Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 437: David Nichtern

Episode Date: May 1, 2021

David Nichtern, Duncan's meditation teacher, re-joins the DTFH! David is hosting a FREE teacher training info session on his site this Wednesday, May 5th at 6PM EST, click here for more info. And head over to DharmaMoon.com for even more! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Purple - Visit Purple.com/Duncan10 and use promo code DUNCAN10 for $200 Off any mattress order of $1500 or more! BLUECHEW - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping. Athletic Greens - Visit AthleticGreens.com/Duncan for a FREE 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase!

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Thanks, purple. And we're back. I wanna thank all my glorious Patreon subscribers for supporting the DTFH at its core. And I wanna invite you to potentially protect yourself from all these wild animal attacks that have been happening not just in this country, but now it seems to have gone global.

And a lot of folks are getting like minor wounds. Some of them are getting infected. Luckily, no rabies as of yet. But good news is my attorneys have instructed me to say is that subscribing to the Dunkin' Dressel Family Hour Patreon will not protect or not protect you from wild animal attacks, small, medium size, or absolutely gigantic.

And there is no connection to the DTFH and the many wild animal attacks that have been happening around the planet. There is no connection at all and thus no liability. That being said, it would be wonderful for you to subscribe over at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. I mean, even if it was a placebo effect, even if let's say I didn't have a special cursed bell

that I found in my grandmother's trunk that she had dredged up from some stupid shipwreck she was in and that thank God she was the only survivor of. I don't have a cursed bell, you know, or maybe I do, but I mean, it would be nuts to say that every time I ring the bell, people who haven't subscribed to my Patreon get attacked by animals. That'd be absolutely insane.

And it's not true. It's just a regular Patreon and no harm will come to you. As my attorneys say, should you not subscribe, patreon.com forward slash DTFH, it does not protect or not protect you from wild animal attacks. If you're somebody who watched the Midnight Gospel, and you're already familiar with today's guest,

he is David on the Midnight Gospel, and he's David in this dimension, and he's my meditation teacher or Clancy's meditation teacher in the Midnight Gospel and my meditation teacher in this particular sector of the multiverse, he's awesome. And a perfect teacher for me because I want a lot of fireworks.

I like fireworks, I want rainbows, I want to read minds, I want to walk through walls, I want to stretch my arms out into space and hug a star. I want to see deities, demigods, devas. I want to witness transmutations of lead into gold. I want perfect tarot card readings. I want to suckle at the nipples of some kind of divine deva

that is the source of orgasms in the multiverse. And most importantly, I want to be able to leave my body and fly around the moon and sing with the moon men and take long dips in the astral ocean that they say exists on the moon, which feels like bathing in frothy cherry juice. But because of these desires, I often get distracted from some of the fundamental

basic sort of things that go along with meditation, which is a little disappointing for some folks who are sort of hoping for the possibility that they would levitate or that their penises maybe would grow a little bit longer. Or if not grow, they would achieve the ability to vibrate their penises at a higher rate, inducing hyper powerful orgasms in not only their partners,

but anyone in the nearby area of where they're making love. This is for me, just what I need. I need a teacher that gives me the most simple instructions because I always want to start on the other side of things. Before I even thought I would be interested in making music, I was already buying modular synthesizers and sort of just diving into like the far end

of music production instead of starting with the basics. But David years ago told me maybe I should learn scales on the piano, that that's a great place to start and show me how to do scales on my guitar. And that kind of very simple basic instruction has led to me being able to make music in a way that a few years ago I never thought I would be able to make music.

I mean, I don't want to brag, but I've won what 15 Grammys, I lose count. But that same kind of instruction works really well with spiritual practice. And today what you're gonna listen to is the kind of conversation David and I have all the time. It's a conversation between a teacher and a student and it's a conversation that revolves

around my current confusion when it comes to meditation and a practice. So if nothing else, I think what you're gonna get out of this is maybe an authentic version of the teacher-student relationship when it comes to Buddhism. And maybe that's gonna be a little different

from what you might have expected if you expect like, I don't know, conks, shells being blown or something or well, there actually are bells in this conversation. Now I think about it. Huh, anyway, I'm so lucky to have David in my life. And if you like what you hear, head over to DharmaMoon.com, that's D-H-A-R-M-A-M-O-O-N.com.

That's Dave's website. He is giving a teacher training in May. And if you wanna find out what that's about, you can go to an information session on May 5th. And that link is darmamoon.com, slash teacher-training. All the links are gonna be at dunkintrussell.com. And now let's welcome back to the D-T-F-H, David Nicktern.

Welcome, welcome on you, that you are with us. Shake hands, no need to be blue. Welcome to you. Wow, wow, wow. It's the dunkintrussell. Dumpintrussell. Dumpintrussell. Dumpintrussell.

Dumpintrussell. Dumpintrussell. Dumpintrussell. David, welcome back to the D-T-F-H. It's really nice to see you. We haven't talked in a long time, but it's nice to see your face. How are you doing?

Yeah, I feel excellent today. You know, it varies, you know, from moment to moment. Yes. Have you ever noticed that? You better believe it. I've noticed that, sadly. I don't, yeah.

Well, wait, wait, it's not just sadly, because sometimes it's good. But I noticed when I asked people how are you, they tell you how they recently were. You know, they're like, how are you? They tell you how they recently were. Have you ever noticed that they started

reciting their personal, I was going to say eulogy, but I mean personal history? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. You know, this is an interesting way to dive into something I found on Twitter, which I was really kind of blown away by. So are you familiar with

the term multiple personality disorder? I'm more than familiar with the term. I'm familiar with the phenomenon. Okay. Well, so there is now a community that I found on Twitter of people who, number one, they don't want to call it,

they don't call it that anymore. They have a new name for it, which is it's not a disorder. It's a system, is what they call themselves. Like a system of, I know it's so cool. And it made me feel really happy for them. I was a psychologist

and she had a multiple personality disorder because that's what they called it then, a client. And she would, you know, keeping confidentiality, she would just, you could just tell of all her clients, that was the one that really blew her mind

because she, you know, as she told me, it really is as though a new person had entered into this person. So she might be talking to an adult and then talking to a little kid and then talking to someone of a different gender than talking to,

but it wasn't as though, I could tell that she was so blown away by how it wasn't like someone's pretending to be someone else. They're literally other people inhabiting the same body. What do you, what do you think about that?

And reference, especially to what you were saying where people are talking about what has happened right up until that moment. They're also talking from some version of themselves that might not be there in a few seconds. I mean, that's kind of Buddhism 101, isn't it in a way?

Yeah. That the identity, I want to talk specifically about the ID, which is what you're talking about because I have some experience with it, but I guess from a... Wait, what did you call it?

Dissociative identity disorder. Okay, okay, gotcha. And because there's more to say about it from that perspective, but the notion that your identity is already fictitional in some extent because it just, it's based on expired premises

all the time. Yeah. It's like if it was a driver's license, you'd need to get it renewed every minute. Like you get stopped by a cop and he says, this driver's license is three days old. So you can, you can operate this vehicle. You may not remember how to do it.

Yeah. But it's so real. But it's so real. It's so real. You know, I was, I'm always messing around with some of the ideas that you've taught me or ideas that I've picked up

from connections that you've made for me. So, you know, now I'm listening to A Smile at Fear. It's a book by... Oh yeah. It's so good. But I'm sort of, I'm just fascinated by

the initial experience before the personality gets ahold of it. Oh, okay. This is good. This is, you know, there's a lot of ways to refer to that experience with words, but obviously it's beyond words, isn't it?

Yes. Well, I think, well, that's what, that's deaf. Thank you. That's one of my confusions is, you know, as I'm sort of, I got coffee today. It wasn't that good.

I'm sorry, because I yapped about this to our meditation group, Journey and Abortum. So any of y'all listening, I'm sorry you have to listen to this boring thing, but I'm tasting it and just noticing the story I'm telling myself,

because it wasn't that good. The story I was telling myself was, well, I guess society's falling apart. Like it took, you know what I mean, in a millisecond, it just, it was, it actually was not bad.

The coffee wasn't terrible, but my mind immediately went to the apocalypse. And then for a second, it was like, I could peel it all back, and I was just tasting coffee, and it was great. And it was a spring morning.

There's birds, the wind's blowing. It's just great. Is that... So you changed the narrative? Well, yeah, I just tried to be in that first moment before the slavering dog of my mind

grabbed it and started like shaking it around to see if it could snap its neck. Well, of course, then you can shift to, you know, a kind of glowing narrative. It's essentially the same phenomenon, a mirror image, you know.

So that's why, you know, in the Six Realms, you have those god realms and those hell realms, and they're really both considered to be fictions of the habitual mental, you know, fabrication.

So is this the same idea as Samsara and Nirvana are the same thing? Yeah, they're, well, they arise, they co-arise from the same ground of awareness. They do.

How would you define Nirvana? Without bringing Kurt Cobain into it, right? I knew you were going to... I did a Nirvana joke already this morning. I can't help it. Well, Nirvana is sometimes no sort of transcending sorrow or suffering or struggle.

So it sometimes could be thought of as peace, attaining a certain kind of peaceful state. But in the kind of more, you know, nuanced way of talking about it, there's nothing to dwell on in it. So it's not, oh, and now I got to a good place. If you're dwelling on the peaceful quality,

then there just becomes another fixation, doesn't it? Yes. Yes. So I mean, it's a more albeit, a more pleasant one, you know, superficially speaking, but so what you're really talking about is

the ground from which samsara and nirvana arise. That's what you're really talking about today. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And that's, that's talked about a number of different ways. There's the word primordial could be used,

unconditional, you know, even basic. And in terms of catching that moment, before either relative frame of reference arises, there is a certain freshness to that, that quality of mind that everybody can experience. Everybody has it, but it hasn't been identified so much for,

for a lot of us, you know, as, as a, so you go right past it. That's what I see. This is where I felt this immense frustration when I, because I did realize when I was doing the rosy story about what was happening, that it was the same thing. And then for a moment, I really did feel kind of nauseating and,

and immensely burdensome and impossible to stop. And, and, you know, you know, it was like a micro panic of like, Oh fuck, it's, it's always just telling this some story. Right. And, and so then I, then I wondered, is this why, and some of the scriptures that I've been listening to,

they say you should treat the problem as though you had, your hair was on fire. Hmm. Hmm. Well, in that, you know, that that's recognizing the strength of certain habits that are pulling you back and back and back into a cyclic, you know, cycling through kind of situations.

So one way of talking about Nirvana is relatively, you would be getting off of that wheel, off of that cycle and there could be a sense of relief, you know, from it, but it's temporary relief. If it's relief, it's got to be temporary. You know, if you take aspirin, you know, the headache goes away for a while, but you didn't remove the source of the headache.

Did you? No. You know, so the, the irony of it to me is that lurking, co-mingling, let's say, co-emerging with that feeling of the endlessness of this habitual thing is a feeling of total freshness in the moment at the same time.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like twins. Yeah. So we would like to, you know, pick our twin and kind of vote on it, but there's something about the co-rising of the complete possibility of freshness of experience,

which is always available, always present. And then the inevitability of us kind of like, you know, reforming it into some kind of familiar landscape, pleasant or unpleasant. That freshness of experience. Is that what children are just naturally experiencing? Oh, that's the age old one. Yeah.

I don't, not quite because otherwise children would be Buddhists, you know, they'd be enlightened. They seem close to that sometimes. Well, you're a new dad. Yeah. You know, I mean, you could say it's some kind of fresh start and they come out, they smell so clean and they, you know, they look so innocent in a way,

but you know, wait till they're like five or eight years old or something, you know, and wait till they're teenagers. Oh, I keep hearing the teeth. But, you know, good news is I still got a little bit of time before they start growing hair on their face, but that is, you know, a little bit of, they start growing hair on their face, but that,

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and before my mind catches up with itself, there is this sense of familiarity with something that I associated with a place and a time, but then suddenly there it is, but I'm in my older body, but it's just as fresh. And I think fresh is the best way to put it.

There's this sense of like, wow, wow, this is amazing, but then it goes away in an instant, because right away I'm analyzing it. Right away I'm like, oh, what the fuck was that? That's the exact same way I used to feel when I was at summer camp, completely unburdened by any kind of adult worries,

smelling pine trees and a young body. And I used to think, oh, well, that feeling, that's because you were young. But then it comes back minus the being connected or dependent on some situation. And I always wondered to myself, is that what you're talking about? Well, you know, we're exploring together, right?

Yes. So I think there's a three tier process happening, not just two tiers. So the first tier would just be the freshness of the experience. You can experience that, you know, if somebody, when you have thunder or lightning or something like that, that's a pretty good, it catches you unprepared.

Right. And so you actually just experience it in a way that is closely connected to some kind of total spontaneous brilliance and also some kind of utter panic that there's nobody there to experience it. So those two experiences co-rise. Then there's us weaving yards and yards of fabric

explaining what just happened. Oh, that was lightning. You know, the thunder will come along in about 0.6 seconds. Tell me how far away the, you know, the event was because the time between you, when you see the lightning and you hear the thunder, you can actually calculate how far the rainstorm is from you. Remember that?

Yeah. Technology, yeah. And then you start thinking like, oh, shit, you know, my car is not weatherproofed or whatever. You know, and then by the end of, by the end of like, you know, 15 milliseconds, you're into like Nightmare Alley or some kind of like,

metaphysical thing, yeah, whatever. You know, then there's a third tier though, which is the entity or the quality of awareness that is noticing all that happening and kind of fundamentally thinking there's a problem with it. Yes. And that's the little gremlin that we go after first. Yes.

That little judging, harsh, nudgy, you know, critical, manipulative, conniving, your way towards some kind of, you know, imagined freedom later, you know. Yes. So we, the way we do unpeel that layer is just by being kind and being, you know, okay, all right, this is part of the experience I'm having right now

and maybe I can relax into actually just exploring the experience itself rather than how do I get out of it. Right. Yeah. That takes a lot of patience though in gentleness and that's not something that's advertised as much as the precision element of it, you know. What do you mean not advertise?

Well, you know, people go, I think people go, you could have clarity of mind. You know, that's the prize for doing all this stuff. Oh, yes, yes. But the prize might be just first, just developing some kind of kindness towards oneself or towards a situation as a whole and then that gives you a lot more relaxation

to lean into it a little bit. Okay, yeah, I see what's going on there. And then you'll, I think, see that the commentary and the freshness are co-mingling and co-arising from a ground that is completely pure and completely timeless, essentially. Yeah. And so your face, yeah, you just, yeah, you just go,

and there's a lot of letting go at that point, you know. Yes. There is listening to the smiling at fear. I really like the way he points in the direction of this like massive vulnerability and how problematic that is for so many people because that thing, that kindness that you're talking about is often viewed with some sense of paranoia.

If I, you know, if I get kind to myself or if I do this kindness thing with other people who my story is they're annoying the fuck out of me at the very least, then I'm just going to get walked all over and I won't be able to function in the world in this kind of vulnerable state. And he keeps pointing to that vulnerable state. And now, you know, I remember in one of your classes,

it was someone was asking you a question, and I've heard it now more than a few times where someone's like, well, I've been meditating and I have a regular active practice, but now all that's happening is I'm feeling heartbroken over everything. Like I don't know how to not feel this heartbreak. I wasn't feeling before.

And really like the person who asked you there, it wasn't like they were saying it to like, you know, humble brag. They were legitimately, they were legitimately, I don't want to say disturbed, but I don't know of another way to put it because they had this sense of every, like recognizing some like level of suffering

in the world that they hadn't seen before and they felt sort of out of their element. The word comes from my poignancy. You know, a lot of great things are poignant, touch that kind of poignant quality. And sometimes we call it a genuine heart of sadness. It has a sadness mixed into the sensitivity of it. But nobody would think sadness was part of the picture.

Nobody in the initial phases of, you know, when you're talking about your classes, I don't think you're saying, come achieve a genuine heart of sadness. Oh, that's a good one. I think we'll change the text. Change the ad. The two things, yeah, we don't say that.

We don't say come and get properly bored. Yeah. You know, but we could. And when, you know, if people, I guess we still want to get people to come and... But the fact is, if you do meditate the way we meditate, the style and practice that this tradition is, there would be an inevitable outcome

of genuine heart of sadness. And there would be inevitable outcome of hot and cool boredom that we've talked about before. It would be almost impossible to expect somebody to go through this process and not taste those two experiences. And then there would be an inevitable quality of suddenly free from fixed mind, which is the third, let's put that in as a third element.

Right. And that is, you put those together, you get some kind of cocktail, you know? Wait, does a genuine heart of sadness ever go away? Well, you look at all these great bodhisattvas, and that's what you see basically. I guess if you took the Arhat exit ramp, maybe you could. What's that ramp?

You know, I'm free from fixation, bye. Right. If you didn't take the next step of like, that the bodhisattvas take of looking at the world with great kind of sensitivity and compassion and realizing A, that you do care. Yeah. And B, that it's somehow a logical next step

in the evolution of your own practice to recognize interdependence and recognize that you're tied to the beings and everybody can recognize it because they have kids and stuff like that. So that's where you go, well, wait a minute, in case you want to nuke that right away or neutralize it, what about how you feel about a friend of mine

just lost her cat and found it, but she's totally heartbroken for a cat. So we have that in us, we can't get rid of it. It's called bodhicitta, we can't get rid of it. See, but this is, again, this is not to say that you definitely didn't mislead me. I mean, there was never a time where I don't think this was like off the table or anything like that,

but you know, I was talking to Erin the other day and she is not, things have gotten better now, but our second one has been giving her rough time. She's breastfeeding and so he's been keeping her up. He was, things have gotten better, but has just like a complete, there's a complete wrong thing to say to try to comfort her. I say, don't worry, he won't be a baby much longer

and she just starts crying and says, why would you say that to me? You know, and I realized like, oh yeah, that's the truth, but it's so sad. And that to me was that heart of sadness in her and in me too, I just, I can't, it's so... Well, Duncan, just friend to friend here. Your line was, but he'll always be your baby.

Too late. Well, it'll come around again for child number three. Yeah, but you know, every... And that's kind of true by the way. Yes. Ask any parent with adult children. It's true, I hope. I hope that's true.

You can't, all these moments with foresties, you know, we go on hikes or he, you know, I can't bear it, I can't deal with it because I just, you know, I was taking him up to the forest. I had heard Annie Lamotte say, if you want your children to love God, get them to love nature. And so I'm pointing around to nature and I'm saying,

this is God. And he goes, I love God. He goes, want to hold God, want to hold God. Yeah, and I know what he meant because that's how I feel too. It's like, I want to hold this, not just because I want to feel it in my arms, but because I don't want it to keep going away.

You know, I don't... And that's two different things. Wow. Wanting to contact it and wanting to, you know, to freeze dry it are two different things. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of letting go and connect. When you connect fully, there's a lot of letting go in it.

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who make a daily commitment to their health every day. Again, simply visit athleticgreens.com, Fort Flash Duncan, and get your free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs today. Thank you, Athletic Greens. Why is that at least initially so difficult? I mean, to me, this really is like a... It's exhaust...

I don't want to say it's exhausting, but it's just... You know, when you hear all the... You know, you hear the double truths and all the... The cause of suffering is attachment and all that. And you hear it, and it's like, yeah, yeah. Of course, I knew that all along. But then when you experience that clinging, even when you don't want to, it's really quite painful.

Is that why the sadness? Why the heart of sadness? Well, you know, if you wanted to understand it better by contemplating it, you could say, what do you mean by sadness? What do you mean by that? What does that mean? Because there's other words you could connect to it,

which is a sort of sense of connection, compassion, concern, love. You know, those all those words also are in there. Right. What's wrong with that? You know, what's wrong with all that? That's pretty good. I love all those. Those are great.

You know, it's just, it's like, there's different words for it. This is actually something in the last podcast I chatted about with the email, my friend, because I've been reading this book, The Myth of Sisyphus. Have you read this book by Camus? Not for a long, long time. Well, the discussion was Camus identifies this thing called absurdity, which in the whole conversation,

what I had was, is that duke? Is that the, you know, is that, is that the existentialist version of duke? That they found it, but through the Western aperture or something, you know, and so they're calling it absurdity, a sense of not fitting in, not belonging. But then in a thread about Camus on Reddit, somebody was calling it the big sad.

Like, I was wondering, you know, that was the conversation. I was wondering what you thought about that is, is that, do you think that in the, you know, in the West, and you hear different versions of it, but this general sense of a kind of malaise, a modern malaise that sets upon a person where they don't really feel like it's, they feel pointless or something, useless.

Is that the same thing as the heart of sadness? No, no. Because it's not debilitating in that way. It's energizing. It's an invitation. It's the warrior's sword. It's an opportunity. It's magnificent.

It's profound, you know. So, you know, the word schlep would never arise in that space. You don't schlep through the sadness. You would identify with it to the point where you're inseparable from it. It's a gateway. It's an opening. It's, you know, you see the difference, you know,

in terms of, you're not adding an extra layer onto it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah. Because it's, the extra layer is just more of the story. You're talking about the, just the primordial it-ness of it. Is that what you mean? Well, you know, I was, I'm thinking of my,

I have quite a few Indian musician friends, you know, Indian music, and there was a great musician named Sultan Khan who has passed away. Very famous. He actually, I think he might have played with the Beatles at one point, you know, and, but he is a classical, great Indian Seranghi player. And two of his students were on my Dharma Moon record label, Palguni Shah and Gaurab Shah.

Wow. And they took me to meet Sultan Khan, who was, and they, they just, he's their guru. So they, they touch his feet and they, they, he adores them. They adore him and he teaches them. And it's very strenuous that tradition. It's very strenuous. And when he's playing, sometimes he plays the Seranghi,

which is a violin-like Indian instrument. You know, it has a sound, it has a sound of human voice. Yeah. So he can sing or play. It's like the same thing. It's very, very good. Wow. And it's a certain thing.

And you go, ah, I mean, people are literally groaning out loud, including me. Yeah. Yeah. Because he's tapping it for all of us. He's taken all of our fingers and putting them on the, the clitoris of creation, you know, and the heart of creation. Yeah.

And it's like everybody's melting into it. And that's his job. That's cool. You know, and, and maybe, maybe he can do that all day long. I don't know. I mean, that's a great, a great adapt who can do that all day long, but he can do it when he's playing the Seranghi. I'll tell you that.

And it's not mistakeable. So I think there's a, um, you know, um, a possibility to experience that as a kind of very positive, desirable experience. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, yes, I wouldn't, in a million years, if there was, even if there were a possibility to not have that, I would not in a million years trade it or take it out or remove

it from, if it were even possible. But Trump, uh, in smiling of fear, he does very accurately point out when it happens, when people start feeling that a sense of, he says the way he put it was, it feels as though your ego has been deflowered is what he says. He says that in the way he puts it is, and it's very strange, but I love it. He's so poetic.

That's what I love about him is his ability to just go into this beautiful poetic, like way of explaining things. And to the point where you don't even know he's done it until you're like, wait, what? Cause it can be very analytical. And then suddenly he's saying, it's as though someone has placed a moon in your heart. Do you know what I'm talking about, David?

And now you have a moon in your heart and you have to deal with that now. You have to deal with, there's a, there's this thing in your heart now that it's there and you might want to shut it down, but it's too late because you've already, once you've felt it, you've, that's it. And this thing, if you've been someone who's completely been up in their heads or in their identity or their ego, and then suddenly there's this other thing, which I do see what you mean by portal. There is a sense of like, no, wait, wait, when did that happen?

And why it's too late now, but what the, what the, what happened? And I know it's, I'm sorry if I seem a little clumsy talking about it because my experience with it is still very limited, fleeting. And, and, and whenever, whenever I have the sense that it's not there, I want, I want it back. I, I, it's all that's, I could, I would only want that string played on my Sauronki, you know, touch the clitoris. It is, it is totally, can totally correlate and, you know, sync up with

what you're saying. And then I'm tempted to just sort of add another layer to the view, which is that it has a consort companion, which is called Suddenly Free from Fixed Mind, which is the sort of a blade of non fabrication that there's nothing to do about it. There's nothing to do with it. And it's only experienced very, very instantaneously. So the minute you start to kind of try to formalize it or stabilize your

relationship to it or anything like that, the blade of Suddenly Free from Fixed Mind comes in and puts you in touch with even worse with the genuine harvest sadness. They, they accentuate, they resonate each other. And it's sort of like absolute and relative bodhicitta really, you know, which we've talked about a bunch. I don't think I've had that yet. I don't know.

I got really frustrated. That was, I was never had Suddenly Free from Fixed Mind. Well, I was doing that, you know, 30 day meditation that we were working on and I started, I started, I started having this like wild. It was wild. It was beautiful. I was going running up in the woods listening to Dilgo Kinsi, Rinpoche's book on the Bodhisattva.

You know, I'm talking about the, the, are you getting a call? I was. I was. Friends, if you work with David long enough, he trains you so when he rings the bell, you start talking. It was a really like beautiful time in my life. And, and I, like, I got a mint. I was meditating out there.

I'm like, I was having this like, it was wild. It was so powerful. And then I was getting frustrated because I couldn't do it again. Like it was like something happened sitting out in the forest, meditating, meditating, something was happening. I mean, I know everyone says that. I know it's annoying. And it was so powerful.

And then suddenly it just, I lost it. I lost it. Not that it hasn't come back since completely at unexpected times and flickering moments, but I don't know. I don't know how to explain it other than it was just. So frustrating. I don't know. Can you help me?

What does it mean? Or is it nothing? Is it just my mind or maybe, maybe I didn't even, maybe nothing happened at all. You know, and I just want something to have happened. Maybe this and maybe that, but in terms of just, you know, method and. The view. The idea that any particular state of mind could arise.

That is worth trying to create or, or attaching to it. In a, in a sort of full sense. The best gesture towards it is disowning it and letting it go. Yeah. That's where I was. That's the way I was taught. That's what I was taught. So I'm teaching it back because I've tasted it.

So in other words, one of the traps that I think many meditators get into is they think there's a state of meditation. Yes. That's what they're going to get to. And then that will be somehow better than whatever state they think they're in otherwise. And so a lot of energy goes into sort of manipulating the consciousness in particular ways.

Yes. And I do believe that's the runway that the Buddha ran out of, you know, just there is no further manipulation going on. There's just a kind of resting in, in the arising and dissolving of phenomena and appreciating them. You know, that's okay to feel the poignancy of it and all that, but there's no clinging. Yeah.

And, you know, now all kinds of experiences, by the way, people have described, I had a really interesting podcast with somebody who's coming from Theravadan tradition. We were talking about the Jhana states and, you know, reaching certain levels of the consciousness has really settled down. So there's not a lot of thoughts, for example, and not even a sense of eye particular. But even those states in terms of the way that we were trained, you don't do

anything other than the disownative arises. And you take your next breath or you, you, you, you allow a kind of open, open ended quality to things to just be there. So at the end of the day, you're doing less and less manipulating as you go along. See, that's where I was getting frustrated with you. Because with me. Yes.

Because I was having these like, I wasn't even there. No, I know, but I would talk to you about it. And that's, that was, that was basically what you were doing. You were saying is like, Oh yeah, disown it. You were, you had different ways of saying it, but every way that you were saying it was really either like frustrating or enraging or confusing. Because it was like. Well, how about right now?

Does it seem confusing? No, right now it doesn't feel as, as confusing as it did then. But the disowning part, I guess, because there's a lot of people, there's a lot of negative connotation wrapped up in disowning. It's a parent does do a child. They don't love anymore. And I, and, and also before maybe you clarify that word, you know, this is something that as I'm listening to smiling at fear, he's talking about,

you know, the brute, breathe, the breathing pattern, the exhalation, the moment before inhalation, disown that. And both of these uses of the word in some way make sense, but can be really confusing. Maybe you could help clarify that. Well, the gentle version of disown is letting go. And the reason he says disown is because people like you and me will make a big deal about a particular experience that they have during the

practice and then get all twisted up into knots trying to reproduce it. Yes. And, and, and you can see how that's, you know, it'd be like, I'm thinking of Michael Jordan for some reason, you know, it goes to mine. Like one of those triple, you know, flip dunks. He doesn't go in there going, I think I'm going to do a triple flip dunk again. He's just, he leaves the ground.

And that was one of these people who could fly. It seemed like, you know, like Miller Ray, but he just literally seemed, he's the only person I've seen who could actually get higher in the level of a jump. Yeah. I didn't know that was physically possible. You know what I'm talking about? Oh yeah.

It's, trust me, I've seen that. He's levitating a little bit. I've thought, I think many of us have suspected that was happening because you look at it and you think there, some physicists, please explain whatever that was. Yeah. But there has to be some kind of, not like, oh, I remember how this when I did this in the, in the Coliseum, you know, with Jack guarding me,

you know, there has to be some moment of just, he's just like having that whatever experience it is right now and opening and surrendering into it. I think it's very, it's very hard to reproduce phenomenon, especially when you have a real target in mind. We do that all the time though, right? You know, that's, you know, played a great solo, like let's say you're playing music, you play a great solo and then you go, the band leader

says, take another one and you go, oh fuck, I don't have another one. You know? Yeah. But I've seen players like Michael Brecker or somebody like that. No problemo. That's because he disowned the last solo immediately. Okay. Yeah.

I, I get it. I get what you're saying. It's, it's kind of like a fractal, you know, anything sweet. This is my, this is a problem I have. Anything sweet that's happening to me, including our friendship, pretty soon I'll be like, David's not immortal. What do you think? He's not going to be around forever.

And you know, with my, you know, like, my son, he's going to grow up. I'm going to die. All this beauty. Ah, gone. Yeah. And then I just, it's, I can't, I want to be a person who can just be okay with that. But I'm not, I'd say it's enraging.

It's, it's, I think that's where my mind does connect with us. Absurdity does connect with like, this is fucked up, man. Like, how can you have this, this potential for beauty in the world? And then also it's just gone in the blink of an eye sometimes. Let's call it what it is. It's the ultimate mind fuck. What you're describing there. I mean, then there is no bigger one than that, that you could experience this

extreme bliss and exhilaration and there's nothing in it to hold on to. So that is where I try to like be very true to, to the Buddhist way of talking about it is a lot of people say, oh, Buddhism's so flat and dry, there's no bliss in it. But that's definitely not true, particularly of any Buddhism, but also particularly of Bajjana Buddhism. You are supposed to taste the nectar, the bliss. But you cannot hold on to it.

So there, that's what we call the union of bliss and emptiness. And I talk about the thumb blue in the face. What a complete statement that is. You know how big I am into synchronicity and tendril and stuff like that. Yes. Right. So, so right before I started talking to, you know, Krishna Das just sent me a text. We, we, like you and I do, you know, we'll read something and send it across.

Yeah. And this is a teacher named Sonsar Kensei Rinpoche. So he was a student of your, your, the teacher you like so much, the Dilgo Kensei Rinpoche. And he's a popular teacher in the West and he's also a filmmaker. And I had, I had the interesting experience of being the music supervisor on one of his feature films. Wow. So I hung out with him in a completely professional capacity. He didn't really want to be Rinpocheing at that point.

He wanted to be the film director and I was the music soup. So listen to what he says though. And he's, he's can be very deliberately and intentionally provocative, but it's so relevant to what you were just saying that I'm going to read it. Is that okay? Yeah, please. So this is from Sonsar Jamyang Kensei Rinpoche. One of the main reasons we practice the Dharma is to prepare ourselves for a certain death. For some, it is the only reason they practice, but that reason alone will make their Dharma practice worthwhile.

These days, various aspects of the Dharma like mindfulness are becoming more and more popular, but rarely as a preparation for death and definitely not as a preparation for what lies beyond death. Modern people meditate for every reason under the sun, except the most important one. How many Vipassana students meditate to prepare for death? And how many practice because they want to put an end to the cycle of death and rebirth for good? Most people meditate because they want to become better managers or find partners or feel happy or because they long for a calm, stress-free mind and life. For them, meditation is a way of preparing for life, not death, and is therefore no less mundane than their otherworldly pursuits like shopping, eating out, exercising and socializing from living is dying, how to prepare for dying, death and beyond. Wow. So, I mean that of course, you know, and the teachers are out there, you could quote Mingyu Rinpoche and, you know, they talk about happiness and peace and finding appreciation in life.

To me, it's not one or the other. I'll just go on the record of saying, I dig this perspective and in some ways it's an ultimate perspective because it comes right out of what you were just saying. It's like, God, I'm going to have all these experiences and then I'm going to die. Yeah. You know, it's true, but I think it doesn't, it's the real thing you want to contemplate is impermanence more than just purely physical death, what does impermanence really mean? Right. And then against the backup of impermanence, how do you actually experience things in a way that's enriching and you could even say fulfilling, you know, or enjoying. Well, yeah, that's what I like. I mean, that's the problem is like, here I am out, you know, I'm out in the forest with my kid.

He's just having fun jumping in streams and like seeing butterflies. I'm, you know what I mean? My mind is like, you're going to die when I will die. I can't cling to this moment. And, you know, obviously I'm not saying that. I'm just like, you know, don't go there. You'll probably fall. Come over here.

You know, but still it's happening there. I mean, is this, I feel like this is like something toddlers have to deal with all the time is they're looking at their parents wondering what is that shadow that just crossed their face? Yeah, why is that person so anxious? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I would love to just like, you know, I wouldn't, I don't want to be haunted by this sense of like, or, and I don't want to be haunted by my own greed. I don't want to be haunted by all this stuff.

I would like to have just that primary experience. But yeah, I can't. And also the whole death thing and the med preparation for death thing. I've never been into that. That's even though I like, I always get annoyed when I hear things like what you just read in the sense of like, don't tell me my workouts are mundane, sir. You know what I mean? Don't tell me that when I'm working out. It's like a miracle.

You know what I mean? Like it's insane that I've managed to get myself to work out. So you know what I mean? Like always feel when someone starts mundanifying stuff, then I get annoyed. You know, and also clearly if somebody takes the perspective offered there and says, therefore, life is not worth living. Therefore, we should be depressed all the time. That's called nihilism. That is not Buddhist either.

So really, really, you know, we've talked about this a million times with eternalism and nihilism being extreme views. And, you know, it depends on, I think what, what, what so I'm sorry. I can't see what you're saying in the West. We tend to be a little more towards the eternalist side. Yes, we want to immortalize even the experience of buying, you know, a cup of coffee, a cappuccino. You know, we want to turn it into like an immortalizing and permanent blissful experience. Yes. You know, so I think he takes his blade out then.

Right. It's a counterweight. Right. And maybe, maybe he also, you know, who knows if you can say this about somebody like that? Because he's also very kind and can be very gentle and supportive. But, you know, different teachers have kind of, let's say a different and like, for example, Dilko Kenscher would say something like that and it would sound like he was kissing you on the forehead like a little baby. Right.

You know, and, and, you know, so the middle way, it keeps coming back of, you know, if you feel like there's too much tightness from holding on, then you practice, you know, releasing or letting go. If there's a lack of gentleness, you can cultivate that. If there's a lack of precision in your practice, you can cultivate that. And in a way, you're your own meditation teacher. Right. That way. Right.

Yeah. You know, there's not, you're saying there, there's no fixed method from moment to moment. There's a lot of skillful means though that have been cultivated. And in my mind, it's unwise to just go like, I'll just reinvent the wheel here all over again. Millions of people have turned past by with, with three year old boys and running in the forest, you know, I don't care what any of them said, you know what I mean? I, I'm just going to start from scratch here. Like that doesn't seem to be all that intelligent, you know, either.

Yeah. What? And there's the other side of that coin is I'll just do what my parents said, you know, just that's not the way either. Yeah, no. No. But tell me this, do you ever, this is something that is, I've always thought about with this stuff. And I saw Chokyum Jumbo Rinpoche say it in a lecture. He just kind of casually said, maybe this isn't real.

Like maybe this isn't anything. It might not. You know, but it was his, he meant it. He wasn't being like saying it, but you know, it's real. He meant it. Like he was disowning, I guess, in that moment. No, no, that's beyond that's like, it's got a got it. It's already, I'm, that's called illusory.

There's a certain practices that are based on actually kindling or igniting your sense of the illusory quality and things like the dream yoga and the practice. And it's not too, again, it's not nihilistic. It's not saying, well, the whole thing is meaningless, but we have solidified it more than it actually is probably undoubtedly. So, but do you, right. But when you agree with that, that we've solidified reality probably more than it naturally is. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I mean, look at our, look at it concrete.

Look at what we, what we do. We try to freeze and hold and, you know, that to me, that, that seems to be one of the great dangers facing our species is not annihilation, but permanent. Like that via through some technological system, an ability to somehow, at the very least, expand the experience of selfness much, much further than the human lifetime is some kind of like, which would be viewed as like, Holy shit, immortality. But sometimes I wonder if like, oh my God, is that like the apocalypse? The apocalypse isn't the annihilation of everything. It's the annihilation of change. So it's just some permanent never ending. You know what I mean?

Like that's the way. Well, that's a description of a hell realm actually in Buddhist terms. Yeah. You could, you could have a kind of licorice and lollipops in it. But at a certain point in your mind would go like, oh my God, you know, I've created a kind of frozen, unchanging experience here. And God, just as I said that I got a little white butterfly just floated across the window, you know, suddenly free from fixed mind. Yeah. Yeah, I got you.

I see what you're saying. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You know what? The second bell, I think helped me understand what you're saying.

The first one, not so good. The second bell. No, right. I see. Right. And it kind of brings us back to what we were talking about in the beginning, which is, you know, it's this concretization of self that, that, you know, and what is that which creates almost a phony quality in the sense of like, you're always having to be this thing just because you used to be that thing and then you're putting that in front of in front of people over and over again. And then when you're not doing that, they're like, are you all right?

And it's, you know what Duncan, that brings us right back to our first, you remember the first part of this conversation? Yes. About multiple personality. Yes. So you know, you know me, I like threads and, you know, following through. So the personality that, and I have just want to share that I have experienced firsthand, some of what you're talking about with them, like your mom did with, with a meditation student, not necessarily with a quote on patient, but, and with a couple of people who had that, had that condition. And it is a really stunning thing to experience.

Like, like Oracle or challenge, you know, channeling, they are not necessarily aware of the other other personalities that emerge. So the therapy for that is often integrating. They'll show them videos of the other person. They'll, they'll try to get the personalities to meet up a little bit and reintegrate because they've been fractured. Right. And usually from, obviously from trauma, most often from sexual trauma, you know, that's severe and in the, in the, in the, in the child. And the person cannot abide in that field of experience. So they create an altar, you know, that, that somehow is a way of navigating through that experience.

And then that process has developed a life of its own. And so people are, you know, shifting voices. I've read about this. There's stunning things. Their eye color can change. Yes. They can be allergic. One can be allergic to a bee sting.

The other one's not. Right. The swelling just disappears. I mean, there's a radical aspect to this, but it's really saying it's, it's a window onto the fact that the personas that we have created are not dissimilar from that in a way. We're just not as rigidly, we're moving more gracefully from one persona to another. Right. You know, right. It's kind of more, more layered.

Yeah. But don't you find that you're like, if you're, um, well, like for example, when I'm being a musician or something like that and hanging with, you know, the music people, there's this kind of different energy. I might use different speech. Yeah. Talk a little, hang a little different way. You know, I'm sure when you get with your comedian friends, don't you sort of like have a, you know, a certain part of yourself that may come out more. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. No, I, no, I, this is, yeah, I like that. I, you know, I, I, I think it's, I love, that's one of the things through this working with you that I've really, that has been a kind of a relief really is just like the realization of, oh yeah, there isn't any kind of thing here that's, it's fixed as I thought it was. I mean, that's a really quite liberating, mostly. But you know, but then you have a kid and then you're just like, fuck. I don't, I don't want this to go away. And I don't want that kid, I don't want this child to suffer in the world. You know that, you know, I'm talking about, you're a dad.

You know, when you start getting the feeling. I'm a grandpa. You're a grandpa. And you start thinking, this, this kid's going to have to like have an accountant one day. You know what I mean? This kid's going to have to like go through all the things, you know, the kid, like all the things that make up a human life. And you want to, you know what I mean? Well, it's classic, but you know, Duncan, when Ethan, my son, Ethan got to be 21 and kind of, you know, was out and graduated from college and was out on his own.

And I was still anxious about his ability to do, you know, he's a grown man. He's, I'm still anxious about his ability to generate his own livelihood, take care of himself, be safe out in the world. So I had a little conversation with him where I said, you know, I just want to apologize to you, Ethan, for some of this anxiety that I projected onto you. It's not really about you. It's really about me. Yeah. That's a good dad. I actually said that to him.

That's a good dad. And, you know, I do want you to go out and thrive and find good companionship and great place to live. Part of that also is I don't want you back at this point because I did enough. Right. So I'm willing to own my piece of the anxiety. And you live, you can, I think, you know, how parents can be, they can be too anxious around the kids and then the kid picks that up. Yes. But it's hard because like my mother, for example, couldn't was too anxious to come to the playground and watch me play on the, you know, what they call the jungle gym.

Yes. And so she couldn't do that. So she exempted herself from that activity rather than project her anxiety onto me because she knew it would be toxic for me. That's cool. Yeah. That's, you know, Erin will tell me just because sometimes I'll start telling her some of the stuff that Forrest and I did out in the woods. And she'll say, don't tell, just don't tell me, don't tell me, don't tell me that, you know, because, because it's, you know, mothers get a little more like flipped out by that, you know. You do got to let the little sweeties, you know, fall or you got to like let them do their thing, you know.

Yeah. Wait till he's like 45 and one of you is still doing that. It's just, that's why I say he's going to be your baby forever. Talk about genuine heart of sadness and just think about it. You're going to look at that person when they're 45. I mean, Ethan's 43 and I look at him and I can see him as a little baby. It's superimposable. And I know that that gives him, that doesn't make him comfortable.

He's going to like get that projection off of me. I'm taking care of the whole thing right now. And I don't need you thinking about me that way. And then probably also maybe there's a little bit of sweetness in it too. Now, do you have time for one more question? I know you have a busy schedule. I have time for 10 more questions. No, I don't.

I'm good. I cleared the decks for you. Thank you, David. This is something that I've tried to square with the practice that you've taught me. But then I just wonder if you could maybe talk a little bit about the magical side of Vajrayana Buddhism and because I think a lot of people when they hear Tantric Buddhism, maybe some people who take your awesome classes in their minds are like, when's it going to get to the Tantric?

You know, that aspect that we all have heard about that seems to not, it doesn't come up as much as a lot of us would probably like. You know, the magical side, six hour orgasms specifically. God, that sounds oppressive. Okay, three hours. Final offer. Yeah, I mean, well, there's a perfect example in a way of one of the great things about orgasms is that they're impermanent.

Right. You get a good nap in afterwards, you know, you feel refreshed. No. This is what I want to talk to you about. See, but you're dodging, you're dodging and a lot of the, and I get it. And forgive me if it's an inappropriate question or but with this particular style of Buddhism, there is for sure, and a reservoir of secret info regarding like sexuality, human sexuality, the orgasm, the, the goddess and the, you know, even one of the statues is it's people humping.

You know what I'm talking about? It's the person in the lotus position. Someone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not humping. They're in union and they represent sort of masculine and feminine energetic aspects of one thing coming together in union. So it's usually the references. It can be done as a physical practice.

I don't do it, but people have done it for sure over the centuries. I mean, Jack Airwag writes about it in Dharma Bums, this yab yum thing. You know what I'm talking about? Like, yeah, you know, look. The energies of the world are coming together in that kind of way. And I mean, here's the twist. If you want to have union in that way, you can't stay separate and have it. What do you mean?

Don't get both. Well, I want the magic. Show me the magic. Yes. The magic is that you're not clinging so hard to somebody there being needing to trip out and have some kind of awesome experience because you haven't yet tuned into the phenomenal quality of the ordinary experience. So we do talk about ordinary magic and I like talking about ordinary magic.

And when we do talk about what most people would call magic, we never emphasize it, never point to it as a destination. It's considered a misappropriated destination for your practice. I see. Cities and things like that. So now, having said that, is there a kind of refinement of the potentiality of somebody who is doing practice? Of course there is.

The awareness itself has some kind of magical potential to it. Right. You know, but if you want to relieve an entertainment, this is not encouraged. Right. Entertainment is not encouraged. It's boring. Right. When somebody says, I got really bored meditating, I feel so great about it.

Boredom is powerful. Boredom is powerful. Yeah. And inaccessible these days. You know, it's a little different. It's like, you know, it's a low, I've always, especially after working with you. I mean, that's the name of the meditation we do, Journey into Boredom. And anytime I find my-

You call your class that? Yes. You call your group? Journey, it's a group. Definitely not a class. Okay. Journey into Boredom. Yeah.

Because the, you know, because to me, the solution, I know this sounds so, I don't want me to come up with some trite solution, but if you want to think of the solution to the whole environmental problem, it's just, we all need to get really bored. Like what's destroying the planet is, everyone's trying to do stuff and get out there and not be bored anymore. And in that collective inner excitement, you know, post pandemic, God, Jesus, God, I don't even know what it's going to be like post pandemic. But in that, we burn a lot of fuel, you know, and so they don't want you.

They want you to think by they, I mean, like most people selling anything, they want you to think that if you're bored, there's some malfunction happening. You know, you've, you've fucked up. Like you're, you're boring. You're bored. What are you? You're bored. What are you doing?

Well, but that's why we talk about hot boredom and cool boredom and spaciousness, you know, and like, you know, hot boredom is just means you're restless and frustrated and irritated and impatient. So that's of course, you know, a very good first portal to go for if you're going to do some kind of practices to find the root of that restlessness and that, that impatience and, you know, land that plane a little bit, you know, I think any reasonable person, if it was presented in a way that they can understand the premise with, they go, oh, okay, I see what you're getting at here.

We should slow down. We should experience our own state of mind more. We should leave space for having proper relationship to our food, to our companionship to talking to another human being. You know, it's, it's England 50 years ago is what it is. There's four TV channels, three of them are gardening. Well, let me, here's an argument for it though. Yeah.

Boredom, I think some people could, would might say, look, if you're boredom is a privilege thing. Like I can't be bored. I'm, I got a fucking hustle every day. And if you're lucky enough to be bored, congratulations. Can you maybe talk a little bit about finding that kind of cool boredom in the midst of the wild, like the wild array of phenomena that explode around many people at any given moment in a, in a modern life?

Well, let me, in a way, flip around what we're talking about. So here's me on Wednesday before Thanksgiving in my house. I've been in this house alone for 15 months, basically. Yeah. You know, and so there's a certain amount of spaciousness there, you know, just unnerving at times. Yeah. A lot of spaciousness.

So I'm sitting meditating on my couch here one, one Wednesday before Thanksgiving and I hear a loud thump talk about suddenly free from fixed mind. Yeah. Really a loud thump. I thought that just seemed like somebody dropped a person on my roof from an airplane or something like that. So of course, then you enter that space of not knowing what it is and just kind of curiosity and mind, my mind was stopped by it.

I walk out and this is the day before Thanksgiving. Okay. Yeah. I walk out of my house. There's these nice sliding doors onto the deck here. I open up, I look up on the roof and guess what was up on the roof? A person? It's the day before Thanksgiving.

A turkey? A wild turkey. That's crazy. And I look at it and we both looked at each other like, what the, you know, and then he or she flew off like an arrow into the, into the East, straight East. Wow. Is that magic? Yes.

What would you characterize that? I would call that magic. Yes. Okay. Well, then there is magic. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that is ordinary. That's what you mean by ordinary magic.

Well, yeah, it can get to the point where you go, whoa, this is like, it's the day before Thanksgiving. A wild turkey just crashed into my roof. It has a sense of humor. I think that's the one thing that might be interesting to note is you might think of magic as humorless, but sometimes it's a very playful aspect of reality that's just expressing itself. Can you help me understand that?

Like what that is? Cause I know exactly what you mean. Anytime I'm experiencing, and I think it gets left out when people, most of the time when people are talking about their synchronicities, a lot of the times they don't mention like, and also there was a personality to the synchronicity. It was cheesy. It was too on the nose. It was childlike in its silliness, but also it was so impossible that that happened that

it melted my brain. But also there's this like ridiculous silliness to a lot of these synchronicities people experience. That's too much. Yeah. Well, and it's like, you know, you know how two musicians are playing and they get into a groove and they smile at each other? Yes. It's a recognition of some kind of lighthearted, playful, but highly communicative thing happening.

So also probably it could be ominous too. That kind of magic could be ominous. It could be like a real message or something like that. Yeah. You know, Jung talks about like his friend died and the chest cracked open at the exact same moment. Yes. There could be a lot of different meanings to synchronicity.

And what the main meaning of it is how dull we are most of the time for not even noticing what's happening right in our own backyard, literally. Yeah. So I think the wakeful element of it is important. And what I've noticed is that around kind of very wakeful situations, the synchronicity goes up. Things seem to have a little more sparkle, a little more magic, a little more tendril. Yes.

But our practice, as far as I'm concerned, is not hunting for that because think about it. That's like you become a musician because you want to be famous. Oh, yeah. That's not the right reason to want to be a musician, by the way, everybody out there. That's not a good reason. No. You should love music.

Yeah. You want to play music. Yeah. And then maybe people will hear you or whatever. So, you know, that's just my take. That's just my take. You want to, if you want to play, if the reason you've, if you're so crazy that you've decided to use music is the avenue to fame, but you don't want to drive down that street at all,

you don't really like it, then you are in hell. I mean, you're going to be in hell. You're doing something that's agonizing to learn. And most people, if fame is the goal, don't reach that destination at all. And also, you're just going to quit anyway. Well, and it could, but it can be temporarily pleasant in the sense that, you know, people give you free sneakers and stuff like that. Yeah.

But you ever noticed that? Like they give rich people free sneakers. Sure. That's a little bit odd. Yeah. Well, that's so fucked up. That's so fucked up. You're right.

Well, no, it gets, they have these things. I never got invited to one, never made it like that, but they have these things called gifting rooms. Have you heard of this? No. I think I, I think I know where you're going with it. They just like some brand invites you into a gifting room and you go there and they just give you a bunch of their stuff and then you leave with all this stuff.

It was the weirdest thing. I knew a few people who got invited to gifting rooms. Really bizarre to imagine like some famous person in this weird room with people being like, oh, and here take these sneakers and this hat and these gloves. It's really bizarre. But you know, in comedy, anytime you just, if somebody is doing comedy because they want to be famous, you know, they're going to be. It could be mixed in.

That's the other thing is, you know, our lay of the landscape mentally is nuanced and complex. So you could recognize elements of different parts of it, but you know, putting your whole weight down, you know, like when you bet on something, if you bet on that, I say you're betting for trouble sooner or later. And I think I've lived enough near it to be pretty clear about the fact that it doesn't solve any of your basic problems actually. Yeah. I would say that's a real big mistake you're making.

Generally it's just, I know what you mean. I get what you're saying because then also when you're making stuff, that's, it's all, and also I get what you're saying when you're like, yeah, there could be some threat of that and anything, any, I don't care who it is. If some flicker of something pops into your head where you imagine some possibility of fame from whatever you're doing, that doesn't make you messed up or anything. It makes you American, you know, because that shit gets blasted at us all day long. But the, um, if, you know, when I'm, if you're making stuff, the best stuff I've ever made

has been for no reason at all other than just you're making something like, oh, this is cool. Put that together and that together. And especially when you're collaborating with someone and they don't have any real reason for it with comedians, it's usually mischief. Like you're, you're like thinking about a way to freak somebody out or to like troll something or like to do some extended prank. And there's no potential benefit that can come from it other than probably infuriating

someone, maybe getting arrested or something, you know, but you're like, but you're, you do it, you're doing it. And it's like the most, um, it's the most hilariously fun, exciting thing to do. And sometimes it leads to something that, that when you look back at it, like, wow, that actually got me a job or something from doing that, but that wasn't the intent. So to bring it back to, but the flip side, yeah, yeah, good. Well, so what you're saying is if you're getting into this thing because you're hoping to get synchronicities or something like that, it's identical to someone getting in

to art because they want to be famous. You've lost the real reason. You've lost like the sustaining principle in it, which is not the result. So here's an experience that I had recently. And then I know we're getting into the week, the wee hours for this, but yes. Um, and because you're, you're asking this, and it's an important topic because sometimes, you know, like when you read stories about some of these great teachers like Karmapa and Maharaj, they do kind of stop people's minds with some kind of display.

Yeah. You know, and, um, and that can maybe shift somebody's, you know, like that having to ramdas and then he said, I better stick around here and learn something, learn about this. And then of course, what ends up being the punchline for Ramdas, you know, uh, love everybody and tell the truth, not here's how to fabricate a rainbow, uh, in the night sky. Right. You know, so it's a bait and switch a little bit, you know, but I was talking to my

friend because we had to talk about Drala principle at this class, which is a sort of has a magical element to it. And he described Karmapa 16. I'll make it very short. Stepping out of a rainy out of his house on a rainy day, when they were going to have the ceremony outside and literally a rectangular space opened in the sky above him and the sunlight comes through and just frames him and shining on him. And he's been telling him all along, no problem with the rain.

We're going to be able to do this ceremony outside. Don't even make a plan B. So my friend, Michael told me that story. Right. Then I went for a walk in the graveyard here. I'm still thinking about what are we going to say tonight at this talk? And I walked down, there's about two blocks away. There's a graveyard.

I like to walk through the graveyard. And for the same reason we're talking about just perspective. Yeah. I'm walking back down my street. I look up and there's a cloud formation sky that's rectangular. Literally, I have a picture of it. I can send it to you. And I go, Oh, that's a good, that's a good one.

You know, that's what we were just talking about that. And I've never seen this. And then, of course, my rational mind comes in and says, Oh, it's probably some sky writer, you know, but I've never seen a plane go at a right angle. Have you? No. And so I will send you this picture, but it's a rectangle. The cloud is a, is a rectangular formation directly referential to the

conversation I had earlier, as if it's saying, you know, Oh, by the way, you know, um, things are not quite what they appear, nor are they otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know if that's a good, you know, I, I did want to just connect. We have so many, I call them dunkites, but you know, maybe Dunkinite is sounds too much like a metal or something. So many of your friends, Duncan, have been coming to, you know, our programs at

Dharma Moon. How are they doing? And well, it's amazing. It's like a whole little mini sangha within, within the Dharma Sangha at Dharma Moon Sangha. And we can sort of, uh, they have a certain frequency or something. There's a certain vibration. So it's somewhat easy to identify.

Sometimes a big surprise. Um, I think I told you that I was teaching in Japan last weekend and a guy in Japan said he came because of your podcast. Yeah. You told me that made me feel super cool. Yeah. I mean, it's just like, okay, I wouldn't have pegged them, you know, so, um, well, it should be consensual if you pegged someone.

I'm sorry, Dave. This is what you do for a living, right? I'm so sorry. I don't know what I do for a living. I think what you do for the podcast is what you do for a living. Yeah. That's what I do for a living. So anyhow, I just want to, you know, a appreciate the fact that you have created

a community online and I think of you as a kind of, um, a progenitor of this whole new style of gathering and communication. You're, you're my guru when it comes to that. I watch how you, how you, uh, how you absorb the information about what's coming up, how to integrate it. And you, you have, I'm just going to test it. I have created a worldwide community of people who are really looking and really exploring in a very genuine and open hearted kind of way.

Okay. Let me mundanify it a little bit here. Here's the thing. When I have this meditation group, we do it every Monday. I love it. It's great. But, and also I talk about these subject matters with friends and online and stuff. And I love talking about it, but I will always have a weird thread of guilt around

it, because I don't fully understand it, which is why I love working with you. Someone who has actually had a practice for a lifetime and is worked with her, uh, uh, renowned teacher, because it gives me an ability to say to people, look, I don't really, I could easily be saying, and many times I have completely confused something. And, and then later realized like, Jesus God, I was talking about that for months. Like it was the God's only truth. Some nuanced little bit of Buddhism that later I realized like, you totally were

confused. Like that's not it. And thus I'm glad it's, I, I'm lucky to have someone like you to send people to, because I will just say, go, if you really feel drawn to this and you want like an actual, like the thing, like a real structure and a real tradition, a lineage, here's one of the people you can go to. I mentioned other people too, because people have different tastes. I like working with you.

And I'm, I'm sorry to turn this into some kind of weird telethon for you or something, but the reason I like working for you, for anyone listening, you can see how David acts as a perfect foil for the part of my mind that is crazy, that wants to like, wants to pull cubes out of the sky and turn into rainbows and get lost in like ideas of like freezing time and space or reading people's minds or levitating cups or whatever my particular, you act as a wonderful, perfect foil for that. And nothing else has got me meditating.

Nothing else was able to get me to sit on a mat and meditate. Other than that, the most simple instruction. Cause otherwise, as you could see, I'll take any scrap I can get and unfold that into a tapestry and then turn that into a planet and then try to live on the planet and then go to war with the other side of the planet and then blow up the planet. So it's nice to have a real simple practice. And you taught me that, which is a gift.

I'll, uh, how that's a never, that's a permanent gift. Thank you. And I just want to extend that invitation to everybody out there. We have a couple of programs coming up. If you want to just start at the beginning, which is something that is people sometimes don't always think about that possibility of actually starting at the beginning. We have a foundations of mindfulness class coming up, um, you know, starting

on May 6th and we have a, uh, info session, free info session for the teacher training program that so many of your, your friends have taken. And that's on May 5th, um, coming, coming right up. So I just want, you just go to Dharma moon.com. And maybe we can put the links in the, in the site or something like that. But I'm just, I'm being unabashedly, uh, ma, welcoming to, to, to the folks out there, because we've had such a great experience of, of, of overlapping, you know, with some of your community in a really, really positive way.

I'm happy to hear that. I really, that's really nice to hear because I don't have to take karma responsibility for leading people into ever increasing depths of horrific samsara from some miscommunication regarding a very important Buddhist point that I completely misunderstood. Um, so thank you for taking all of my negative karma forever. I really appreciate that, David. I've also taken some, I've taken some of your good karma too, because you're

a lovely person. You are. You have a talk about, you know, genuine heart of sadness, you know, so, uh, and I think being a dad has really, hasn't that really like rippled? Just really cook that up more. It certainly has, it has. And then, yeah, it has, and I'm so lucky. I really am, I really am lucky that I have something like this to refer to

because I wouldn't know where the fuck I was. It would be, I don't know how people do it when they're suddenly plunged into that kind of vulnerability and they don't have some framework to, you know, I, it's, uh, it's really, really a nice thing. And, um, thank you, David, and thank you for coming, spending so much time with us today, as always on the show. And all the links you need to find David will be at dunkitrustle.com. Thank you so much, David.

Okay, Duncan, thank you. That was David Nickturn, everybody. All the links you need to get to David, if you're interested in taking his teacher training program will be at dunkitrustle.com or just go to darmamoon.com, uh, much thanks to our wonderful sponsors, purple athletic greens and blue chew. Great way to support this podcast is support our sponsors. And if you don't want commercials anymore, you can always go to patreon.com

forward slash DTFH and subscribe. You're going to get commercial free episodes of this podcast along with a shotgun to the face of the demon in your heart of extra content, including access to our weekly meditation group and our Friday family gatherings. And much more. And thank you for listening, my friends, and for giving me the most incredible job of all time. I really love you.

And I'm honored that you chose to spend your precious time with me. I'll see you next week. Until then, Hare Krishna. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, J.C. Penny family get togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style dresses, suiting and plenty of color to play with. Get fixed up with brands like Liz Claybourne, Worthington, Stafford and Jay

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