Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 327: Charlie Ambler

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

Charlie Ambler, [@dailyzen](https://twitter.com/dailyzen), meditation teacher and author, joins the DTFH! Check out Charlie's new book, the [Daily Zen Journal](https://t.co/GBhetZ0SR3). This episode is brought to you by [Squarespace](https://www.squarespace.com/duncan) (offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site). [**LA FAMILY - Check out David Nichtern and Duncan's upcoming meditation workshop at Samarasa.**](https://www.samarasacenter.com/creativity-spontaneity-meditation/)

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. Hi friends, it's me, Duncan, and here's a preamble to this episode. I recorded this intro before I got the news

about the tragedy that happened with Brody Stevens and if you wanna hear me talk about that in a pretty disjointed and certainly unfunny way, then I put it up on Patreon and it'll be there for free. So just, it's there for free if you wanna go listen to that. I just don't wanna seem like I, when I recorded this intro about Hollow Earth,

it happened before the news started coming in about this incredible, tragic, horrific, and really, really upsetting loss that a lot of us are feeling right now. So yeah, that's it. And now on to Greetings To You, my beautiful children. It is I, D Trussell, and you are listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast

being recorded from a secret location. I'm really at a secret location right now in the sense that I can't tell you where I'm at, but soon you will know. This is the remote DTFH studio. I still have the other one at my house, but I actually created a new one here so that I could be where I'm at

and simultaneously do podcast intros. I feel a little bit of guilt. The walls of this particular place are a little thin and I know there's people working on, either side of me. And I don't know what that's like for them to hear my raspy, seemingly lesbian voice blasting out. Well, anyway, hello.

Man, I gotta tell you guys, I have been in the greatest rabbit hole of all time, hollow earth theory. You gotta check it out. I don't wanna go on and on about it. It's just like, I managed to get through the first layers of YouTube video, which you have to do if you wanna get to the deep freaks.

You gotta get past the National Geographic cave documentaries. You gotta get past the ancient alien stuff. Anything that wasn't on a network, forget it. You gotta keep digging down and digging down through the surface of YouTube until you start getting into the hollow YouTube where you're gonna find some of the craziest videos of all time related to hollow earth theory.

The theory, if you're not aware of it, is amazing. And here's what it is. Basically, the idea is that the earth is not solid. There's actually, I think, three different rings within the earth. And now, here's what we know, for sure. There's different zones of the earth. We know one thing.

This is not conspiracy theory. And the center of the earth is a spinning lead ball. It's just super hot. And it's as hot as the surface of the sun, apparently. And surrounding this are various layers of the earth. And this is some interesting stuff. And maybe a geologist out there could help me because I actually read, this is how deep

I've gotten into hollow earth theory. No pun intended. A study came out recently. And the study used seismic waves originating from a massive earthquake that actually rippled the entire planet. From these seismic waves, you can do this kind of, I guess, cat scan of the interior of the earth.

And I don't know if you saw this. It kind of popped up for a second and then went away. But it says that there are, this study, this was done by Princeton, by the way. There are basically mountain ranges beneath the earth. Now, I'm gonna read this to you. I must have misunderstood this. Because when I hear mountain ranges, I think,

oh, that's mountains. That's like Ultima 4 shit. I don't know if you ever played Ultima, Old Man on the other side of this mic here. Really great video game. But you could go down into the earth and there were like mountains under there. And I always thought that was super cool.

So you can imagine how every bit of erectile tissue on my body inflamed the moment that I saw this story as I was already inside of a hollow earth rabbit hole. This is an article from Popular Mechanics. All right, this is not, we're not even in YouTube. We're not even deep in the funhouse of lunacy that is the deeper interior core of YouTube. This is Popular Mechanics.

To deep beneath the surface of the earth lies an entire landscape of mountains, possibly rougher and taller than any on the surface. So say Princeton geophysicists, Jessica Irving and Wimbo Wu, who published a story last week in Science in collaboration with Cedillo Ni with names like that. These are like, who are these people?

From the Institute of Geodesi in their Chinese and geophysics in China. The researchers use scattered seismic waves registered during an epic magnitude 8.2 earthquake that struck Bolivia in 1994 to map the topography of a boundary layer, 660 kilometers straight down. This layer called the transition zone

is about 155 miles thick. It divides earth's mantle into an upper and lower section, revealing the interior of our planet to be far more complex than the tritone crust mantle core models boring or used to. Irving and Wu found that the top of the transition zone at about 255 miles deep is smooth for the most part and drastically different from the roughness at the 660 kilometer boundary,

which is what they've started calling it for lack of a better word. They don't wanna call it what it is, the hollow earth. When you're data lies far inside the earth, the bigger and deeper the earthquake, the better says Irving. The shock waves they send out in all directions can travel through the core to the other side

of the planet and back again. Okay, so now, you know, this is, I keep going through, okay, here's, I keep going through it and it's like, that's it. That's it. There's nothing in there about like, holy shit, there's mountains under the earth? What the fuck?

It says here at the very end of this article, it's like the real world geophysicists redo on Jules Verne's journey to the center. Is it redux? How the fuck do you say that? God damn I'm dumb. Geophysicists redo. I tried to make it French, maybe it is.

I'm not gonna look it up, I'm gonna call it a redux. Can I get a redux on Jules Verne over here? I'd like a Jules Verne redux. All right, now, that's popular mechanics that appears to be saying that there are mountain ranges under the planet and no one's talking about it. Why is this not national news? Why is this not being, why are they announcing this

at targets across the country? There should be planes flying over with banners on the back saying there's mountains under there, there's huge spaces under there, mountains. But no, it's just gonna float away just like everything else, cool. This is gonna vanish, but maybe not. Who knows?

Regardless, that is from popular mechanics. Look it up yourself. If you're a geologist out there, correct me please. I tweeted at this brilliant Princeton scientist. I did not expect a response. I tweeted her at 2 a.m. last night. Is there, are you saying that there's mountains under the planet?

But maybe she'll write me back, who knows? Regardless, that's the sort of, that's the science part. Now, my friends, I present to you the story of Admiral Byrd, the famous explorer who seems to have stumbled upon something in the North and South Poles. I can't remember which, and honestly, I wouldn't know the North Pole if it bit me in the ass.

I don't know where Antarctica is. I don't know if it's in the North or the South, unfortunately, I don't need to know. That's something you don't need to know. I don't know how to get to, I look at my GPS still. I've lived in LA for 18 years, so I guess it's no surprise I don't know where the North Pole is. We're gonna jump back in to this exploration

of the Hollow Earth, and also we have a great podcast for your great conversation with Charlie Ambler, the brilliant spiritual philosopher who created one of my favorite Twitter accounts at Daily's Inn, we're gonna get right into it right after this. Much thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH, it's time for you to climb out

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with you and your beautiful sister or beautiful brother. Remember, it's squarespace.com forward slash Duncan. Use offer code DUNKIN to get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Welcome back, friends. It's coast to coast on DTFH. Now, Admiral Byrd, famous explorer, something happened. He went up to Antarctica and he found something,

something that became a national security issue. He couldn't talk about what he saw and he came back with a legion of military vessels, ostensibly just to map uncharted areas. But this is where the Hollow Earth people kick in. The idea is he went up there and he found something. He found the entrance to the Hollow Earth. And so there's these things floating around

called Admiral Byrd's secret diaries. And I'm just gonna read an entry from one of these secret diaries of Admiral Byrd. Okay, here it is. The Inner Earth, my secret diary. Did he have to call it a secret diary? Is that what he really called it? Did it have a little lock on it?

I must write this diary in secrecy and obscurity. It concerns my Arctic flight of the 19th day of February in the year of 1947. There comes a time when the rationality of men must fade into insignificance and one must accept the inevitability of the truth. I am not at liberty to disclose the following documentation at this writing.

Perhaps it shall never see the light of public scrutiny, but I must do my duty and record here for all to read one day in a world of greed and exploitation. Certain of mankind can no longer suppress that which is truth. Now, these diaries seem like a load of horseshit if you ask me, but there is a really weird interview with Admiral Byrd talking about this expedition.

And you should just check it out. I'll put the link over at dougatrustle.com because in the secret location where I am at that I can't talk about, it's the Hollow Earth. I don't have a quick way to grab audio from that interview, but just look at it, look it up. It's a weird interview. It's like he seems like he's being kind of mysterious

or coding certain things that he wanted to talk about. The idea is this gang, the Earth is Hollow and there's aliens in there or maybe there's lizards or maybe there's dinosaurs or maybe there's mammoths, I don't know. But if you're looking for a great way to spend your weekend and you wanna spiral into some kind of temporary madness by recalibrating your conceptualization

of the planet you're living on temporarily, maintaining Robert Anton Wilson's agnosticism so you don't end up standing on the road somewhere, holding up a sign with images of mammoths, then just go down the Hollow Earth rabbit hole. It's a wonderful rabbit hole that leads to Shambhala. There are a lot of things in life that aren't right. The cursed well outside of your farm

filled with the corpses of children. Oh my God, there are a lot of things in life that aren't right. The cursed well outside your farmhouse filled with a Wraithful. There are a lot of things in life that aren't right. The cursed well outside of your farmhouse filled with a wrathful entities

that drove your grandfather insane and caused him to decapitate all of the pigs in the barnyard. There are a lot of things in life that aren't right. The shrieking of a Banshee at the night, reading the Necronomicon without anointing yourself and holy oil, taking baths and there are a lot of things in life that aren't right. Like the fact that the earth is hollow

and they're ancient cities. There are a lot of things in life that aren't right. The shrieking sound of Banshees that drove your grandmother insane. The haunted well outside your farmhouse filled with the wrathful spirits of the many children that died there and were thrown inside during the onslaught

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Mint Mobile.com slash Duncan. Do you really want to get destroyed? Do you want your soul sucked out by cell phone companies, by technology, by the man, by the great void of space surrounding us all by the ancient ones who will return again? Mint Mobile, thank you. Charlie Ambler is today's guest.

He is the creator of the wonderful Twitter account at Daily Zen. You can check them out over at twitter.com slash Daily Zen. Also, he's got a blog, TheDailyZen.org, and he just released a wonderful book, The Daily Zen Journal. Now, without further ado,

please welcome to the Duncan Trestle Family Hour Podcast, Charlie Ambler. It's the Duncan Trestles... Welcome to the DTFH. I'm so happy to have met you. You're awesome. Thank you, Duncan. I feel the same way about you.

This is super cool. This is one of the... I love doing this podcast because I end up connecting with people that I may have never met and unfortunately we didn't record our previous conversation over the phone. But one of the things I love about Buddhism is the idea of the... well, the three jewels. Can you talk a little bit about the three jewels? I mean, I guess I can talk about them from my experience of Buddhism, which I've sort of... when I first started, when I was like 13, it was Tibetan because the only way I

could meditate in my town, not at my house, was at this Tibetan center in Redding, Connecticut. You know, I sort of understood those concepts then in terms of just the Tibetan tradition. And then as I uncovered Zen, I feel like they shifted to the three jewels of the Dautaging, which are just simplicity, patience, and compassion. So I don't... I like... it's something that's so funny because you said that and I haven't thought about them in such a long time. Because in my head now, they are those things.

Cool. Simplicity, patience, and compassion. So that's amazing. Which God, I should know this, I don't. Which came first, Buddhism or the Dautaging? So Buddhism came first in India way, way back. I couldn't say which millennia. I think it's like the eighth, like 8,000 beasts.

It's very, very long time ago. And then migrated to China. And I believe that Dautism emerged in China right before our, you know, our zero began. Like sometime in like the 500 years preceding Jesus. Wow. Okay. So this is news to me because, yeah, for some reason I thought Dautism preceded Buddhism. No, so Dautism was like the first millennium BC, basically.

I think it was like 600 BC, that the mythical Lao Zhu lived, and Buddhism had been around for a long time. Wow. Primarily, I think in India, but I'm not quite sure when it migrated to China. This thing that we're doing here is funny. Just because of the nature of the discussion that we're having and the way that we met each other is so mind blowing. What I love about Buddhism, I love many things about it, but it's the way it spreads.

And we're talking about sort of the Dharma or the way that the realization, the Buddha's realization rippled around the planet. And as we're talking about this, we are the ripples in the sense that I've been permanently transformed by the Dharma and by Buddhism, and it makes its way into my podcast all the time. And you have a Twitter account that became, I guess, one of the preeminent Twitter accounts, Buddhist Twitter accounts. Is that a fair description of it?

Yeah, I would say so. I'd say it's less doctrinally, strictly Buddhist than some of the other ones. I think maybe that's probably also one of the reasons for its popularity, because my focus has always been on a significantly more modern, you know, Zen is a very modern form of Buddhism. It's almost like postmodern Buddhism, like it's very kind of rebellious and contradictory and sometimes a little bit conflicted and nonsensical in the way it approaches things. So yeah, I mean, the Twitter account is definitely one of the most popular Buddhist atmosphere

Twitter accounts that exists. Buddhist atmosphere. Buddhist atmosphere, the Buddhist sphere. But you know, what's wild about it to me is this, you know, there's an event that happened where someone had, I guess, what you could call like the ultimate epiphany. Sometimes I think about it in terms of humanity in the way that people talk about an AI passing the Turing test or something. It's like that moment in the history of our species where someone woke up and not woke

up in the sense of like, whoa, I'm woke or whoa, I realize what's happening. But in the sense that where that, you know, the beginning of an optic nerve starts forming on some primordial fish in a coral reef or something like that. And so what's wild to me is that that happened and then that began to sort of radiate out and spread around the planet. And now in this age that we're in this technological age, it's continuing to ripple out in the sense that that's wild to me. That is so odd because it's as though Buddhism is this formless, it's formless.

It's formless. And yet it's always filling up cups, you know, it's always, right? And so the way it's currently filled, the cups that we have are the, my podcast and your Twitter account. And they're, they get filled up with these ideas that are simultaneously archaic and completely in the now cutting edge at the very, like, very, very, very like crest of the wave of reality. And that's pretty interesting to me.

Do you ever feel burdened or do you ever feel blasphemous because you are propagating these ideas using Twitter? I think whenever, like in the past, when I felt that way, I've realized it's when I'm at my most self-righteous. And like if I'm actually practicing, I'm like, oh, okay, you know, I'm just going to share what emerges, what's on my mind. And usually the stuff that I find most, like the thoughts that'll move me the most will resonate most with the audience because they're very usually simple and succinct, sort of

the way that the best, you know, you can't really be a good read of the data Jing or the eaching or, you know, the book of Chung Zhu or any of like the early Zen texts. And those are all extremely succinct and simple in their declarations. There's no religious obfuscation or, you know, there's, there's no unnecessary complexity. And it's so cool because you're like, oh, these were living. I mean, in some cases, it's debatable whether there were single individuals responsible for the texts, but like the words came from somewhere and these were like living, breathing people thousands of years ago.

And essentially, I mean, because I think, I think it's because physically humans haven't changed that much. Like our, our ecosystem has changed and our tech techno sphere has changed. But these ideas are just as soothing to the soul and conducive to growth now as they were then. And it's fun because they're sort of like, I mean, you can kind of see religion as being one of the original incarnations of, you know, memes, like the real meaning of a meme, like how information fractalizes and spreads in this memetic way.

And so that's the thing that I find most fascinating about these ideas is you can read someone a thousand years ago, read one of these texts and wrote a book about it. And then you can read both of those texts and a novel by Don Delillo and watch a movie, you know, an action movie and whatever, go to the store and you have this whole experience and you can take all of those parcels of information and you then become an agent of the, you know, it sounds silly to say meme because of the internet, but that's really what it is. It's sort of, it's just passing through you, you know? That's so cool.

Yeah. So like the dharma is a meme, right? I mean, if we want to be reductive, I think, I think, yeah, I think all ideas are. And I think one of the things I like about Zen is that it views conceptual thoughts in that playful way. Like the whole thing is when you're meditating, you're, you're letting, you know, there's an old saying, you let your thoughts and you let your thoughts come and go, but you don't serve them tea.

And so I picture them as like little birds that kind of floats through your head and they'll, they'll perch or they'll shit or they'll do something rather and then they'll, then they'll leave, but they're, they're just kind of floating through and all the texts and all of the fancy ideas and all of the principles are also just kind of floating through. And the stuff that sticks with you is usually stuff that you already had in you anyway, I think. Not to get too Zen, so forgive the question, but what is, what do you think is the difference

between thoughts and birds? Thoughts and birds. I think it's probably easier to catch birds sometimes. Birds are also a lot prettier, generally speaking. Thoughts can be. Wow. I think there's a lot more ugly thoughts than there are ugly birds. Depends on what the birds are thinking.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. What do birds think? I don't know. They probably think about thoughts. Now, do you think, do you think like birds get woken up in the morning by thoughts? By themselves? Yeah.

So the the way that one of the other aspects that I love about Buddhism is that it doesn't really care so much. There's not a thing like in other religions, there's like this real great potential for blasphemy. You know, there's an ability. So when you look at missionary culture, you see this, you know, someone goes to a place, finds some people

that aren't living according to the way they have been taught is the right way to live. And then through manipulation, sometimes force, sometimes a combination of both, you shift their society into the society that was thought up by your whatever profit you're following. But Buddhism comes into a place and looks around and just takes the symbols that are there and configures them in a way to help people see something that was already there. That's what I love about it.

It's not trying. It's not saying, no, no, no, this is wrong. Don't do this. This is evil. It's just more along the lines of, OK, so this is your symbol for this is a goddess symbol for you. And this is or this is the symbol. This is how you understand nothingness or this is.

Oh, you guys call it a meme. OK, we'll call it a meme, you know? So it translates to it and in other words, I guess, to simplify. Missionary culture is weird because it goes to another place and it tries to make the people there speak its language. Right, whereas Buddhism comes to a place and learns the language and speaks that language. But what it says is the Dharma.

And I think that's really cool to me. And it seems like that is that is continuing to happen. And that's what you're part of, it seems like. Yeah, I used to get disillusioned with the idea that, you know, like Buddhism had become so popular and lucrative in modern culture. Yeah. And, you know, and that's sort of its own religious purism of being like, I want this, I want this just for me. I don't want like someone to be able to see this on TV and then start

meditating because they saw something on TV or because they bought an app or something. Yeah. But I think, you know, with a little, you know, with a few more years of practice and maturity, I I currently believe that it's it's a great thing. And the the compatibility of Buddhist ideas and especially Zen ideas and sort of the the contradictory open-ended nature of it is they're very compatible with modern life, precisely because they let us speak our own language. I mean, it's very hard to speak the language of, you know, a even

you could say it's a Tibetan monk or you could say, you know, a Catholic monk or an Islamic monk, it's very hard to speak that language in modern times because you're just going to end up feeling guilt and shame about a lot of things. And you're going to eventually probably end up making other people feel guilt and shame for a lot of things. And so, yeah, I think that that that openness to the outside that Buddhism isn't always purely focused on this monastic self-involved sort of self-referential life.

It's very compatible with our everyday life now. And it's funny how it crosses over with, you know, the tech world and the business world, specifically through meditation. But, you know, meditation is evolving to fill whatever vessel it's in, like you're saying. And I can't help but think that that's that's a good thing, no matter what, you know, no matter how it's sold or packaged, it's still just silent reflection. And so if if people are doing it and it's continuing to spread in a

open-ended way, I think that's a wonderful thing. And that's when I when I remember that I'm most excited about having the platform that I have, because it is a very it's a it's a fun way to connect with people because you're sort of sharing, you know, you're having this independent experience of meditating and kind of coming to certain realizations and you're sharing those realizations. And then you're seeing all of these people, like it's almost like cooking an electric grid, you know, over the world, being like, oh, yeah,

I have that realization too, or that resonates with me. And, you know, that's what writing is in general. But having it be tied to the experience of of meditation and knowing that there's a sort of universal benefit that people get from meditating is fun for me, because Daily Zen is really something that I just do for fun. So I wouldn't do it if it was if it was just something that, you know, was lucrative. And it's funny, because it's it's really not lucrative. Watch out. Watch out.

There the the except for the new book. That part has been like probably the most success that Daily Zen has seen on a commercial level. Well, yeah, that's the beginning that, you know, that's the beginning part of it. It's it's the the the problem with it. Well, it's not a problem. I don't want to call it a problem. But it is, I think one of the aspects of it, when you say lucrative, or people start making money from it, or you start one of the problems is and you do I I I hesitate to say it.

But now that you're inspiring me to not hesitate so much when I say things. But I hesitate to say one of the things about it is if you start meditating, even just a little bit, but you pull it off over time, you get a little more inspired. I'm that's been my experience. I that's my experience with it. Yeah. And my drought periods, my creative droughts always have within them a kind of laxadaisical,

undisciplined, wavery, foggy sort of way of being. And within that, it creates a feedback loop. Oh, fuck, I'm not I'm not inspired. I what's wrong with me? Am I? Am I fraud? Is something wrong with my brain? Is it did I break my brain? It's my brain. But really, and then that creates fear. And then the fear creates more of the thought.

And the thought patterns create more of a peril paralysis. And that can go on forever. Yeah. But sitting still somehow and watching my breath. Inevitably, somewhere within that pattern over time, suddenly. Birds start landing in the trees again, so to speak. You know, like suddenly there's like, oh, right. What you're saying, which is like all the heavy, self-righteous or even worse, like a self villainizing thought patterns,

all of it just sort of disappears. And then you're reporting now. You become like a reporter, a type of journalist. Only the thing you're reporting on is the moment, the now, the isness. And then that feels so good. So it's it's a really exciting thing. But as you were talking about the. Problem of prosperity in relation to spirituality.

It made me think you and I saw in my mind, like a fruit and like or like seeds, you know, in the way that like it is such a brilliant thing. Because the fruit is so sweet and the animal eats it and then shits out these seeds and the seeds grow these trees that make more fruit. Yeah, or the or like or the seed sticks to the animal's fur. It doesn't even know that it's there and it's running through the forest and then the seed falls and then it grows a tree, you know. And I think that that's a great metaphor for the relationship

between philosophy and capitalism. Oh, wow. Yeah, any philosophy, religious or otherwise 100 percent. That's great. Yeah. Yeah, it's that. And it's it's like which I it's like I love it because, you know, so many people with with capitalism or with communism or with any system.

They either bear their teeth at it or they join or they join the system or or they're you know, but what I love about Buddhism is it like it's it gets into the DNA of the system. It's like, oh, capitalism. Oh, OK. Oh, it's money you want. OK, let's make some money. Let's see. But then what happens is over the as you begin to practice. Now the problem is, oh, great.

Well, there's some prosperity. But somehow the bench and the breath and the trees and the wind is way better than the money. Still most important. Yeah, 100 percent. So it fucks up your so the problem. So even though, yeah, maybe you got some money. But now what?

Now you get it's things have shifted a little bit, you know, in your in your relationship with that, have you have you found that? Yeah, definitely. Because there was a period before I had a separate business that was doing well, that I was trying to monetize Daily's End. Because I was like, well, what do I have in my life? You know, when I first graduated college, what do I have that I could sell basically?

And then I was like, well, I have this thing, but it's very precious to me. And I don't really want to sell it, but I can try. And so I tried doing donations and I tried screen printing t-shirts at my friend's studio and selling them and stuff like that. And I mean, I'm I'm glad that it didn't. I'm honestly relieved that it never went that well financially, because if if Daily's End had become my job, there's a certain degree of of difficulty there with navigating it

like in a in a healthy way, because it's something that really helps me. It's really, you know, the same way a lot of writers will talk about. Um, like I just listened to a great interview with Sam Lipsite, who's one of my favorite writers, like currently writing. And he was saying how you have to have a motivation to to write or honestly to do anything creative that's not external. Like it's it's obviously has to be intrinsic. Otherwise, you wouldn't toil away for however many years before anyone notices.

Yeah. And so it's it's nice, I think, to keep first on a personal level. I like to keep the spirituality stuff and the commercial stuff separate. And so I have my business, which is extremely different from Daily's End. And then I have Daily's End and I sort of spend my time, you know, working on both in a pretty symbiotic balance. And it's it's a nice balance to have. But I wanted to go back to what you were saying about the seeds and the the idea of like just Buddhism in general and commercialism and stuff.

And I think that the thing that you are touching on that I think is important to talk about is kind of this idea of what happens to you when you start meditating. And the the way I like to see it is sort of, you know, if people just went about their if you went about your eight hour work day, just talking nonstop. If you just didn't shut the fuck up for eight hours a day, you would be you would go crazy. You'd drive other people crazy. No one would want to hang out with you.

You wouldn't learn anything, you know, there'd be nothing. Right. You it would just be word vomit eight hours a day. Yeah. And, you know, so we find a balance in our in our external lives of thinking, listening, speaking, conceptualizing. But in our internal lives, it's pretty much just thought like word vomit 24 seven. It's like as if we're just sitting there talking for for hours and hours and hours and hours and it's like we just become broken records.

And so the way I like to see it is meditation. You're like you're finally shutting up and you're you're listening. You're just listening and you're like you start by listening. When you first start meditating, as I'm sure you know, and everyone who's who's done it knows it's really hard because your internal voice does not shut the fuck up and you're please shut up. Please stop. I'm just I'm trying to meditate. Please. Yeah.

But then eventually you get more of those moments of quietude and, you know, in pure pure mind, as we call it, or Samadhi. And you're experiencing them more and more often and you're sort of seeing that beneath all of the chaos of your of your thoughts and your nonstop conceptualization and verbalization, there's like a certain piece. Like things are kind of chill under under there, under all of the noise. But if you're constantly, you know, experiencing the chatter and you don't take that step back to just listen, it's like never listening

in a conversation, you know, but it's a conversation with yourself. Wow, that's so interesting. What an interesting relationship with thoughts. I, you know, that's so interesting, you know, because a lot of people have, I guess they they well, either they haven't even made the distinction between their thoughts and who they are, or in making the distinction, they've decided their thoughts are poison or they've decided that this it's the ego. We got to destroy the ego, that kind of attitude.

Right. But what you're saying sounds like to sounds to me like you're saying, wait, why don't instead of villainizing these thoughts, what are what are the listen to them? Do they have something? What are they saying? What is what is the sound of your thoughts? What are they? What are they saying? Is it is it is it real? Is that what you're is that what you're talking about? Yeah, no, totally. That's totally it.

It's I had a post that a lot of people, obviously, for obvious reasons, didn't like a long time ago, that was one of the most popular posts on dailies. And I don't know if it's still there or not, but it was called Don't Be a Terrorist. And the premise was like, you know, obviously, most people aren't domestic or international terrorists, but we terrorize ourselves all day, every day. And we do it by the same means. And, you know, it's sort of that that idea that you shouldn't you shouldn't be an enemy to yourself.

And if there's something you want to change, you're able to change it a lot faster by getting to know yourself and sitting with yourself and befriending excuse me, befriending yourself than by creating an enemy. Like if you're if you're dropping a bomb on yourself, you're going to create sort of hostility and resentment towards yourself in doing that. Like you're, you know, you're taking out one bad thought, but you're creating 10 more. You know, I mean, yeah, it's sort of a you're making an insurgency. And I think that idea has helped me kind of navigate the self-help space

because I have to spend in order to do dailies and I have to spend so much time reading, you know, both new and old spiritual texts and self-help texts. And there's just so much crap. And it's nice to remember that you don't have to, you know, you don't have to battle yourself, you don't have to kill the ego. Right. You don't have to be a, you know, you can discipline yourself without being a masochist. It's an important thing.

This is making me think of, and I'm sorry, you guys, I've talked about this too much, but I guess it like affected me. There's this Ted Bundy documentary on Netflix. Yeah, just watched it. Oh, and what's so terrifying about him and most people like him is they have this horrific talent, which is compartmentalization. They're like masters of compartmentalization. So in the, this is like an extreme example of compartmentalization in the

sense that Ted Bundy had the Ted Bundy that was in court and the Ted Bundy that was self-righteous and the Ted Bundy that was whatever he was trying to be. And then he had the Ted Bundy that was killing people. And somehow his psyche had managed to create these like walled cities within which there was the murderous Ted Bundy. There was the sort of romantic, funny, charming Ted Bundy. And the two were like completely separate from each other. It wasn't quite a split personality, but that's an extreme example of compartmentalization.

Yeah. And I think people are so fascinated with those stories because it's sort of like a mythical, extreme version of what everyone does in their own heads. That's it. Right? Like, that's what you're saying. Yeah, it's just the sort of, yeah. And it's both terrifying and something that people are like, oh, yeah, that guy does that.

I don't do that. You know, I don't act crazy like that, but we all do really like the way we sort of shield our personal lives from our work lives or we shield our the private ideological lives or political lives in our heads from the lives outside and like the things we think versus the things we say. And that's right. And it causes us a lot of pain, I think. And then the thing we do with birds, because I'm only bringing it up just because

I've had this thought like in those in the a few moments. And there, you know, my teacher was a student of Chokin, Trump or Rinpoche, and his advice in this regard with these moments of epiphanous moments is just disown them. And I like that a lot. But I love him. He's the best. He's the coolest. I love him, too.

Crazy wisdom. Crazy wisdom. But in those great moments, there have been times when I've been sitting and there's been no difference between my thoughts and the birds. And they're just the same. You're all, oh, they're basically, oh, wait. So there's no difference between my thoughts and the birds. Then what the fuck am I, man?

And then, you know, then you're already back. You know, then your mind is like, what happened? What was that? Oh, shit. We take acid. So so that that's a moment of decompartmentalization in the sense that whatever your psyche is doing that creates a compartment you call yourself and a compartment that you call the natural world in that moment, the compartment went away.

And now you're thinking birds. You're not thinking thoughts. And in that moment, something has happened that is just astounding. But right as soon as you realize that the compartments have come back up again. So now it's like, wait, what was that? Let me analyze that. I want to write that down. Is that a thing?

I should write it down. Have I gained realization? Was that realization? Am I in the light? I'm in the light. You know, and so then and then now you're making millions of little compartments inside the compartments inside the compartments. And this is the pattern.

You know, yeah. And and and, um, uh, maybe this is why people love popping that bubble, the bubble packing tape, you know, and maybe maybe this is why, because like, there's a deep sense of like, fuck, this bubble tape is me and the bubbles are all the little parts of myself that are separated from all the other parts of myself only only it's like externalized. Like, ah, it feels good. Oh, it feels good because it hurts to be broken up into a bunch of little pieces. It hurts, man.

It's not a good feeling. And I love you comparing it to terrorism because it made me think like, holy shit, where is it? Is there like, you know, you hear on the news now and the propaganda or whatever, there's inevitably some city in the Middle East that is the last enclave of ISIS surrounded by all the forces of the world. And then, and similarly in us, it's, I just love thinking like shit, man. What is my like, what is my ISIS enclave in my head?

What is the part of myself that I've surrounded with an entire army of the other parts of myself that's like, just keep the gun if there's any movement, just shoot, don't let anything out of there, you know, that is really a powerful image. It's fun to think about that because man, God knows if one thing you wouldn't want in your brain is a terrorist enclave, you know, many of us have them because that's that moment when you're in traffic and you're listening to Ravi Shankar and somebody cuts you off and you had just been in the most blissful, just dreamy, but I think the world might really be heaven and someone fuck that in that moment.

So I'm like, you mother fucker, that's like a shoulder fired rocket coming out of this secret enclave in your heart. Yeah. And all the meditation in the world won't, won't keep that from happening every once in a while in my experience. But I think, yeah, I, I, I love that. That's a funny image. And then I picture them getting to the house or the village or whatever.

And there's just like 10 guys, like really scrawny guys with laptops or something. Like it's not even a threat. They're just like, oh, like I've confronted this and it's not really like whatever you're anxious about or whatever is sort of torturing you and terrorizing you is often just this, you know, paper tiger, basically, or like a mirage or a projection of a projection of some insecurity or some idea of bad or evilness or whatever that you're pushing out onto yourself. Well, I mean, if you want to scare the shit out of somebody, put on an executioner's

mask, right? Look at those fucking things. Just not a fucking bag over your head. And then while you could, you could put, you put an executioner's mask, you know, on the Dalai Lama and have him walk into a room and people are going to shit bricks. And then like, oh, it's just a Dalai Lama, don't worry. You know, but so, so that, you know, I think that wherever there is the ignorance, so to speak, in the sense that, you know, we ignore parts of ourselves, like a big, the classic

example being death, you know, like, so people ignore the fact that I'm just going to bring it up death, death. I mean, literally death is the executioner's mask put over time. So it's in like, so we, for many people when they think about death, they see this black field with like, no, without any eye holes, it's the worst kind of executioner's mask, because it's just like, you're just, I don't know, it's a screen. And then that screen, you start like projecting all the worst of the worsts upon it. And because you just don't know what it is.

And, and that's an untrained mind, of course, an untrained mind, when it encounters the unknown or insecurity, then suddenly it will start populating that screen with the worst possible thing that it could be, you know? Yeah, and I think that I was going to bring up death because it plays back into that idea that you're when, when you have those moments of pure meditation, I like the word, the word Samadhi, which is sort of that like immersion, you know, and that's sort of like the, and those moments of realization, which in Zen, they call Satori, where you're sort of like, you're sort of melding into the experience.

And I think there's a real relationship with death there. And there's, there's not a coincidental relationship between people who meditate a lot and sort of a lack of fear of death. Because you're sort of like the way that your body would decompose if you were dying, your, your brain is sort of decomposing and turning into its environment. Like the way that your bones would turn into soil or something. Your spirit is just kind of turning into what it's experiencing. And that's a very powerful experience.

It is like the psychedelic experience where you find, you realize that you're, you're a part of the world instead of just like an individual agent or a subject dropped into the world. And there's sort of the, the religious narrative that we're these, these little pinpricks that are kind of plopped down into the world and we're left to interact like, you know, in a, in the Sims or something. Yeah. But, but there, I think it's, there's an Alan Watts quote. I couldn't give it to you straight up, but it's kind of like your, you don't look like, you don't live in the world, you are the world,

that sort of thing. Yeah, sure. That's definitely not the quote, but it's, it's that sort of strain, that sort of idea that you are, you sprout up from the world and the universe the way that a plant sprouts out from the soil. The earth creates, You don't just appear there, like from a spawn point, you know? The earth creates people in the way an apple tree makes apples. The world peoples, that's what he says.

The world peoples. It's people-ing. I fucking love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's people-ing. Yeah. And, and what a strange tree. The, the, the, that is, that, it's a lonely thing to be in a compartment, you know? Right. I mean, this is solitary confinement.

If you want to see like, look at the effects solitary confinement has on people, it drives them mad. They've been compartmentalized in the most, in the ultimate way. They've been shoved into a box and they're, they're closed off from other people. They're completely separated by concrete walls and it drives them fucking mad. And then, and, and, and we hear these stories of solitary confinement and we walk around like, my God, well thank goodness I'm not in solitary confinement. In our moving cells. Yeah, yeah, that's it, yeah.

We're in these like, rolling solitary confinement cells where there's me and the rest of the world and it's, wow man, those guys in prison, boy, they've got it bad. Meanwhile, there's people in these solitary confinement cells. I interviewed one of them, Damien Eccles, and they're in there meditating. Because, because the dharma is reaching into the prisons and you know about this, you know, the Zen Buddhists, the monks who come into the prisons and they teach these prisoners how to sit. Oh, I didn't know about that. Yes, yes, yes.

It's because when you can't look out, you know, why not look in? Yeah. And, and, and, and so suddenly for some people, what happens is they, they have the paradoxical experience of being imprisoned and yet being more free than they ever were when they were in the outside world because they're no longer locked in to this identity that is so, for a lot of people, man, a prison cell would be a lot more space than the space they've locked themselves into in their psyche, you know, a prison cell. Oh, to like have a nice six by six cell to stretch out in for a lot of people that because

some people, when they stretch out, they're like, oh, I'm lazy and when they're not stretching out, they're like, oh my God, I'm never going to get a chance to stretch. And like, you know, they can't even stretch out yet. So when you read about that in like in the autobiography of Malcolm X or the story of, I mean, I don't know, different stories, that's what comes to mind specifically, but there's a, you know, million examples of people who are in prison for a certain period of time. And that ends up oddly being what spiritually liberates them because they're forced to spend time like looking inside themselves and just reflecting and not to say that prison has that

effect on any significant number of people. But I think that that is a very powerful realization because, you know, going about your day, living in some sort of cubbyhole of, you know, I'm this, I'm that, obsessing over what different labels you're going to associate with your identity, you know, and it plagues everyone. I feel like now with the internet has sort of fractalized culture in that way, where whether you're a corn farmer in the Midwest, or, you know, like a trans activist in San Francisco, or a soccer mom in Florida, or whatever, like you can have these five labels that you just smack on yourself like stickers. And that's who you are. And if your experience of the world doesn't meet that

sort of symbolization of what you think you are, you experience this weird sort of tension. And I think it, I mean, everyone experiences it, but I think it makes a lot of people really unhappy. And it turns into that, I mean, it's what you're talking about compartmentalization, but we end up imprisoning ourselves even when we think we're liberating ourselves in some way. We like even people who I find people on Twitter who discover Zen or discover Buddhism, and they become obsessed by the terminology, or they become obsessed by, you know, a specific tradition or this or that. For some people, that's, that works. But in my experience, in my understanding of things, I'm like, okay, well, you should always be questioning why

you're grabbing at that little box, you know, like I'm trying to get inside of it. Yeah, that's, it's like, yeah, it's like, if I was trying to climb into this can, LaCroix, I'm LaCroix. I would love to, I would, I would love to bathe in LaCroix, but I can't fit in the can. Well, you'd have to shrink yourself down. You know, that's a good, that's a good plug. Maybe they'll sponsor me. Shrink yourself down. Hold on. Uh, we're going to cut real quick and then we'll be right back. Okay. Oh, just one second here. Sorry, I have to go pee. I'll be right back. Oh yeah, no problem. I think I'm going to do the same. Oh, cool. Awesome.

Okay. Okay. So here, forgive me for this. This is a, I think this is a little bit of a cheap, cheesy question. I don't expect you to have the answer to it right away, but if you were, if reincarnation were real and if you could engineer your next incarnation, but only in this way, you, you, the way you were only given three quotes that you could introduce to your brand new self as a child, what would those quotes be? So you've reincarnated your, your, your, and, and, and instead, I don't know how you came to Buddhism or came to spirituality, but I came to it accidentally, you know, I stumbled upon this and stumbled upon that. And one thing led to the other, but if you could engineer it,

what would be the three quotes you would give your future child self after you died? Okay. Yeah. Sometimes I wonder how, how like attached to Zen, I am. And then when you ask a question like that, I realized that they probably be three like Eastern quotes, specifically probably Zen or Dallas quotes. The first one would be the one I kind of mentioned earlier, which was from the data gene. I don't know what chapter, but it's simplicity, patience, compassion. These are your three greatest treasures. So that would be the first one. The second one would probably be I'm just going to end up quoting the, the data gene. It's embarrassing, but it's whatever comes to my head is what clearly the most important ones. So the, the world is won by those who let it go.

That's also from the data gene. And then I really like, it's falsely attributed to Winston Churchill, but it's just like a random quote from some guy in like the 19th century that people became obsessed with during World War II. And it's, if you're going through hell, keep going. I think those three cover a solid, like they're a little bit like corny, but I think if you're just starting out, that's what you need. So that's what I would do. Well, the last one, I think it's a little corny, but those first two data gene quotes are like my, those are my, you know, precious jewels. Those are what I, I worship basically, I'd say I try to at least, you know, in my better moments. Simplicity, patience, compassion. Tell me what simplicity is.

I like to think of it as sort of the, you know, your life is like the, the block of clay that the, you know, you're the sculptor and you've got this big block of clay in front of you. And you're better off pairing away little bits of clay, a bit at a time to create what you're looking for instead of adding more clay onto the block. Okay. So that's kind of how I like to think about it. You know, you're sort of, it's the way, I think simplicity is the way that you, the way that you can approach your life as kind of an art form where you're, you're finding ways to make things less chaotic and more pleasant. And I find that simplifying, simplifying anything in like a mindful way that takes all the variables into account

and has a net positive impact on your life has incredible. It's just like that's, that idea has completely changed my life. Like it's changed, it's made my business, you know, way better than I thought it would be. It's like sort of you take these ideas and you apply them to your life and you're like, oh, there's a reason that this idea has, has been, you know, worshiped for thousands of years. Sometimes there's no reason, but sometimes you, you try it and you realize that there's a, you know, a real value to a simple idea. Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, yeah. E equals MC squared, right? Like that's like, when you, you can, you could dense these. I've never tried that because frankly,

I don't fucking, I have no, I know idea what it means. I just know it's important. So. Oh, you should try it. It's great. But it, but you know, the effect that that has had on, on, on society is pretty profound or, but the, the, what, why is it so difficult to be patient? I mean, I think a lot of it comes down to that, that speaking versus listening mechanism where when, when we let the ego take the wheel, we just want to be, we just want to be driving, like we don't care. We just want to be going faster and faster, pushing and pushing next thing, next thing, you know, uh, you know, I was addicted to that video game runescape when I was a child. Okay, sure. And now after having had that experience as like such an impressionable young mind,

you kind of realize that when you're being impatient or overly zealous or vain in your real life, that you're kind of just treating it like, um, like a video game where the only purpose is to grind and to like, to just like do the same thing over and over again. And then like, you know, you meet, I mean, I've met a few really, really wealthy, really successful people who don't know how to turn that off, who still, they don't have the patience, like they've achieved everything they've ever wanted and they're continuing to do so. But without that patience, there isn't the ability to step back and to, to sort of slow things down and to enjoy things. So I don't think it's, it's not always just waiting for something to happen. It's more so, um, being able to stop at any time

and reflect and kind of like let things emerge in yourself. You know, I love the comparison to RuneScape. It's funny, I brought that up, but it, you know, it's, it's a, I mean, there's a real, the way we approach, I think because of the way everything is so virtualized now and our experience of the world is so symbolic in so many ways and so virtual that comparing the times that we're living on autopilot and the times that we're really not living mindfully are a lot like being trapped in a, in a video game of sorts. Um, M-M-P-O-R-G or whatever. Yeah, it is. Yeah, specifically that genre of video game, I would say.

Well, yeah, because that genre of video game plugged into the, the thing that gets people stuck in patterns, you know, it's, and also interestingly enough, like if you want to, want the, one of the cures for that kind of addiction is you realize like, wait a second, the exact same thing is happening over and over and over again, only it's getting like more colorful and bigger usually. Like, you know, like you, you, uh, when you start World of Warcraft, you're going to start fighting, I don't know, some kind of like fire cricket. You know, like you're going to go out with a little, like you're, you're crappy weapon and you're going to hit the fire cricket a certain number, you're going to grind.

And then suddenly you're going to be given a little bit more, what a juice. And now there's a bigger thing you're going to have to attack. Now that thing is a little more difficult to beat. You have to use your new tricks to beat it. And then this cycle repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats until finally you realize like it's just fine. Why don't I just pull up a YouTube video of fireworks? It's just the same thing, right? Yeah. And I think that's the, the relationship between, um, you know, meditation and sort of like the, the pleasure principle that's inherent in all of us where we're constantly, I like the, the whole idea of the hedonic treadmill where the more

pleasure, you know, the more pleasure you feel, the more pleasure you want. Basically, it's like it plays into addiction. It plays into unhealthy relationships. It plays into work. It plays into everything. You know, it's like one of our primary drives. And so if, if we let ourselves get carried away into that constant, that constant grind for more and more and more, uh, we never actually enjoy anything. We just kind of, it's, it's, you know, it's, we're all addicted to sort of different types of dopamine rushes. And if we don't step back and like let ourselves recalibrate, we end up just building a really, really extreme tolerance for enjoying like the simple things in life basically, you know? I mean, yeah, being able to appreciate, you know, if you've spent

30 years striving and striving and striving and striving and striving and striving and then suddenly you're like, Oh God, like I'm almost done with my life. I have all this money. I have all this stuff. But like, how do I, how do I enjoy it? Like, how do I stop moving? Or how, like, you know, it's, it's like, man, I've set up an imaginary, you know, in this case you, you can, you compartmentalize, you know, you make imaginary peaks, you know, you're, you're basically creating some kind of ridiculous, I don't know, marathon for yourself and you produce all these dumb finish lines. And then you run through the finish line and you pretend like you're happy or you act thrilled, or maybe you do feel thrilled. But, um, the, something I heard recently, which really kind

of blew my mind is that happiness is actually just another kind of suffering. Have you ever heard that before? Right. I mean, yeah. And that's a very central concept in Zen is that you're not aiming for, you're not aiming for like pleasure or happiness or bliss. It's sort of this you're, you're letting your mind in a controlled way, you're letting your mind go beyond that dichotomy between suffering. I mean, it's, it's more than just happiness. It's like, you're letting your mind, it's the whole idea of the middle way in Buddhism really is that's what that means to me is you're, you're going beyond all of those dichotomies of good, evil, you know, joy, suffering, happiness, sadness, you're kind of pushing beyond that and trying to experience life on a, on a

somewhat higher plane, I would say. Well, yeah. Or you're, you're sort of like, you're just popping these, like the, you're popping the bubbles, right? So it's like, so now you've, you know, first, the first bubble is, okay, it's the, it's, this is when I'm happy and this is when I'm unhappy. So there's one bubble, which is your happy bubble. And then there's another bubble, which is your unhappy bubble. And, and these, this is not real. It's, if you, if you just spin, like you're saying, if instead of just like, you know, eating food as quickly as you can, so you could eat more food, or instead of doing like creating like a personal vomitorium or whatever they call it, you know, the bigger you like, I gotta have my stomachs full of me. And then eat more.

Like in this, you're not even tasting food anymore. It's like, when you look at the bag of chips and you ate, it's over, you know, you look at the glass of wine and you haven't tasted one sip and it's gone and you're a little tipsy, you're like, ah, pour another one and I'll taste it this time. But by then you can't taste it because you're kind of drunk. It's like, this is the hedonic treadmill, as you're calling it. But this continuum of experience, we break it up, right? We put these bubbles to try to differentiate. Okay, this is happiness. This is sadness. This is joy. This is grief. And you start realizing, wait a second, this is like, there's a comedian, I can't remember his name. And so I feel really bad saying this, man, I don't want to, damn it.

I can't credit this person. So shit. Is it like old or new? It's old as hell. I might know it. I was a real comedy nerd in high school and still. Well, it's like, I heard a joke just how Taco Bell, it's the same food. It's like basically the same thing and different food in different shapes. You know, like if everything they serve at Taco Bell is, I'm sorry, whoever you are, if you contact me, I'll tweet the shit out of that game. I'm sorry, but I wasn't mine. But then it was a long time ago. But the main thing is like, this is the experience of life is it's like, when you start, I was like, wait a minute, my pain is my pleasure. My pleasure is my pain, right? My eye is a we actually. And there is no

we. So somewhere in there, these bubbles start popping. And in that naturally, you've, the hedonic treadmill stops working. Yeah, completely. It's incredible. Having that experience is also very, it can be very unsettling. Right. I know, I think it was Robert Anton Wilson had that idea about psychedelics where there's a certain point where you get trapped in, it's called, he called it chapel perilous. Yeah. Where you're sort of trapped in between the like that, you know, ultra woke understanding of, I hate saying, I hate the word woke, but you know what I mean? Like, yeah, your third eye opens up, but it's like halfway open. And you're like, I'm still kind of trapped like you're trapped in limbo basically in between that state of

realization and sort of like your primitive human monkey brain. Yeah. And yeah, that, I mean, it's sort of this, I think that's the thing about spiritual practice too, is it's this constant transition between those two states, like you're kind of always going back and forth. And you need to cultivate the kindness to yourself in order to understand that like your brain isn't just going to magically arrive at any point. But like you can have those little moments like you just described where you are, you get it, you know, and then you can carry that with you in your day to day, and like be more patient and more kind and more creative with like how you use your time and everything, you know, this is the, I think the product that this this really brings us to the

third jewel that you brought up at the beginning and it compassion. You know, we if you can like in in the in this bubble popping practice, you know, it does seem like you need to you need to make sure that you're sitting in compassion for yourself because otherwise you will start beating yourself up, you know, because you're like, oh, fuck, man, I'm building more bubbles again. Or even worse, you're like, everything's just bubble wrap, man, it's not real, this world sucks, or, you know, all these things. So, but compassion is a confusing word for people. It's almost more confusing than love. So what's your definition of compassion? I mean, fundamentally, I think it comes down to seeing yourself as the world and the world is

yourself sort of understanding the that, you know, process of fading into everything that we were talking about, because in doing that, you see other people, even like the people who you who you can't stand who are like you feel are so different from you that you can't understand that like you like they fundamentally are looking for the same things as you are, like we're all fundamentally very much, you know, just of that fabric and we want the same things. And then I think there's a certain compassion for yourself that comes from that realization, because you realize that you're not you're both not super special. And you're not like a piece of shit either. Like, it's very easy. It's I mean, it's very hard to cultivate that. And it's not something that I think anyone really

ultimately achieves fully. But you can cultivate it on a daily basis, like in those little in those little bursts and in your practice, and it really helps with just sort of accepting, accepting yourself outside of any of those labels or judgments. And then in doing that, you're like, Oh, you know, even this person who I absolutely abhor is still just a person like who wants to be loved who wants to be understood who wants to be appreciated and acknowledged and like sort of waved at. Oh, hi, you exist, you know, like, yeah, you just sort of see things in that way. The same way you, you know, it's like we don't harbor, you know, if I was in the same room as a mountain lion right now, like, it's very dangerous. It's probably more dangerous than being in the

same room as like a serial killer. But like, I'm in a harbor, you know, it's a lot easier to harbor hatred for the, you know, the serial killer or the, you know, the politician you don't like or your ex girlfriend or whatever it is, you know, and instead, like, and you're not going to harbor like abstract hatred towards a mountain lion, because like, you're probably never going to be in the same room as a mountain lion. But it's like, you're both just subjects of the world, you're both just existing in the same fabric. And so I think it's kind of like a rambling notion, but it's kind of just this idea that you're, you're accepting that there are, there are no real distinctions. And in doing that, you can kind of accept yourself fully. And then in accepting

yourself fully, you can accept others. And I found in my own experience, that's when the most growth happens. Because people seem to think that if you accept yourself, you're not going to try, like you're not going to grow, you're not going to like try to make yourself better. But I found that if I, if I accept myself, like, if my girlfriend is telling me something about myself that I don't want to hear, like she's trying to have a conversation about something and I don't want to hear it. But I'm listening. And if I decide to listen and to open my ears and to like, try to really understand what she's saying, and accept it and be like, okay, yeah, that is like pretty true about myself. I don't want to acknowledge that it's true, but you know, you're right.

That's an incredible moment of growth. And that's an incredible, you know, exchange between two people when, when two people can share that moment of growth together. You know, whether it's in a conflict or if it's in a some sort of loving exchange. And then that's what you're doing with yourself. It at your highest moments when you're sitting is sort of you're bearing all to yourself, you're looking in the mirror, you know, at ultra magnification and seeing all the zits and the boogers. And you're like, all right, you know, everyone's got these like, I don't fuck it, you know, it's okay. And some of them will stay, some of them will go away. They're not inherently ugly. Like it doesn't really matter. You just start to like question

everything, you know, like, okay, you know, I accept myself. Well, you know, a tree that was terrified of animals eating its fruit would be in a lot of trouble. And that's great. Yeah. Wow. That's, that's really good. I like that. So we, when we're sitting, we're like the tree and we're eating our own fruit, so to speak, which is that, you know, these moments are or the seed, you know, or the seed when it's turning into a tree, the poor fucking seed, you know, if like, oh my God, look what's happening. Also, but also good for the seed, you know. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, so if like that, I think sometimes those moments where someone's telling you something that is you've, has been a bit of a blind spot. And if you can just understand, oh wait, the pain I'm

feeling is the pain of a seed growing into a tree. Right. Of learning something new that you didn't know, that you're embarrassed, you didn't know, you're like, oh, fuck, that is true. Why do I do that? You know? Yeah. And it's like, you're, you're at your most power. That's another idea, that very Taoist idea that you're at your most powerful when you're at your most vulnerable. Because, you know, your defenses are, are down. You can like hear what the intruders have to say instead of just shooting them on site, sort of thing. Wow, what a great chat. Charlie, you got to go pick your dog up. Thank you. I do. Thank you so much for this. This is a thank you one of my favorite podcasts of all time. Can you please tell people where they can find you?

Obviously, it's at Daily Zen, but talk a little bit, just briefly about your book and any other ways people can find you. Well, thank you for having me on, Doug. It was a real pleasure and a treat. Anytime. The Daily Zen exists at twitter.com slash Daily Zen, thedailyzen.org. And then I just released a new book that you can order through the Penguin Random House website, or Urban Outfitters, or Amazon, wherever you choose to buy your books. But it's called the Daily Zen Journal. And it's an illustrated 180 page interactive journey through all these ideas, I'd say. You can draw on it, you can answer different questions. It asks you to think about certain things, some that will make you feel really good, some of them will make you feel

uncomfortable. And it's sort of intended to just sort of encourage some of the topics that I think we covered today. I think if you like this, you'll probably enjoy it. So I'm done plugging now. Awesome. Charlie, I'm so excited. I hope I'm allowed to say it. I'm so excited that you're moving out to LA. Me too. Cool, man. Well, I hope that you will come back on again. And what a joy. Thank you so much. It would be my pleasure. Thank you, Duncan. You got it. That was Charlie Ambler, everybody. You can find him at Daily Zen on Twitter. Don't forget to check out his new book and his awesome blog. All the links you need to get to Charlie are going to be at ducatressal.com. Thanks for listening, everybody. I love you. And I'll see you soon. Hare Krishna.

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