Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 320: Raghu Markus

Episode Date: January 3, 2019

Raghu Markus, teacher, host of the [Mindrolling podcast](https://beherenownetwork.com/category/raghu-markus/), and director of the [Love Serve Remember Foundation](https://www.ramdass.org/love-serve-remember-foundation/) joins the DTFH as Duncan teeters on the precipice of fatherhood! This episode is brought to you by [Robinhood Financial](http://duncan.robinhood.com/) (get one free stock when you sign up).

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. 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, oh beautiful friends. It is I, Dee Trussell, and you are listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. Welcome, not only to the podcast,

but welcome to 2019. I present to you a glorious year undulating before you. Have you ever seen such a wonderful year? Behold the glimmering appendages, the sweet golden feathers, and the slight drip of lavender scented oils that roll down from the many beautiful waterfalls, rivers, creeks, and streams that you have yet to see

because years, you know how they work, you only see them moments at a time. But man, I'm telling you, from where I'm sitting, this is a really beautiful year. It's your year, and all you have to do, and forgive me if I'm mansplaining how to feed your year. I'm really sorry, I know most people already know this, but sometimes it's easy to forget

that all you have to feed your year is love. That's what they like best. There's other things you can feed it. Some people in the past have tried just pumping fear into their years, but it gives them an adgestion, and it can cause them to sprout weird moments. It's better to just give a pure diet of undiluted love.

And I know what you're thinking. How do I feed something love? Where do you go to get it? I don't know where to get that kind of food. Good news, friend, it's what you're made out of. Oh, you're telling me I gotta feed myself to my year? Yes, that's what you do. Just throw yourself into the moment.

That's its mouth. And then in the process of being digested, you'll realize that you and your year are actually the same thing, and you're both made of love, and that's how you have a great year. And okay, sweet darlings, I'm about to head into a zone

that I've never entered into. In fact, I'm already kinda in the zone. I'm feeling feelings I've never felt before. I'm experiencing moments I never thought possible. I'm about to be a dad. And what that means is I can't do much more of an intro. I'm just gonna dive right into this podcast with my dear friend and teacher, Raghu Marcus,

from the Love Server Member Foundation. He's also the host of Mind Rolling. We're gonna jump right into that, but first, some quick business. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by Robinhood. Robinhood is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks,

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Robinhood helps sort the archaic nature of financial information by creating these wonderful playlists. You can pick companies owned by all female CEOs. They've got these wonderful curated lists so you can invest in companies that align with your values. It will be sad if you found out you were giving money to a company

that was bombing panda bears or something. Robinhood is giving our wonderful listeners a free stock, like Apple, Ford, or Sprint, to help build your portfolio. Sign up at Duncan.Robinhood.com. That's Duncan.Robinhood.com. Like my uncle, Rink, used to say, go get that free stock. Whoa, I wonder what would happen

if we all did it and pulled our stocks together in one massive communal portfolio? We could buy Antarctica. Much thanks to my sweet Patreon patrons for bearing with me as I phase up, as they call it, into this new realm of becoming a video podcaster. What you're about to get blasted with is a YouTube link that is an actual video

of this conversation with Raghu Marcus. And there's gonna be many more things like that. I promise, I'm still figuring out how to use this technology. If you've noticed a sudden proliferation of odd videos on my YouTube page, very strange things, lots of stuff related to crow's milk, for example, and a variety of other things of that nature. My apologies if you feel like it seems like something's weird

with the DTFH. We've been getting hacked and we've been getting spoofed. And I have my tech guy, Jen Geshe, and also, of course, our moderator, Logroy, working fervently on figuring out how to get unhacked and unspoofed. In the meantime, oh dear Patreon sweeties, you're gonna start getting

not just commercial-free episodes of the DTFH, but commercial-free video episodes of the DTFH as long as my guests are willing to be put on camera and I figure out a good way to film them. If you're interested, head over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH and subscribe. You'll also get access to our Discord server. And finally, if you are feeling like you wanna get involved

in the crow's milk issue that is raging across our nation, by the way, for me, I think it was kind of a phase. I got sucked into it and for a while, I was really passionate that we must stop drinking crow's milk as a nation and as a planet. And then I realized that there's two sides to every argument and I sort of saw things from the perspective of the crow's milk lobby for a second.

And then I realized that I just wanna keep my family safe and that if people wanna drink crow's milk or don't wanna drink crow's milk, it's not really any of my business. I'm sort of all for just let's do it, do as we will, so to speak. And now I've realized the whole thing was just a ridiculous phase

and so I have completely disavowed myself from the crow's milk movement completely. And also I have disavowed myself from the children of Geb, though I did start that organization. I had nothing to do with the events that took place at CrowCon in New York City on December 26th and I am completely disavowing myself and I'm no longer their leader.

So I really hope that the authorities that might be listening to this understand, it was just a club I thought would be fun to start. We wanted to get, my friend Gary, he works with me, he's been having trouble meeting girls and we didn't mean any, I certainly didn't think that it would lead to me not being allowed to travel to Europe.

Regardless, I don't wanna load you guys down with all this ridiculous crow's milk drama. I have nothing to do with the crow's milk movement. I'm neither for nor against and I'm also completely disavowed from the entire thing altogether. You can find out more information about that just by going to my YouTube channel

if you wanna check out where we are currently with the many hacks and spoofs that have been happening to our feeds. In the meantime, my dear loves, I present to you a glorious podcast with someone who is one of the most important people in my life and who over many years is very patiently helped me sort of open up to love

and has introduced me to a wonderful group of people, including my meditation teacher, David Nickturn, along with folks like Ramdas, Neem Krollibaba, Sharon Salzburg, Jack Cornfield and so many other great teachers. He's a really focused, beautiful person who facilitates many of the Ramdas retreats and who runs the Love Server Member Foundation

and runs his own podcast, Mind Rolling. And he's one of the simultaneously busiest and most relaxed, sweet people that I've ever met on this planet and he is with us here today. So without further ado, please welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast, Ragu Marcus. Welcome, welcome all of you.

Glad you are with us, shake hands, no need to be blue. Welcome to you, it's the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast. Ragu, welcome back to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour. Wow, this is so futuristic. I can't believe that we're filming this. This is so great. I love the background you've got going. Hopefully, folks, you'll put this up somewhere

where people can see it. I love that mandala you've gotten. It's fantastic. Can you turn a little bit away? Sorry, I'm always blocking the mandalas. Oh my God, what is it, by the way? I think that is the Kala Chakra. Kala Chakra, I was gonna say that

because I've been to His Holiness Dalai Lama's Kala Chakra twice, actually. Wow, really in Dharamsala? No, in Toronto and in Washington. Oh, I thought it only happened in Dharamsala and I thought it only happened once every few years. No, He does it all over the world. I'm trying to get myself situated.

Yeah, He does it all over the world. Anyhow, what is the Kala Chakra? Are you kidding? I just wanna hear you describe it. No, there's no way. I've got no intellect, no mind, no nothing. I'm useless. That's why I came from the whole bhakti thing,

the dualistic bhakti thing. No, I could never really get at that, especially in my current state. Gundah had, someone kicks your door down, some horrible person has a weapon, holds it to your head and says, tell me, what is the Kala Chakra mandala? Yeah, really.

What would you say? I'd say I don't know. I was there, but do you know the book, The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Yes, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, okay. So there are two kinds of people, right? One of them, like sees a motorcycle and goes in there

and takes it apart and puts it back together, right? Because that's their thing and that's how they become one with the motorcycle. And then there's other people who walk and see the motorcycle and it's all, it's Harley glory. Yes. And you go, oh my God. And you just like blend in with the molecular structure

through your soul, okay? So those are the two kinds of characters in this book. Yeah, I'm the latter one. So I would tell people, it's useless for me to try and go into an explanation of the Kala Chakra when you can easily get that from your new teacher, for instance, he would know David Nicktern. We'll have to ask David it.

Yeah, so I wouldn't even go there. But I like, let's talk, I wanna talk about that for a second. Cause I think it does blend in with what we wanna talk about today or what we were planning on talking about it anyway. This, I guess you could say this is two, this division, this sort of like overlay

is something that comes up a lot in spiritual conversations and in the broadest of strokes, we have on one side the bhakti as it's called or the sort of loving relationship with truth, God. And on the other side, we have this sort of deconstruction of reality. And I was just reading about this in the Bhagavad Gita as it is just a day or two ago,

I just opened it up when I was reading and Prabhupada was saying that one, one is the bhakti is watering the roots of the tree. If you water the roots of the tree, everything else is taken care of. And this other form mayavadi or this sort of deconstruction of our essential nature, it does the exact same thing,

but the process is more complex like what you're saying. It's a complex process, but both reach the same point is what he was saying. Is that ultimately this identical place is you will inevitably run into God, whether you're doing some kind of very lofty intellectual deconstruction of reality, whether you're doing some meditative process

that involves the dissolution of the identity or whether you're sitting at the foot of a deity or a guru or an awakened being, all roads lead to Rome, so to speak. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, you know what? I got an email today from somebody who just listened to a podcast on mind rolling

with a Buddhist teacher named Tani Sara, who's incredible, wonderful, wonderful teacher. She's all about Buddhism in action. She's totally concerned with what's going on socially, politically, et cetera, et cetera, and yet rooted in deeply in the no mind. So this guy, can I read a little of this? Please, yeah.

Yeah, it's somebody who's a real practitioner. Oh, hang on, this is a ridiculous interruption that I was not even thinking, because we've just been doing this new, I'm doing this new form and I didn't realize that my phone can intrude upon my very existence, okay, there. Keep going, I apologize for that interruption. No problem.

So this guy just writes about it, as I was explaining, I did an episode with Tani Sara. So he says, like you, I feel the marriage of Buddhism and Bhakti is such a powerful vehicle and something that seems to be a unique offering for Maharaj's blessings. I really resonated.

I don't know if you recall conversations with me about a year ago, I came to you with a dilemma on how to choose between Bhakti and the Buddhist path. You reminded me of a talk with Roshi Joan Halifax where she said she looked into Baba's eyes, Maharaj in Imkaroli Baba, and she only saw emptiness. After that, I took refuge in the Tibetan Nyingma tradition.

I've learned so much, but I've always keep Maharaj in my heart. I had somewhere, but sometime put him on a back burner. And I went to Taos and I went into, there's a Hanuman temple there that's in Imkaroli Baba temple in Taos. By the way, anybody who's in that area, definitely go there.

I went into the shrine room, stood in front of his picture and wham, hit me like a ton of bricks. That loving awareness that Ram Dass talks about is so real and so easy to access. I feel like it empowers my practice. It fuels the devotional side of my being and the devotional Guru Yoga Sadness

of the Tibetan tradition. I still use Ram as well. I had a conversation with someone about Hanuman being a Bodhisattva or even a Buddha and Ram being the Dharmakaya. Anyhow, and he makes one little thing at the end where he said, I had a psychedelic adventure where, because this woman, Tanisara,

tells me in her early 20s, she had a psilocybin trip and had Maharaja complete darshan. I mean, she'd been a Buddhist her whole life. I never knew this about it. So he said, I took a high dose of LSD. Everything was merging into a single consciousness and my ego was freaking,

although awareness was more dominant. He was, Imkaroli Baba was the only phenomena I could make out and he was just laughing and laughing and he kept saying over and over, it's okay. It's okay. Yeah. Hey, how about that for a wonderful note? Yeah, that, that, it's okay.

And it's okay. And I think that it's okay either, it's okay. Whatever come, I would say this about people, the grand huge difference of Buddhism and the Bhakti tradition, the duality, non-duality, the soul, the no mind, all of that kind of stuff. It, this is nuts Duncan, but I have to do this.

I'm gonna do something to you. Okay, cool. Yeah, I have to do this because this was addressed exactly what we're talking about was addressed by Bob Thurman in the spring. Okay. I'm gonna read this. Please.

It's just terrible. Buddha is. Go ahead, sorry. Buddha is defined in the Mahayana, in Mahayana Buddhism as a being who identifies with all life and all things. So when you become a Buddha, you have this apparently, and I only know this by definition,

not yet by experience. You suddenly feel you're everyone else. So imagine if you're in this room and you suddenly were seeing what's going on in this room from everybody's perspective simultaneously. It might come to you as a bit of a shock. Yeah, Bob. Usually we look out from our own meat puppet.

We're enclosed within our, we're enclosed within our own meat puppet, right? Suddenly you're in everyone's meat puppet and you see everything from every side. That's what a Buddha is defined as. That's what Vishnu means who Vishnu from whom came Ram and Krishna. That's what Vishnu means, all pervading.

The word comes from to pervade. So Vishnu is everyone from Vishnu's point of view, which means everyone's point of view, which of course is inconceivable to us. It's inconceivable. We think that would be a nightmare. We'd have everybody's headache. So you can only do that if you bring bliss

to that kind of perception. Put it this way, I'm hoping. So please don't worry, Ragu, about self versus selflessness. It's just a fork in the road. And it's just part of the pharmacopia of Indian generosity to the planet. Wow, that's very, that's cool.

It's like very scholarly. It's got that, it's brilliant. He studies so much. It has within it that kind of like, what's it called? The, it's like some people have to put that sort of, they have to attach to it. I've never experienced this.

So he had to attach that to it, meaning that it's something- Yeah, because he's being honest. He's not living in Buddha mind on a moment to moment basis. But it's something you heard and he trusts that that must be the way it is. What? Well, I mean, he's close to the Dalai Lama.

This is not just somebody who's popping around the street writing books and saying shit from nowhere. I've heard the earth is round. I'm gonna just have to believe it. I haven't experienced it. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, this is the sort of the, one of the shortcuts, I think,

is to just trust people. Well, trust is the most important person for anybody who wants to have any kind of life that's not absolutely caught in identity roles and everything that you and I have been talking about in the last few months around this movie of me. And anybody who absolutely trusts is the first thing you need.

You hear Duncan? I mean, you guys out there, they're listening to Duncan. I just had two strangers come to my house because he didn't send them, but that's how they found out about me was through Duncan's podcast. Okay. And those strangers vanished a day ago.

Yes, they're gone. But they vanished with everything. Just to say that the trust thing that these particular people that I met had in you that moved them over to listen to Ram Dass and mind-rolling and other podcasts from the Be Here Now Network is, and it's the thing that got you through Ram Dass,

the thing that got me through Ram Dass was trust. Okay. And now I'm gonna investigate this a little bit more. And then, wow, there is a way to be happy. Oh my God. I mean, there's a way to actually live and you're not in fear, anxiety, and paranoia. That's a good start, right?

Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, so Bob has, well, he has a trust. I mean, he's had this long relationship with his holiness, the Dalai Lama. I mean, let's just start there. Yeah, he's a real Buddhist scholar. And he seems to be deeply connected with that tradition, Vajrayana.

And he seems, he's very good at articulating these big ideas in ways that are understandable. But it brings me to something that I think is important to note, which is that, and this is something with David that I talk about a lot. We talk about a lot. The concept of real time, which is sort of, there's the scholarly analysis of scripture.

And then there is the recollection of moments from the past and sort of sifting through experiences, ideas. For example, any time you find yourself writing something down that you thought, you are writing something that was inspired by a moment in the past, but the action is happening in the present. But my point is that this,

the idea is to make contact in real time with the Buddha field or the Buddha mind. Or if the Buddha was doing this or that or experienced this or that, that is interesting to me. But even more interesting would be is that there's the possibility of making contact with that truth. And there's lots of different names for that truth.

That truth is so many different, a million different names for that truth. One Vishnu being one of them. And one thing that I particularly like about Vishnu is the various incarnations. And every single incarnation of Vishnu is coming to the world when things are completely out of balance,

when things are very out of whack, when things are completely topsy-turvy, Vishnu appears and sometimes in a very scary way and sometimes in the most subtle of ways sets things right in the world. And there's all kinds of stories Vishnu's encounter. You know the story of Vishnu encountering Indra? The King of Heaven.

So Indra has built this palace that is just the most amazing palace. Like he spent, you know, these are gods. So they've spent probably the time the earth has been around. They've spent that times 50 building this incredible palace. And it's sort of drawn in from not just this universe but all the universes, all kinds of devas and deities

and sages to help build this incredible palace. It's just amazing. And so it's so amazing that the gods themselves start showing up. So Shiva is coming. Brahman is coming there, blown away by this. And so then Vishnu shows up and he looks at Indra and he's blown away and he says,

this palace is more beautiful than any palace that was ever created by any of the Indras. And Indra is like, wait, what, wait, what did you say? And he's like, oh my God, this one, the other Indras, they could never top this palace. This is really, really beautiful. And Indra is like, what do you mean the other Indras? And then Vishnu points to the ground.

There's like a trail of ants, I guess, on the floor. And he says, oh yes, all those ants, they were Indra at 1.2. And so in that moment, this wonderful balancing happens, which is the, I think two things happen. I don't think Vishnu, when he was expressing his awe at the palace was just being sarcastic. I think he really meant it.

Like, yes, I'm impressed. Like, wow, this is amazing. And then also simultaneously is the recognition of the infinite nature of time and that the building of palaces, though amazing, even from the lowest level to the highest level, ultimately is just one little stop along the way. And I love that story so much.

And the way Vishnu represents the balancing out, not just of literal societal events. And within that, of course, is ultimate hope, right? The idea that no matter if you are personally, subjectively or experiencing some imbalance, there is within it this sort of pattern that is that when you're completely out of balance, something will come around the corner.

Quite often you don't expect. Yeah, yeah. Trust, that's right. I need to start trusting. But there's one thing you said, you can listen to, read texts, listen to stories of encounters with high beings and so on.

But ultimately, what you're looking for is that day to day, moment to moment, being in the center of Buddha mind, or whatever we wanna call truth, right? Yes. So that's what, and that's why we, you and I have been working on this material around, okay, what are the things that you,

obviously one needs to practice, not have your crazy ass monkey mind going wild on you all the time. So practice, and you're doing this stuff, meditative stuff with David. And then there's looking at the way, the perspective from which we see ourselves on a day to day basis and that gigantic attachment

to who we think we are, our story, right? We've been working on that. So I came across some interesting stuff, especially interesting related to the fact that tomorrow or the next day, your life completely changes. Yes, yes. And suddenly you're gonna be shepherding a soul,

basically, right? That's right. So then you start to think about kind of, where the stuff you've been going through all into your adult life, myself and people around us. And you start to wonder, how does that happen? Where you come in and you're this absolutely pure awareness, right?

You've come in from, as Ram Dass calls it, soul land. I love that analogy. And you come in and the body is reacting, needs to eat and it needs to sleep and shit and piss. That's it. There's nothing else going on. And so these people take care of that. And then after maybe six months,

something starts to happen like, holy shit. There's people around me acting really weird. And need your kind of reactions to, God knows what. And there's a name suddenly that, is that me? There's a me. Holy shit. There's a me. Oh, shit.

Oh my God. And they, for the most part, are completely unaware of where I've come from, really. They just look at me and they project all this stuff. Oh, hungry. Hungry was crying. This is a smart baby. Yeah, well.

This freaking baby is amazing. This baby has come from the all-knowing place, okay? Where they all come from. Isn't it more like the baby's like, I want to touch that blade. I wonder what happens if I grab that knife. How let me fall into this rhino cage. But I know what you mean, an identity begins to form.

There's suddenly like this. Yeah, and it's as a result of, well, there's a couple of things going on. I mean, we have to go into a big conversation around karma in terms of what's brought, whatever that thing is, soul, Buddha mind that goes, that does not die when the body dies and carries with it impressions

into this next incarnation, which they need to be run off and so on. So then days go on, baby, days and then months, right? And then suddenly the baby's, oh, shit, there's objects going on around me too. What are these things, right? You're coming out of this subtle,

subtle, empty mind thing, awareness thing, and into, okay, now you start to get conditioning. Yeah. You're reacting to the people around you and little by little that home, I call it home, awareness, right? It's the home, it's like, I was like born again. I'm just thinking when I went to India, to that home.

I mean, the home I had, because when I thought back about me and whatever I could recall in the youngest parts of my life, I mean, I remember feeling fairly at home and then the fear and then the anger that people had around me, I would start to take it on.

And then that home, it gradually went south. And then it was a matter of you're dealing with just being afraid, right? Fear. Yeah. And that's why when you, we've been talking about when the baby's actually there, the kind of nurturing that needs to be done

to it's okay, it's okay. That's that guy's darshan of Maharaja. It's okay. But to say it's okay, you have to know it's okay. You have to know it's okay. So you gotta start doing the other kind of work, right? Which is the work that you're doing. And it's with, and this stuff comes,

you got in touch with Ram Dass seven years, six years ago, something crazy, some long time back, right? And that, and I've said this to you before, that motion that you made, that intent, I gotta talk to him. And then, yeah, I gotta talk to these other people. I don't know what they're doing, but they need some help.

Yeah. And then you got in touch with me. That intention, that to me was there the entire time. And probably you came in. I mean, I don't know what you can recall about your, I think you had, your mother was really a solid mother. Yeah, I had a very solid mother, very spiritual person. And yeah, this is kind of the part of the,

I think this line of dialogue, I like a lot. It's fun and it's very similar to when you're in love with someone and you start going through the first time you met and then you start sort of picking apart like all the decisions you made leading up to the first time that you met. And you just sort of inevitably will come to this like spellbinding awe-inspiring moment of thinking,

whoa, if I hadn't turned left there, right there, then I don't. And this is great on one level because it's sort of connecting you with the, or me, it connects me with like the grace as it's called, or just like, holy shit. You know, really, I don't see how I, I don't think, I don't know how much I had control over any of this stuff. It's like, you know, when you watch a crystal forming

or something, you don't really, the crystal, you don't, it's like the thing just does what it does. It takes on this incredible shape, but it just does this on its own. And I think that's kind of what's known as the sangha or the community is there. And it's been, I think it's been here for a very long time, but I do think that it's no different than any other thing

in the physical marketplace reality, which is if you wanna go to college, you have to apply for college. You don't just walk into a university and sit down at a class and start taking classes. Usually there's some process involved where you have to send something to show them that not only do you wanna go there, but you're ready to go there.

There's another piece of the puzzle too. There's this like whole application process. One of my friends, this kid who took care of my dad when he was dying is like, just got accepted to this really great school. But I was, we went through the whole process and it was really exciting and intense and like real. Like there's a lot of people who wanna go to good colleges.

And this, I think the difference, that's where things maybe start splitting apart a little bit, which is that in this case, if there's like a true intent inside of you, even if it's the muddiest, even if it's the most like muddy, foggy, blurry, crazy, even if it like, this is why in the Bhagavad Gita, I really love Krishna,

describes the various people who like come to him. And one of them is the seekers of gold is what he says, which is like really cool because he's acknowledging like, oh no, no, whatever the reason, whatever your reason may be for beginning this path or stepping down this path, it's not gonna be the same reason as you continue to move down this path or when you begin.

So you might come, you might find some group or sangha or satsang and there might just be some really lonely sense in you or there might be just a, you don't even know like you're on ambient and you're sort of blundering or sleepwalking, but there's a real sense in you, something, a kind of longing, I guess you could say,

a kind of homesickness you could say, the most perplexing sort of homesickness though, because in this case, the homesickness is like, you can't really figure it out because you're like, wait, what am I pining for? Why am I feeling homesick right now? My home was when I was a kid.

You know, I had a home when I was like between the ages of two and six or eight or before things went south if you had a crazy home or whenever you think your childhood ended, that's how a lot of people identify that. Oh, that was home. And they don't realize like, oh, no, no, you think the physical surroundings around you

were your home and you think the family members were your home and then you think that the particular conditions were your home, but this is no different than somebody who experiences some kind of joy and then instead of understanding the joy that they're experiencing is contact with the truth, looks around and thinks, oh,

it's when I walked under the tree, it's when I sat in this place, it's when I did this particular tap dance move or when I was like, and this is part of the formation of the identity is that you begin to try to recreate the surrounding conditions where you were contacting truth and now you start repeating the patterns of your childhood.

And for some people, this is devastatingly horrible. So they start trying to recreate the chaos and people say, oh, you're trying to recreate the chaos because that's what you were habituated to growing up, but really you're trying to recreate the chaos because you were fresh out of heaven, so to speak, fresh out of soul land. And you're trying to make your,

you're trying to get back to that thing that we call youth and what people call youth, they're being young. Yeah, yeah, well, youthfulness. You'd rather call home is before you got that identity going. I mean, by the time that you, apparently, by the time you recognize your parents and siblings, et cetera, that's when the feeling of mine comes into it, right?

And before everything, before that is just everything is, it just is, there's no separation, right? We're not living in separation. We're living in that soul land place that just is. And your analogy there of the joy of walking under a tree in a moment, that's home. That's the is place, any one of those moments. But then suddenly that's before,

and now it's divided into mine and yours. And that's when everything goes way south. It's six months old. It just goes off the end of the cliff at that point. And so, when there's a wake up that happens at a certain point, and that's what you're talking about where you go, wait a minute now. There is a place that I've experienced that is joy.

Wow, so there's a possibility that that could happen. And the next thing, stuff is appearing, as you just said, from the universe that leads you to the next place. It's almost like you had nothing to do about it. You didn't create it, but you did create it because you had an initial thing. I mean, for me, it wasn't about joy and bliss of remembering that.

For me, it was, I just was so sick of feeling shitty. All right, then I looked for, so I looked out words for what could make me feel better. And one of the things was music. And I had a mind blowing experience with that one. And I've told this story before with John Coltrane when I was like 15, 16 years old, that I went out of what I thought was me

into something else and then psychedelics. Yeah. Okay. And then for me, it was, it's wrong. So all of these things happened. And for me, it was like, the pain in believing in my little guy mini me self was, I realized that the other day, actually, just dealing with some of the stuff

I've been dealing with lately, that yeah, it's all about the fear of suffering, fear of impermanence, death, okay? That's the core of what's going on at the deepest level. And whatever wakes you up through joy, you remember something, that's where I'd like to be. Or I can't stand suffering like this on a day-to-day basis, what there must be something more.

And then that more appears and gives you a path. And we describe you and I and many of the people that gravitate over, like listening to you right now on the podcast, and they might hit and take a chance with Romdus because there's some trust there, trust through you or maybe something through me on mind rolling, whatever it may be.

And then the steps fall in front of each other like Domino's. Yeah. I mean, it's just like Domino's, it just happens. And then you go along with it because you start to realize, shit, there is a way to be happy, as simple as that. Well, I mean, it can be really quite shocking.

Especially depending on how, the way you sort of came at it, especially if you came at it in a real sleepwalking, sort of like you don't even know what you're doing, you just stumble into it. And then there's a, this thing that you're calling happiness and fear, there's two words keep coming up. I think that the fear thing in particular is over, it's a result of not being aware of your situation

because to be afraid, there has to be this sense of a kind of like imminent threat, right? Or a potential threat or whatever it may be. For some people, it's death. Usually it doesn't even get to death because death is a really pure truth. That's a good thing to be afraid of. In fact, what is-

Wait, well, just uncertainty. Let's not go that far, just uncertainty. Or somebody's, things have changed radically. There's been some changes or you're uncertain or there's survival involved or there's so many different places that fear comes from. Sounds like my ass. Yes, but that uncertainty or insecurity

is a kind of confusion for some people, so what's happening is to get back to the idea of like, well, I associate this thing with happiness or this thing with joy. So it's kind of like you, because you've like music reminded you of something and that reminder is very powerful but because of our various incarnations that we all have,

nobody sat down and said to you this idea of like, well, there is a soul land or a sort of fundamental goodness in the universe that you are in right now. Right now, we're all in it. We're all hanging out there. This is what I love about what Ram Dass talks about is the various levels.

On one level, you're an identity, you have a name, you have your memories, you have your predilections and all of the things around you that you... Habitual patterns. Habitual patterns and also the kind of like cocoon or the spider web, depending on I guess what type of person you are that you have sort of woven around you, which is like when you look around

wherever you're at right now, that's your web, that's your crystallization pattern into the material universe. So wherever you're sitting, wherever you're looking around, the numbers in your phone, the tweets that you are looking at, all of it, this is just the way the crystal of the thing that you are identifying as is forming.

And... Not to mention reacting to every phenomenon that comes into you and every thought that you have, you're reacting to everything. Well, this unbridled reaction. Well, that reaction is the spinning of the web or the cocoon, like every time you react, you'll find that you're in the reaction

is a repetition of a pattern and the pattern is the weaving of the web, so to speak, that is your identity, right? And so this is why the practice is really good because what it does, it's really awesome sitting still because what it does is, for one, it seems completely ridiculous and so innocuous that it's so ignorable.

That's one of the first signs that it's something to sort of really ponder, which is that, how come I can sit in front of my TV and on my couch with my dogs for hours straight, consuming and watching and just like, just getting into that like, fixation, right? But if I go and sit still at some part of my house for like six minutes, 10 minutes,

it's like someone poured gasoline on me, just, I gotta move, man. So here we have this innocuous activity of not doing anything, so to speak, which is not a good descriptor probably, but and yet it's almost impossible to do and especially almost impossible to do over time. And so, but within that process of watching your breath,

what starts happening is these, you begin to realize that the web weaving doesn't just happen externally in the reactive states, that in fact the web weaving is going on in these mind moments that are happening as we sit. And this is really fascinating to watch because then you start seeing the way that within your own sort of the many moments of your,

when you're getting, when you think, oh my God, I can't fucking believe I, I'm in this place that I can't afford and I'm going through a divorce and I think I'm gonna get fired. Holy fucking shit, I'm, I'm backed into a corner here, man. That actually, interestingly enough, if you just remove all of that stuff

and go down into your self, you realize that that actually is an outgrowth of something that's fundamentally within your identity. And I think that's what people call your karma, isn't it? And so somehow the practice of watching the way we weave this web within our own moments spontaneously, something within that creates

the possibility of change, real change. Yeah, but you even, even those thoughts, like you're sitting in meditation, you have those thoughts, oh shit, I'm gonna get, oh my God, this bup, bup, bup. You're further creating more karma. These vibrations are going, they're, everything is real. That's the horror.

And by the way, when you talk about, we talked about joy, oh, there, you can be happy. You can't, you know, joy, just being in the sunset, but what that really is though and why we want to gravitate towards that is complete presence. It's be here now. You, in that moment, you're not thinking about yourself.

There isn't anything but that deep, total, deep experiential moment and you're there and in that moment. And that's what you talked about earlier, you know, the Buddhist, let's get it down to entering into Buddha mind on a, you know, mini second to second basis. That is what it's all about.

So that's what we all are remembering. We are all remembering that and that's back to, baby pops out, baby's at home, he's Solan, still in, he's still in Solan. And that's when you're gonna look at this little being and you're, holy shit, it's God, you know, or whatever you want to call God, you know, we don't like God, we'll call him something else,

but yeah, Buddha mind, you're gonna see that. And that's what wakes us up as we go along, we recollect through these moments. For me, it wasn't a piece of music. I actually went out of my identity. I wasn't that mini me in that moment with Coltrane playing my favorite things. Yeah, right.

Yeah. And so I remembered. You became. Yeah, it is, it's Rama's being. In that moment, you're just being and that little guy that pops out there is just being and then, you know, gets conditioned. It's a weird thing.

But I think this is one thing you said earlier, which is I think important to bring up again is that you said, we create, I create, I'm creating this, I'm spinning this web. And on one level, 100% true. Of course, obviously, if you are thirsty, you've got to go and get a glass of water and drink it. There's no question about it.

And if you imagine that you're not the one drinking the water, then I think in this case, you're, oh, I thought I walked you, where you're like, yeah, I'm getting the fuck out of here before your rambles again. Yeah. But the watching of the pattern, I think also shows you, for example,

the idea that we create our thoughts, if you just spend any amount of time quietly watching your breath, you realize that you're not creating your thoughts. Your thoughts are bubbling up out of something. They're like, they're bubbling up or they're a kind of, you're not creating your thoughts anymore than a hive of bees is creating the buzz of the sound of a hive of bees.

It's just this activity that's happening within yourself. So by realizing that there's this emergent quality to your thought patterns that doesn't really seem to be within your grasp. Because if it were, holy shit. You know what I do right now? I'd create the most genius thought of all time. I'd be like, let's activate another brilliant,

brilliant thought of truth. And then whoof, there it would be. But really what's happening is there's just this arising of thought patterns. And then of all the thought patterns, one or two, grab your attention and you pull that in. And then within that is where you start creating the reaction, but you're not really creating your thoughts.

They just seem to be coming. That is dependent origination, is it not? I think, yeah, I think so. I think that's... Sorry, I had this turned around. Dependent origination, which is the Buddhist, one of the most important concepts in Buddhism. And the basic, most simple thing of it is,

we are primordially, which we've been talking about, Buddha-mind, and what happened. But another term for that could be, instead of Buddha-mind, because sometimes people, that sounds crazy, and you start thinking of a mind, you start thinking of some kind of brain. True self, true nature. I think you have to go with...

What do you like? I think a good way to put it, only because, and it's a, maybe too basic way to put it, but because it's so, it is truly elemental, is I think you could say, just in terms of like, obviously we are not this, but you're gold. And another way to put that might be, you're fundamentally good,

but only because everyone kind of brings, Buddha-mind, I'm thinking like, immediately. Okay, forget it. Fundamental good. Fundamental good. But good is confusing. So I think it's better to like, actually use a kind of like,

something that clearly is like, of no real value, but as it just is a little tool or a crutch, imagine this, you're gold, you're made of gold, you're what you are and what things are and what everything is, is gold. It's the most beautiful, incredible, reflective thing ever. It is the source of home.

It's that from which all homes have derived from. It's the source of mother. It's the source of father, but not father and mother that have been caught by their own sort of karmic predicament, but the precursor father-mother state. The place where you see skin to skin, the mother holding the baby to her breast,

that is fundamentally good and that is what you are. So that would be one way to say it is gold, you're gold. Gold, yeah. You're golden, that's one of the things, you're golden. Okay, you're golden, yeah, that's good. It's a little bit of a problem in India and the Hindu thing because they talk about the two things that you get caught in immediately.

They always talk about women in gold. Talk about me too movement, women in gold. They don't mean women, they mean greed for desire. Right. Well, yeah, and also that whole system is like stems from a kind of patriarchal, you know, so there's always that kind of like ridiculous misogynistic insanity is gonna spring up,

but I think, so how about this then, let's put it this way, gold in this realm, the thing we call gold is a mirror and it's reflecting something and the thing that it's reflecting is what you are. And anytime you've encountered a thing, whether it's John Coltrane, whether it's something as simple as a sunrise,

whether it's that moment of complete and absolute forgiveness of yourself that happens in a MDMA experience, whether it's truly falling in love in that moment before you can think, my God, I hope I never lose this person, whether it's the feeling you get on a really great jog where you're like three miles in

and you start accidentally being like, thank you, God, thank you, God, or whether it's just simply waking up and there's a moment of smiling and you're like, God, wow, wonderful. And then you remember, holy shit, my dad died yesterday. Oh no, fuck, oh my God.

That is what you are. That's what you are. And there's a lot of overlays on top of it and those overlays are your identity. And so that's where we get caught is somewhere in one of those overlays. Yeah, now, how about divine presence? Can we call it that?

That's my favorite thing. Or maybe the divine presence, you know? I had this, did I tell you this? I went to the dentist. You told me, but please, I wanna hear the story again. This is a nitrous oxide story. Yeah, I went to the dentist

and I had an impact that too. They gotta pull the damn thing. And I went there and it was, I was going to India, I only had like, you can't do it after a certain time, you can't fly. There's a big hole in your mouth. So I went there and the doc says,

yeah, no problem, nitrous is here. I said, good, I love nitrous. And the thing was he got me in at the last minute. So he had a lot of other people, patients that he was seeing. So he came in and he put the nitrous on and he said, well, look, it'll be a little bit of time

because I've got to treat this, you know, I've got to tend to this other person. So I said, no problem. I mean, seriously, they had me there for 20 minutes. Yeah. Okay, I said, turn that up. And I had complete presence. It's called Darshan of Ninkaroli Baba.

And then from there, all my whole history and not just history, but nowness with every manifestation of divine presence through individuals, through being, through psychedelic, whatever, this whole trip was honoring every bit of that divine presence for 20 minutes. It was a really powerful experience, psychedelic experience

that it's with me to this day, okay? It was so powerful. So I love that term divine presence. But you know what, I get, but then I have fear. You know what my fear is? What? You're going to laugh at me. No, I bet I won't.

What is it? It's the whole Mr. Rogers thing that, remember I told you, I wrote to Duncan. I sent him a text that I was on a plane and watching Mr. Rogers, the documentary movie, which I highly recommend to people. And I was, it was, you know, there's not a lot of oxygen up there at 37,000 feet.

So, you know, I was, it makes you cry. There's no doubt about it. It's the pure, the purity of this being, you know, that I, anyhow, I, so I sent Duncan a text and I said, Duncan, you've got to watch this, Mr. Rogers. I mean, I know you, you might be, take that as scans. You're Mr. Rogers. And Duncan wrote me back and said, I got it.

I have a Mr. Rogers. I'm already watching. His name is Hannity, okay? And then I got fear. Oh God, he's, yeah, he thinks I'm just a pussy watching Mr. Rogers and I myself had, in the past, denigrated Mr. Rogers as, oh, you know, that syrupy, sacred shit.

And then suddenly, and I realized, you know, of course I haven't seen Mr. Rogers in ages, suddenly he's there in this doc and then you did exactly what I myself was, had that fear in me because I had that mind too going on. I had that conditioned thing going on. Yeah, I'm just doing like a crass blasphemy for no reason. Like I'm just being like, but there is a reason behind it.

You know, it's because like, you know, it's a kind of like chance to express a kind of like ridiculous absurdist gruffness to one of my great teachers and the truth of course is, and this is, it doesn't take any amount of brains at all to realize that the reason we're not watching Mr. Rogers and the reason we're not crying all the time and the reason our hearts aren't opening up

and we're not on the phone with people telling them how much we love them. Like I love you, Ragu, or like I love my teachers, I like love my wife or my son coming. The reason we're not doing that all the time is because it is scary and it is so, so much easier to be gruff and cynical and closed off. It's not cool.

It's not cool. That's it. Yeah, but it's nothing, it's like really, if you really look at it, the fear isn't so much of societal rejection. It's really what the fear is is that we don't wanna get our hearts broken because the idea is this, listen to this crazy, crazy idea.

Here's the crazy idea. It's true. It's true. It's true. Right now is home. And not just in some ridiculous, like the side of something written on a cereal box home, the source of all homes. Right now, true.

Now, because of our karma, you hear a thing like that and there's a real potential to be disappointed, I guess, or a sense of like the possibility you hear that and you're like, no, it can't be. I'll never go home again. I'm never gonna go home again. I'm lost, I'm lost, I'm lost, I'm lost forever. I'll never see my mom again.

I'll never see my dad again. I'll never feel that again. All that's left is hardness. All that's left is protection. All that's left is just fight my way through the last few days of my life and then blink into non-existence and that's where I'm at. And fuck you for even daring to put on the table

the possibility that I could in this very moment be back home with someone I loved and I lost. Fuck you. That's a lie. You're a con artist. That's not true. Fuck you. So this attitude is a continuum.

I just gave a pretty extreme example. I've never met anyone like that in my life but usually it doesn't manifest as a fuck you. It manifests as a kind of eye roll. It manifests as like, I guess you want to go for the lime, baby, or it manifests as a kind of like, okay, well you go and do your little rainbow gatherings, all right, but we got to deal with a fucking campaign in Syria.

That's Hannity or whatever, right? But mixed in, but it's all the same thing, which is like, hey, I've worked real hard, real hard becoming a callus and becoming numb and it took a lot of work and it took a lot of web weaving and I really don't want the broken heart. I don't want to feel that again. I don't want to feel that again.

It's too much. It's too much. I don't want to do that again. I'm just going to die and that's it. To me, that's it. That's it. That's really what it is. It's like that concept that it's right here,

not just in a bullshit way, but like here more than you could ever possibly dream. It won't even come to you in your dreams and that you can be in this place right now and the way to do it is not by buying shit, but by sitting still and listening to your breath. Wow, I don't know, man. That sounds like a bunch of snake oil

if I was someone who was incredibly bitter. But this thing we're talking about cynicism and related to Mr. Rogers and all, I looked into that into myself and I see, and you and I talked about this a little bit with in relation to Ram Dass and Larry David and how Ram Dass, I tried to get him to watch Larry David. I love Larry David and how Ram Dass,

it's too unkind for him. And that's because he's in a very special place that allows for gigantic doses of vulnerability. And I looked into myself and I see that this kind of cynicism that I do carry in some ways works in terms of the good side, I would say, that's not the right way to put it, of cynicism or the corollary to cynicism is discrimination. You're just not going around

and everything that's in front of you, it's yeah, that's cool. And I'm completely down with that, I'm down with this, I'm down with that. And there's people, I used to know people in India who went around the entire country from one guru to another, right? And it was completely without discrimination.

So discrimination and the Hindu thing is called in Sanskrit more Viveka, spiritual discrimination. So it isn't actually a very important thing, but it's miles, billions of miles away from this identity that we put up that has this cynical attitude and it's a way of defending our... Sure, yeah, you know, art and the appreciation of art

in all its many forms from the most dark, scary, seemingly nihilistic art to just basic, like nice, dark, cynical comedy to whatever it is, the consumption of these things is a human right and it should be done, it's wonderful if that's what you're drawn to. To me, the problem is that you could start thinking that there's a way to be,

other than the way you are right now. And so in this situation, you see someone like Ram Dass and you hear, oh, he doesn't want to watch Larry David, I'm not gonna watch Larry David, or you see somebody who is making decisions that are based on a lifetime of practice and you wanna skip the lifetime of practice

and you wanna just do the decisions that they're making, not understanding that, because that would be easier than to, it would be like, instead of going to college, it would be like putting on a graduation outfit and a hat and giving yourself like a PhD, for example, and walking around and like, you know, acting as though the way you would see in the teacher act. And so this is not it, and this is the other element

of getting into real time and in the moment as you are is because where you're at right now is it. And that's the other thing Ram Dass talks about, which I love so much, which is that this thing as you are, from the, you know, gleaming, beautiful, reflective quality of your deepest self that is showing to everyone around you who can see it, your true identity is a soul made of love

or a thing that is a bridge connecting to the divine consciousness, or to all the way to like, whatever your porn history is from the last couple of nights ago, the entirety of the continuum has within it in this moment right now, something that is fundamentally good.

And that is the practice. So when people say meditation is the practice for death, I've never understood that, but I do think it's a good way to practice listening. And it's a good way not to just practice listening to others and listening to music and listening with your eyes as you take in beauty and listening with your skin

as you take in the feeling of the world and then listening to your thoughts as they arise, but then listening to something that's underneath all of it. This tiny little, it seems like when you're in a, you know what, one of my favorite things, walking through the forest and suddenly you hear a river. Do you know that?

It's the best. You didn't hear it. You were walking for a while, surely it was there, but then all of a sudden you hear it. It sounds like a little song, way out there like chimes or something. It's beautiful, but very, very quiet, but you could walk towards that.

And then the closer you get to it, the more you can hear it. And you're like, oh wow, that's not a little river. That's a big river. Holy shit, that's a raging river. And that I think is what happens when you begin to come home in this sense, which is that the thing that seemed like a little trickle

in the sound of John Coltrane is actually the most, the raging river that is so powerful that we are doing everything we can to not hear it. And because we're afraid it's gonna suck us in. But by the time you hear this river too late, you're already sucked in. Yeah.

You know, meditation though, that is all true, but the inner inquiry that can happen, and that's why they call the particular practice that we're most familiar with and still many of us do, is vipassana, insight meditation. So it's the eventuality of insight into the impermanence of every moment,

every molecule, and that insight goes a long way to eventually that river, that rushing river that you start, here's a faint thing, and then you walk through the forest and it gets closer and closer. Suddenly, the time that it takes to get to the rushing river or be at the rushing river is far less than it normally is because the conditioning and the defense mechanisms

that we carry on a moment-to-moment basis, they start to recede into the background and the foreground becomes complete presence of everything, every moment. That's why that Bob talked about the Buddha, all pervasive Vishnu. And imagine being in a room where you were absolutely, you were everyone in the room

and everything that was going on in each one of these people, you were that. It's inconceivable. But that is the extraordinary eventual reality. That is who, that's why Nim Karoli Baba, which is my bestest example, because I experienced it, that's why he knew everything about everybody,

the past, present, and future. Because that time continuum, that you remember you talked about that earlier in the podcast, ceases and desists. It is no longer relevant. And so, all the conditions are gone. So that meditation is one major path to that moment. And so in this river analogy,

it's sort of like, it could happen like this. You're walking down the path and actually you don't even hear a river, you hear a John Coltrane. And then maybe you start wondering like, where did he get that? Where is that? How did he come up with that thing he's playing?

Where is that coming from? Or maybe you don't hear John Coltrane, you hear, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Ram, Hare Ram, Ram Ram, Hare Hare. You think, what is that sound? What is a mantra? What is that? And in these cases, you might be,

one thing you could say is maybe what happened here is John Coltrane heard a river and he started playing music. And the music that he was playing was him making the sound of the river. And then maybe the Hare Krishna Mahamantra coming through people's voices was people making the sound of that river.

And then maybe someone like Neem Krali Baba is someone as if when the river starts talking to you, which is luck and really, really good fortune. And in that case, the river is talking to you and it's saying, oh, I love you. I love you so much. And when that's coming out of some people's mouths to you, there is a sense of like, I don't know.

But when it's coming out of the river and it's saying it to you, oh my God, that's a different kind of I love you. And yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a great, I love that. That's a great analogy. And it goes back to, in a practical level, and you know how much I love to be practical.

As do I. Yes, on a practical level, that is absolutely possible because trust, it's because of trust. That is possible just because of trust. Then you start to realize, oh yeah, this is, I feel good.

I'm feeling, I'm in that river. I'm not even thinking, how did I get here? I'm just letting go, just let go into that river. That's right. And that process is really beautiful. And that doesn't even, sometimes, I think people here trust and are like, no, no, no, no, I'm not gonna, I don't wanna trust.

First, I wanna test and I wanna measure and I wanna quantify and I wanna explore. And I think that's like the first step, which is like, maybe this is not true. Maybe it's all a bunch of hooey and it's a bunch of rambling from people who are one took over the line. But I think that it would serve some purpose

to think, all right, well maybe, I don't know, maybe there is something. Maybe there's a river, I don't know. I have no idea, but the beginning to figure out a way to quiet things. So if I was telling you, hey listen, not only are you in a forest very close to the most beautiful river of all time,

in fact, the river of time, in fact, the river that time, it's the source of time. But right now, it doesn't look like a forest. It looks like your house or it looks like your car. It looks like the subway or it looks like this or that. But if you're getting a little in a quiet place and just literally turn things down, I don't even mean in some analogous metaphorical sense,

turn your phone off, turn your TV off, stop whatever you are gonna do for a second. It's okay, you will go back to that thing and then just sit still for a second. And then listen just to your breath. And when you're listening to your breath, you actually are listening to a language, interestingly, a primordial language that everyone on the planet speaks,

which is the language of inhalation and exhalation. And so you start listening to that. And then your thoughts are now the radio. You turn that down, your thoughts are your phone messages. Turn, if you can, let them come. Breath, back to the breath. Somewhere within there, over time, not right away. And that's where the trust comes in, I think.

It's not trust in the sense of like, trust this, just look at this picture and trust it's gonna, you're gonna get better. It's trust us in the sense that over the period of this process of breathing, you might begin to hear something that you never heard before. That's something Chokin and Chopra Rifices used to say,

which is there are sounds that you've never heard, there are smells that you've never smelled. And if I tell you that, you just have to trust that that's a possibility. And then trust if people are saying, well, here's a process to begin to hear those sounds and maybe smell some of those smells, that's where you have to trust.

Because that, you still have to get yourself down on the bench or whatever your practice may be, or in front of the harmonium or chanting. Yeah, whatever, yeah. And I think we have to talk about trust. We have to include another, the reality of intuition. Ram Dass calls it imagination room, where you go and you're able to be completely free

and talk to a being, talk to a Buddha, talk to a Christ, talk to a name Karoli Baba, but it's intuition. So you trust the trust with intuition. Yeah, and that is the beginning of the dance and that's the beginning. And also, don't forget, in this forest, fortunately for all of us, there are also other people who've heard the river

and you'll find them, you'll stumble, you'll run into each other, as you're like, wait, is it over there? And in that, a group forms. And within that group, now we have this wonderful sort of gypsy caravan of all types of people. And some of those people are singing songs of the river. Some of those people are making art

that kind of looks like the river. Some of those people don't say anything at all because they just want to listen to the fucking river and they would love it if we'd shut up for a second. But within it, it's like so much beauty and that is the satsanga, the sangha. But man, speaking of rivers, there's gonna be a river of tears.

If I don't do what I told my wife to take the dogs. And can you tell me one thing before we leave? Yes. How can you possibly be so calm in this day? Today's, tomorrow it's a whole, it's a different life. It's like complete metamorphosis. Thank God for the present moment. And thank God for the training to be in the present moment.

And even within this moment, if I told you I was calm, that would not be necessarily true, but my God, I really do feel a great deal of love and joy right now. And the fact that I get to experience this at all just feels like the greatest gift of my life. And I'm so lucky for you and your teaching that I can enter into this with some mindfulness instead of like just shitting bricks and screaming.

Raghu, I love you. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's been great. Where can people find you? Go to beherenownnetwork.com slash mind rolling or even better, go up to iTunes and subscribe to Mind Rolling Podcasts. You have to have Mind Rolling Podcasts

because I stole Mind Rolling from a Tibetan Lama. So I'm probably going to hell or over there. I'm sure you, I'm sure he's would be thrilled to know that you're free. Because she, she's one of them. Oh, now I'm a monster. I'm sure she would be very thrilled. My apologies to her.

Khandro Rinpoche, everybody. Go K-H-A-N-D-R-O Rinpoche. She's fantastic. Thank you again, Duncan. Thank you, Raghu. Hare Krishna, we'll talk soon. I'll be sending you baby pics real soon. Yeah, Ram Ram.

Ram Ram. That was awesome, Raghu. Thank you so much. That was Raghu Marcus. All the links you need to find Raghu will be at dougatrustle.com or audioboom.com. Thank you, Robin Hood, for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH and happy New Year to all of you, darlings.

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