energy of the warrior image is confidence and bravery. Okay, cool.

Now we live in a time when cowardice and freak out are pretty prevalent. Yeah, sure. You know, so it's an attempt to strike an archetype that will help human beings re-arouse their original confidence. Gotcha. Right?

Yeah. It's not about fighting and being, you know, a killer and it has nothing to do with that image. So, and that's not the image of a samurai either, or any of the warrior, really good warrior traditions. It's not like this is the guy who's going to go around beating everybody up. No, no, we were talking about this too.

Anytime I've been hanging out with Joe and you meet these MMA people there, that's exactly what they're, they're relaxed, they're confident, they don't seem dangerous at all. They just seem very, you know, if anything, very kind and they're, they're cool. It's, I've never been around one of them and felt in danger, though at times I've been like,

shit man, this guy like is trained to kill people. And yet he seems so relaxed and legitimately cool. Yeah. So yes, okay, so I understand. Well, the warrior tradition obviously includes things like martial arts, but in this context of Shambhala, we're not, we're talking about basically two qualities,

fearlessness and gentleness. Cool. And overarching is restoring some kind of natural, authentic being and confidence. That's cool, man. And that it's there, you just have to bring it out more. Okay, I love it.

So, as you're sitting, you're embodying that. You are embodying that. Okay. Just physically, you, you, you see somebody sitting like that, like when I teach a group of people and they all just take, they just have done the first step of taking their seat, already the room feels different.

Right. A room full of people, you know, who've taken their seat has a certain feeling to it. No, I'm sitting like this now. I feel completely different. It's, it's, it makes me think about the Mujras more and think, shit man, maybe there is something like to the circuitry of energy running through it.

Oh, there is. There definitely is. But that, that's further along too. And there's many, that's why I say there are thousands of dimensions to meditation. This is laying the foundation. Okay. And if you skip this, God help you.

You know what I mean? Right. It's like, I don't know what's gonna, if you start doing fancier meditations with energy and visualizations and mantras and your mind has not been stabilized in this way. You haven't been able to create some kind of foundation. It's easy to see how the rest of it could go,

could get weird. Real quick. This is, well, you know, even as insane and like wild as Crowley is, this is in the very beginning. This is the, this is what he was like. It's like, learn this basic stuff before you do anything else. You've got to learn this, this basic, basic stuff.

And I've skipped over. It's so easy to skip over. Yeah. So here we go. So we're sitting, our hands are on our knees. We're up to the head. And so the neck and shoulders should be loose, but you know, kind of upright.

And then there's this whole area of the sense perceptions. So we have five sense perceptions. And the idea in mindfulness is you don't shut them down. There's no benefit to shutting them off. Okay. To go into some kind of inner space. But at the same time, we don't indulge them the way that we normally do.

So it's kind of a middle way approach. So the eyes are open with a soft downward gaze. And it's maybe you could just relax your gaze about six feet on the floor in front of you. I want to ask, I wanted to ask you about this in particular. Let's say that you're in a space where you don't have six feet in front of you, or it's, there's stuff on the floor,

there's shit scattered around. What about that? Yeah. Again, these are, you and I taught yesterday and I said the main thing, the way we teach is principles rather than rules. Because if you understand the print, the principle of the eyes open

is that you're not shutting down the awareness fields. Gotcha. You're including them, but you're not, you're not focusing on them in the same way you normally do. So it's like, almost like dimming the lights in a room a little bit. There's a softer kind of feeling

to the sense perceptions. What I mean is like some, like some. You could just drop the gaze further. What if I'm just, this is a kind of a ridiculous example, but it's not quite a ridiculous example. Some people, maybe he's even some people listening to this right now. Their apartment is a pigsty.

Like their clothes are scattered everywhere. They've got, they've, they're in the middle of a real freaking mess. So when I was in, when I was in our hotel room, which is just like, because we're packing up and it was just shit scattered everywhere this morning meditating. One of the questions I had for you was,

is it okay for me to just stare through the mess or to include the mess within the thing? Cause then it turns into like, well, I got to clean first before I meditate. And then I'm sure as hell, I'm not going to meditate. You know what's great about that question? It's born from practice. Ha, ha, right.

That's cool. These are the questions we like. Yeah. If somebody's saying, well, what about if I visit, you know, well, let's start from where you are, start from what you're experiencing. So the obvious thing is ideally, it's good to have a clear, clean space in which, if you're sort of talking about a clean,

clear approach towards mind. Right. You know, it's reasonable to think you could just clean up your room a little bit first. If you can't, maybe just clear a space. Okay, you know. Got it. Yeah.

But you will begin to think, well, what is the space I'm in like? Because we're not shutting down and going to what I call the secret garden meditation. It's an inner landscape and it's opening up to you and it's got this whole other quality than your actual life does. Right.

This is much more integrative. Okay. Much more, whoa, what does your room look like? Gotcha. You're talking about developing mindfulness and awareness and that means that your room is not reflecting that. Right. Your environment's not reflecting that.

Right. Your ecology is not reflecting it. Right. We have an unmindful ecology right now. Yes. You know, if somebody was practicing mindfulness, there's no way they could just say, let's just pour plastic into the ocean.

Right. It's not mindful. Right. You have to be kind of a zombie for that to make sense. Yeah. And so we're not promoting, and this is, if I can get one idea across to people, we're not promoting meditation as either a deadening

or a tranquilizer. It's an awakening quality and it's becoming more mindful, more aware and less distracted. And therefore you will become more aware of your emotions. You'll become more aware of your irritation, your boredom, your frustration. Yes.

You'll become more aware of your tendency not to want to be where you are. Yep. You'll become more aware of the mess that you've created around yourself. So it's not going to necessarily lead to a kind of superficial tranquility. Right.

Which a lot of people need these days because they're so stressed out. Yes. But it does have a kind of settling influence so that you can look at those things and not panic. Gotcha. Yeah. So it's not trying to create panic,

but it's also not trying to create a tranquilizer. Got it. Okay. So I'm sitting, I'm looking six, I'm looking downward gaze six feet ahead, hands on, palms on my knees. Good posture. Nice.

Good posture. Nice fell down, right? Yeah. Good posture. And now what? Okay. So that's step one. That's called taking your seat.

Okay. So, and to review the points of that, good strong connection with your butt and the seat, a cross-legged or kneeling or sitting on a chair, kneeling is okay too. Resting the hands down, face down on the knees or the thighs, depending how long your arm is. Extending the spine, strong back, soft front.

Chin tucked in a little bit if you're used to it, like sticking your head out. And then the eyes open with a soft downward gaze about six feet on the floor in front of you. That's taking your seat. Step one. So when we, after we train in that, when we say take your seat,

everybody knows what that means. Step two, place your attention on the breath. Okay. That's a very specific instructor. Your attention is wandering most of the time. You can track it. You know, your attention is on a variety of different mental events.

Yes. It can be pulled away into sensual events. Yes. It can be pulled into emotional, energetic fields. But in this case, we're saying just the feeling of the breath. This is not an idea. It's just, how does the breath feel in and out? And traditionally, either at the tip of the nose

or just feel the full cycle of the breath. So, and this- Am I supposed to be doing in through the nose, out through the mouth? Yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter. I mean, the idea is that you can add more and more details to this.

And sometimes I prefer not to over detail. You're breathing. Got it. Okay. Now, obviously if you know anything about anatomy, it's better to breathe through your nose. You get more oxygen if you breathe in through your nose. Right.

So, and the out breath has a little bit more of a dissolve out through the mouth, but it's really up to you what feels comfortable each person is doing. When I was doing this this morning, I realized, man, you're not taking very deep breaths. You seem to be a pretty shallow breather. And then I thought, well, then I should change my breath

and start being a better breather. And then I thought, well, if you change your breath, David was telling you, just watch yourself breathe, don't make any adjustments. And so then I found myself getting in this kind of weird, neurotic relationship with my breath itself, thinking like, well, shit, man, you're a terrible breather.

Why are you breathing like this? You need to fix your breath, but if you fix your breath, you're going against the instructions. Well, here's the thing, Duncan. The image that comes to mind is you're playing ping-pong, but you don't have a, you don't actually have a partner. So you hit the ball and then you run around

to the other side of the table, hit it back. Then you run around to the other side of the table, hitting back. A lot of our internal dialogue has that kind of dynamic to it. So we talk about the middle way a lot. And the way that's expressed is not too tight and not too loose. So that sets you into a kind of moderate approach.

So for example, we say, we're not doing pranayama. We're not manipulating the breath towards some effect. That's a legitimate practice. You should do pranayama if you want to do pranayama, but that's not this. Okay, got it. Pranayama has a lot of benefits, none of which will accrue if you don't practice them,

but that's not this practice. This practice is mindfulness, mindful attention to the breath. And so each time the breath goes in and out, you just feel that you're not trying to deepen it, but it might, you know, as you sit, you might find it just naturally deepens a little bit. Got it.

Right? And if you need to sigh, I think somebody like you needs to sigh every once in a while. I do. I do, I just sighed at Montefood's and my wife, Erin, was like, I heard that sigh from across the vitamin aisle. Exactly, yeah.

And also, you know, with the sigh, there's a sound, that's actually a mantra called ah. It's sort of a very simple, but profound. And most people can't make that sound. They can't release enough to make that sound. Right. I love it when those happen. Yeah, so if you need to release,

you know, you could just take a release. Okay. You're finding your way into it, but the general thing is not too tight and not too loose and we're not trying to manipulate the breath. Just be aware of it. Got it. Mix your awareness with the experience of breathing.

Okay. Then, you're doing that. Wow, this is easy. And the mind is like Road Runner. Oh yeah. It's still got momentum and inertia, so it's gonna go somewhere. It's gonna go like, oh, it can't be this simple.

Yeah. Right? How could that be? And then as we treat these people, we're talking about these exotic states and beyond death experiences, how could just me sitting and the mind starts to go, blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub-blub. And then, before you know it, you're thinking about lunch and whether they're gonna have cookies or not at lunch.

Yeah. And then before you know that, you're planning out your swim for the afternoon. And then before you know that, you're thinking about my fucking schedule for the next month is insane, you know, and I can't keep up with myself and my own life. I'm not enjoying my life.

And, you know, all of a sudden there's a little, a little moment where you recognize that you wandered. Right. And you're lost in thoughts. Yes. Not just thinking about lost in it. Sure. That moment of recognition is a kind of natural,

little bubble moment of awakening. You just come to. Okay, cool. It happens on its own. Fuck, what is that? That is the kind of awakened mind just peek peekabooing. Who did that? Nobody did that.

It just happened. Whoa. There's no, I've never thought of that. That is so weird and terrifying. Well, however, when you have that little moment of opening, you say thinking, you label that whole diorama that you had been creating. You labeled thinking.

Thinking. One word. That's what it is. It's nothing other than that. And this word during this retreat has come up of a spiritual bypass? We'll get to that in one minute. Let's get through the three steps.

So the practice then is bringing back, once you label thinking, let it go. Okay. Okay. It's already gone, by the way. You don't really have to let it go. It's gone. Then you bring your attention back to the breath

and be more mindful of the breath for a period of time. Then your mind will wander again. Now, here's an important, second important point. There is no problem that you're trying to solve. Okay. Cool. Good to know. I mean, maybe relatively the problem is that

you've got spaghetti mind. Right. It's not really the best kind of mind. When I was doing it today and I'm sitting there, the problems that were emerging were, well, you're obviously not very good at breathing. And then it was on top of that. I was like, man, there's some anxiety in there.

Like, look at that fucking anxiety, man. You are, look at that. You're in a hurry. It was mainly just like, shit, I'm in a hurry, man. I gotta get to breakfast. But it's not so much thoughts as much as a kind of like, weird, someone's beating a slave ship drum in my heart really fast for no reason.

And it's, you know. Boy, write that one down. Somebody's beating a slave ship drum in my heart for no reason. And it's driving my whole life. Yeah. And then I want to fix that. That's called duke.

That's the first noble truth right there, man. That's suffering. Yeah. That's the truth of, the word duke means more like underlying anxiety. You know, there's some kind of, I call it like a ground hum. Yeah. It's underneath.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. It just never feels. The face you're making is the face it makes. That's exactly it. I wish we caught that on camera. That's it. But here's the thing. There you are.

You've found yourself exactly at that point, which is profound. You're not trying to get out of it exactly. And you're also not gonna keep doing it. Right. So that's a very interesting space, right? It's called awareness. Awareness is a space in which you see what's happening

and you're also not just gonna reconnect with that momentum and that inertia. Right. Of insanity, basically. Right. So that's a really key cultivation. That's the mind of, which we called the other day, the abstract watcher or the witness,

you start to see yourself much more clearly. You know, what your own process is. It really has nothing to do with what's happening externally in your life, interestingly enough. Nothing. It's really an internal exploration. But to get back to the not fixing thing, it's that the impulse immediately is to fix that.

Immediately to like, well, take a bit deeper breath. Maybe it'll go away or you know, it's very difficult to encounter that kind of internal muscle cramp and not try to massage it out in the moment when you're meditating. Right. What you're saying is don't. Just go back to the breath.

But we have to address one more little detail, which you brought up in the form of bypassing or kind of not acknowledging properly what feelings that might come up for you. Right. Because then it becomes repression or suppression. Right. And that is subtle.

And I would say that's what Trungpa Rinpoche used to call spiritual materialism. You think you're gonna fix it. Yes. So how not to do that is subtle. And the way we do it is by, you could say taking a friendly attitude towards the whole thing.

Okay. Like, okay, yes. I'm an anxious mess by my own description. Yeah. And I'm sitting here and I have this simple job of just, can I just breathe and be with it? No, I can't because I keep getting grabbed, seized up by my own underlying anxiety.

Which manifests as a number of different narratives that are going on. So the point is we touch in on that without rejecting it, then let it go. Got it. Okay, cool. That's called touch and go. So if you only remember two things from this whole talk,

not too tight and not too loose and touch and go. Not too tight, not too loose, touch and go. Yeah. That's cool. So you have the feeling, you're not trying to suppress the feeling, but you also don't entertain it further or engage it further.

Okay. Got it. So you will see. I find years and years later, I'm just still seeing, wow, that's my mind. That is, this is the mothership. This is where it's all being emanated from. And it's got some,

still some tendencies to fashion reality in a way that's not really pleasing. That's right. To put it lightly. Yeah. But before you see that, if you try to change that before you really see clearly where that's happening, how that's happening,

you'll put the wrench in the wrong place, probably. Absolutely. It's like, you know, you smell something burning in the house and then you go to something that isn't burning and pour water on it. Ha ha ha ha. You know? Yeah.

But I think one of the things we're trying to... That's amazing what you just said. Oh, thank you. We have to think about that one. Okay. Something's burning in your house and you're running around pouring water on the stuff that's not burning.

Yeah. Yes. And then you pretend to not smell it anymore. The thing you said to me yesterday, because I was, we were talking and I was saying, whenever I meditate, which is rarely, I always think, why don't I do this more often? Yeah.

And you asked me a question that was so brilliant, which was, well, what's the answer to that? And I had to pause for a second because I realized like, shit, what is the answer to that? That's a question I asked myself, but I don't answer. And then you said, what I find is that it's, there's some discomfort. There's some things that you start seeing

that aren't comfortable. And so it seems like, and I was thinking, yeah, that's clearly the answer, which is like, let's face it, man, when you're meditating, you aren't doing universe merging. You're like witnessing a lot of pain and a lot of confusion and a lot of just disjointed various levels of displeasure. So that's a pretty good reason to not do it.

Yeah. And I think maybe that's perhaps the reason some people don't do it. It is absolutely the reason that people don't do it or develop resistance to deepening their practice, but it's also, it can be not clear that that is part of the practice. So by including that, you change,

it's like you had a whole room in your house that you're not using, you haven't opened the doors to it. Right. The house is bigger than you think. Right. It includes all that stuff. Right. It's not like we have to get rid of that,

like call the dump truck, empty out that room, and now the house is good. You're allowing, and this is very compassionate, you're allowing yourself to be who you are. Yeah. As you are. And considering the whole thing workable. So we now have this not too tight, not too loose,

not too tight, not too loose touching go. We have these two things to refer to. And the three steps of the meditation. Take your seat, bring your attention to the breath, and when you notice your lost in thought, label thinking, come back to the breath. Okay, but let's, and this is probably a relevant question, but now that we're done meditating.

Oh, just some details. And I asked you this yesterday. Bell, no bell, incense, no incense. Do you set a timer? How do you do it? Do you set a timer? I just put my watch down and I look at it periodically too. And well, here's a good point.

When you practice, it's advised that you set a time that you're gonna practice for and stick to it. Right. In other words, you don't just sit down at the beginning and go like, I'll get up when I feel like it. Because you're gonna get to a certain difficulty and then you're just gonna sort of take that as your cue to leave.

Get the hell out. Yeah, like a relationship, you know what I mean? Yes. So say I'm gonna sit for 20 minutes and then sit for the 20 minutes. Get married to the 20 minutes. Get married to the 20 minutes, beautifully put. And it-

Does everybody know this as part of your present reality? It's floating out there now, I think. All right, so we're out now though, that's for sure. Yeah, for sure. But I wanna talk about the watch thing. Yeah. Because I've always thought that every time I look at a watch or every time I go out of the meditation

to look at this thing or that thing that I have actually ruined the meditation. Well, ruined the meditation. You just took a pause and looked at your watch, actually. That's okay. That's what you did. How did you ruin the meditation? You just took a pause and looked at your watch.

That's what happened. Because my idea of it has always been this strict, kind of like, I don't know, like this like almost like an endurance trial, which is if you look away from this point at all, forget it, man, you gotta start over again. Not too tight and not too loose. Cool.

It's too tight. Now, if you recognize that quality in yourself, set a timer. You know, use inside timer or whatever it is. No, I love this. I use inside timer, but usually right around the three minute mark, when there's three minutes left, I'll start looking over to see like,

how much fucking longer does this go on for? The most panic that anybody has in a meditation hall is when the timekeeper falls asleep. Does that happen? No. Now I'm here forever. Ha, ha, ha. Instant trip to the hell realms.

That's so funny. But yeah, you can do it. Look, you can do it either way. I think you'd start to develop a feeling of what 20 or 30 minutes feels like and then you look a couple of times. That's what I tend to do. But you could just set the timer.

That's really legitimate to set that inside timer and just leave the timing up to that. But it doesn't matter. God, I love it. That solved a huge problem in my understanding of this. And you don't, the bell and the incense, you can have whatever ornaments you want, but basically, the process is quite reductive.

So if you like incense, because it clears the kind of atmosphere in the room, it's fine. Some people these days are allergic to it. They don't use it. And I don't know what you'd use the bell for. I use the bell to time for other people. It gives you this feeling

that you're like some kind of like holy being. You're like, bang, I'm ringing my bell, man. I don't even have a bell. I just always think about that. But now one last question. You're done meditating. Now what do you do? Yeah.

You know, the mindfulness practice has a corollary. It has a formal practice. And really, I recommend to people, you really are gonna have a hard time cultivating this quality of mindfulness if you don't do some formal practice. It's possible, but really you've reduced your odds considerably. But that is to continue being mindful in everyday life.

Oh, okay. That's called post meditation practice. And you could even say it's a formal practice, like we're doing it right now. We're not formally sitting, but we are kind of keeping some sense of accountability for where our awareness is. That's right.

And the more you do the formal sitting, the easier it is gonna be to keep a thread of that going throughout the daily life. Gotcha. What I meant, now, and thank you for that answer, what I meant is directly after meditating. Like what I noticed today was I'm like, oh, okay, great, let's move.

And I got up and like, you know, is there some prayer or is there some? Oh, okay, I see. Well, now again, these practices are reduced from a much deeper well of practice because you could think, well, why am I meditating? What's my motivation for meditating? And you could think, well, I just wanna get more sane

and kind of clear and then we'll see what happens. But in the traditions that we come from, there's already the idea of maybe it's gonna be helpful to your friends too and other people. So in the beginning of certain formal practices, we do what's called arousing bodhicitta or kind of, you know, sympathetic heart. You know, you think about others.

And then at the end, you could do a little dedication to others, like may all beings be happy, you know. Will you say that, the entirety of that, how that goes? May all beings be happy, may all beings be, what is it? Free from suffering. Free from suffering. That's one, may all beings never be parted

from freedoms to joy, which is joy and then equanimity. May all beings, there's a number of different ways to say it, but free from attachment, aversion and ignorance. So the idea is that these come from different traditions. So, you know, you could get clear on, you could even write your own, you know. May all beings be happy and at their ease. So it's just you're wishing well.

You're, it's called dedicating the merit. Okay. So in other words, if there's any benefit that happened, it's not just for me, it's, I'm spreading it around. Love it. And that can really, you know, that can be a very beautiful thing to do. That's, I don't ask people who are new to the practice

to do something like that because it's already got a sort of Mahayana kind of flavor to it. What is, some people may be on no mind. You know, compassion and compassionate flavor to it. Well, wait a minute, am I doing this for other people? Now, first you're doing it for yourself. That's okay. Well, when you say may all beings,

then you are included in that category. But then you get into, as you know, with those more progressed practices like meta and loving kindness and things, you really start thinking about other people. Yeah. You know, as, and you even think about people you don't like.

Yeah. Right? So that's interesting. Yes. Well, that's the, yeah. I love all that, but you know, that is. It's another podcast. It's another podcast. It's another two million podcast, which I hope we have. So, and I'm already mentioned this

at the beginning of this. I just haven't done it yet. So I'm going to start studying with you and you are teaching in Los Angeles a meditation teacher training. That's right. A mindfulness meditation teacher training program. But the first, which is a hundred hour program

at Samarasah Center in Echo Park, LA. And the first weekend is June 8th to 10th. And then there's another introductory weekend in August. And then there's some level two and level three in the fall. Now, the level one is a basic introduction, just like what we've been talking to, to the whole Buddhist path and the topic of mindfulness and meditation as a whole.

It's like a survey. I call it a Disney, we go to Disneyland and we go to Buddha land. Okay. And I give you the whole tour. Great. So that's good to have a framework of where all this is coming from.

And it's of course also introduction to mindfulness and the path of meditation. So that can just be taken on its own. Will there be meditation during this training? Absolutely. Yeah, we always practice. And how? My lineage, we don't just talk.

Okay, cool. There's always practice. But you're just saying like, to me it seems so lofty to think, I'm taking a meditation teacher class. So you're just saying don't... No, the level one is a hybrid of the level one of the meditation teacher training

and also just on a standalone introduction to mindfulness and the path of meditation. So it can be just taken as a very good overview and introductory program. But why become a meditation teacher? Why do we need certification? What does all that mean? Yeah.

There's so strong an interest in mindfulness these days because it's been written up so much in the cover of Time Magazine. So so many people are curious about it. So my sense of it is that there are not a lot of people who are just trying to give a clear, cogent, precise definition of what that practice is. Right.

So for me it's like the Revolutionary War and the armies are coming and you gotta get some soldiers out in the field. Give them a musket and get them out into the field. So I feel it's very simple to learn mindfulness meditation. It is not a kind of deep, arcane, intricate thing and that people can learn how to do it in 100 hours and can learn how to teach to other people.

But it's not required. It's like you could take the training just to train yourself. No, I think it's beautiful what you just said. That is the reason is because it's like you learn how to teach this stuff because if you personally, for me it's just, how can that hurt? To have an actual, specific, precise framework

through which to talk about these things because so many people I run into are really interested in and what can I say? Because I will read this book or that book. Yes, and I feel confident saying that at the end of this 100 hour program you would be able to give a very simple, direct answer to what it is and how to do it.

And it's not science fiction. And this is also what I'm just learning from these brief lessons with you. I don't know that this is something you can learn from a book. This feels like you need a person to talk to and ask real basic, basic questions. Like what if there's a sock on the floor when I'm looking?

This is what you asked today? Yeah, that kind of stuff. So it does feel like this requires help to learn. The books can help you, it's like the map of Italy and going to Italy. Right. It's good to have a map of Italy. So this is how you go.

But now you're getting a guide. You're in Italy and you have a guide. So these classes are June? When are they going? June 8th to 10th in Los Angeles at the Samarasa. If you want to see it, you can go through the link through my website, davidnickturn.com. And it has, on my schedule, it has it there.

Or you can go to Samarasa, S-A-M-A-R-A-S-A center. You can go to their website. I'll have the links. And I'm going to be at the June one, you guys. If you want to come, begin meditation, training with me. Come to the June one. Maybe I'll do the, can you do both? Or is it just?

People often retake. Yeah. I'll probably have to retake. But I'm definitely doing the. But here's the thing, Duncan. It might be interesting just even in the context of that, maybe we could just have a little dialogue. I love it.

You could be like the kind of, you know, everybody has questions, but you know, have a space. There's a lot of time for dialogue. Great. It's an important part of it. And we don't spoon, you know, force feed. We're cultivating inquiry and cultivating what you and I called Prajna yesterday, you know, like discriminating mind.

Yes. So you rep, to me, if you, if this was a Buddha's original group, you would represent what I think Ananda represented. It's like. The confused man. Well, but with good questions. Ah, cool. Not Ananda.

It was, oh, I forget, one of the students was like had a really sharp, inquiring mind. Well, let's do it, man. I mean, I just love this, this field. What I really like about it is it is so, and I, so formal. And I like that it reminds me of swimming lessons or guitar lessons or when I learned how to kayak or those kinds of things. I really like it because it's just very grounded.

And I'm really enjoying it. And yeah, I'll see you in June for sure. Very good. Thank you so much for this. OK, thank you, Duncan. Thanks for listening, everybody, and much thanks to Simple Contacts for supporting this episode of the DTFH. Remember, you can go to simplecontacts.com forward slash

Duncan, use offer code Duncan, and you'll get $30 off your brand new contacts. Also, if you have the slightest interest in studying meditation and you want to get into it with me, why not come out June 8th through 10th? That's the one I'm going to be at to the Samsara Center in LA. But if you can't make it to that, come to the one on August 3rd through 5th.

And if you're in New York, there's going to be workshops on May 22nd and June 12th with David Nickturn. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. I'll see you next week with an interview with Mark Duplass. Until then, God bless you. Hare Krishna. It's Macy's friends and family.

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