Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 713: David Nichtern

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

David Nichtern, author, musician, senior Buddhist teacher at Dharma Moon, and Duncan's meditation teacher, re-joins the DTFH! Next Tuesday, September 23rd you can join David for his free online discussion, "The Path of the Teacher, Developing Your Skills as a Meditation Teacher," on Dharma Moon! Spots are limited and Dharma Moon always appreciates it when you register in advance, so please click here to register now! Be sure to check out Dharma Moon's full listing of Live Workshops and Courses as well! South Bend family! Duncan is headed your way next! Come see him at the Four Winds Casino South Bend on September 26. Click here to get your tickets now!! This episode is brought to you by: For a limited time, our listeners get 10% off at Ridge by using code DUNCAN at checkout. Just head to Ridge.com and use code DUNCAN and you’re all set. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. PLEASE support our show and tell them our show sent you. Download Cash App, use our exclusive referral code SECURE10 in your profile, send $5 to a friend within 14 days, and you’ll get $10 dropped right into your account! Terms apply. That’s Money. That’s Cash App. Go to Quince.com/Duncan for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns!

Welcome, friends. You're listening to the DTFH. And if you're somebody you watch as the news, you're probably aware. We all just had to witness a horrific political assassination. And I realize whoever the guest is this week has got to be someone who can contribute in some way to cooling things off a little bit, giving us a little bit of a little bit of. direction. Things were, it was just so horrible. I think many of us are shook. And so with us today is my meditation teacher, David Nictur. He's amazing. He's written a ton of books. And, you know,

whenever I do his intros, it's kind of sloppy. I'm going to give him the credit he deserves. He's a senior Buddhist teacher who's been practicing and teaching meditation for 40 years. He was one of the initial American students of renowned Tibetan meditation master, Chogimhumpur Rinpoche, and studied closely with him soon after his arrival. arrival in the United States in 1970. David is the author of the critically acclaimed books awakening from the daydream, reimagining the Buddha's wheel of life and creativity. That is such a good book, by the way. Spirituality and making a buck. He mentors individual students both in person on online and leads meditation teacher training programs around the world via his

Dharma Moon platform. Oh, and he's also an incredible musician who's recorded and played with Stevie Wonder, Jerry Garcia, Lana Del Rey, Maria Muldar, Paul Simon, and many others. And on Tuesday, September 23rd, join David for a free live online event, exploring the profound practices of mindfulness and the journey of becoming a meditation teacher. The links are going to be down there. And now, everybody, David Nictorne. David, it's always good to see you. Welcome back.

Yeah, you too. I miss you, too. I miss you too. and you know I you are the first person that came to mind after this the horrific event of last week everybody knows what happened the assassination of Charlie Kirk public execution and who do you who do you have on your podcast when globally people are wrestling with what does this mean? Why did it happen? What do I do with the video if most people, they didn't take it offline. It happened, you know, it happened so quickly and so publicly

it was live streamed and so it was in that the video was disseminated instantaneously all over the place. And so in the middle of a podcast I was doing my producers like you need to call Aaron. you know i was freaked out because if you if that happens you know usually it means like something happened to the kids or something but no she had just seen that video and was inconsolable and so the you know i have probably most people i had all the reactions to it you know revulsion anger confusion fear and then of course the event was followed by the much amplified, not outpouring of like, this is horrible, but maybe an unexpected outpouring of gleeful rejoicing over an assassination. And, you know, or if not so much a gleeful

rejoicing a, Charlie Kirk was assassinated, but he did say devise of things, which is a other way of saying kind of brought it on himself and and so though that isn't a gleeful like victory dance that some people were doing it's still embedded in it is aggression and and what what I would say is an attempt to numb or to make sense or to not have to feel feel it you and I that's that's what I realize it's like oh I know what they're doing because I've done this. By going nihilist and celebrating it or by finding some way to justify it, you shield your heart from the reality that a human just got brutally murdered in front of a bunch of college kids and the whole planet. Regardless of any other thing, you peel away all the layers

and what you're seeing is an atrocity. And so who do you bring on to help the confusion in your own heart and also maybe to help cool things down out there in the world, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum? I think one universal is it's never a bad thing to de-escalate. It's never a bad thing to de-escalate potential violence. And so you're the first person that came to mind. Oh, wow.

Well, Kanye West, honestly, was the first person. And there it is. Suddenly free from fixed mind. Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for thinking of me. And, you know, we're obviously sharing some kind of quest for a wholesome way of going about living in this world at this time. you know so my contemplation when I got kind of a feeling of like talking to you about this was there are different perspectives and angles that people are coming at this from clearly right and usually that's okay you know like that over dinner you could talk about you know something

that happened and people have different points of view but this is really getting to the heart or core of some very deep feelings for for for many yes so i guess for me it just i started thinking about well what if you go down a level we're talking about suffering yes and and confusion you said confusion yeah so that's a big buddhist topic you know that's the the air buddhist topic is what is the root cause of the suffering right um and so i i can't help but i did i did a deep dive into that rather than trying to figure out my perspective in relation to this event, which unfortunately is part of the history of our species for eons. These things come and go regularly. At my age, you can think back and think of a lot of things that had this imprint. Kennedy assassination.

Oh, it goes. The Manson murders. The, you know, you could go through these like massive cultural moments of violence that sent shockwaves of fear through the country. I mean, really, there is a real parallel between this and the Manson murders because there was a political what was being blown up in the press is a political motivation uh like who are these people cultists or like what they're killing rich people now like ah and everyone got freaked out and scared and so yeah and i don't mean to again i do want to take it to the deeper level but i can't even i'm sure you've seen so many moments like this yeah what was the shooting at this um In Ohio State, the protester got shot, four protesters got shot in the anti-Vietnam protests.

Like, so many moments you've seen. You can zoom out and you can also zoom into your own personal life and, you know, recalibrate experiences that we each have had that are traumatizing. Yeah. And inexplicably penetrating and overwhelming. And yet, you know, we're. trying to make some sense out of it, as you said. So in that spirit, I think I like just for a minute, not to, you know, bypass any specific orientation somebody might have. But if you look

at the root cause of suffering from a Buddhist point of view, just representing that for a second, it is ignorance. It's a root cause. Yeah. It's interesting. It's profound ignorance. You know, ignorance says to the nature of things, not just like me ignoring you or trying to ignore a different person's point of view. It's not seeing clearly, and it's not understanding the totality of what's happening, which goes through old age, sickness, death, suffering, reviving the person, like in the hell realms in the Buddhist iconography, beings are being tortured, and then they're having hot, molten lead poured down. their throats and then they're being revived they die and then they're being revived again so this

idea of this ongoing quality of of ignoring what are we ignoring uh and it is ignoring the quality of interdependence hmm that's what we ignore right we don't see the connectivity of the whole situation we just have pulled out and and created a unique and singular perspective right which substantiates and supports our own sense of existence or ego, whatever you want to call that. Right. And then we support that with these three root clashes or obstructions, which is grasping.

We grasp at something. We attack. We reject. We push away. And we ignore at a more superficial level by just, so I gave those kind of modern words. The passion is conning. We're conning everybody.

Right. We want to pull. them into our perspective. We want to magnetize them, but into our unique and singular perspective. That's the spin. We don't, right? Conning, you know, magnetizing. The second one is aggression, but like we attack. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of attack energy going on. Yeah. And the third one, which is ignorant, I called canceling. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You see? So conning, attacking and canceling. If you use those three words and say, well, how much of that is going on? Yeah. And as you said, what's underneath it is some kind of pain.

And the pain is that of connection, somehow your heart is broken. Yeah. And, you know, so I would look for that moment of heartbreak and, you know, allow it to penetrate without strategizing a response. That's what I would recommend to anybody. Okay, let it break. Let me take the voice of the people posting like lethal videos for a moment. Yeah. It's a shame. It's really a shame. Doesn't hurt my heart at all.

Why didn't you weep for the, why aren't you weeping for the Palestinians? Why aren't you weeping for the, this, this, this, this is who you're upset about? My heart is not going to break for a Nazi. Now, this is no, by the way, not my perspective. someone's going to cut just that part out and be like, look what he did. Not my perspective at all. I don't think that. But this is sort of what I've gathered.

And it's a reductionist because I don't have enough time to go through the litany of charges that some people seem to think this makes a dad deserve the death penalty in the most horrific way. But that is the sort of rough sketch, I guess you could say. of what you are, I think, astutely calling ignorance. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, and of course we can go through as kind of scientists and students of human nature the different strategic formations that people tend to form. to keep their view intact.

Yeah. Keep their sense of self-intact, right? Right. So, and that's, that's not bad. That's kind of like sociology or the psychological thing. And you're not really like going from the personal heartbreak perspective. You're going from the kind of clarity of mind and saying, oh, this person's doing this, that person's doing that.

So the commonality is, and this is where, like, I guess I tended to pull it towards common language is othering. that's really if you looked at the root cause of suffering from one perspective in a high-tech Buddhist language we'd say it's you're not understanding non-dual awareness that it's all interdependent right everything that's happening is independent but in a simpler language you're othering right you're creating self and other right and that is the not only is that the cause of temporal suffering you know in one particular incident but that's pervasive how these realms are pervaded by suffering as othering. Okay. Now, I completely. So seductive too, isn't it? Very seductive, and here's where it gets interesting. Yeah.

One would think that non-othering, that recognizing the interconnected nature of everything, one would think that that recognition of the, sort of interconnected tapestry that we're all part of would be more painful. I think many people think, no, no, no, no. If I, for a moment, scrub away all of my notions regarding why and just let myself feel the thing itself, I am not going to be able to, not only is that number one, from certain ideologies, you shouldn't do that. That's profane to even do that.

But from another perspective, a deeper perspective, that's going to hurt. That's not going to feel good. You don't get to go numb at that point. And a lot of people associate what you're inviting us to do as not a path out of suffering, but the road to right into suffering land. which is a new part of Disney that they just added. I'm pretty excited. Well, it seems to be historically, and, you know,

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Please support our show and tell them our show, say you. You don't find the great compassionate beings who have not gone through the valley of experiencing suffering properly, thoroughly, fully, non-duly. And what's interesting is the othering in the name of, I would say, you know, I'm going up in the skybox for a minute, but we'll come, we'll bring it down. Othering in the name of non-othering, which is you use these great. religious spiritual traditions, and you other from that premise. So I'm not an expert in Christianity, which seems to be a thread going through this whole situation. But the idea that you would other people in the name of somebody who clearly took on the suffering of others as a regular diet. Well, you know.

Am I getting that right about Jesus Christ? I come not to bring peace, but with an axe. I will separate. brother from brother he did not just say that and it's a miss it's a it's a from my understanding that is

there is the sort of hippie Jesus you know what I mean and hippie Jesus is there hippie Jesus is definitely there love everyone do unto others as you would have them do unto you

and then there's like I don't know what you would call it like dark Jesus and that Jesus is also saying, you know, I'm going to show you with my own life, what happens if you tell the truth. And then we all know how the story ends. Spoiler alert, they tortured and killed him. And then within that, there is no, like, but you're going to be fine. Yeah. but rather there's, and if you follow me, you can expect the same shit.

And so there, within that, you have Christianity. And then you have the interpretations of Christianity, which show up in a lot of different ways and which create the sometimes justified critique of the thing, because it's like someone isn't looking into the thing itself. I know you don't want to get into a Christian theological discussion right now. Well, because I'm so unqualified. to do it. Me too, by the way. Me too, but boy, that never stopped me from talking about anything.

Well, and it's fair in a way, as long as everybody's clear about the fact that one itself is not an expert witness, and we're not calling in expert witnesses. We have any human eye-to-eye-level conversation. So, as you know, just the tradition I come from is, is, I'm very, doesn't posit that Buddha is an expert witness or that oneself is an expert witness about that expert witness. So you can't really talk about something unless you chewed on it a bit. And you can say it honestly from your own experience. Right. It's called non-theism. That's the only thing I'm trained in and have any business talking about. And that's where we should, that's where we should stay. Because really, just in this back and forth that just happened, you can see how quickly

the mind wants to evade the simplicity in what you're saying. Very quickly you want to run off into some other place. Or you want to complexify what you just said. Make it qualify it. Make it something that you could spend a lot of time thinking about and writing in your journal about and maybe giving lectures on the complex. But what you're saying and to get back to this central point, the root of suffering is ignorance, what you're saying is if you are, if you are suffering right now, sure, you can ascribe that suffering to the most recent political assassination. You can describe that suffering to socioeconomics. You can ascribe that suffering to classism, capitalism, leftism, conservatism, homophobia, all the things.

You can ascribe that to those, or you could recognize what you're looking at there is a capillary system all connected to a central heart of suffering. And before you even get into the conversation of how do we fix those things, let's get to why those things. this is because we are ignoring reality as it is. Is that a fair synopsis? Yes, and to take, to keep it really simple and earthy, the, I don't think it would take a genius of,

but it would take a certain innocence to understand the quality of interdependence as an outcome of assessing, studying the situation. everything is connected. And our attempt to disconnect from something always creates, you know, those three things. We end up conning somebody to pull them into our individual perspective. We end up attacking somebody else or canceling whole groups of people because we just don't want them to even have a opinion. Right. Right. So the flip side and the reason that it's sort of, let's say, challenging for me as a public teacher sometimes is,

not to confuse that with spiritual bypassing, that you have a view now that everything's interdependent and you both sides are equal and all this kind of stuff, and you don't have skill in the relative situation. Right. And you skillfully act within the relative situation. So somehow that's the hat trick that we dance, is that you have to as an individual in a challenging time

be willing and ready to take stands. You have to. You have to be willing to act. You have to be willing to say what you think or feel about something. But if that's coming from one of those three places, you're probably, you know, shooting yourself in the foot. Maybe here's something that popped in my head as you're talking. Let's say that you actually do have a unifying message.

Like, and it does happen, you know, people were blessed on this planet by people. like the Buddha show up people who are great speakers people who figure out a way when it just seems impossible to bring everyone together again or remind everyone of this sort of central shared humanity and when people like that come along and they say things in just the right way it creates cultural ripples that have a cooling effect instead of an effect that amplifies whatever the the particular moment of fear and aggression and violences. Now, let's imagine you're this person. Unfortunately, you have like tuberculosis. You have some kind of contagious illness. And so you go to give your lecture thinking, I'm just not going to talk about this disease

that I have inside because my message is important. Contaminating the entire office. audience with some kind of plague, which they then spread, even though they might walk away thinking, yes, we are all the same person. Why am I coughing blood right now? What's happening? So the, whatever the particular message is, which I think another commonality, if you look across the board, what, like if you remove the talking points and look at the central, the nucleus of what are the sides having common, they want a harmonious world. They want a better world. There's this shared desire and belief that the world could be better. And how we get to that better world, polar opposites, but in common, a sense that the world is not so good right now and a sense that there is a way

to make the world better. I don't think you can argue with that. There is a legitimate shared interest there which is paradoxical if you look at how divided things are but all that being said if you aren't dealing like i know like whenever i sit down and i'm trying to do a podcast and i do want to say some very nice thing i want things to be better yeah but then i look into myself like the way i feel right now it's a gumbo of anger confusion shit nervousness fear uneasiness, exhaustion. You know what I mean? Like the thing that you're talking about,

the fundamental central issue, I have not truly dealt with that. And so no matter what I say, mixed in with that paint is going to be some kind of darkness. And so, but then what, David? We just don't talk until we're enlightened?

No, we go a little with first thought, best thought, as we always do, refresh the screen, you know, to come up with a little bit of a, you know, confusion also tends to dig in and kind of, you know, like a tick. It kind of gets its, it's, you know, it's, you know, sucking, sucking blood. So to get some freshness of take, so I thought while you're talking about that, you know, in my teacher, Trunkerimitay's, you know, presentation of Shambala teachings, which were an attempt to do what exactly you're saying, create a kind of like updraft in the integrity and the dignity

and the kind of quality of the human experience, get the sort of higher road going on. He postulated this thing that freaked people out at the time completely called basic goodness. Yeah. And it's still people go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's no such thing as that because, you know, people are good, people are bad. There's evil in the world. There's dark forces. and he was saying that all of it is subsumed under this banner of basic goodness,

which is kind of like a gigantic attempt at refreshing the whole system. Right. So I used to have to give a talk, you know, and explain this concept of people. And one time I did it with my son, Ethan, and we co-led this weekend. At the end of the first night, we had sort of made a nice glowing case for this podcast, possibility at least that, you know, there is some kind of fundamental wholesomeness in the human race that can be uncovered, that can be cultivated. And I said, okay, that's all. We have time for tonight. There was a guy in the back of the room, you know, with his hand up. And I knew we should leave it alone. Ethan said, you know, okay, we have one more question there. And you can guess what the guy said. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Yeah. can you get he goes well what about Hitler

fucking Hitler man and in that context you know what the person's saying is can we reserve some space for unadulterated dark forces evil that so there's now a battle between goodness and evil and that allows you to continue

to have a sense of non-integration, actually. Okay, that brings to mine this incredible. That's tricky. Let me just finish that one thought. I thought you were done. Yeah, no, it's okay. But so of course there's dark forces and confusion. And those, by the way, are talked about quite extensively in those teachings.

It's not a Pollyanna. It's not New Age. There's some kind of acknowledgement that people are confused, that they mistake, you know, an apple for a tornado. You know what I mean? All kinds of things like that. But the notion that there might be a way to tilt one's own experience towards the recognition of some kind of underlying wholesomeness or interdependence that is recognized as not fear-based, but that is love-based, actually, that you actually are not afraid of being connected to everything around you. and and so we can in my personal view cultivate that at an individual level at least for sure you can do that

a small group level for sure you can do that a societal level okay I'm you know my hat's off to anybody who can pull that off but it has been done they say well okay so you can influence society society societal level let's pin that as theoretical black black belt black belt black belt let's pin that as black belt and maybe at least from my own subjective experience highly theoretical now that being said one of trumpa's uh lectures that i i will watch from time to time as a screen refresh as you said is him talking about it's i think it's called basic goodness and harmony. And remember he talks about going to that harmony conference and went to a harmony conference in India. And after the harmony conference was over, nothing really seemed to have

changed with anybody other than they could say that they went to the harmony conference. And but then he goes into what you're talking about, which is this quality and reality that is fundamentally good basic goodness natural earthy he has a and even more primordial primordial unconditional not based on like wishful thinking or any of that kind of stuff it is in the fabric so that's food for thought or as we say what comes to mind is food for non thought this happened some time ago a man is there's like a lunatic on a subway he tries to protect people the lunatic has stabbed him and he's bleeding out on the subway he passed away and as he's dying he tells one of the people who's just trying to tend to him i love everyone on this train now i feel

like in that moment he saw it what you're talking about because that person who stabbed him i think was probably on the train too yeah and in that moment he transcended him he transcended you're talking about and in that moment he transcended the complexity of the mind stuff and in that moment he connected to that reality that sometimes people connect to

when they're dying, that sometimes sadly, or that children seem to be naturally connected to before the middle part happened. And so... Yeah, it's the part between birth and death we have to deal with.

listen you're just going to have to deal with the part between life and death after that everything's great it's fine before and after it's easy and so but i do think that i can plug into the basic goodness thing subjectively and in my neighborhood and when i go for a walk and even when i step on dog shit it's all over my driveways unfortunately there's a what I'm saying is even in tumultuous moments sometimes I can I can see through them into this is good yeah and and then where all of where I realize like oh well I guess this is all bullshit is when something like this happens and it's like I've been wearing a backpack filled with spiritual aphorisms that I happily throw off

that I happily am like fuck all that no vengeance is mine saith the Lord there must be punishment revenge retribution if we don't do something now oh we're all done forever we must attack fight back it's over man you can't let this keep happening open up the camps

let's wear my boots to polish it's time to fire and it's scary how quickly that happens it happens in a blink in a blink in a blink all of it just out the out the all the moments where I'm looking at my children and thinking my god I love you so much and then I think everybody used to be like this everybody used to be this adorable sweet kid like the way they run when they're toddlers this clumsy way that they run

or the way that they dance beautiful perfect everyone was like that everyone was is this inside and then this shit happens and it's like I must protect my family yeah yeah um so the macroves harder for me so yeah the the trick and I didn't know we'd be talking about this

but I never know what we're going to be talking about so that's equally okay and it is in the wind right now for the time being the trick is somehow to marry is to get married and stay married another wife you're saying marry okay yeah i mean and we should keep in mind the person we love the most using that analogy can become our mortal enemy absolutely so it's us the point is that we are flickering between these three things of conning attacking and canceling yeah and that's

our operating system for most of what we do in this life yeah so i also then i said well what would happen, and this is still theoretical, we're going to bring it all the way down. What if we flip that script and conning became the basis for affection and connection? What if attacking became clarifying the situation? Yeah. So that there's some real use for the anger because it produces clarity and penetration into things that might need to change. Right. And what if canceling just turned into a kind of more spacious approach towards allowing different perspectives? So, somehow to have space rather than you have to attack immediately or con immediately. Well, what about Hitler?

Yeah. Well, Hitler, and I'm Jewish, you know, so this is a big deal for me personally. And when I see people being anti-Semitic, it hurts me. It's, it's, and I go like, what? You know, this is, this is a twist. So. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Cash App. You know what happened to me once?

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how to engage reality on its own terms. That's what the instruction was. And he got so pissed that he killed his teacher. So this is a primal story, like a kind of archival retrieval story. And at that point, because he had some understanding of how reality works, he became very powerful and became like a world, you know, a tyrant, an autocrat. So if you look at the autocrats in our world right now,

they do have some understanding of how reality works. Absolutely. They're not just stupid idiots. And now they've got the backing of their super intelligent AIs to also guide them. And so like they do have some kind of math, you know, but they don't have a, like, imp that follows them around and helps them with their magical powers. They've got, like, a super intelligence trained on all humanity that can instantaneously use weird algorithms to let them know what's the best way to move the needle here. And immortality, if you overheard that hot mic moment.

hilarious. Right. They are going to live to be 150, but they're from a Dallas point of view. That's, you're still a kid. You know, I mean, so the point is, is that these. understanding that we're talking about of interconnectedness and also how the mind works, for example, and how people tend to go into attack mode or con mode or canceling mode and how that can be manipulated by somebody who has, you know, got some intelligence about

the operating system, that is worth noting that, you know, that capacity, if we engage sort of superior understanding, it can still be misused to the last, down to the last second. I got you. So here's a thing, Doug. I'll just finish this one time. That when we asked Rimpatee about Hitler, he said, well, that's a very low level of this principle. Jesus Christ. Because he's a cosmic monster.

He could take over galaxies, this kind of level of egotism and mixed. And then talked about Mao. And he said, Mao's a little more sophisticated because Mao used kind of, you know, Taoist, Buddhist psychology, you know, and arguably. created a more and he survived it for one thing that's terrifying hitler did not and then so there's levels of this so it was interesting to think of Hitler as that's not even as big as the phenomenon of egomania gone wild it can get bit worse than that holy shit like in it from this perspective Hitler was like an open micer just a well and look where what you just put if you put If you put together the level autocracy that's being invoked now, the kind of shrewdness of it, you know, and then use of the technology to support it, you could envision a kind of a 1984-ish kind of level of rootahood that would, that would, that would, we're on alert about it.

Oh, listen, we're there. Like, to me, like, where it's incredibly insidious is that people are always saying some. version of man it's it's you know we're talking this is orwellian it's like my friend you live in a panopticon there everyone has a phone in their pockets you will notice that you probably don't notice i'm i have a feeling you have better internet hygiene than i do but you'll notice that when people are in some kind of embarrassing youtube clip yeah whatever it may be uh karen the whole genre. Yeah.

Someone will be filming a Karen and she freaks out and then what does the Karen do? Pulls out her phone. You're gonna film me? I'm gonna film you! Like some kind of bizarre camera totem. Now I'm filming you too!

And we live in a panopticon. Like in the way that creatures when they're threatened used to pull the humans in the wild west. What do you do? You pull your gun out. Now people pull out their phone. I'm gonna digitize your ass.

Permanitize, Concretize. I'm going to upload your ass. This is going on YouTube. And so we, so, and as far as the coercive state control, which is already here, you know, many times I have to scan my fucking eyes at the airport just to get on a plane? It's like, it's already here, but there's a whole other cultural entity running the show. That's the canceling part, which is should you fall outside of whatever the, particular. Well, Duncan, sometimes you have to fight, right, in life. Yeah, absolutely. But,

however, is it possible to be a warrior without anger? And that was another phrase. Is it possible to purify one's own motivation and intention in terms of entering the fray? At least do the best you can towards not, at least what you've learned so far about the negative possibilities of aggression and just unleashing your aggression on the world as an operating system. Dude. So one by one, a person can make that decision without a doubt, in my opinion. How? The minute you lose that, your journey as a spiritual warrior, if you want to call it that,

has been dented seriously. If you're just using that whole thing to foist your own aggression to the situation, and you haven't looked deeply into it. I love that. But I'm not trying to bypass with that. You do have to sometimes enter the discussion that people are having. You have to be fearless to have a perspective. You have to be willing to talk to people who you don't agree with.

I think that's super important. And, you know, we have to try. Yeah, I see, I love what you're saying, because in the same way people criticize Christianity, who don't really have a full picture of what it is, is the general critique of Buddhism, it's passive. So I guess you're just going to like what? Just show them your soft buda belly and let them rip your guts out.

And it is not inviting you to a passive victim me kind of like let the tyrant be the tyrant life. But it's, I think making a fairly obvious, maybe two obvious point, which is if you go go into battle with anger you will not be as effective as if you go into battle with a clear calm mind and all the you know hanging out with joe you inevitably meet these ufc fighters holy fuck these are terrified like you've seen them you've seen them like just just you know brutalizing another human and and and But yet you meet them in person. Yeah.

They are the sweetest, calmest, sweetest, always they've got this something that I've only run into in people like you. This complete coolness to them. And sometimes when you're seeing them fight, the best of them, they don't seem to really get mad. Some of them do. And then right after, when they're both covered in blood and eyeballs hanging out of their head, they hug each other. One of them will whisper something in the other one's ear. Like, that was incredible. You were such a good, there's a compassion to the person that they just brutalized.

And so, to me, the reason that they got to that place was not because they were at a music festival and took ecstasy and realized that everyone deserves love. It's a lifetime of discipline. And I'm getting to a point, which is, how do we get to that place in an expeditious way? So again, again, first thought, and you can, you know, this is just for consideration. Anger and aggression seem to decrease sensitivity and awareness. Yes, yes, they do. Now, you could say it's made me alert, I'm vigilant now, and I'm on the case.

So that's the enlightened dimension of it. And that's clarity. Yes, sometimes if you're sleepy, you need to wake up and you could get angry for a minute, but if you start fueling on that energy alone, it's going to make you less sensitive and less strategic and less able to know where and what to do. So we may have like a cultural renaissance that's happening here. And here's what I think, Duncan, the whole world is looking at government systems governing systems with a new eye. and, you know, should, is the best governing system some kind of hierarchical structure? Is it a geodesic dome? Yeah.

You know, what, and we're looking at it, like, the idea of democracy is not that old. Comparison to other forms of governing systems, which are more hierarchical. So, and there's hierarchical systems that are more benevolent and ones that are more like dominatrix, top-down kind of things. So I think that there's some real look. at what how we should be going about it and um well look at what just happened in nepal i mean yeah they overthrew the communist government and they have now the kids gen z oh don't take their phones away you know what that's like they they told them they couldn't have phones anymore and that was that was the final straw that broke it huh it already wasn't great but they took

their phones away and within i don't know a day the parliament building that's been for hundreds of years is on fire and and and but but the and I think they're they're attempting to institute some kind of like digital democracy I mean I feel like I don't know but the the the before we even get there though David I want to mention how on one level anger feels good and when I intellectually contemplate dropping my anger do you know what I also immediately think but then I can't attack but then there's a sense of like I will have neutered myself well you'll be defenseless yes like a baby yes that's it and and and and

you know though I that as you mentioned the top down hierarchical system is great with the dominatrix and we must allow the dominatrix to do their very sacred and holy work in this world but the the the on a on a general life experience i can remember god this is way too personal and intimate it's so sad and when i think back to it i'm just like god oh i I wish I knew you when I was a kid, but I can remember parents got divorced, PTSD dad, alcoholism. I have the class that can't remember most of my childhood thing. I can remember sitting in class, just hurting so bad. And I started thinking, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall, build

the wall. I was saying that over and over like some mantra in my head. And I managed to numb it down. I managed to like numb that. And so what you're inviting, you're basically inviting a lot of people who have experienced a lot of pain to just deconstruct this wall. that they probably started building when they were kids and that did keep them safe to some degree they to some degree needed it and which is why when I start going in this direction I'm like I can't you're talking about years of masonry here friend you're talking and i don't mean the freemasons i'm saying years you're talking about de claw defang what and then what and then what ripped to shreds by well yes and that's a great question how does one

engaged in that process of becoming more vulnerable becoming more open-hearted uh becoming uh you know less defended. How do you take care of yourself properly? Yeah, how? And so this is, again, I come, I come naturally, I don't think I'd be teaching or have these conversations if I hadn't studied, the tradition I studied and feel some responsibility and interest in perpetuating it and going forward with it in a very fluid way. But what it says is there's, it's called a mandala. There's an arrangement of things that is very organic. And it includes protection principles. So when you see these mondolas, these ancient mondolas,

there's a great being sitting in the center of it, which represents some enlightened quality, wisdom, compassion. Then there is sort of a coterie around that deity. You know, there's some kind of like society that forms around an intimate gathering of people. And then there's a sort of boundary of it and a moat around the situation. In other words, it's this sort of, you can't just run in there and spieling. and throw up and puke your body. You have to kind of be a little more mindful to start with,

and then you engage those aspects of energy for yourself. And there are protectors outside, and they're fierce. Like in Japan, there are these sort of dogs. And do they have temple dogs? And if you're not going to disarm, you can't come in.

Okay, that's cool. You can't just go. And those principles, here's the analogy that's used for it, is the thorn on a rose. That's a natural protector. Like you say, the rose is so vulnerable, so beautiful.

Somebody could just pluck it or just throw it away, stomp on it. But the thorn makes you aware and wakes you up on the spot. So that's the protective principles. That's what police is supposed to do. That's what the military is supposed to be about. We need protection from our own, you know, sort of, let's say, habitual forces that can bring the whole situation down.

But they have to be without aggression. And how is that even possible? Yeah. You train those people to be like, and great policemen and great military people are, they are not coming from an aggressive place, actually. No, they're, and I, like you said, they're UFC fighters, you know? Yeah, I've seen that.

But I'm, I guess I mean like, you know, in a more pragmatic way. Yeah. Like, I mean, like today for people listening. Yeah. Who are contending with. insane cultural forces on top of cultural forces that these kids David just think of these kids they could think of Gen Z in the last like everyone's down on them they call it the Gen Z stare I don't know if you've heard of this but they have this weird stare and it's like yeah

look at the world that they were born into they were they were born into a world with a brand new technology hyper connectivity a sudden like explosion of like like like ideas from anonymous sources or like source of people with varying spin, I guess you could say, different cons. Yeah. Pandemic. Wars. Terrorist attacks.

Assassinations. Complete political turmoil, tumult and confusion. And how in the world do they. are we even being assholes for inviting them to put down their sword for a second? Like, how do you do that? Wait, wait, wait, because in the protective principle, you don't put down the sword. I don't mean put down the sword. I'm sorry, I'm saying, I'm saying, but let me give you another.

Not be angry, not be angry. The analogy that's used is sharpening the sword. Oh, okay. That's cool. Okay. And the sword is the prasjana, the discernment. So you can train those young. people to take that clarity of mind and that need to be part of a changing situation and you

could sharpen it you can invite them to become sharper not duller and the way in and the wetstone in this case is non-ignorance it always is going to come back to that if people don't have a personal practice or cultivation everything we're talking about becomes very theoretical Cooler temps are rolling in. And as always, Quince is where I'm turning for false staples to actually last. From cashmere to denim to boots, the quality holds up and the price still blows me away. Quince has the kind of false staples you wear nonstop. like Super Soft, 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at just 60 bucks.

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And let me reiterate, this underwear, it's not going anywhere. It's somehow lasting through so many, so many things. Keep it classic and cool this fall with long-lasting staples from Quince. Go to quince.com slash dung for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash Duncan. Free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com slash Duncan. Thank you, Quince. Yeah. So it's almost like, look, what you're saying isn't like, sit down, bench yourself, stop participating. What you're saying is there might be a more effective mind state. There might be a more effective way to engage and you're not going to get there if your practice is.

going on Reddit, 4chan, Twitter, TikTok. And I am saying bench yourself for 20 minutes a day. Just 20 minutes on the bench. No big deal. Yeah, but for all the people I work with, it's a huge big deal for some of them. Can't get there. They want to fix everything, change everything,

but I say just settle down and be, you know, with yourself for 20 minutes. I've got an idea. Yeah, okay. I think I know just the way. instead of let's take this let's take this out of the linguistic realm

and let's do let's sit for 10 minutes I think we have time why don't you do what I've seen you do many times for people who are watching this for people who are listening why don't you

let's do a practice session do you have time I have lots of time Okay, let's do Let's do it Let's let you You should be shorter Because we're just sort of

This is let's call this inception We may be planting a seed Of an idea Okay, so let's do it for five minutes Yeah Josh put a commercial right here I'm just kidding I'm just kidding

You're not do that Ahead of time I thought I'm going to get my bell out To this session You've never done this before But this time I thought No, I want my... What do you call that?

What's the name of that? Tendril! Yeah, auspicious coincidence. Josh, do you want to meditate with us? Sure. Okay, let's do it. Yeah. Let me put my phone on airplane mode. I'm going to step off the mic here and let you do your thing, and then let's do this.

Or should we do 10 minutes? No, five. Okay. But I want to give a little framing of it, and I don't know what button to push. Is there... Can you hear when I ring the bell? yeah all the way through yeah okay close enough i mean we're not going to get the final resonant beautiful thing but there's a setting on zoom that allows it to ring out but i don't know what it is

on this so yeah here's the thing we are benching ourselves quite literally but not permanently nobody's saying withdraw retreat from the world stop the world i want to get off we're just saying leaving a little bit of space even in the worst situation possible you can do this in the most challenging situation and and just to take a good seat like feel feel embodied that's the thing is anger takes us we don't feel embodied properly when we're when we're doing those conning and cancelling stuff we're not even actually in our body at that point so take a good moment to be embodied and feel your your butt on the cushion or on the chair your feet on the floor and kind of the natural nobility of the posture,

you know, a nice long spine. You can just rest your hands on your knees, right? And, yeah, we may have all kinds of thoughts coming into it, but we're going to just let that go for a short time. And the second step, once we've taken our posture, and you keep your eyes open with a soft downward gaze. There's no hiding out here. It's just you're being present.

present. The second gesture is to just allow your attention to come to your breath. So you're just being mindful and aware of your own breathing in a very organic way. It just give you some place to anchor your attention for a moment. So just feel the breath going in out of your body. You don't need to manipulate the breath and you don't need to feel like you're doing something special or extra. You're just taking your seat and paying attention to your breathing. And then, of course, naturally, there's a lot of momentum in our thoughts and our feelings, which will continue. So we'll find that our mind has wandered. We're thinking about what we just talked about. We're thinking about, you know, dinner, tonight.

night. We're thinking about our childhood traumas. But this is the mind basically recycling material. And in this case, once you notice that, there's no need to hold on to it further or work through it further in this exercise. Just label it thinking. Oh, thinking. And then bring your attention back to the breath. That's it for five minutes. I'll give a few prompts as we go. We're going to be able to be. Thank you. So again, just feel the breath going in and out of your body at the tip of the nose or through the whole cycle of the breath, just bring your awareness to that.

And when you notice your mind is wandering, there's no need to repress the thoughts, but we also don't have to go down the rabbit hole following them. So just label it thinking and come back to the breath. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. that's amazing and so the recommended dose is maybe if people could try that 20 minutes a day five days a week something like that and just see what it feels like to be you without any other

you know interactions just what does it feel like to be you and and make peace or friends with it and then re-engage I mean, this is not meant, I'm trying to build a bridge with what we're doing between the kind of active world and this contemplative space because they need each other, you know. You know, this brought me right back to that incredible retreat at Menla. Oh, my God. You know, that was, I think that was one of the most profound spiritual experiences I've had.

And, but it's so subtle, just like the other day, you know, I was, no, today, I was holding my daughter's hand, walking her to her class. And I remember doing the walking meditation. And I remember how you said this, this will anchor your practice in post-meditation experience. And just like that, I was back there in that, in that mind, in that, it's, it. really did work because my god i have such a rotten practice i drift like a kite you know and moments like this anytime the reminder of that place yeah is just it's so well you know it's great to remind yourself not of a place but of the instruction right right you know like don't take your eye off the ball you know like if you if you had a good bait little league coach yeah you don't

remember what it feels like but you can remember that instruction you go Okay. I'm here now. This is actually happening. I would love to see it. I mean, look, I may be heavily biased towards thinking this is a good idea. And I also want to say I'm not an expert on any of this. I'm certainly not a political. I don't want to give people advice as to whether they should do this or do that.

I just, that's not where I'm coming from. But I do feel like if, can you imagine those congressional hearings if they started it and ended it like we just did? You know, I mean, amazing. You know, it's the one minute in boxing. There's three minutes in the ring, one minute in the corner. Oh, my God. Or like any time the president gave some kind of address,

if it just started with that, with him just sitting for five minutes with a bell? You can approximate it to without the bell and with 20 seconds of just leaving some settling quality. That was the greatest moment of meditation ever. Maybe the best. They say it was the best. They say it was the greatest meditation ever.

that's what people are saying. In fact, they say that I'm the best of meditators, maybe the best American meditating president of all time. One of the best. That's what they say. And then you just label the thinking and you come back to just being the president. That is such a, to me, what you just walked us through. And maybe I just call it this because I like drama.

is one of the most revolutionary subversive things that I know of in the world that for some that should not matter and the fact that it just just that alone I don't know how you guys felt you might be like that was fucked up boring or whatever that's what I used to think what I did it yeah but generally my sense is like my god this is just right in front to everybody totally accessible and boredom is the antidote for hyperactivity right it's a good antidote so we're cranked up that's my perception of the world it's in hyperdrive and cranked up and and people are ready to go you know like you know how if you if you can counter somebody like in a bar and they're ready to go there's we're cranked like we're on the edge of our seats for

something to happen. And so nothing seems to be the antidote. It's the best. It really is the ultimate to me in between doing activism. That is true activism. But it's so odd because I mean, you wouldn't think of it that way. It's maybe, but. Well, look at Tick Nhat Han or Gandhi. Yeah. No. You know, and it's possible. We have to explore it. We have to find it in our own time and place. And we have to de-culturalize it.

It doesn't need this uniquely cultural envelope. It needs human access for modern people, just to be able to integrate some kind of little bit more space into the hyperactive universe that we've created. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. If anybody has any questions about it, they can let us know. Let me do a pitch here, by the way.

like in case you forget not that you would but David is my has the David has the unfortunate karma of being my meditation teacher I don't know why why he had to deal with me but and I've worked with you for I don't even know how many years now and my life is has changed dramatically over those years but you know I think about you every day I think about you every day and I think about the things that you've taught me and the work we've done together every single day and and then I'd like blink out from talking to you and it's not because of anything other than like I'm usually working through something on my own I don't know how to say it to anybody but the um the the you have this incredible incredible incredible community called

darma moon i was lucky enough to be invited to one of your retreats and it was just fabulous that the the the different teachers you had your own kid Ethan like all of these it was just a for me it was just perfect and um i don't know if you guys are this is not some like half-baked attempt to hide a pitch or anything um but uh and i have no idea if you're even doing anything like that again but wow man wow that i'm telling you if there was some kind of medicine for the world right now what you guys are distilling we have the we have the whole thing online dama moon.com is online and we're unabashedly trying to engage people to come and participate and we have we're we're sort of specializing and training

teachers, mindfulness teachers, but training practitioners. And, you know, we have this fall, you know, another teacher training coming up. And there's a free info session about it next week that people can come check out on September 23rd. We'll put the, how about if we just put some notes in the show. Okay. Some links. Okay. And just know everybody that it's online.

So it's global. We have people from all over the world. And you are welcome to come check us out and come talk to me. I like to be available to talk to people. I like talking to people. Me too. I like people, Duncan. Me too.

You know, isn't that? And you're not going to find too many people who say it, I don't like people. You know? There seems to be a growing number these days. No, they're going to say I don't like some people. Ah, right. Right, right, right, right. True.

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to include everybody. It's a big, it's a black belt territory. Right. But you can start by taking somebody who irritates you a little bit and not losing your cookies. You know what I mean? That would be like one small step for mankind. It's true. Yeah.

That's true. Yeah. Well, David, thank you so much. This meant the world to me. I imagine like probably a few days after I upload this, we can expect world peace. So thank you on behalf of the citizens of the world. At least maybe if somebody irritates you a little bit, you cannot lose your cookies. Yeah. Don't lose your cookies.

Yeah. So you thank you, Duncan. And, you know, I get that you're trying to create a space for people to gather without the anchor of that space being like focused hostility on somebody else's group. Yeah. And that's hard to do these days. Man, it's a bitch. Even in my world, it's hard. I'm not, let me tell you, I'm not doing a good job at it, David. I can't, it's, it's, it's, it's, but you know what, I'm going to keep trying. I don't, I'll just keep trying. And, you know, there's, fortunately, I've got people like you to connect to. And, um, and I always try to redirect. It's totally lame.

I always try to redirect people to you. Well, but look at, you know, I'm like the general, I'm the shitty GP, I'm the general practitioner man and like you're the specialist that I send everyone to. Well, it's interdependent. And, you know, a lot of people come, you know, people call me from New Zealand and they say I heard about this on Duncan's show. I mean, a lot of people are. And this is something where I think humor can be very magnetizing for people. Just like, you know. the worst thing that happens is you get totally humorless like that would be the definition of autocracy oh my god yeah that's so that's so terrifying and it's such a it's no sense of humor no sense of humor that's nihilism nihilism's you know I'm sorry it's humorless I mean there's not very fine okay there's funny nihilism who I'm saying George theism can also be pretty humorless you're damn right it's across and I'm not talking about

a trivial sense of humor. I'm talking to a profound kind of appreciation of, um, um, go see spinal tap too, by the way. Is it good? I laughed out loud, embarrassing me out loud the whole time. Yeah, well, anyhow. You know what? After when I press stop, I got to tell you this Norm McDonnell, McDonald joke about Hitler's dog. Um, okay. Thank you, David. We'll leave that for next time. So, hey, everybody out there, good to see you. Uh, and thanks to Duncan for, for including me. Thank you, David. You are just the best. Thank you.

Okay. Ciao, everybody. Bye. That was David Nick, turn, everybody. Don't forget to sign up for his class. I wish you all well. I hope you're doing okay. And I'll see you next week.

Bye.