Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 456: David Nichtern

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

David Nichtern, Duncan's friend and meditation teacher, re-joins the DTFH for a talk about enlightenment! Be sure to check out Dharma Moon, David's meditation teacher training school! You can try a FREE info session for the upcoming fall training program on August 25. Click here for more info! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: ZipRecruiter - Try for FREE at ZipRecruiter.com/Duncan ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package. BetterHelp - Visit betterhelp.com/duncan to find a great counselor and get 10% off of your first month of counseling!

Ghost Towns. Dirty Angel. Out. Now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns. Dirty Angel. Out Now. New album and tour date coming this summer. I want some money or another fucking body. I want to be the enlightened one and fancy Christmas parties. I want to get enlightenment for Christmas. I want to embody all that's true. Don't want to use keys or doors like you. Just walk through the wall cause that's the easy thing to do. I can see me now on Christmas morning achieving full liberation. Oh what a joy and what a surprise when I open up my eyes to Jesus giving me a standing ovation.

Congratulations Duncan. You're the last sentient being in the universe to achieve enlightenment. Wait what do you mean? I mean literally every sentient being achieved enlightenment eons ago. They were just acting like they did because they didn't want to hurt your feelings. I want to get enlightened for Christmas. Only enlightenment will do. I don't want some body or another fucking body. I want to be the enlightened one and fancy Christmas parties. Hey pals it's me Duncan and this is the Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast. That track of course is the all time favorite Christmas Carol. Garen Fuller writes I want to get enlightenment for Christmas.

I'm playing it because today we have one of my favorite guests on the show. One of my favorite people David Nickturn who is my meditation teacher. And I thought why not get down to it and have a conversation about enlightenment itself. What is it? What a mysterious thing it is. Seems like the famous spiritual teachers are very enigmatic when it comes to the question. Take Sadguru for example. How does anybody here know I'm enlightened or not? I never made a statement on that. So how do they know?

They're just assuming. Yes? How about Eckhart Tolle? You can never reach it because it's an abstract concept of who I want to be. Not realizing you are it already. Hey welcome to my restaurant. We don't serve food because you're already full. Here's your bill. What is enlightenment?

Again this is one of those words that have come from India. To be enlightened. To be enlightened about what? I want, please let's be rational, not irrational. When I say enlightened, I'm enlightened about what? I don't know Krishna Murthy. Well we're going to find out today in a dialogue with David Nickturn about the concept of enlightenment. We're going to jump right into it, but first this.

I want to thank Zip Recruiter for sponsoring this episode at the DTFH. Friends there's some things in life that I just like to pick out for myself. The type of psychedelics I'm taking, which feet I want to suck on. I do this so that I know that I've got the one that's best for me. What if you could do the same thing for hiring? Choose your ideal candidate before they even apply. That's where Zip Recruiters Invite to Apply comes in. It gives you as the hiring manager the power to pick your favorites from top candidates.

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Sign up for the video tier and you can join us at least twice a week for our family gathering along with our meditation group journey into boredom. Patreon.com slash DTFH. All right, beautiful friends. Let's dive into this exploration of the concept of enlightenment with one of my dear friends, my meditation teacher, author of Awakening from the Daydream along with creativity, spirituality and making a buck. These are two incredible books and of course he offers classes. If you're interested, you could drop into one of his free sessions.

It's happening Wednesday, August 25th and you can go to darmamoon.com slash info-session to sign up for that. The links are going to be at duckatrustle.com too. Now everybody, please welcome back to the DTFH. You know him from the Midnight Gospel where he played himself, but he's here now also playing himself. David Nickturn. Hello David. Welcome back to the show. Thank you for coming on again. Duncan, I feel like I never left.

That's cool. Yeah, it is cool. So today I thought we could just talk about something that a lot of people talk about, but I don't think, I know I, what I discovered is I got ready for this conversation and I just started researching just basic enlightenment or the concept of enlightenment as I had never, I knew nothing, I'd never really done that. Like I hadn't really looked up like where did the word come from? What's the, you know, origin of the concept itself?

And I found a lot of really interesting things, mainly enlightenment. It's a fairly recent word that is a translation of a lot of a few different words. And so I thought maybe we could start there with the concept of nirvana, which I saw means extinguishment or literally blowing out a candle. Maybe we could start with that. Yeah, so it, of course, since we spoke a couple of days ago, I thought, well, let's tune into this idea, this concept. And I think, as you said, a lot of people have said a lot of different things about it.

So remember, remember the movie, the Japanese movie Rashomon? No. Oh, you have to see that Duncan, because there's a murder that happens in the forest. And then the, the different witnesses appear before the magistrate and each one of them tells their story, what they perceived to happen and who committed the murder. And then they never, they don't resolve it, which is what's Japanese and cool about it. You don't get the, there's no fourth act. That's it. So when you say something's like a Rashomon, it means there's different perspectives on something.

Yes. You know, so I think enlightenment would have to fall into that category that different people are speaking about it from different angles. But, you know, as you know, I'm speaking about it from a Buddhist perspective. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't presume to talk about how, how it might manifest in terms of the European culture version of it. The Christian version of it. You know, other people would be much more knowledgeable about those things. Okay. So here's, here's a framework and you know, we always talk, we set up frameworks to have a kind of piercing conversation, you know, penetrate somewhere. So sudden and gradual. Sometimes we talk about sudden enlightenment and gradual enlightenment.

Okay. That's cool. And you know, you could say within Buddhism, that debate has been going on for thousands of years. And some people advocate, you know, the notion of sudden enlightenment. There's some kind of penetration into a state that is like, you know, happens in a moment. Yes. And then there's like a real transformation involved with that. And then there's a notion of gradually building the causes and conditions for what you called nirvana there, you know, for a cessation. Now, they have had debates over the centuries.

There's a famous debate between the sudden and gradual. Okay. And so if I could, I'll tell you just one little story. Which was Kalu Rinpoche, who is a very famous Tibetan Lama. And actually there's a young Kalu Rinpoche now who's quite formidable, appearing. But his predecessor, you know, was an extraordinary practitioner. And he had a debate with a Chinese Zen master. This is kind of, kind of famous story.

And it was sort of, the Tibetans were representing the sort of progressive or stages of enlightenment approach. And the Zen master is representing the sudden enlightenment approach. So the Chinese Zen master takes an orange in his hand. And he holds it up. You know, he has the, his person take it over to Kalu Rinpoche and put it in his face and say, hey, what's this? And Kalu Rinpoche just looks puzzled for a minute, you know, thinking about it goes. And he says through the translator, what's the matter with this guy? Hasn't he ever seen an orange before?

That's so funny and so deep and so cool. Historically, I think the gradual people often won the debate. But here's the kicker on it. I would say the school I come from, you know, which is the Kagyu and Nigma School of Tibetan Buddhism. We talk about both kind of simultaneously, which is interesting or interwoven experiences. So there's always a possibility of like recognizing, sensational, you have to do stop thinking for one second, cut through for one second. Everything stops. Yeah.

You can have that experience. Anybody in the audience can have that experience. Like if I just, if you just made a noise or something or lightning flash or something. Yeah, you go. But that's second everybody was cessated, you know. But then the thing is the whole thing comes creeping back in like a bunch of worms towards an apple. Yeah. And then you need to work with it.

So that's, I hope that's a good framework for beginning to talk. Really cool. Very cool. Very cool. It's so from the story, of course, just the surface level is very funny and it's a really wonderful jab at someone trying to be so clever. Then in the, the, but then also if you start breaking it apart, which is the cool thing about, you know, these people is like both sides. It's like incredibly deep, but it's so simple. And both sides had to be like it's, it is the conflict between the two that produced a parable, a brilliant parable like both, you need it both takes for that to even happen.

But then so, but, you know, the, the underlying thing is it's already, it's already here. Like, yes, that's the sudden part. It's, it's already, in fact, it's like, it's faster than sudden. I mean, like, you know, something is here. There's no sudden it's, I mean, you can't get more sudden than something that's already like, it's like the speed of light or something. You can't warp, warp drives warp drive can't get faster than already here. And so, but then on the other side of it, there is this like acknowledgement. Some people don't know what a fucking orange is.

You know, like, you know, and so it's the most and also the other part of it, if you keep picking apart, which I really like is like, what's on one level, what's more boring than an orange? You know, it's like, there's piles of them at the grocery store. They're at, you know, it's like, I've got oranges down downstairs or everywhere, but the, but also on another level, what's more amazing than an orange? Like, how did this even possibly happen at all? So, you know, it's so cool on all these different levels. He's teaching this about using the orange as like enlightenment as the right. That's the idea. Well, and you could say basically fundamentally from a Buddhist, again, I'm speaking mainly from a Buddhist perspective, but, you know, everybody's living in the same world.

So it's not like we're describing different universes per se, but you could say enlightenment's a preexisting condition. A tremendous thank you to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. My loves, I'm in Austin right now staying at Airbnb's and I just don't want that people at the Airbnb to know that right now I've been masturbating while watching. Blowjob porn, I don't know what it is. Seems kind of like vanilla compared to what I'm usually looking at. But the point is I would be mortified if the world knew that right now I've been going on porn sites and watching blowjob videos. It would be ruinous to my career as a podcaster. And this is why I use ExpressVPN.

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Expressvpn.com slash Duncan. You could say enlightenment is a pre-existing condition. Yes, right. That would be one way to talk about it. As you said, it's sometimes unconditional or primordial or words that are used. I also thought we could use as a framework the three Yanis or the three vehicles in Buddhism really talk about enlightenment in different ways. Okay. There's stages of recognition or realization that are generally acknowledged as part of kind of method and a kind of progressive approach

where you're developing something progressive which would be the gradual approach. There's three Yanis as you know. There's the narrow vehicle. There's the Mahayana which is the Bodhisattva vehicle and then there's the Vajrayana or Tantric vehicle. Each one has a slightly different perspective on maybe how to approach the topic that we're talking about. Okay. As I was looking it up, it is the Wikipedia entry. Very deep research here.

What does wikamine? I don't know. I'm sure if we look it up it'll pop up immediately. Wiki. Different podcast. Okay, so it talks about the extinguishment of these three fires. The three poisons and so on. Are these three poisons or the three Yanis supposed to be some?

Is there any connection or just as another? No, totally it's connected but in this way. Poison is the word in Sanskrit is klasha. So it could mean poison but it could mean an obstacle or obscuration. It could mean a neurosis if you want to use really modern language. The three are grasping when you grasp at something and cling to it. Attacking or aversion and ignorance. So those three are as you know at the center of the wheel of life.

That's what makes the thing spin. That's where the torque comes from. Look out at the world and you break it up into three slices like a pizza with three slices. One slice is I don't want it. Get it out of here. Another slice is I gotta have that. And the third slice is huh, duh, not even seeing anything. You sound like my kids.

My kids are literally the three ways. And if you have three kids one of them could be each klasha on any given day. On any given day. But I'm like them too. It's like they passionately want something. They passionately don't want something. Or they're just confused. They're just like bewildered.

But completely confused. Yeah bewildered. Yeah so in these now what you're saying it obviously it was mentioned that these are the like this is what the term weaving comes in. So these are the three things that weave together the experience of being here a human or what most people think of as the human experience. This is like these are the things that glue it all together and that the extinguishment is that it's not getting glued together by these three pizza slices anymore. And now what? Yeah. Yeah.

You know and so because the implication there and I think this is where all of us on on the where we're still eating pizza get really titillated is because that implication of no more pizza what kind of world is that what are we you know what is that even is it even something conceivable. Is it something that you're still enjoying your pizza your your hell pizza. Can you even imagine it and I get the clapping thing and that pause between breath thing but yeah yeah we're talking it's like trying to imagine what it would be like to have a two hour orgasm or something or you know what I mean like what experientially. Yeah. Can you describe it. Yeah. This podcast is sponsored by better help. So something interfering with your happiness that's preventing you from achieving your goals like I don't know maybe you moved your family to another state for a month so you could get back into stand up comedy and that state happened to magically turn into the epicenter of the global pandemic.

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Experientially, can you describe it? Well, so just continuing to build the frame for one more second here. So the description there would be sort of most akin to the Hinayana perspective. Because you're looking at those things as, oh, these are in the way. I got to get rid of these things. I got to extinguish these fires. Because every time I go to look at a tree, the passion, aggression and ignorance get in the way. Every time I go to, you know, to call a girl for a date.

Every time I go to play with my kids. Every time I talk to my wife. Every time I work, passion, aggression, ignorance are in my face. And I can't even see what's right in front of me with any clarity or, you know, or equanimity. So now, so therefore you begin to dismantle those three things. First, by recognizing them. Second, by making friends with them, which is really advisable that you don't regard them as an enemy, which could come from the idea of extinguishing.

You know, you might want to crush them. And third, by recognizing their nature, which is they don't really have any substance. That's why people got to meditate, Duncan. You got to meditate because otherwise you go, I get this intellectually, but I haven't had the, I haven't tasted the soup of non-substantiality of my thoughts. I buy into everyone every time. I'm on board. And if I have a passionate thought, I'm running down, you know, I'm running to the deli to get ice cream.

And if I have an aggressive thought, I'm yelling at the neighbor, you know, there's no gap at all. So practice is where that's where it fits in. It cuts the chain of those things, just going around and around in a loop kind of pattern. So that's the gradual. Yeah, but yeah, by extinguishing those gradually, seeing the, seeing the root of them, befriending them so you don't, you don't lose, throw the baby out with the bathwater. And then seeing the unsubstantiality of them gradually, their grip on you is released. That's the theory of the Hineana.

They cease to grip you. That's Nirvana. You're not governed by those things. But okay, so when I look at it, maybe this is getting too literal. When I look at a candle, like a flame, it's just a flame. It's, you know, there's, I guess you could say it flickers and there's like temporary form to it. That's always changing, but it's essentially just a flame. So do these three poisons, are they real?

Is this just like kind of like the opposite of a rainbow? You know what I mean? Like you take light, you put it through a, you look at the spectrum of light, you get all these colors. Is this like a shit rainbow or something? It's like, you know what I mean? But ultimate. Good title for something. Shit rainbows, you know.

Shit rainbow. But is it, is it essentially just the same thing? Like when I'm, you know, like when I'm, when I'm sitting or when post meditation, when I'm thinking or looking into the precognition experience of suffering, it doesn't really seem much different. In other words, like aversion and desire don't really seem, they seem like they're coming from the same place. Okay, now. So what, and what place is that? Where do they arise from? Well, well, that's where I'm, that's where I'm stuck right now.

I mean, that's where I'm stuck right now is because whenever I get to that place, it just seems like a very painful. It's, I mean, if I had to define it, I would say it hurts. It seems to be very hot. It seems to be very piercing. I guess you could say very like pointed and, and, and I mean, not to like an annoying, just annoying. It's like, it's annoying. You know, it's like a, and also it doesn't seem to, it doesn't seem to be so dependent on phenomena as I would like it to be. You know, because if it were dependent on phenomena, then the shifting of phenomena would reduce it or, you know, but it doesn't really, as far as I mean, you know,

and also it's not there all the time, but, but at least I'm not aware of it all the time, but it is there a lot. So I don't know. But then from that comes shit. If I'm not here, then maybe this will go away or fuck. If I go get the ice cream, that'll do something or a nap will take care of this thing or whatever. You know, but it's, So the glaciers come, the glaciers come roaring back. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Once you get to that, but the underlying root system doesn't seem to be very, it's not nuanced. It's just a splintered feel. It's a, you know, it's like when you have a splinter. So let's call this chapter the beginner's guide to the experience of emptiness.

Okay. Okay. Okay. So, and this is also a little bit of a peekaboo into the Mahayana practice. You have a glimpse of some kind of non substantiality of those glaciers that maybe the whole thing is not really solid and fixed the way that it feels. And then you start to feel underneath that there's a kind of uncertainty that is free from any ability to calibrate or categorize. And that's called Shenyatta or emptiness. Now, how would the ordinary person experience it?

Like, yikes, somebody just pulled the rug out. This is, this is not, not exactly pleasant. And that's, I think, a big, a big misunderstanding is people think, oh, emptiness is going to be blissful and I'll be happy, but there's nobody there. There's nobody home. So there's a feeling of loss of spaciousness, but also panic underlying it, fundamental panic. And then you dive back into the three glaciers to create ground, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. That's right. This is a roadmap. You know, this roadmap exists. So we're just talking about, you know, a very traditional approach to these things, but that might leave you at a place where now the glaciers reignite and you go, you know what, I don't want to resolidify these, but they keep coming. So how can I work along with them to make them a kind of more compassionate universe with the thought in mind, I'm going to have to be dealing with this for a while. So soften your aggression, soften your aggression, you know, lighten up on your grasping. And this is called Mahayana practice.

It's very gradual and you start to work with the interpersonal, it appears interpersonal, it's really your own mind, but you appear to hate your neighbor for whatever. And so maybe think better about your neighbor as a way of reversing that, that traffic flow, you know? Okay. Now, this is something I was thinking about just yesterday. The antidote, I've read it about the antidotes or something. So it's like, it's almost like a reversal where, oh, okay. So here's the feeling that makes you an asshole, whatever it is. Like, so here's the feeling, you know, suddenly you're looking at like, oh, I'm completely anxious.

And because I'm anxious, this presents the possibility of the opposite of anxiety, which I think a lot of people when they're getting contorted by whatever the feeling, the clashes may be, they don't even think about the opposite. And that's useful for me just like, oh, okay. Like what it would, what is the opposite of this rotten feeling? I mean, whatever. How would I, how would I, this is my question. How is it, is there, is it phony to then say, okay, so I'm anxious. So now I'm going to try to imagine being calm or act calm or pretend that I'm more peaceful than I am when I'm completely like annoyed or rattled or worried about something. Yeah, faking it till you make it.

No, it's a little bit more nuanced than that in this way. The, the simplest equation is. Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. The simplest equation is for my honor practices, exchanging self for others. That's the engine. So you take on what they, what you've attributed to them, you take on and what you're trying to, you know, pulling off onto them, you take on for yourself. So you got good, you got good feelings, give it to them.

You got negative feelings. Make sure that you work them through yourself rather than projecting them onto somebody else. And then the logic behind this is it's like, look, if, okay, so to go back a couple of steps, the spaciousness, the pre-cognitive glacia experience. This is like the gas on the stove, basically, right? It's like, that's the gas leak. And the spark is the, whatever the particular instantaneous response to that may be. So that's how it lights. So the logic here is, look, the reason you're going to exchange yourself for them is because that's just all part of the gas leak.

Right now it looks like it's a flame. Right now it looks like form or something, but it's not. It's no more form than when you see gas lit up. It's gas. It's like you're looking at. So the reason you're, it's not just like you're doing some kind of thought experiment here. It's like, it's a reminder, right? It's like, look, I know you think that's not you right now, but that's, you're just seeing the fire.

So you might as well acknowledge that by recognizing whatever you're assigning to them is in you. Now what I mean is it's not like you're doing some kind of like feet where you're literally, you're taking the darkness in you. It's like, no, the darkness is already there. You wouldn't be seeing it. Is that, is that it? Well, that's, that's part of the nuance of it is recognizing the point of origin of whatever it is you think you're experiencing. Of course it's in you. And a lot of times you do these practices, there's literally nobody else around.

You know, so, you know, that's kind of a giveaway. You know, what you experience when you're alone is kind of a giveaway that you're the source and point of origin of what you're experiencing. Right. Okay, so there's, you know, this is like, you know, modern psychology and everything, you know, the notion of projection. So you just work with the projection from the point of view of reversing the habitual pattern of it. So it's a further subtle way to let go, you know, of the glaciers actually to refine your relationship to the glaciers. Can you give me a basic example of what that like a basic real world example of what that looks like? Yeah.

And I just thought of, you know, we always are saying first up best that right. So, yeah, you have a fight with your wife. I think those are easy. Those are safe. Never. I've heard people do that, but that's never happened to me. And you storm out of the house, right? You storm out of the house.

And the door sort of slams on your foot and you kind of stub your toe. What's your first thought? Fuck. It's fuck. That's, you mean, you know, your first thought is that fucking bitch, that fucking bitch hurt my toe. Is it not? I didn't want to be that honest. Exactly.

What the fuck? Yeah. Look what you did to me. Yeah, that's right. And there you were just, you know, so I'm not saying everything's like that. Sometimes somebody comes up to you and punches you in the face for no reason. You know, we don't get crazy about this, but a lot of the experience that we have comes about because we've conjured up enemies. We've conjured up grasping neediness and we've conjured up a kind of dull wash, you know, whitewash of, you know, blank canvas.

And we work with that by just saying, well, okay, the other people who appear in my drama, let's give them some, let's give them some props. Let's give them some love. And if there's any blame to take, let's take some of it too. Got it. Okay. That's my honor in a nutshell. That's so cool. And that's graduate.

That is so cool. Now, if you don't mind me just, I thought if I framed this out, then we could jam for a while. But the third frame that we talked about is the Vajrayana. So, which is Tantra or, you know, Buddhist, something called Mantrayana, Vajrayana. And it's, it's the, of the three, it most clearly presents the idea that enlightenment is a preexisting condition. In other words, it's saying, Buddha nature, it's called the proclamation of Buddha nature. The awakened mind is already present. And we don't have to go anywhere to get it.

Nobody can give it to us. Nobody can take keep us from it. So it's already on board and it's considered of all things, you know, kind of permanent in a weird way. Even though we talk about impermanence to where blue in the face, that is a kind of ongoing situation. Nowness is the portal. And you, if you approach nowness, you go, there never was a problem actually. So that's the Vajrayana ground perspective. But we have, from beginning this time, occluded that perspective by creating a dualistic world.

And it's got considerable construction to it. So it's dismantled in the Vajrayana. And it's dismantled relatively quickly compared to the Mahayana. As I say, and this is just something that people can chew on, that the Mahayana practice will liberate somebody in three eons, three Kalpas. And the Vajrayana one lifetime. That's just, you know, now, it's, in all these eons, there is method and there's form and there's a sense of, you know, gradual development. So that's different than a lot of the, I heard your introduction. I thought, well, nobody's really talking about, you know, how you get there.

You know, I mean, if you followed, I love Eckhart Tolle, but he woke up on a park bench. So is he, is his method sit on a park bench? Should I go sit, get depressed and sit on a park bench for two years? You know, what's the method? So the Buddha left it really elaborate and kind of well-defined method. And people have followed up on it. Now you can't eat the map. So people got to do it themselves anyhow, right?

You can't eat the map. You can't eat it. Well, okay. I'll tell you, there's a phenomena that happens. It's really annoying to me, which is people get hit in the head. Have you heard about this? No. And they could play piano.

You ever heard of this? So like some, it's rare, but you can look it up. Somebody gets a brick, hit some of that. And all of a sudden they're just, they can play piano. They're suddenly masters of the piano. I've heard the same phenomena happens with math. Someone gets smacked in the head. Now they can like see numbers and they could do these incredible equations.

And all these stories really bother me because it's just like, so what? You know, like, wow, you're a robot or something. I don't know what the fuck you are, but who cares? Like it's more interesting to me, the person who spent years and years studying piano and got good at it. And in stories of enlightenment at Cartole seemingly being one of them, you get a similar version of the concussion leads to the suddenly being able to play piano. And in Zen, you hear these stories.

Oh, they were walking down the street and a drop of water landed in the puddle. And then suddenly they were awakened. Or it's all a park depressed dude on a park bench. You know, suddenly he's awakened. And that would just, by the way, maybe it's, I'm jealous. I mean, it's like, holy shit, lucky you. I'd love to wake up in the morning and look down and I've got fucking abs and I'm ripped. I don't know what happened overnight, but it's gotten superlative shape.

So, but as far as like things I can plug into, I prefer the story of the method. I prefer that because that's just where I'm, that's where I'm at. It presents a pathway to, and some something real to work with. But I wonder, does it even matter? Can I jump in there for a second on that one? Because it's such a great, you know, colorful. So I want to go with the brick and the head. Now we have somebody who can actually play piano brilliantly.

And we hit them in the head with the brick and now they can't play the piano. But you can. Wouldn't that be awesome? But you can now play like that's how you learn to play pianos. You have to hit a pianist in the head with a brick. Oh, and then the person holding the brick learns how to play the piano and the other guy forgets about it. It's how it jumps into you.

It's a great movie. And also you could hit a person with a brick in the head and you can kill them. That's another option. And another one is you hit them with the brick in the head so they can play piano and they end up being a rugby player because of it. So it's very unpredictable. Let's face it. Right.

I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty chancey. So it just depends what somebody's prescribing. You know, we're all prescribing things. Your podcast, you're prescribing this, you're prescribing that. Try this, try that. And if you want to start your own, hit a person in the head with a brick school of mastermind class. No.

You know, make sure you have good lawyers. That's all. You have to be spooky in that version of reality. When you meet a talented person, you're like, fuck, stay away from me. You know, he's like, everyone would be wearing helmets if they were good at anything. But look, this is a, we got off track here. To me, when something popped into my head when you were talking about the difference between the Mahayana and the Vajrayana path, which is what's, and I feel like there's

an obvious answer to this, but it's like, so one thing takes eons, one thing takes a lifetime, but is time even wrapped up in that, the destination anyway? Is there, is it doesn't matter if you get enlightened in a lifetime or in a zillion eons is, I guess, is it, is that just a human thing to want to be able to get enlightened in a lifetime with the Mahayana people just say, you don't need to be in a hurry with this thing. Just relax. It'll happen.

Well, Duncan, you know, we, we often together in a part quote, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, right? Yes. So here's a quote that I think we might have touched on before. Enlightenment is ego's final disappointment. Yeah. So I like that because I don't, I don't know if there's something really to crave in it.

It's almost the extinction of craving. It's the extinction of, of, of feedback and acknowledgement and kind of confirmation. So for most people that experience it is like, you know, and they say, God, they got gone. It's like, it's you that's gone. There's no party. There's no certificate. There's no nothing.

So what is there after it would be only a kind of primordial awareness which is infused with compassion for sentient beings. That's my best guess at what you mean by enlightenment. Primordial awareness, non-dual awareness, there's not a separation of my needs from your needs. And then there's a tremendous like sort of natural flow of compassion and skillful means. And that comes from extinguishing, the glaciers are, are obstructing that potentiality.

They are greed is obstructing it. Jealousy is obstructing it. Anger is obstructing it. How do you make friends with greed? Wow, that the whole world could learn that lesson, right? As soon as the better, right? Don't you think that's one of the primary afflictions that we're suffering from as a group of species?

100%. 100%. And it's such a, it's such an unsavory, like with jealousy, when someone's jealous, it's annoying, but there's something cute about it, you know, and hanging out with comedians. They're a world jealous. And we are openly, you know, some, some of my favorite comics are open in their expression of, of like, if you, that's one of the great compliments is they're like, I wish I thought

of that fucking joke. Oh, I was right there the whole time. And it's a way, you know, but greed, it's so, there's no, I can't think of like a cool kind of greed. It's always gross. Somebody eating too much, somebody taking more when there's food on the table and they eat all the food. It's always just, ugh, it's, there's something so unappealing.

I don't know how, in my own personal greed, anytime I'm like looking at like, good, what do you want? What are you looking for here, man? Why are you looking at my plate? When I eat with certain friends, it's like they look at the food in my plate. I know they want it. And they had a chance to order. They had plenty of time to order.

Oh my God. Or just sometimes Forrest and I will be eating the exact, now I guess this is where it is. This is a kind of greed that doesn't bother me at all because it's my son and it's adorable. But we'll be sitting and eating and like grits, eating grits, I'm eating grits, eating grits. And he'll look at my plate and go, I want daddy's grits. It's like, but you have grits on your plate, like the same amount, but it's like, I want daddy's grits. Of course.

Yeah. You know, it's that. Wow. Like, yeah, I can love that. But my own personal greed, other people's greed, how do we make friends with it? Well, the greed, you know, is associated, you know, you know, you've read my book Awakening from the Daydream, which is about six, six realms, the six realms, not just the human realm, but the hungry ghost realm is the one you're talking about.

Hungry ghosts are particularly, they're addictive personalities in modern terms, and it's very challenging to deal with it because their dissatisfaction leads them to your plate. They will steal your credit card. They will spend your money. You know, right now it's cute on Forest, but if he's 20 and he's stealing your credit card to go score opioids, it's not going to be cute. Right. Right.

You know, like, you know, extract the love and the generosity from that, and somehow at the right time, go, you have what you need for us, and you need to, you know, help him learn that. He does have what he needs. He does need to crave what other people have. And I'm sure you'll teach him that. Your family will be healthy enough, and he won't have to go through that. So, the hungry ghosts, they're visualized with tiny little mouths and tiny little necks

and huge bellies, so they never can get satisfied. And we all know what that feels like. Everybody, I know, knows what that feels like. But, you know, when you're sitting with somebody who has a marked amount of that, they're kind of leaning into your space. That's their way of, that's their way of making love to you, actually. That's the only way they know how. Yeah.

Yeah. They don't feel like they have enough. And they're, it's the only way of making love to themselves, and it's never enough. So, it's a particularly challenging state of mind to work with. And generosity is the only cure. Okay. Is there such a thing as greedy generosity? Well, there's idiot compassion.

You know about that, right? Where you're sort of satisfying yourself by appearing to be compassionate to others, you know? Yeah. That's another great drum groove. I love that one. The image he gives that I read on, I always think about it is it's like someone's dumping honey on top of you.

It's like someone's pouring, you're stuck in all this sticky, sweet outflow, but it's too much. And it's like, it's all, you know, when it's happening, like when someone's being legitimately generous, it's a totally different feeling than when someone's like trying to like do a kind of potlatch in front of you by giving you shit, you know, to like, and it's a sad state to see someone in. It's a sad state. So making, I'm into, I think this idea of making friends with the clashes is something I want

to just keep talking about it a little bit more because the, so you get like the gas leak of suffering. It explodes into these fires, aversion, desire and confusion. Again, I just don't understand how to make, like for me, I think my, if I had to like look at it the way the thing catches fire, the worst of them for me is the confusion part. It's the, the mode, the, and the, I can work with desire. I can work with aversion, but when I get all numb or confused or just tired, you know what I mean?

Or just fuzzy. I don't know how to work with that. I don't, I don't know how to make friends with it because the state is so remember when we first started working together, I would meditate. I couldn't meditate for, I couldn't meditate. I could barely meditate. And anytime I started meditating, that was the first thing that I felt sleepy. It was the very first thing.

I would feel all of a sudden, and I had insomnia at the time. So all of a sudden I would feel mysteriously, Oh God, just exhausted. Like now I can really sleep. Whereas at night I'm like laying wide awake. You know what I mean? It was, and I thought I must be tired. It's fatigue or something. But now I've come to see, Oh fuck, that's one of the things and it sucks.

I don't know how to make friends with it. It creeps in and suddenly I'm fuzzing out or I'm just like feeling kind of entropic. You know, it's depression, I think. It's a form of, you know, I think people call it depression when it gets out of control, but it's something worse than that even. How the fuck do we make friends with that, David? Well, of course there's a person who's experiencing that who you could make friends with. Ah, that's cool.

Right. Yeah. You know? And it does come and go in my experience. Yes. It is often, I'm not going to say every single time, but often people like us who are, you know, real thinkers, sit down and just pay attention to breath and we just go right. It's like, I call it the road runner principle.

We're kind of zooming around, zooming, zooming, and then it just all stops because you sat down and it's just like you crash. Yes. But a lot of kind of thinkery type people, not out during meditation. Not exclusively. It also could be you're not getting enough rest and that's, you know, you should get enough rest. Yeah.

So I thought, well, gee, if you fall asleep every time you meditate, why don't you just meditate right before you go to sleep? It wouldn't work. Either way, either way, you'll come out of winter, either you won't fall asleep and you'll be meditating or you'll fall asleep. And that's good because you're trying to fall asleep. That's what that's what making friends is like working with the energy of it as opposed to I see.

Okay. Like kind of like, like looking at what the system you're dealing with and then hacking it to some degree, like I'm doing first, just understand what, how is the energy system functioning? And then let's, let's tweak it. When I started meditating more, it, that phenomena when it went away, but it was the first thing it was, it was worse than boredom. It was worse than not wanting to sit still.

It was because it's like a heavy headed feeling. It went away. I think that's how I experienced confusion. I mean, I think that's what, to me, when we hear the term confusion or ignorance, I think people think more of like, I can't solve this equation. You know what I mean? I don't understand why this is happening versus what, for me, at least the way it appears is more of just like a, you know, like a zombie like state or something.

Is that, or maybe I'm misinterpreting it. No, there's, well, I mean, again, you know, classical Dharma, there's laxity and elation of the two words in English that are used. So they basically correspond to manic depression and contemporary language. And those are the kind of two extremes that most of us will experience in the meditation process. Either it's too loose or too tight would be another way of looking at it. Not too loose or too tight. Wow.

So that's laxity you're describing. Just the energy sinks. Yes. You know, and, and it's bottom. Usually people like that, they're going to hit the other extreme too at a certain point. Sure. So elation doesn't mean you're happy. It means you're like, you know, kind of a little bit wired up, you know.

Yeah. Laxity and elation. Yeah. There you go. There you go. That's a good one. Right. That's real good.

And we're going to experience it. There's no, so I feel Duncan, as you know, that like helping people to understand that there's a process involved with meditation. It's not a magic pill is can be really, I found it experientially, it's very helpful to people. Like they're not just, it's not a one shot deal. It's like, you know, it's not like, oh, I got to do it all at one shot and just get the whole thing under my belt. So laxity and elation are very common experiences for meditators.

I mean, I do think for a lot of people when they first begin meditating, they're looking for elation. Like that's the, that's the goal is elation. And, and if that isn't happening, there is a sense of failure or like something went wrong here. But to get back to the concept of enlightenment and to get back to the argument of gradual and sudden enlightenment, I have to say this idea of sudden enlightenment is very appealing, even though, yeah, what you do sit on a park bench or whatever.

And visually, I can kind of, I can kind of imagine, I mean, if it is a flame, if that's the, and that is the one of the ways that suffering gets described, not just in Buddhism and Christianity, where do you go when you die? If you've been a complete fuck up, a lake of fire, you know, it's like the fire gets used a lot to describe suffering, but that's where Johnny Cash goes. Yeah, exactly where the ring of fire, baby. But the, but the idea, and I think there's something in my heart that soars at the idea that at some point you can turn off the fucking burner, you know, that at some point that

that that just, it's done. You're done. Can you talk about that a little bit? Is that just a dream or something? I mean, the gradual enlightenment idea, it appeals to me because there isn't a sudden extinguishment that's happened as of yet that lasts at any amount of time. But can you just talk a little bit about sudden enlightenment or the sudden extinguishment of this and your thoughts on the matter?

Has it happened to you? And have you met people who it's happened to? So again, there's different perspectives on this. So it's helpful to know the range and then you tune into where you plug in the best, what's useful for you. So that's what I encourage everybody to do. And I want to emphasize that anybody we're talking about, there's no disrespect intended. It's just what's going to work for people to actually engage some kind of process where

they can move towards, slowly or rapidly, a positive state of being and existence in their own terms. It doesn't have to be even on somebody else's terms. It can be on their own terms. So the extinguishing part is broken up into a glimpse, which I think basically people, it's pretty easy to induce a glimpse if somebody's had enough living experience. Wow. That was a gap.

That was an in-between experience. And then there's the notion of you could say recognizing what that is, which is, that's why the word recognition actually is part of the original meaning of mindfulness. You're recognizing something. And then in the sort of more progressed types of training, you recognize it frequently, but without a lot of drama attached. And you recognize it not just when you're in the cushion, but you recognize it like now, like in everyday life.

You recognize it in a glint of sunlight. You recognize it when your mind shifts perspective. You recognize it when the light changes in the room. You allow yourself to recognize an underlying state of awareness. That's very, very open. Then there's the notion of disowning that recognition, not clinging to it in any way. So letting it go, you recognize and release. That would be the technique and frequently.

And then there's a notion of stabilizing that recognition. And then there's a notion of stabilizing that during the day. And then there's a notion of stabilizing it during the night. Wow! And then there's a notion of complete stability in what we call rigpa, or kind of underlying primordial awareness. And when somebody has had that happen, now different schools will talk about this differently, in the Kagyu and Ningma schools of Tibetan Buddhism. They would say, yeah, sure there's people who have gone all the way through that experience.

And I would personally say, without any doubt in my mind, I've definitely met people like that. Human beings and human bodies, but they have that level of realization. And I'm not saying there's a lot of people like that. There's a lot of high level bodhisattvas and unbelievably compassionate and developed and disciplined people. But I feel like I've clearly been in contact with, at least from the point of view, a strong confidence in the possibility for anybody, which is why I like to work with people, because I basically see them as intrinsically having that capacity. And so therefore it's a joyful thing to cultivate that with people, for both parties.

When it first started happening to you, and I'm not trying to get you to admit some state of permanent enlightenment or something, I'll deny it. I have a pretty accurate, you know, where I think I am on that particular grid. Where are you on the grid? I think clearly you could say the transmission of that recognition has been effectively given. And that's by my teacher and other teachers. But primarily by Trungpa Rinpoche. So when we talk about the recognizing what it is to recognize, I feel I have some confidence in that particular aspect. I have confidence in that aspect for you.

Yeah, I mean, and I don't think it's a... For you. Okay, well, you know, it's something that gets passed along. That's the way the tradition works. It's called transmission, it gets passed along. That's straight through from Buddha. That's the kind of essence or heart of the matter. But then I would say I definitely personally would experience clashes. I can get angry, upset, needy, any of those things. My view of them is that they're insubstantial, though.

So even though I'm hung up in one, it's like I'm not really, really going, is this your final answer? No, it actually isn't. So it's something to work with. I think also I feel somewhat gentle towards myself and towards others in terms of like, okay, this happens. It's not the beginning or the end of the world. And I try to be kind to myself when I can, remember. And then I think I'm very much dedicated to well-being of others. I've taken a bodhisattva vow. It's very serious to me.

I try to work with others and keep their interest in my heart and mind. And then in the perspective of stabilizing, no, no, no, no, no. I'm flickering in and out of it. Ah, damn it! That's my next question. That's so funny, David. My very next question was, how to stabilize? How to stabilize? Because I do feel from working with you, I have caught a glimpse.

And wow, anytime it happens, just all I want to do is like, that's... There is no not grasping. There's no disowning. There's, ah, holy shit. I thought the reason I felt like that was because I was Christmas with my family when I was a kid. Wait, that's the feeling I used to have in the best day I ever had at summer camp. Oh my God, that's the thing I associate with this event or that event. It's not, but I'm just sitting here on a mat in my closet meditating. And suddenly, what the fuck? What is that?

Well, if I felt like that all the time, if I felt like that, if that was where I lived or that's how I was, then there would be nothing else to want. And then before you know it, I'm like, what's the word you use? The elated. Now I'm elated. And now I'm like, wow, that's when I'm on the phone with you. David, what's this? And that's when you're like thinking.

It's thinking. And so you know what I mean? But how does, you may not have been able to stabilize it. What is the instruction regarding stabilizing this thing? And do you have a little, we only have six minutes, so maybe I should have saved this question for the beginning of the next podcast. But how do, I think many people listening have caught a glimpse of this thing. If you've caught a glimpse of the thing, I can't imagine you not grasping at it.

And then how to stabilize without grasping. Well, okay. So, you know, a lot of times poetry is the way to express these things or metaphor. So immediately you thought, you're talking about that, I thought of fly fishing. Don't eat the fish. Catch and release. So this recognizing and then letting it go. And Trunk Rumache was even more, you know, kind of, you could say,

powerfully emphasizing disowning it. He used that word and he spoke English very well. That was not a translation, disown it. So catch and disown, fly fish. And that keeps you, you know, and do it, do it frequently. But without any kind of obsessive quality to it, a light touch. And then don't worry about stabilizing it at this point. That would be the wrong end of the, you know, that's like trying to put the hook in your own mouth.

That's awesome. Wow. Oh, I'm so lucky. I'm so lucky I get to have these conversations with you. Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's how I feel too, Duncan.

That's how I feel too. We've got, you have a, can you talk a little bit about the course you have coming up and Ah, wonderful. Well, here's the, here's the amazing and miraculous news is we have my, my platform is called Dharma Moon, d-h-a-r-m-a moon.com. If you go there, you can learn about what we're offering, but we're trying to help with the, I guess the gradual training, which at this point includes training teachers of mindfulness meditation and hopefully doing a good job of that so that it's not just a kind of a, a groping kind of approach towards communicating about it,

but something fairly well trained and specific. So we have a hundred hour mindfulness meditation teacher training and there are free info sessions coming up for it. The first one is Wednesday, August 25th. If you go to dharmamoon.com, the link is there. And then if you go to dharmamoon.com slash info-session, you can go right to it. It's free. You can just come and find out about it. But so many of our friends, the Dunkeits we call them, have gone through this training.

We have one going on right now. There are so many Dunkeits in it. And I told people we were going to be talking about enlightenment and I got like five emails. Well, tell Duncan enlightenment might be this. It might be that. So there's a nice community of Dunkeits that are part of the, part of the tradition of being trained as mindfulness teachers. They're really good people, Duncan. They're really good people.

I mean, you really, you really got some nice friends out there and they're very sincere and they're kind of, you know, they have good discipline in general and they're not, you know, just going low and just spoon feed me this. And, and they're really curious. So they hear, you know, I appreciate any, any, all, all Duncan, trustful friends are welcome. Just go to Dharmamoon.com and come and come to find out what it's about. Got to do it, y'all. This is clearly after you hear this conversation, I get to have these, I get just caught. I get to call David and have these conversations, not to brag, but you should definitely take this course.

And David, thank you so much for your time. It's just a real honor to get to work with you in this way. Thank you. Thank you, Duncan. Say hi to everybody out there in Duncan land. I will take care of yourselves, everybody. That was David Nick turn everybody. You can find all you need to find out about David's upcoming classes at Dharma moon.com.

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