Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 313: Alan Sacks

Episode Date: November 17, 2018

ALAN SACKS! Legendary producer and survivor of the 70s LA punk scene, joins the DTFH! This episode is brought to you by [American Hysteria](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/american-hysteria/id1441348407?mt=2), a new podcast from Skylark Media. This episode is also brought to you by Audible! Visit [audible.com/dtfh](http://www.audible.com/dtfh), or text DTFH to 500-500, to try Audible for free!

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. It's my 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. Greetings to you, sweet friends. It is I, Dee Tressel, and you are listening to the Duncan Tressel Family Hour podcast.

Now with premium sound. Some of you may not be aware of this, but a few years ago, I got into a pretty bad contract with a company called Xaethor Labs. You're probably familiar with their jingle, but if not, here it is to refresh your memory. Xaethor Lab. Xaethor Labs.

It was 1998. I was in Beijing. I was sitting across from a man in a velvet suit with a handlebar mustache. He was smoking a cigarette that smelled like moths playing tennis with moth balls. It was a very strange and interesting day, perhaps one of the most interesting days of my life.

I was sitting with Routarg Winder, the CEO of Xaethor Labs. I was in desperate need of money. I was wearing rags. I was in rough shape to put it mildly. I'd been on a mescaline bender. That and a few lime reedas had gone to the wrong part of my belly and it led me down a very dark path.

It was almost incomprehensible to imagine that my entire life had been transformed by simply opening an email. Two weeks prior, I had received this email from a woman in Beijing. Dear Duncan Trussell, you seem hot. I'm horny and full of fun. I love kinky stuff and want to party.

Will you come to Beijing with money so we can party? Let's fuck forever. Patricia Luna Lila. It was less than four hours later that I was sipping Jin on a one-way flight to Beijing. The Jin was doing nothing to abnegate the nervousness that flustered my brain. I kept going through a checklist in my mind.

Suitcase, check, cash, check. I had everything that she had requested. I kept thinking of this poem by Albert Camus. Zoo by Albert Camus. When a man journeys to a zoo, he does not see the colotype and chain of gold. That yanks him into cage. There in that place where chimchests

are laid bare with shavers and cream, chimp nipples a nipple of man, towers of loneliness. This perfect poem by Albert Camus perfectly describes what every new lover feels as they in plain ride across the planet to meet some new lips that their mouth will fall upon. I'm going to tell you what happened to me in Beijing and why I got into a contract with Zathor Labs

right after this. American Hysteria is a brand new podcast from Skylark and me, Chelsea Weber-Smith. It explores our moral panics, urban legends, and conspiracy theories. How they shape our psychology and culture and why we end up believing them. I'll cover moral panics like stranger danger,

satanic panic, and tinky-winkies homosexuality, urban legends like poison Halloween candy, and conspiracy theories like the Illuminati's secret plan for world domination. I was raised around a ton of wild conspiracy theories and I know how easy it can be to freak out over the sensational, the rare, and the untrue. I want to understand why we fear the wrong things

and how these fears shape our past, present, and future in sometimes devastating ways and also what these bizarre panics might be covering up. I promise to show you a good old time while I try to figure it all out. The first two episodes of American Hysteria drop November 12th. Head over and subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

I was met at the Beijing Airport by a strikingly beautiful woman named Patricia. As it turned out, she had seen some of the exercise videos that I'd been putting out. International Workout is what it was called at the time and she'd been attracted not only by my physique but by my training patterns. We spent the next five days passionately making love

and training together. But at the end of the fifth day, I woke to a sweat-soaked bed musky and pungent with the stink of our love-making and a gun firmly placed against my temple. This was the infamous Rutar Gwinder. Rutar Gwinder, the CEO of Zathor Labs. He kidnapped me, wrenched me out of the bed of my new lover

and forced me into a horrific contract where I agreed to produce podcasts with really bad sound quality. And two days ago, that contract expired. So now you can enjoy premium sound from the DTFH except for this interview because in this interview, I was still, and I guess some other interviews that I recorded previously

when I was still under the Zathor contract. But from this point forward, it's gonna be great sound. And thank you all for being so patient with the shitty sound quality of this podcast. It's been a real depressing thing to know that I have this pristine sound equipment and an expert level understanding of how to engineer audio.

And I haven't been able to use any of it because of a dumb contract I signed when I was a kid drunk on sex, gin, mescaline, and limeritas. We have got a fantastic podcast for you today. Alan Sacks is here with us. We're gonna jump right into it, but first some quick business. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by Audible.

How does anybody have time to sit around and read, to lay in your hammock and open a book and just relax? Come on, there's cleaning to do. Half of us are either hang gliding or lifting weights or climbing mountains. Some of us are hit men or hit women stalking a hit. And some of us are out there farming or painting or tap dancing or giving tap dancing lessons.

And there just isn't as much time as there used to be to sit with a book and read. This is why I love Audible. If I need to wash dishes or clean or if they're just driving to be done, I can actually enjoy a book simultaneously. Here's what I'm listening to right now on Audible. Cutting through spiritual materialism,

which is fantastically infuriatingly fantastic. It's by Chogyam Trumpa and it's narrated by John Baker. I'm listening to Hallelujah Anyway by Anne Lamott. I've got the New American Standard Bible on here though. I'm gonna admit I didn't spend as much time with it as I thought I would. The Ramayana, narrated by Ram Dass. How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan.

I have not read that, listened to that one yet. Calypso by David Sideris. I love Audible. I love having all these wonderful books being read to me by professional narrators. It's like being a kid all over again, only instead of your mom, your dad, who barely know how to read and you jump in that mess.

You've got an actual professional narrator reading books to you and it's just fantastic. Try them out. If you haven't tried them out yet, right now for a limited time, you can get three months of Audible for just $6.95 a month. That's more than half off the regular price. Give yourself the gift of listening

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to 500500 to get started. And again, right now for a limited time, you can get three months of Audible for just $6.95 a month. That's more than half off the regular price. Truly, truly, what a wonderful, wonderful thing. And my day when we wanted to get audio, any kind of recording of books, it was like ridiculously insanely expensive per book,

like 50 bucks, 40 bucks, a big fat set of CDs. Now you can just go online and get any book. And by the way, the Gunslinger, my God. If you wanna hear a well-read, well-narrated book, the Gunslinger, I think it's like the first three or the same narrator. I believe his name is Frank something, but I'm not sure about that.

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it is at Dunkin'Trussell.com. Okay, pals. Man, I gotta tell ya, this episode, this entire week I've been working, not just on the intro to this episode, maybe it's a little too long, I don't know, but on the sound equipment itself. Getting all this stuff wired in,

like I got an Apollo X6, it's a very nice bit of audio gear, but there is a lot more than just getting the gear. You've gotta dial stuff in, put the right stuff on it. I'm trying to learn this stuff. People go to graduate school to learn how to do this. So my apologies if the sound is not completely dialed in yet. I just want you to know I have heard your complaints

regarding the way the sound used to be, and I am working literally night and day trying to get everything dialed in so that I can offer a really great sound to you guys. I can't believe it took me so long to do it, but now I'm doing it, and hopefully pretty soon, it will just have that nice NPR sound to it. But until then, let me know.

Give me feedback. I am really interested in figuring out how to refine the sound on the podcast. And I love you guys, and I want you to not have to deal with the weird cognitive dissonance that comes from wondering how the fuck can somebody with a podcast not have good sound? What's he thinking?

Is he out of his gourd? Today's guest is so fucking cool. I'm so lucky to have met him. A big thanks to Martin Olson for introducing me. Alan Sacks is a producer, an artist. He made a show that was a big hit when I was growing up called Welcome Back Cotter, and he also made a show called Chico and the Man,

and he also made a bunch of other great shows, but he was also, he is a punk, and he was in the punk scene, and this is a human who has so many cool stories about living in LA through the 70s and the 80s up until today that we are gonna do many, many more podcasts together. He's a new friend of mine, he's really inspiring to me, not just because of his amazing stories,

but also because he is a practitioner of Nima Buddhism. I think that's the right way to say it. And he's, I don't know, he's just, you'll see. Why am I even telling you what he's like? You're about to hear him. He's a wonderful person who has soon to have a really great podcast coming out himself. You'll hear more about this during this episode.

So now, without further ado, everybody, please welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour Podcast, Alan Sacks. Also, unfortunately, or fortunately, is part of working on the sound. I got a brand new computer, so I'm missing some files I usually work with, meaning I don't have the theme song.

So this is gonna be theme song free, or I'm just gonna play some guitar chords as a theme song. Why am I even telling you this? I could have just jumped into that episode. ["Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour Podcast"] Dogs are barking at the moon. This guitar is out of tune. Now they're howlin', not just at the big ball in the sky.

There's screaming, because I'm singin', and that's no lie. It's the DTFH, it's the DTFH. Shit, has nothing to do with it. Yeah, that's for you recording your music. That's for me being high and wanting to dial in aliens. What the fuck did I hear? Oh, no, it was you I heard the other night.

Did you just do something with aliens? Yeah, you sent this on your show. With aliens? Yeah, who? A channeler, the Paul Selig one? No, I heard that, too. Oh, yeah, the alien thing, yeah. Some guy, fuck, was doing that.

Maybe it was Selig, I don't know. But it was very recently, and you sent out some signal. Oh, yeah, that's right. What show was that? Oh, yeah, that's the last episode, man. Yeah, what was that? I started listening to that. And you played some alien stuff at the beginning.

I did. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, to me, the reason for doing a podcast, even though it's wonderful, I mean, it's like the best thing in my life to be able to have a job like this. But that's secondary. To me, what's incredible about it

is when I find myself sitting across from people like you. And it gives me goosebumps to imagine that you're listening to my podcast, and it really does blow my mind. I'm listening to every one, man. And this is before I knew you. I told you that. Every one.

I look for the Duncan Tressel family hour. Yeah, when Martin reached out to me, it was just a very odd moment, you know? Because I know it was ages ago. But welcome back, man. That made an imprint on me. That was a series of show. I still have the theme song in my head.

Uh-huh, uh-huh. Welcome back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It did it burn. What do you call it? It burned something in your brain, you know? A brain worm or something?

Or a sound worm? A meme. A meme? Is that what it is? I don't know. No, no, no. But it burns into your head. Absolutely.

And so then when we were hanging out and I realized the strange connections we have. You're connected to Ram Dass. Oh, yeah. And Buddhism. Yeah. And all in the comedy store in the 70s. They don't even belong together.

Good luck then. It's very, very, very odd. And so then that's why I realized this is like, the dream guest for this podcast. Oh, I love that. Thank you so much. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Duncan.

It's very exciting. I love it. But equally, you know, it's like you're playing ping-pong. You need somebody that's good opposite you. I don't play ping-pong. But that's, you know, that's great. Yeah, man. That's great, man.

I appreciate that. I was thinking if I, I would tell you how I met Ram Dass. That'd be awesome. And I was invited to an event in Beverly Hills. It was a dinner party, small, maybe 20-some-odd people for Jerry Brown. Wow. He was running for governor.

No shit. And Ram Dass was there. Wow. What year was this? I was trying to think. So I'll tell you, about 74. Wow. Before you even thinking about incarnating on this planet.

April 20th. I incarnated on April 20th, so I could have been here already. I don't know. Yeah. So I was there. And there was Ram Dass. And it just blew my mind. I probably, one of the few that knew who he was.

Because I had known Timothy Leary. And so. But this was post-Majoraji Ram Dass. This was Be Your Now Ram Dass, right? Like, he came back. Yeah, he had just come back. This was the, maybe came back a month ago, man. This was, he had just written Be Your Now.

That was taking, that was like hitting everybody of my generation. We finally had, holy shit, man. What is he writing about? This is amazing. And it's like a picture book. It's so easy to read. You know, so it was Guru Maharaji.

And so he asked me what I did. And I said, I'm producing a television show called Chico and the Man. It hadn't gone on the air yet. It was in the summertime. It hadn't gone on the air yet. But they were running the promos. And he said, you know, with that Puerto Rican kid

who goes up and down, I had a head that, remember Freddy's joke where he had, like he was one of those balls in the back of a car? Ram Dass did that. So I said to him, holy shit, you know, you know that comedian? He said, he looked at me and said, do you think I live in a cave?

Wow. And it was great, man. That's so cool. It was really cool. Was he, that is wild. That is like, you know, Ram Dass has had all these different phases. Yeah.

And fresh back from India, Ram Dass. That's the long haired Ram Dass, like the glow, like the, you know, still probably still taking LSD, Ram Dass, you know? Not sure. Not sure. Not sure. I don't remember what he said in that book, but could have

been, could have been taking little micro doses. I know he was probably smoking. Yeah. You know, but I don't know, but, but it was amazing to be with him. And it changed my life that moment, you know, to be near Ram Dass was something else. How do you, when you say change your life,

what do you mean? Like how? Well, I kept staying there. I was into, I was looking for a teacher at that time. I didn't know where, there was so many different things to 70s in LA, the mid 70s around this time was nuts. You didn't know where to, it was like your show, man. You didn't know who to listen to.

You know, it was all coming at you like, and, and that's why I love your show so much. Thank you. Because it's still just, you're exposing me to shit that I just, it blows my mind. Wow, man. Duncan, I'm telling you, you know, it blows me out of the water. Yeah.

Well, me too. I mean, this for me is just like a trap for gurus. You know, I get these like beings and they, they like, I get to sit with them and they, they, they blow, they, they blow my mind too. I, that's just what, what, what has happened. Like if your mind's being blown, my mind's being blown. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I realized that and that I'm saying, wow, that's really a blessing that you be, you get to do that. But you're also doing something really important that you are putting these people, you're introducing these people to the world, to a lot of people, you know, there was people you, you have on your show that I never even heard of, what's his name, Lucian Gray, Lucian Graves.

Oh, sure. I never heard of that. Temple of Satan. Yeah. Yeah. And how about today I get, I get an email, a text message that's, you know, just because you're interested, it says, the temple of Satan is suing Netflix.

So, and at the same time, the town of paradise is fucking on fire. I mean, what kind of letters is going on, man? You know, my guess is there's no correlation. No, but I did see a very sad, somebody tweeted this very sad thing to me. I don't know how I ended up on the tweet on the, you know, sometimes you end up on these tweet chains. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're at, and this guy tweeted this very sad tweet. As a pastor, you know, I, I think, I try not to just tell people about abundance, but the reality of hell. And now seeing what's happening was like four images. One of them, the satanic temple in some kind of march. Another one, I don't know, some dude who would like apparently like implanted something in his forehead and then something that looks awesome, which I'll never get to go to, unfortunately,

which is in Columbia. Someone's opened up some church to Satan, but it looks like Stanley Kubrick really designed the interior. You know, it's like really, really cool. Like it's definitely not. It's really funny and really cool. It's got that carny feeling. I love it.

I love it. Sometimes has attached to it, you know, what's your take on Satan? What do you think about Satanism? What's your feelings about it? It's, you know, it's like, I think it's very close to Buddhism. That's, you know, I saw that in and I started to read Damien's book. Oh, yeah.

And, you know, he talks about being a Zen practitioner through sitting, you know, sitting there and, you know, doing visualizations. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, he doesn't. He does he self identify as a Satanist? I have to go a little deeper than on that. I'm not sure. Hey, guys, I got a message from Alan this morning.

You want to clarify something regarding this question that I asked him? It's actually a dumb question. Because I was sort of halfway through Damien's book and isn't at all a Satanist. There's nothing in there about that at all. But yet I asked the question and I was done on my part. Anyway, Alan sent this awesome voice memo to me to answer the question. So, Duncan, you asked me, does Damien identify as a Satanist? And I said, I don't know.

I have to go a little deeper. But in thinking about it, listening to the podcast and in retrospect, that wasn't the answer. I know in my heart, Damien is absolutely not a Satanist. He's a magician. He's an amazing visualizer, a meditator and a teacher. OK, thanks, Duncan. Let's wrap this weird interruption up with a quote from the notorious Mark Twain. I have always felt friendly towards Satan.

Of course, that is ancestral. It must be in the blood for I could not have originated it. That's the autobiography of the blasphemer himself, Mark Twain, not back to the podcast. Hail Satan, just kidding. There's a lot of problems when it comes to like practicing what is, you know, what people call magic or whatever, which is really just like a kind of religion or a kind of practice that I think I guess it kind of reminds me of the Aghoris in India. You know, the I don't know the Shyvites.

They worship Shiva. They do magic. You know, kind of reminds me that to some degree. But, you know, we had this whole beautiful, magical, religious, spiritual tradition here in the United States and in Europe that got like wiped out. It got wiped out by, you know, people calling themselves Christians. And that's real. That's not some conspiracy theory.

They're burning them alive and they're killing them and cutting their heads off and going into their groves and desecrating the crowd. They're basically, I think you could say they were doing what the thing that is currently happening to the Tibetans or has happened to the Tibetans with the invasion of China happened to an entirely different religion, except that religion got mostly just wiped off the map. So now what now what's going on is like we have these people who see a goat and they're like, that's the devil, it's the devil, the goat in the hoofs and no one

even spends any amount of time asking themselves, why are goats considered evil? Is there a less evil? I mean, like if I had to like bees are more evil than goats, little tiny heads. They're like lambs. Yeah, they're like lambs with weird eyes. Yeah. The but Kenneth Anger told me that look at the cover of Goatshead Soup. And what's Goatshead Soup?

Oh, it's a Rolling Stones album. OK, it's a Rolling Stones. That's great. I think you like chicken soup or the snow. No, no, no, no, no. And it's a weekly. It's a picture of it's a picture of I think it's Mick Jagger sort of with a goat. Like on his face and he's got like menstrual blood on his mouth.

Yeah, wiping it off. Kenneth said that's scaring people. Yeah, yeah. So think of that. So here, like imagine if like he'd had a bee superimposed over his head and his face was covered in like just like the dripping love juice of whoever's pussy was licking. That's what that's what that was.

Yeah. You know, if that had happened, everybody like, cool, man, he's like a hornet bee. But like you could put a goat and menstrual blood. One is like the prerequisite for one of my favorite dishes, goat cheese, at least on salads. The other is a prerequisite for life to happen on the fucking planet. And you put those over his face and everybody's like, he's at a league with Lucifer. You know, it's ridiculous. The symbology is not diabolical at all.

I don't know where it comes from. Well, I think it comes from. I think there's like a mischievous, carny, coyote sense. Wouldn't you say like whenever I've met whenever I've met these these Satanists in general, there's a trickster sense to them. Absolutely. Well, Ramdas calls it. He calls them rascals. Yeah.

Is that his word to use? That's right. He used to use that word. Yeah. He said, I'm around. He called Christian Dasarascal. You know, have you heard the the Anton Leve podcast? No, no, not him, not him, but they're doing his bio in a podcast on cults.

Oh, cool. And he was he was a carny. I know he was definitely a carny. And he was funny. Did you ever meet him? No. How'd you meet Kenneth Anger? Can you, first of all, this describe to the to the listeners who Kenneth Anger is? I just say no, because they might not know. Kenneth Anger is like one of the foremost

independent film directors in the world. I mean, he's made movies that he's revered by in the 60s. And now today, the current prop of, you know, millennials are freaking out over Kenneth Anger. Yeah. But he was also he was a I guess he was a practicing satanist. Wasn't he more? I mean, I do. What's that dude on his chest? What's that thing? Satan. Oh, Lucifer Lucifer.

What does that mean? What? What does that mean? That Lucifer Lucifer is on his chest. Yeah. Yeah. You know, a big nice one, goth lettering. And yeah. And so he has that. He also has a jacket, a satan jacket that says Lucifer on the back. Oh, yeah. That that my daughter is dying for.

It's like a thousand dollars. I'm saying you got to relax on that, Sim. I'll get you that for Christmas. We'll see. What do you mean, he still makes him and sells him? Yeah. On his website. No shit. Yeah. No, those are cool. It's cool. It's cool. It's really beautiful jacket.

Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. I know. But and it's written. It's just it's embroidered. It's very nice, very nice, very classy. Yeah. And so, yeah. So I met Kenneth. I met so many people in the same way you do through what I do in the entertainment industry as a producer.

I wanted to produce Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth's book, as a movie. And I tracked him down. And and that that was that began our relationship. And I worked with him on that for like two years. I did that with Leary. That's how I met Leary. I wanted to do a a sitcom like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a serialized version of family living on

a space was it called the space station when Leary was doing his, you know, his home aliens, you know, going from planet to planet, traveling in the stars. And that's how I met Leary. I met him at Dantanas. That is so wild. Yeah. But I want to jump to Leary. But let's stay on Kenneth Enger. Yeah. Yeah.

This isn't also the sense when you when you when we were hanging out for the first time. I thought, my God, like this is like a thousand hours of conversation. Potentially. Yeah. Yeah. Because I can't just jump. Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry. I think or sorry to to to Leary that quick, man, because I think there's something that just, you know, one of the things that really bugs me a lot right now

is like and that, for one, like, because I've had Satanists or the head of the Temple of Satan on my podcast or that, you know, the new incarnation of it. Well, you know, that that was the former. There's the Lucian Lucian, yeah. But that's the Temple of Satan as opposed to the Satanic Temple. There, too. Yeah. Wait, which Anton Levé was the Satanic Temple.

That's so confusing. And Lucian is the Temple of Satan, the Temple of Satan. Yeah, he reversed it. Yeah. But there are two, you know, communities of Satanist. Yeah. Yeah. And so one thing that really bothers me, I don't mind being lumped in with Satanists at all. Like, that doesn't bother me at all. I'm not a Satanist. I don't identify as a Satanist.

But my my encounters with Satanists throughout my life has always been mostly good, you know, it's like. And if it's been bad, it's only been bad because of my own, like, how would you say, inability to discipline myself? Because they got great drugs. Some of them. I'm having dinner with one of them tonight. But in general, I find them to be like really ethical and moral.

And I find them to be intelligent and intelligent. It was probably that I sent you a. You picked up a transmission from me. And and that was I was thinking before coming here. Do I want to talk to you about Joey Diaz and Naropa? Or do I want to talk about this thing? Or talk about Buddhism, man. Like, that's the thing that blew my mind.

I mean, everything. Like, yeah, because you're just so deeply intertwined with so many things that I love. It's likewise. What do we pick from? Yeah. You know what I mean? But this will be part one. OK, great. Yeah, you know, and it's right. And it's exactly.

And it's this this woman who's this executive at Stitcher who said, do you know, Duncan? She came in when I was doing a recording over there. And she said, do you know, Duncan Tressel? I said, no, who's that? She said, check out his podcast. Cool. It blew my fucking mind. Awesome. And I couldn't stop listening to you.

So cool. Yeah. I've gone back and into to Joey Diaz's podcast of five years ago. Digging deep into it, you know. I love Joey Diaz because, like, you know, Buddhists and I identify as a Buddhist, so Buddhists like me. We talk about it a lot. Yeah, the levels of it, the noble truths,

the what you call the perfections, the parameters, this and that and this and that. Perfections, right? Yeah. Meanwhile, you know, as far as like a living practice, you know, I don't know. I don't know how I'm doing there, you know, but someone like Joey Diaz. I think you're doing fucking good, man.

Thank you, brother. Really good. But Joey Diaz, you run into him. And he doesn't really talk about Buddhism. It reminds me of what Jack Kornfield said to me. He said, we don't want you to be a Buddhist. We want you to be the Buddha. Oh, that's good. That's good. Yeah.

Well, I think you are an important part of what's going on in in the Dharma in the West right now with your show. I really believe that. What is going on? Well, first of all, do you think for people listening, you could talk a little bit about what the Dharma means, what the Dharma is, even because maybe people listening don't aren't clear on what that term is.

But I want to just back it up a little bit because I was thinking about some of the things that I've been pondering. And one of those is I've had a lot of Buddhist teachers over the years, a lot of, you know, Rinpoche's and Guru's and. There's scandals. You tell me about this. You said it. I was talking to you about my my third ex-wife or something

and that she she got involved in Shambhala. Yeah. And then you said, oh, she involved in the scandal. Yeah. And so so I went to look this up. Yeah. And it turns out. She is the secretary of the wife of Trunk Pasan, whatever his what is his name? I don't know. I don't know.

Yeah, that's it. She she's his wife's secretary. So she's like right in there in the inner circle. Jesus Christ, what you have to say? I didn't call her. I haven't called her. But I might, you know, I don't know. This thing, when you see that man, when you see like this kind of like sort of flying apart, that's happening in that way, you know,

which is not just there. It's like, you know, those women talk to the Dalai Lama about this. And like you go back and like, you know, if you look at like Buddha, the Buddhist history with women in general and the misogyny and the patriarchy and the like complete dismissal of women. Yeah. Yeah. It's being like a road bump. Yeah.

Basically a kind of just a road bump to realization, like something you just got to like look out for women. You can't. Yeah. I've right now. Two women are my main spiritual teachers. Who are these? You wouldn't, they're two. One is a former nun.

She was ordained for set 27 years and gave back her robes. Her name is Tenzin Katcho. And another one is called Lobsang Dreamay, who is who is still a a teacher. She's amazing. Is this Ningma? No, they're part of Mahayana. They're part of the FPMT. What is the FPMT?

The Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Buddhism. Oh, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Acronyms don't. Yeah. Yeah. So she is she's the director of a place called the Land of Medicine Buddha. And and when I got sick, I picked up through Ningma, I picked up a medicine Buddha. I called up there.

I called up to talk to Tarthang Tolco, who is the head cash. Yeah. Who's got some some stories around him, too, that, you know, people question. And I called him and he said he introduced me to the the tanka, the deity of the medicine Buddha, Guru Medicine Buddha. And I wanted to delve a little deeper into it. And I found that there was up in Northern California, a retreat that was going to happen on the medicine Buddha.

And I went up there and this none venerable Dremay was teaching it. And that saved my life, man. You mean literally saved my life. It cured you. It cured me. What were you sick with? I cancer. Which kind?

Bad kind. I had it was it was a variation of lymphoma. And it was called mantle cell lymphoma. Jesus. That put me to the edge of the fucking world. And I would go in. I went for nine months of chemo. And I would go in to Cedars every other week to stay there for four days to get an infusion.

And I would go in with my tankas and my mantras and my underground comic books. And I would sit there for four days with my beads. And it was fucking incredible. And in addition to the chemo and a good doctor and my wife, all that should save my life. That was 18 years ago. And I put that away. Thank you. It's great.

Yeah. And I never talk about it. I don't want to talk about it because I don't want it to be to stigmatize me in any way. But now I'm in a position that it's so far and back of me. And if somebody has a problem out there, medicine Buddha is the way. And it's being taught by a teacher. And he's one of the only gurus I know in in Buddhism right now. That it's not involved in any sort of scandal.

Oh, that's that's the Dalai Lama is one of them. And there are so many others that are just like, oh, are you kidding me? So I said, and I was going to answer you the question, answer the question. What is the Dharma? The Dharma is the work, the teachings of the Buddha. It's the teachings that Buddha gave after he sat under the Bodhi tree and woke, came out of the meditation and he taught for several, I don't know, several months. And he was developing the Sangha.

The Sangha is the group that studied with the Buddha. And he talks about the turning of the wheel, the turning of the wheel of the Dharma. That's the teaching. And so that's what I was getting. And this teacher is named Lama Zopa Rinpoche. He came here in 7070. That's when the wave of these Buddhists came. These Rinpoches came to the West.

What is that? Why did that? Did that was that planned out? I don't I don't know, man. I really don't know. I think it was. I think maybe his holiness or the Karmapa came then and and his holiness hadn't come yet. But I could very well have been.

But there's a whole wave. They all came out of Tibet. They escaped Tibet. They went to Damsala. And then they started coming to the United States. So I got to find that. I'm going to get the answer to that. It was we got when we didn't just get them.

We also got Ramdas. You know, we got like it. There was this like incredible infusion of Eastern mysticism and philosophy in the Dharma. That injected itself into mainstream culture in the United States. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. And it intertwined weirdly with this like wave of like comedy. True.

True. Because I didn't know that. It's absolutely true. I don't know why. I don't know how Gary Shanling and the whole documentary. I didn't see that documentary. Gary Shanling studied with Tik Nakhon. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. He worked with me on Welcome Back. Holy shit. Yeah. And I have no idea that he was, you know, practicing. He was doing it a long time. Yes, he was.

He was, you know, it was important to his existence too. Well, I mean, it is. I mean, to me, it's like as a fellow cancer survivor and but not quite so bad. Just had one of my balls snipped off and got some radiation, but still fucking scary. And still makes you sick and still teaches you something. You know, the great teaching, the great, great teaching. That's what it was for me. Yeah.

Impermanence. That's it. Impermanence. Yeah. Because you do. I mean, I remember like walking around before that and really toying with the idea. You know, maybe maybe this is like some kind of dream and maybe I'm immortal. I like maybe like, but they're going to like, I'm not going to die.

Maybe I'm not one who doesn't get sick. You know, you hear like all these people. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know that. And I really believe it. I didn't believe it. Believe it. But it just kind of the sense of like, you know, people get sick. My mom got sick, but not me.

And then it was not me. You know, yeah. And that's that's one of the things the Buddha saw, of course, you know, prior to leaving his opulent life, he saw a dying, you know, he went out into the street and he saw he saw people dying. He didn't even know what that was. His parents were protecting him. Yeah.

And he saw he saw pain. He saw suffering. Yeah. He saw suffering. And so I had no idea, but I did it. My sister says to me, I went to the edge of the Circus of Horus. I woke up one night in fucking intensive care and the guy next to me couldn't take it anymore. And he pulled out his tubes and he was flapping around like a fish on the floor up and down

and they put the sirens on and shit. Yeah. It was like, whoa, I never forget that moment. I have PSTT from that shit. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Yeah. It sticks with me, you know.

And so going back, my thought was there's some we're jumping all over the place, but my thought was that there are so many of these teachers that are taking advantage of students of women, of the me too stuff. Yeah. That what am I going to do, you know? And what I was going to do, it's just last night, I got to stay with the Dharma. That doesn't mean the teachings aren't good. What it means is I just got to find the right teacher.

Right. You know, and that's where it's at for me. I love the, I love the Dharma. I love the Buddha. I love the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama has performed miracles for me. I mean fucking miracles. I saw it.

Oh yeah, man. I've been around. I saw it, man. I don't think, you know, weirdly with Buddhism or like kind of the neophyte phase I'm at right now. No, you're not. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. But you know what I mean in the sense of like, one of the things I love that Trumpa said is,

you know, it's good to kind of like when you're starting off just realize, oh we're absolute fools. So we have something to work from, you know, because if we're going to start off from a different spot, when I go to college, when I went to college, I needed this attitude of like, I don't know this yet. Because if I knew it, I wouldn't need to go to college. You know, and that's good. You know, with all things like that, you know. Where did you go to school?

Warren Wilson. It's liberal liberal arts. It's a great school, man. North Carolina. It's one of the schools my daughter was thinking about going to. Oh, it's great. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great, great, great, great.

Great fucking school. They taught you how to garden and grow things. I mean, one of my favorite professors there, I remember sitting down for the first day of class and like, you know, this is like a super liberal arts school. Like we sat down under a tree and the first lecture he gave was just drop out. Guys, like, this is a mistake. And he's like, trust me, it's better for you to spend this money on travel. I would say I taught also, and I would say that to the students too.

And they wanted to go to film school. I was like, there's a fucking waste of time. You're on it. I mean, that's the best. And I remember sitting there and he goes, this is like one of the great teachings I got my life. Wow. As he goes up, here's the way it works.

Right now, life seems kind of slow to you. You know when you're speeding up on a street and the telephone poles start going by? He's like, that's what's going to happen to you. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And so don't really, you shouldn't be here right now. Like just go, go to India is what he said.

And then he goes, like, I know you think you can't go to India. I know you think you don't have enough money or you can't figure out a way to do it, but you can figure it out. So just drop out of school now and go to India. That's the best. But so it's, but to get back to the point of hand here, in a weird way, like my sense in talking about Buddhism, even though I yap about it too much, is a feeling like, man, I don't want to spoil it.

Like the way I don't want to talk about Westworld or something. The way I don't want to talk about a great show or something. Because there, I think there are things that when I was like learning about Buddhism in the beginning or when I had an idea of Buddhism, you know, actually the first time I heard about Buddhism, I was with my friend Emil on acid at Warren Wilson. And I'm tripping and it's cold and we're sitting outside in the cold. I'm in my jacket shivering and he's like, Duncan, listen to this, listen to this, listen to this.

Life is suffering. And I was like, oh, weird. He goes, that's called dukkha. And he goes, you know, and the cause of suffering is attachment. That's, I think it's called tanha, I think is the second one. I can't remember the names get mixed up. And I remember him, I'm tripping and I'm like, whoa, I think I said to him or I thought, what is this?

Some kind of Eskimo religion or something? Like that's because I was cold. But he goes, that's Buddhism. And I was like, what the fuck? Holy shit. Holy shit. Yeah. That's crazy.

Because, you know, when we talk about the teachers in particular and the problems that we're experiencing right now, which are very sad, very problematic for a lot of different reasons. You know, number one, it's hurting people who trusted power dynamics, all of it. And then on top of that, there's like an additional problem, which is doesn't the dharma heal? Doesn't the dharma shift and transform? And if the dharma is truly transformative, then what, how did you rationalize this type of aggression? I don't know the answers to these questions at all. But what's cool about Buddhism is regardless of the, the, these things that are happening

and probably have happened again and again and just haven't been documented. I don't know. We have a very scientific systematic approach to suffering. That's what I was going to say. And the healing. And the healing. Yeah. There is like, though, we do need the teachers.

We have to, it's a fundamental component from my own experience. You can't do it on your own. No way. You could, you can have all the books in the world, but you still need to have a teacher to help you. You have to. I think that's what, that's what I understand. Yeah. Yeah.

And I mean, it's kind of a little bit like if you're going to do the Olympic torch thing, unfortunately, you need people to pass the torch to in the passing of this dharma. One component of his knowledge, but there seems to be another component, right? Oh, I think there is. I think there's, I think there's something that I have no idea what it is, but it's some sort of transmission that I've received over the years. I think I've received it through the Kamapa. I've received it from Tothank Toku, the first time I ever met him,

first time I ever met a Buddhist teacher. He looked at me and said, what do you do? I said, I'm a producer in LA. He said, ah, you work for me in Los Angeles. So I went out to my wife and I said, he's telling me I'm going to work for him. No fucking way. Next thing I know, I'm helping him distribute his books at the Bodhi tree. I'm like schlepping books.

I've turned, we had a guest house. I turned the room into, into a meditation center where people could walk in, you know? Yeah, man. So, um, man makes plans. God laughs. Yeah. And my, my teacher, you know, he has a similar story. My teacher's a, he's, I think he's won Grammys.

Oh, David Nectar. Yeah. Yeah. He's a great music, great, great musician. I'm going to try to come to the November 16th night. I want to see that. I want to see that. He smashed into Chogym Trumper Rinpoche, you know, and like this happens.

You run into these people and it doesn't, it's like, that's the funniest thing about it is like you cross paths with Ram Dass. You cross paths with these teachers and like you said, oh, I was just at a dinner party with him and then my life, something happened, something happened, which is why I asked you, what do you think that is? And that brings us to what you're talking about now. Which is the transmission. Yeah.

Dharma transmission, as it's called. What is that? Is this a, what, what is it? Is it magic? Is it an energy? I can't, I can't answer that question specifically. I could just tell you from experiences that I've had, that I was talking to a friend of mine before I came, I'm sorry, Duncan, that, that was New Yorker with my hands moving all over the joint.

That, that came, I sent him an email. I said, Nicholas, I really would like to talk to you. There are a few things I want to discuss. And he emails me back. He said, this is really amazing. I'm in Los Angeles. He lives in Europe. I'm in Los Angeles today.

What are you doing? You know, so, and I said, well, I guess you picked up my, my message, you know, from a transmission. He said, we don't even need to have phones, you know, you and I talked about that the other day. Yeah. So that's what it is. I don't know what it is, Duncan. I don't know. All I know is that some weird things that happened to me since I've been around Buddhism.

And that's 40 years. The other night I had a dream and the, the dream was it was really intense. I was looking at my computer screen and all I saw, I didn't see myself, but I saw the screen. I saw an email and the email was from you saying, I have to switch our appointment today. And I said, oh, fuck, man, something must have come up. I'm really sorry. This is my dream. Yeah.

And then I woke up like three hours later and I said, I better check my emails and it wasn't. There was no email. It was just in my dream. I dreamt an email from you. Yeah. And so I don't know what that means, but that was certainly. Was this when I canceled on you? No, no.

This was last night. Okay. This is my anxiety about wanting to be here that I'm dreaming your emails in front of me. The weird thing that happened when I met you, which was really kind of mind blowing to me is, so I'd been, you know, I've been studying, I keep saying this. I don't know why I keep saying it. So I've been studying Buddhism with Nick Turn and, you know, his teachers took him Trumpa. So I'm going Kagu Buddhism.

And then within that, suddenly Nyingma, is that how you pronounce it? Yeah. Yeah. Nyingma Buddhism pops up. And then I'm just Googling that. I don't, you know, I still, from my research, I didn't really understand much of what it meant. But then the next day I meet you and you're like, oh, I practice Nyingma Buddhism, which is the second time in my life I've even heard of.

You know, there's something it's called Rime, R-I-M-E, and it's mixing different schools. Okay. It's being open to the different schools. You can ask Nick Turn about that. Okay. And I believe like Lamasurya Das. Sure. He studied, studies Buddhism, studies Nyingma and Kagu, what's the, uh,

Kagu. Kagu. And he was a student of the Kamapa. Okay. And so he had a combination of both. That guy got me good. And I thought, I thought you mentioning the Nyingma because of him, that you might have met him. No, I didn't know he practiced Nyingma.

He got me. He got me. And they get you. That's the other thing about Buddhists. They get you. You know, not in a bad way, but they, you do forget. And that these, you know, this is a llama. He's heavy.

So like, but he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt. I know. So he's like, get this Buddhist, you know, rather, uh, the Ram Dass retreat. And I've been up there doing these interviews and I've been like putting on the show where I've been trying to act like I'm skeptical, but I'd started at that time to not really be skeptical anymore, but I felt like it was cooler to seem skeptical. Um, so I was just trying to, you know, uh, it was, it was not truthful, you know, because I'd already been experiencing this love, like this opening and like,

but it was, this was early on still for me, you know, I'm still scared. Sometimes I do get skeptical to this day when I was putting on the show, you know, skepticism or something, trying to be cool. So, um, he comes up to me. It's the last day. It was perfect timing too. You know, he like really gave it to me on the last day and, you know, and skillful means they talk about these, I think it's, what is it for skillful means?

One of them is, um, the sword is like cutting. Cutting. Yeah. Cutting. And then there's some other ones, you know, including there's ways of doing it, but he just, he did the right thing. I think, uh, I'll never forget it though. My jurisdiction holds the sword of knowledge that he, I think that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So cutting through the bullshit, as they say here, cutting through spiritual materialism. Yeah. Yeah. As, uh, Chogan Trump wrote, but anyway, he, uh, I remember like, he came up to me in a freaking Hawaiian shirt, you know, so that I, and I'm not saying,

like, he's just wearing it around the retreat. You see him, he's somebody like, you think like, this is a guy who's going to be giving you like burgers at a barbecue or something, man. Like he, he just is like, you don't realize this guy's trained for a long time. For years, years. Yeah. He studied a long time, still studying. Yeah.

And teachers, you know, so when he's teaching, you're studying. Teaching. And he goes, Hey, can I do, can I talk to you for just a quick second? Yeah. I'm like, sure we're talking. And he's like, you know, just might give you a little bit of, uh, criticism respectfully. He said, in a really cool way. I was completely, all my defenses were down.

I'm like, Oh yeah, sure. Well, sure. He goes, you know that, uh, that thing you're doing where you, you know, you act skeptical. He's like, that in like 20 years or 10 years, he's like, that's going to be the same thing as saying groovy all the time. That's great. He's not going to age well. Fashionable cynicism isn't going to age well, man.

And then he's like, also, you know, if you, uh, by pretending you don't, I can't remember how he said it. He said it in a really cool way and he said it in a sweet way. The way I say it sounds sinister, but the way he did it was so sweet and bubbly. He's like, you know, also that kind of like, I can't remember. So forgive me. Uh, students of llamas, psoriasis, llamas, psoriasis, I mean, no disrespect. I just, it's been a bit of time, but he said something along the lines of, uh, you know,

that kind of deception, you didn't even use those words. He said them very sweet way. He's that kind of thinking kill you. You know, you could kind of rip you apart from the inside. He didn't say it like that, but that's, I knew he was right. You can't fucking parade around. You can't do phony picked it up, huh? Yeah.

And it was awesome. And then he was like, okay, well, you know, and he left and I'm sitting there having been essentially flayed by a llama in the sweetest way, you know, and then the, and truly the most compassionate thing you could have done was that it was great. Wow. Yeah. It's great. But that's, does he know that?

Have you told him that? I don't think I've ever told him that. I'll never talk to him again after he said that shit to me. What was he thinking? When I saw, he's an interesting cat. When I saw him, we were at a talk of his holiness, his holiness talk somewhere. I forget where it was in New York. And at the break, we both got up and we would walk.

I didn't know him. We were walking. I knew he was and we walked by and he looked at me and said, how do you like that? That was pretty funny. He does these like dad jokes. Then he said, yeah. And then he said, where did you go to college? Was it in Queens or in Brooklyn on Jewish, you know, enclaves, you know?

He, these Buddhists, man, like that's the thing. It's not what you think it is. Number one, right? Like probably, and if you haven't done any practice or you haven't spent any time with it, it might not be anything that you think it is. Like you see, you think like, what did you think Buddhism was when you first heard about it without knowing anything about it? Did you have any sense of what it was?

No idea. I had no idea. I didn't know what I was standing on the ocean in a kaftan with psilocybin with Larry Hagman working on a comedy. I was producing a show that he was. So you're asking how does, you know, the comedy blend in? I was with Larry on a Sunday. Larry's Sundays.

Larry Hagman. Can you tell everyone who that is in case they don't know? He was one of the great comedians. He, one of the great comics, one of the great actors. He was in, he was like, you know, an iconic actor. I dream of Jeannie. I dream of Jeannie and J.R. in Dallas. And I produced the show.

A pilot with him. God, that whole. He was J.R. The cowboy hat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I had the cowboy. He had the cowboy hat and he had a house in Malibu and he had a beautiful wife. They're both deceased now.

And on Sundays, he had a day of silence. Every day, every Sunday, he stayed in silence, which was a great thing. And I was producing a pilot that it was called Here We Go Again. It was, it went on the air, but it didn't do very well. So it was on in like 11 weeks. It was off. But I would became very close with Larry. And where was I going with this?

Oh, he asked me. He asked me what I, how I knew about Buddhism. And so he's standing out at the ocean and I'm standing next to him. He's in silence. He's looking out at the sunset and he's going. Oh, money. Pardon me. Oh, and he's doing this chant.

Oh, money. Pardon me. I never heard that before. And oh, money. So it's like a basic, you know, chant, chant. I'll look at the shavara. It's, you know, it's, you know, asking for compassion to blessing your friends. Behold the jewel.

Yeah. Yeah. And the heart of the load. Exactly. Exactly. And so that's, so he explains that to me. And I like the sound, the vibration of it. Yeah.

And I feel it going through me. And that's all I knew. And I didn't know. Are you on acid too? psilocybin. Oh, psilocybin. Yeah. I'm sorry.

I thought LSD because I know Hagman was at that time was doing the LSD therapy that people were doing back then. Didn't he use it to treat his alcoholism or something? Or am I confusing him with someone? He, he, he liked, as he told me, he liked to have the trickle of champagne going through his body all day long. And I did too. And so, so he liked that.

It was very sensible, you know, but he was drinking real bad shit. He was drinking La Domaine, which was like $3 a bottle. Why would he do that? That makes no sense. I don't know. I don't know. But, but anyway, so he was liking to smoke and all that, but it was psilocybin. I don't think he was doing any sort of acid treatment.

I'm not sure. I could be wrong. A quick Google search. I feel like I have to do it just so that I can clear his name from such a terrible accusation. Let's see. Larry Hagman, LSD therapy. Let me look it up real quick. Kavira, you know what it is?

No, it's not LSD therapy. It's that there is a wonderful clip of Larry Hagman saying all politicians should use LSD. That's it. That too. That's good. But so he was doing psilocybin. And he had it. He had it ground up.

He would snort it or eat a little bit of it. And he had a lot of that. And I remember going to the Grateful Dead Concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Now, I'm in Hollywood like two years. I'm a kid. And I was going to the Hollywood Bowl. I'm sitting in the back of Larry's van. He had a Chevrolet Step Van like the size of a food truck.

And he had a dome in it. And he had a hammock in it. And I'm sitting in the hammock. He puts me in the hammock. He's in the captain's seat. And we're off to the ball to see the Grateful Dead. It was wonderful. That is the coolest store.

I mean, man. Oh, I just can't even imagine standing in the ocean with Larry Hagman, tripping on mushrooms. And that's where you heard Om Mani Padme Om for the first time. It's like, what is, I mean, and then when you consider where that vibration came from or comes from. So I guess if you wanted to get into the semantics of it. But what do you think, behold, the jewel in the heart of the lotus means?

I think the jewel is the dharma or the Buddha that was in the heart of the lotus. And it's experiencing that. It's hearing that sound, which is the sound of, I think that's the sound of the Buddha. It's the sound of everything. Om Om Om

Vajragara Payma iye Om That that was the Vajra Guru mantra which is very similar to Om Manipad Me Om but that's the Om Manipad Me Om is called the six syllable mantra but what I just did was a Nyingma mantra that Padma Sambhava who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century did. I got them mixed up I got too much shit running in my head

so anyway um that was intense man oh good we could do that for now or if you'd like I would like that I love doing that I love I I I you know my like I've had a couple like mind-blowing psychedelic experiences when it comes to religion one of them reading the book of John on LSD and then this like thought occurred to me somebody wrote this you know and that was like a really intense moment because somehow I'd forgotten that this was written by someone I don't know you know like it just been here or something but then you realize like wait I can almost trace the personality I can almost not just trace the person like when I'm around the uh well what actually I think it is a verse

in the New Testament isn't it you you'll you can know the father by the son uh and there's like a thumb print that is in the the scripture of something I don't know what exactly but it's a thumb print I don't know what it is in the same way saying what's this transmission thing I don't know but similarly and this is something I would I've talked about David a little bit at some point and chogum Trump or Rinpoche talks about this at some point after gaining realization or whatever happened to this person called the Buddha which is a true historic figure it happened he started talking he was not talking and then he started talking and there was this thing that he he was now or had found or saw or realized or connected with or I don't know the right words

for it merged with or melted into or something and he was quiet and then he started talking and then something came out he had to take this thing that was before language shunyata or whatever you want to call it the fruitful emptiness the clear light and it had to turn it into words and there was some first moment where that happened and then we have these sounds now and you can see this thumb print in it or something right like there's a thing yeah and his um his voice when it came out if you were sitting in front of him it was like a bell you know when they ring the bell um beautiful sound that's what it would sound like but if you were three miles away it would sound equally as powerful and

beautiful as the same so when the Buddha started talking you didn't have to be right in front of him it just spread out I'm sorry it spread out to to the land to the people yeah it was and it spread out through time yeah it was an I think of these things as like a nuclear a temporal nuclear spiritual bomb that was detonating and rippling the time space continuum all the way the point up until right now because right like we're still the ripples of that moment we are in the ripple of the moment of this being's realization it's not a this thing didn't happen in the past it the past is on is not as fog it's like it's fog and there's a landscape and the past and the present the future this foggy thing on top of this like thing that is not doesn't seem to be very touched by transient

phenomena you know and so that's where one of the weird traps or tricks of buddhism is you can start thinking it's archaic primitive antiquated past thing you know and that's one of the I think the spoilers I didn't I don't want to do necessarily suddenly realize like wait fuck it's still now oh the bell ringing thing oh shit you could be thousands of years away from it and still here it just is clear if you just listen a little bit that's where it's pretty intense to me and then you realize oh I see what meditation is you know because if you don't like yeah I when I'm thinking of meditation or go home self-knowing or whatever I've always thought of it as like prior to like working with a teacher and he didn't tell me this shit PS I'm sorry David if this is

completely off the mark or something but um prior to working with a teacher I had this concept of meditation of being really kind of painful boring like like kind of like a uncomfortable position in yoga a sort of thing you do in the way you jog or do push-ups or some shit and I didn't know that what you were doing is getting quiet enough so you could hear that bell ringing you know I didn't realize that's what it was and then maybe you hear just a second of that bell even if it's just a second and you're like wait a minute what is that I don't want to hear that again and then you don't get to hear it again because you're thinking about you know I'll tell you one thing what you just gave me is a great teaching just being here with you is a teaching oh thank you

it's true Duncan thank you yeah I'm learning a lot from you I'm learning a lot from you this bell idea is beautiful I love it so much and that's why it looks really funny about it oh there it is when you were doing that chant I was after you finished I wanted to grab this oh let's hear it ah that's my bell you see that's the that's the Vajra at the top of the bell yeah yeah I see that I see that sometimes it's good to have the Vajra and the bell because the Buddha has the the he's holding a Vajra and a bell so in one in one of my visualizations when I do the six the six the six yoga practice I visualize the Buddha sitting on a seat of a moon seat and a sun seat as if it was slices of

cheese and the Buddha is sitting there and he's holding his consort with him and he's holding a Vajra which is like the Dorje the lightning bolt symbol and the bell and then I take refuge in the in the three jewels the three jewels being the Sangha the Dharma and the Buddha take refuge in those every day and then I recite a mantra to the depends which one I do but you know we could do um Om Mani Padme Om right now if we like Om Mani Padme Om Om Mani Padme Om Om Mani Padme Om

Om Mani Padme Om Om Mani Padme Om wow yeah your face was right that was really trippy man that concludes this episode of the Dunkin Trussell family out that was amazing what I just saw what did you see well the shit man it was timeless it was completely timeless you filled up I saw you but your head was just floating filling up my whole screen wow amazing and you were in me I was you were in me that's what I was about to tell you oh you were just seeing some reflection of yourself yeah that's could be well because you have this

practice you know you can't that thing you're doing I don't know we the funniest thing about this the Dharma I think or talking about this stuff is it's like a river it's weird because it's like a river and it's it's streams going into a river or something and the streams are like no you're the one making the river all these trees this is the episode this is the first segment we're gonna do we can we do this in a month I love to thank you so much love to because we didn't are we okay are we okay you want more I can no no I think we got it we got it I don't think we can beat we can fall that no well we can because I got something I want to give you before we go okay unless you already have it I have two things I wanted to give you oh yeah um do you know this book

no I do not it's uh when I was cool in my life at the Jack Kerouac school by Sam Koshner yeah at the Jack Kerouac school of disembodied poetics and that's the school at Naropa that trunk power was teaching at and Ginsburg was teaching at and this describes a season with trunk power and Ginsburg at the school holy shit is that burrows yeah burrows in the middle here yeah that's burrows and I think it's Phil Walden is there he's a Zen teacher too thank you so much great book thank you thank you thank you it's a great book oh I love it it's a wild wild it's it's crazy wisdom thank you very much my pleasure and I got one other thing that I thought you were going to ask me about Nyingma and this is um as I was leaving

you know a little box I have this was there this was a Christmas card I got last year I'm giving you I'm recycling I'm recycling a card for you that's my Christmas card to you Duncan to you and Aaron and the baby I just want to like just only because we're talking about my you know Nick turn has this term um called uh tendril and tendril no it's a it's a Tibetan term I think Sanskrit term I'm not sure Tibetan I believe but uh the the the term means um the weird synchronicities that happen in relation to a practice you're not supposed to you're supposed to disown them that's what Trump is I just don't get you well that becomes spiritual materialism if you talk about it you get addicted to miracles yeah right but um

uh but uh a friend of mine and I were texting just today and I said my my compassion muscle is weak and she said oh that's something you can work on and I said uh she said I'm not a very compassionate person by nature I work on that every day of my life um and then you give me this thing and I'm just gonna read it yeah it's good it's good that's an important muscle that's the muscle you need for enlightenment yeah yeah look holy shit you have compassion tattooed on your arm remember I was a punk also and let's just mention my podcast for one second could we mention it no we're gonna talk about it I'm gonna read this card first and also as an aside I think it's cool to have compassion tattooed on your arm than Lucifer on

your chest I don't have Lucifer but that don't give me any ideas I don't want to make that commitment to Lucifer what's that the the tattoo yeah it's a pretty sounding word and yeah yeah too bad it's like I mean it's like it's I don't know I don't know unless the guy I'm having dinner with tonight see what he says um who you have oh about Lucifer yeah that's from podcast to you I'm gonna read this and then let's talk about your podcast for a second okay can I go to the restroom yeah of course pausing now and and Phil Spector did that to me what did he do well he held me a gunpoint in his house that's a long story I'm recording should I delete that no I don't care it's on another part I don't care but he but he was amazing so he had he had me locked in his house

I wanted to do I wanted to him to do the music for a pilot I was producing yeah so I'm locked in his house with George and he locked me in and I'm sitting there for like four hours and his gun is out and you know he's but he looks at me and he says why are you here I said you know why I'm here I wanted you to do them I wanted you to do the music for this pilot that I'm producing and he said no you're here because you want to go back and tell people I drink too much I take drugs and I play with guns and with that he takes his jacket off and he's wearing the biggest gun I've ever seen Jesus Christ right and now the gun comes out and I'm locked there but he was prophetic because I'm still talking it's one of my best stories I've been telling people that fills back the hell

of me at gunpoint I liked him I liked him you know but you know anyway cocaine no really no drugs no drugs not that I should get to the point of paranoia where you're holding guns on I think I think it might have been you know some you know bipolar medications I don't I don't know but it was also um he was drinking Manashevitz wine you know what Manashevitz is it's like the cheap Jewish wine you have it a seida you know he was drinking it right out of the bottle it was like you know what is going on with these comedic or artistic teachers of yours that are drinking cheap booze you got Hagman drinking bad champagne you've got Specter drinking Manashevitz who else was drinking um um I don't know I don't know it drunk pa well he was drinking sake sake I don't

know what quality of sake he was drinking I bet it was good and I'm gonna use something my wife got me as a gift and um I've never used it before wait your flask yeah what's in there um Jameson okay you are the best person it's so cool meeting I'm so glad I love it Duncan I love you man I love you too I want to read this card that you re-gifted me compassion is the bridge the spiritual foundation for peace harmony and balance in the beginning our compassion is like a candle gradually we need to develop compassion as radiant as the sun when compassion is as close as our breath as alive as our blood then we will understand

how to live and work in the world effectively and to be of help to both ourselves and others Tarthong Poku Rinpoche gesture of balance cheers would you like some of this I love some thank you my friend thank you Hare Krishna Hare Krishna wow I am lucky me too that's what I was thinking about how lucky my day is today that I I'm getting to come over here and now this proves that and then my conversation this morning with my friend who's in from Berlin but he said I can't tell you his name because he's because he said I'm here secretly and so tonight I get to talk to him and um and that's it you know so oh wait a minute what I'm not gonna I I have a guess about what he's doing in town I'm not gonna mention it

because I know what there's like some kind of like able there's like a music thing happening with Ableton right now in Berlin and I don't know is he a musician no well yes yes he is but he's here and he's here in Los Angeles yeah it's in it's in LA it's happening oh really I don't know you should ask him if he's like going to the Ableton there's some kind of like crazy hardcore like music convention happening oh really yeah yeah anyway I'll I'll ask him I'll ask him I don't know I don't I don't think that's the case I think it has to do with a book he's writing I'll tell you about it at another point I can't right now but um it's pretty far out I want to um jump into your podcast real quick oh thank you now I know what your podcast is about but I also know there's

right now some limits on like about like talking about the I think there's limits on talking about a little bit so you just describe it to me and I'll ask questions and you tell me what you can't well it's it's a um a true um it's a true crime podcast it's based on a murder that took place in 1982 in Los Angeles I knew the guy personally he was a friend um he was also a a very strong meditator he's pictures of him meditating all over the place and um he was bludgeoned to death in his loft downtown in Los Angeles and it's what was he bludgeoned to death with from what I'm told it was a circus mallet so you know those guys this yeah when they're putting tents together yeah it was one of those yeah it's also like you know it's it's like they the miniaturized version of what you

use when you're doing whack-a-mole it's the thing that you hit the thing to test your strength yeah yeah yeah yeah all this like carnival like yeah that's what it was that's what I heard yeah and so you know I'm I'm investigating that and there's no there's several people that are suspects that I have right now I have in my studio I call it my room because all I got it I live in a room and one wall is completely filled with names pictures strings it's my murder wall you have an actual yeah murder wall yeah I have it yeah yeah but you're we talked about this and I don't want to give away the podcast all but one of a sin I've had it happen to me a couple of times talking to people I got this weird sense of danger like you were like unraveling something that was maybe

gonna put you in some kind of like predicament you know look cancer put me in a fucking predicament you know I went to the edge I'm okay I'm not worried about any of that shit cancer is one thing but people who bludgeon other people to death with mallets that's a different follow I watch my back but although I must say yesterday I was checking out my wife said that she would like to buy me a computer for my birthday and I said no maybe I should get maybe you want to get me some velcro a velcro vest what do you mean like a bulletproof vest yeah yeah yeah yeah because you're you're because like when we were talking about it and without giving too much of this away I got the sense that like people were starting to like get weird around you because you

were like you were you're you're this is real you're this is real I'm not making this not fiction no I know that but I mean it's like it's not just like it's not real in this I don't question that it's that it's not real what I'm saying is this is an unsolved murder and if your show if you do solve it somebody goes to jail somebody's gonna be pissed off at me somebody's murderer yeah murderer will be very very pissed off at me but from what and I have a few suspects I'm not going to say who they are right now but um I mean and I'm learning things as I talk to this is this involved the punk underground I was with all the buddhism stuff I was a hardcore punk I don't think anything's changed that much yeah thank you

yeah that's good I really appreciate that Duncan it's true particularly coming from you that's that's fucking awesome and but um so I know everybody in this scene I'm talking to people in um the hardest core of the LA punk scene the German people that were in the germs um Don Balls is in it um Tequila Mockingbird um spit sticks from fear um who else do I got on the wall I mean I just a lot of I'm saying these names because the names give you an indication of who might have done it you know not who might have done it no no no excuse me of who who I'm talking to and where I'm getting my information it was like you know there's that documentary on um I think it was the the New York party scene oh yeah club kids yeah where there's that murder

that yeah yeah yeah yeah that guy who um yeah yeah it's like that yeah it's like that and this this guy and and and you know Penelope Spiris is going to be in it you know Penelope yeah she directed the Klein of Western Civilization oh okay I'm the guys in the chili peppers I used to go to a club it was called the Zero Club it was owned by David Lee Roth it was like going into the third world it was an after hours club that everybody went to after the bars closed and there was no way to go and you would go to the zero and there was the craziest shenanigans that were going out there there were skateboarders there were punks there were um there was drugs and there were new waivers there was a difference between the punks and the new waivers and they were all there

and we were all mixing together and in this scene and we were all going to the club lingerie and a club on sunset called on sunset and within this scene suddenly Peter Ivers who was one of the most wonderful guys around was murdered and while we were at this great party being high and laughing it was like a shroud was thrown over a blanket man was thrown over us because now we didn't know whether or not there was a murderer crawling around on the scene in the clubs you didn't know and one of the places I would go every night when I um and you know granted there were drugs going around on this scene and drugs a lot of them that kept you up all night and so when there was no way to go after the zero after the night club after the bars closed the club lingerie

the cafe de grand uh madame wong's you would go to the zero club where all the musicians were and we were all there after the zero closed at five in the morning a few select few would go over to david joe's cave and we would go to david joe's cave where we got locked in where he was editing the new wave theater and he was doing intense amounts of blow we all were sure and we were staying up all night watching him doing his editing and he would have a gun on the table and he was very very unpredictable he was a student of crowley's oh shit he's he studied the otio holy shit he was studying to cross the great abyss and all of this shit was going on at once and so um peter wanted to i'm not giving anything away right now on the podcast

but peter wanted to um not be the host of the new way he was the host of the new wave theater he was the voice of david joe when you went to david joe's house he'd locked in and it was all dark except the red walls and there was um eucalyptus coming through the air conditioner through the vents fuck that's that's it for me i'm out man i'm out i want to get out of the store that's the one that's like where i'm melted i'm like but you can't get out because you're locked in there's a two by four over the door with padlocks on the door until i would go there every other night and there was a whole group of us that were there he knew his energy he wouldn't make it so people wanted to run yeah he had to lock it he locked in you couldn't run you couldn't run and you stayed

with he was he was he was a he was a warlock too he was a powerful yeah i think it was a cult and that's that's one of the things definitely a temple yeah it was definitely a temple and we talked about the otio and he was part of that and he studied aliens he has a website that's like fucking impossible man it's called the whole truth and it's his experience his experience with aliens i mean this guy was fucking unbelievable why but the eucalyptus and now you've got like and you have the gun and the gun is like it's on it's like functioning on a bunch of different levels but on it's like it's producing a very specific type of tension or tightness in the air and then you got it donken you got it yeah and so we were there i was there and suddenly

peter ivers the host of david's show the new wave theater was murdered he was murdered this guy was murdered and the show had just been picked up by usa cable it was going from a public access show to a national network show and peter wanted to quit the show and david went ballistic he didn't want to let him quit the show and when he told this to david that was the end of it peter went home that night to his loft downtown on i was going to say the Lower East Side but downtown LA and he was bludgeoned to death well now you have like so you have the situation where you have a kind of cult figure and followers and you get a sense that there's this wasn't just a it was an organ you get organized crime murder style something makes them yeah yeah yeah and that advice yeah

and i i've been talking to the police i've been down at the cold case division i have the coroner's report i i'm trying to get them to activate this and i've got 80 people i've spoken to why have you chosen not to diminish my own profession but why have you chosen the podcast route instead of turning this into a documentary a video documentary why why podcast instead of film well because as you know the world of the podcast right now well i'm gonna sound like a greedy producer but the best route to produce something that you're talking about is through the podcast that's true i mean so i i see this the end game is not the podcast although i have the most creative freedom right now in the podcast let's just get this out and i'm sorry to be a weirdo here

would you ever kill yourself no you would never kill yourself no you would never hang yourself shoot yourself no okay no so if anything happens to you yeah thank you dunk and i appreciate that somebody did it okay that's very nice of you to ask sure and to protect me in that way no i would never i would never walk in front of a bus i would never do any of that shit okay no no no matter where i was what what stage i was in um so i'm not killing myself i'm this is not a suit i'm not on a fucking suicidal mission i'm just saying if something like it just to me this has a weird feeling to it that's like that's really intense and i don't know man i don't want to be like my problem is i'm always like like i'm the ghost person i'm just saying be careful because when

you're talking about this there's a feeling in it that's like gives me goosebumps i want to listen to the podcast but you're talking about the podcast on my podcast before the podcast is even out meaning that somebody could hear be like fuck that i don't want this out you're putting yourself in a little bit of danger go for it no don't you're not gonna you're not gonna put it out you're not gonna talk about this i'm putting this out i'm telling no when you say go for it i'm saying like who oh i thought you meant go for it like the person the malicious person listening is like no no no no listen listen to that you could put it out this is i'm teasing the podcast that i'm doing you're doing a great job i can't wait do you have a timeline when we can expect to get the

first episode they're saying that they're expecting me to spend a year working on it it's going to be like you know 10 12 episodes and it's going on a new um platform so i'm working on it now so it's not going to be out for a while so okay you could talk about this if you wanted to 2019 yeah 2019 so you'll be on the pike at my this podcast many times leading up i love it i love it wait and you could keep teasing little pieces of it i love it do you mind if i do that i know of course not it's legal in california thank you so much i think we should wrap it up you gotta go to dinner with your friend thank you so much erin looked at that do you remember what she said she had me laughing what did she say she said what is that it's scaring me and when it turned green i said

this is that scaring is that scaring you and she had not as much oh yeah it's the red color was scared vaporizer technology i love it they're like we're witnessing like computers are advancing music gears advancing but also like weed consumption this is this is part of the internet of all things this is connected to my my smartphone i can tell you the temperature on that i could raise and lower it from my smart it's connected on crafty yeah it's really good man it's a really good one i want one yeah that's it's the best it's the most gentle form of um taking weed is there like actual uh flowers in here yeah oh wow yeah nice little buds it's a combination cool by the way we're not sponsored by crafty friends i just happen to have this in my hand right now just buzzed yeah

let's wrap it up okay thank you so much Duncan i love you brother you're my brother too likewise thank you so much let's do it let's do it every month i'm in okay thank you awesome that was so that was my new friend alan sacks everybody he will most certainly be back thank you guys so much for listening a big thank you to all of our sponsors and friends if you enjoy this podcast won't you give us a nice rating on itunes and subscribe to us we've got some great episodes on the way until then i hope that you are oh wait you know what i just learned this this is a buddhist kind of like a buddhist i don't know if you'd call it a prayer um this is a thing you can do before and after you meditate you could say this even if you don't feel it

uh may all well i'm gonna sort of i'm gonna change it for the podcast you you could do whatever you want with it may all of you be happy may all of you be free from suffering may all of you experience joy in the happiness of others and may all of you remain equanimity free from attachment aversion and ignorance until next time a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop jc penny family get-togethers to fancy occasions wedding season two we do it all in style dresses suiting and plenty of color to play with get fixed up with brands like lis clayborn worthington stafford and jay furar oh and thereabouts for kids super cute and extra affordable check out the latest in store and we're never short on options

at jcp.com all dressed up everywhere to go jc penny a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop jc penny family get-togethers to fancy occasions wedding season two we do it all in style dresses suiting and plenty of color to play with get fixed up with brands like lis clayborn worthington stafford and jay furar oh and thereabouts for kids super cute and extra affordable check out the latest in store and we're never short on options at jcp.com all dressed up everywhere to go jc penny