Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 765: David Nichtern

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

David Nichtern, founder & CEO of Dharma Moon, co-founder and CCO of Strawberry Moons Media, and Duncan's meditation teacher re-joins the DTFH!Join Buddhist teacher David Nichtern for a free online talk on Tuesday August 25 on the art of teaching meditation.Interested in becoming a certified mindfulness meditation teacher? Dharma Moon’s 100-Hour Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training begins October 9th.Also beginning October 9th, David Nichtern’s Intro to Mindfulness and the Path of Meditation is a weekend workshop for both newer and experienced meditators looking to learn or refresh the foundations of mindfulness practice.This episode is brought to you by: Buy two months of BlueChew Gold and get the third FREE with promo code DUNCAN. You also get an additional 10% OFF + Free overnight shipping on your first order.  Go to Quince.com/duncan for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/duncan and get on your way to being your best self. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at MintMobile.com/Duncan.

Welcome! You are watching the DTFH, aka the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. And today we have a returning guest. If you're a fan of the Midnight Gospel, he's Clancy's meditation teacher, David. He also happens to be Duncan's meditation teacher, David Nicktern. And this has got to be my favorite conversation with him ever as far as the podcast goes. So this was a really, really, really premiere episode. And I thank you for being here to watch it. We're going to talk about Lindsay Clancy, the Hell Realms, and the fundamental goodness that exists within all things.

Also, if you're into this episode, you should definitely check out a Dharma Moon live info session, which is coming up just next week. All the links will be down below. It's Tuesday, August, 25th, you can actually have a chance to see David talking about Buddhism and mindfulness. And potentially you can interact with some of the Dharma Moon people. All the links you need to find David are down below.

And I hope you'll come and see me at the Emerald City Comedy Club in Seattle, September 4th, 5th, and 6th. After that, I'm going to be in Dallas and Fort Worth at Hyena's Comedy Club. And then October 23rd, I'm going to be in... Detroit at Mike Drop Comedy. I hope to see you there. God bless you. So that's a good start if you ask me. That's a good start.

That's what the Buddha would have wanted. You know, you don't hear that that much. Do you? You do. It is interesting, though. Like, you know, you hear things like WWJD. What would Jesus do?

How often do you hear that about what would Buddha do? I guess people just aren't familiar. But don't you ask yourself that sometimes? Like, what would Buddha do in this situation? You know, like when your audio is fucking up on your podcast. You know, it's fun to the Buddha. What would Sid Arthur Gatama, the Enlightened being? What would he be like in the modern world with all of the world's difficulties?

You know, you're ready. lost the battle if you're asking that question i have lost the battle because what you really want to ask is what would you do if you had the same level of understanding and realization okay well that's a different question i as i was thinking about this conversation with you i was thinking there was some kind of personality to the historic buddha there was a personality there was a personality there And that personality was mixed in with the awakened mind, but it was still there, right? Like he wasn't like a abyss, a talking vortex of wisdom. There was a self of being there.

He died of food poisoning. He had food preferences, probably. Yeah. So in different Buddhist presentations, this is maybe more or less important to assess who was this person. and what exactly did they iterate? What's the source for that? Because, you know, for example, they didn't have a written language.

So for 200 years after Buddha died, it was purely oral tradition. Yeah. And then they had a council and tried to reconstruct what, you know, I visualized some little old Jewish lady in the back of the hall saying, what did he say?

You know, like for 200 years. Yeah, right. Like to put that in a perspective, that's us headed back to the 1800s. hundreds where there was some kind of brilliant person who never wrote anything down and moved so many people that generations of people kept talking about the things this person was talking about. And then suddenly right now, somebody is like, guys, we got to get it, we got to get together and figure out what exactly this guy was talking about. 200 years is a long, long, long time.

a lot can get scrambled in that game of telephone. Which is why a literal rendering it can only take you so far, but it can take you so far in that at least you have some source code to assess. Right. But if you don't do the assessment yourself and you just have adopted this set of regulations, let's say from somebody who lived a long time ago,

to me that's not really the full Monty right there. What is the full Monty? So whatever input you have coming in, you should assess with the same degree of, you know, remember that your Dharma name flaming sword of Prasjna. Yes, I do. Get that flaming sword out and see if it's true, see if it's conditionally true, absolutely true. If it's relevant, if it's expressible in contemporary cultural context, if it's serving the well-being of oneself and others.

And otherwise, there's no point in hanging on. like, you know, that guy, Ben Turbin used to hang on to the clock in the silent movie. Yeah, right. You don't want to be that kind of practitioner, you know? No, but I don't. But let's start at the very top, the term Buddhism. Are there other names for it that are more accurate as to what it is? Is there obviously, or has it always been called Buddhism?

And what are some different names for Buddhism going back through the centuries? Well, so even within Buddhism, let's clarify a couple of things that might be, you know, relevant. One is, Buddha's not a name, you know, it's not like, oh, there's Fred, Arnold, and Buddha, you know, over there sitting on the bench. Right, right. It is a word that means, roughly speaking, awakened, awakened to what? You have to, you know, understand that too. And there have been many Buddhas throughout history. And if you study, you would say this Buddha was the fourth one in a garland of a thousand Buddhists.

That's one of the things that you would come across. So it's not a name. It is a description of a kind of. Yeah, title in a sense, or, you know, describing a certain aspect of yourself that is, you know, brought to full fruition. Okay, let's, let's, I'm sorry to cut you off. Let's go, 150 years after this particular Buddha's death. What were they calling this practice? It's a great, great question in a way.

like you, I think about this because I was a big fan of Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine, if you remember that? Like, I've always wanted to go on Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine, go back to Jesus, go back to Buddha, and like, and then you'd cut to a picture of me like this because, you know,

didn't map exactly to what you might have hoped for. Like, I think, how did people hear the Buddha? Yeah. They didn't have microphones, they had big groups of people, and I've heard answers to that, that there were speakers halfway into the audience who would repeat what he said. Who knows? Who knows?

The point is that the Buddha is a principle. I'm going to go full on with this. It's a principle of a way of being. And if you fully manifest that, you are a Buddha. And I have, in the Vajiana tradition, there are Buddhas all the time. Dilgo-Ken-Sahir-Rim-Betio, somebody like that is considered to be the Buddha and the flesh. not just somebody who carries on, but a source code for the whole thing. Yeah, well, okay, so yeah, this seems to be one of the mistakes people make when they, you know,

most of most people have just heard about Buddhism. You know, when I was much younger, I thought it was like the fat dude in the Chinese restaurant, the statue of the fat guy, which is, I think Confucius. I don't even think it's Buddha, but a lot of people are at that level of understanding with it. But they were born into Christian families. And so they conflate the messianic Jesus idea with the Buddha idea. In other words, they think this was a Messiah being like the Son of God level. But what you're saying is not so much.

This is actually a phenomena that if we're going to use the story of Jesus as the son of God, which I know you're not, Buddhism is generally non-theism. but that happens once. You get one Jesus. Like there's not, or twice, I guess, when Jesus comes back. But so you get two occurrences of this. Whereas in Buddhism, you get multiple, multiple, multiple occurrences of this consciousness, this level of this way of seeing the world and of expressing yourself into the world.

And that happens more than twice if there's humans about. Yeah, and starting where you started with, one has one's own personal journey is part of that. So it's, and you know, we've talked about it's a bunch of times with the absolute and relative truth. So, and they're said to be inseparable, which means that even if somebody had this, achieve this kind of wakeful and extremely fruitional state, it's still Duncan. It still has four children at home. It still has, you know, maybe bills to pay. It still has decisions to make. So how those two ride together, I think, is confusing for

most people, even spiritual practitioners, especially spiritual practitioners. How would you integrate that? How would you not idealize, reify somebody who's achieved that and dehumanize them in doing that dehumanized yeah because that is sort of the I guess the fantasy would be that there's some kind of spiritual winning the lottery that could happen to a person and upon that happening what's commonly called enlightenment no more mortgage, no more Social Security number, no more bills, no more kids tuition fund, no more 401Ks, just something you can't understand because it hasn't happened to you, man, but in reality, it's like, no, all of these things. So one, maybe to answer my own question for the beginning, though it might be missing the mark a little bit, the Buddha, a Buddha, in modern times

is still going to pay bills is still going to have to decide how much to tip at a restaurant is still going to have to know how to call an Uber getting a taxi, book an air a flight meaning that as you're walking through the airport as you're going down the street the next time you're at the shopping mall

you easily might pass an enlightened being who's headed to buy cat litter you know you you That's what you're saying. It could be anywhere. Well, yes. And what a relief. What a relief.

And my teachers would say they could do all that stuff better. The clarity would not just only be about the ultimate nature of things, but how to, which cat littered to buy, which app on your phone would tell you which cat littered to buy. Trump was to say that if enlightenment was some kind of like blasting your molecules into hyperspace, we would need an enlightenment ward in the hospital. If Buddha was not functional and couldn't function in relative reality, you'd have to have them in a wheelchair and roll them around. Somebody help me. I'm getting enlightened.

Holy shit. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. And Duncan, you know, this is, hero worship. We have it as part of our makeup. It's part of our ability to inspire, aspire. It's okay. But the idea of putting people up on a pedestal at every level. And then, unfortunately, we also have the tendency once that happens to want to pull them down. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that includes religious figures, political figures, and, you know, entertainers.

I really, I liked the text you sent me, the article where they mentioned you in Trumporimposhae. Could you tell that story? Because it's such a cool story. And it is kind of, and it's what's gotten me thinking about all of this. But yeah, that story. You know, friends of mine,

and including me, you know, we play with AI and some of my spiritual friends are playing with it at a level that is kind of a little bit like, okay, you know, let's verify or let's come down a notch once you once you you know let's not reify AI either for that matter even though it's a very very fast learner yeah you know so she was asking a question about um a quote that she remembered being attributed to to my teacher and it it got right into oh david nick turns you know it was

about trung green and then david nickturn said this about it and all of a sudden it kind of knew somehow that she and I knew each other, it seemed to. And you might be interested in this aspect. And then it kind of, it was actually me that had asked the question of him, which was, you know, related to our kinds of conversations. Actually, it was quite mirror-like in that way. Yeah. I would ask a question like, you know, which the last conversation I ever had with him, Duncan,

was he asked me how I was doing. He was already on his way leaving this world, but he asked me how I was doing. I said, well, I'm going to tell you know, life has had its ups and downs. And he just looked at me kind of somewhat hollowly, you know, and just said, of course, what do you want to hear from a mentor in this case like that? Well, what's been happening?

How are you? Tell me about it. He just looked at me and said, which comes first? And as far as I'm going to say, concerned, those were his actual last words that we ever spoke. Yeah. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by Blue Chew Gold. And I know you might be thinking, wait, I thought I was listening to a podcast about Buddhism. And here you are talking about boner pills?

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Visit BluChu.com for more details and important safety information. And I thank Blue Chew for sponsoring the pod and the bedroom. Which goes first, up or down? And then the AI gave a little interpretation of it. Yeah, I like the interpretation. Yeah, it also included the quote about, you know, another time when I was sharing with him that I was having a difficult time. he gave me this Pith instruction, which I've given to you and many other people, because I consider it a very helpful. He said, don't panic when things are going bad, which I was.

I was sort of starting to panic. But then he added to it, don't relax when things are not going well. Right. I mean, I'm sorry, don't relax when things are going well. And yeah, that is, you know, equanimity there is that you don't bias your experience too strongly towards just, oh, success. and you become a manic depressive practitioner, you know, it's going well, it's not going well. She loves me. She loves me.

She loves me. She loves me. Yeah. So it attributed it to me. Somehow it knew that I was the person who'd ask that question. And then I thought, have I ever written this down? Or is it watching my videos of teaching? There's no telling.

It easily could be. It probably is. She might have mentioned something. Who knows there's something written? If it's on the written record, the thing probably knows. but you know that that um that that question which comes first or that you know pointing out of how you're you're not getting one without the other the classic cliche stuff no mud no lotus that anytime you're picking out up versus down or down versus up are you making a mistake are you

would that be considered a distortion in the sense that you have framed out, this is down? Even though for some people, you're down is their greatest day on earth. And for some people, you're up is their worst day alive, meaning that you've sort of picked out one or the other. Yeah. Well, it's really pointing towards the relative relational truth as being one of the two truths. And this is where I think it's easy to get befuddled because we tend to get very absorbed in relational truth, you know, and track ourselves and kind of make sure it's going the direction we meant it to go. And the, or we tend to get reified the absolute truth and say it's all empty, there's nothing happening. You know, it's just a big empty universe and none of this matters.

It's a dream, you know. and the truth of the two truths is that the two truths are inseparable from each other. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like a little bit, you just have to assess how that person operates in the world to know if they have some understanding of the two truths being inseparable. Right. Yeah. I mean, is that one of those undersc- I think most people have some idea of the, like, you know, they know that. They understand that at some level these things are connected. But then it's

very easy to fuzz that out and get fixated on one or the other. Either you're evading one to get to the other or you're clinging to one to try to keep from rolling back down the hill. or you're always but every once in a while you might recognize that things are just pretty much the way they've always been regardless of up or down

there's a it's always you know it's this comic I think I've said this to you before and I wish I could remember his name or maybe it's a lot of comics it's not I guess the most brilliant joke on earth but I was a young comic when I saw him say it I was like holy shit man what a genius!

He goes, you know, Taco Bell, it's just five ingredients, like, you know, put together different quantities. It's such a, when I say it, I was, I really was my blow, man. I wasn't been pretty stone. It's true, man. He crapped for cold at Taco Bell. But you, when you're sort of like in a high moment and you look at the experience. the experience it's strangely like a low moment there's you know what i mean there's an intensity like a what like a low moment you know what i mean in high moments your things are great

holy shit i got the email it's happening oh my god it's in the works here we go there's a kind of joyful frenzy to it or something you know or maybe maybe uh it's not business related it's a family peak utopian moment. You're watching your children on the beach. The sun is setting. This is the beach that you played on as a child. And here you are. Your mother, you can feel her spirit in the air. And yet in that moment, there's a kind of melancholy or a sort of like flavor to it that isn't quite all the way sweet. Then in the low moments, you're like, oh, fuck, I'm back here again, man. There's a sweet familiarity to it.

There's a kind of joyfulness to the thing. Even at the worst moment, you're driving to the children's hospital. The baby's been pukin. You know what it? The wife is upset. But somehow in those moments, there's a kind of sweetness, a kind of joy. There's something real, resonant, scary, terrifying. Dear God, the fragility of life.

How quickly can life flee the more. auto coil. But mixed into that is all this love and caring. And so, you know, all I'm saying is the ups and the downs when you start looking at them, it's just different ingredients. It's the same ingredients just sort of mixed in differently. Does that make sense? What you just said is worth reiterating. It's, it's, um, not only does it make sense, but it's, it's, it's, um, not only does it makes sense, but it's poignant and true at the same time. So the relative truth, you know, I mean, the way I'd frame it is what you're really describing is manic depression. Yeah. And we all have it. Yeah. Because we chase the highs and try to avoid the lows is the only reason it

becomes problematic. So what the meditation practice is inviting, is to say, don't chase the highs and don't avoid the lows. That's what Trunkeruncomments meant to me. Don't chase the highs and don't avoid the lows. And it does away with ignorance and attachment in one swoop there. You're cutting through ignorance and attention. You're not ignoring anything and you're not attaching to anything as having sort of hypermeaning. Yeah.

But you're staying awake. You're staying Buddha. Right. And, you know, and this is only conversation I'm having these days, actually, Duncan, with everybody. Really? Yeah. And in a way, in the spiritual community, you could think of it as a left-right spectrum of, like, highly relational stuff. And also people who are like really trying to elevate the situation and see it as kind of pristine and clear and unobstructed.

It just is what it is. Yeah. Right. And so they use words like Darmatah, suchness, but nobody believes it. So you've got to keep like, it's like being a herder. You keep moving the sheep towards that what it is is not only good, but it's also unavoidable. Right. Right. I mean, it is what's happening. Yeah, you either can try to pump it up or try to cut it off or all the moves that we make that are habits. So I think in Buddhism, a very important, as it's evolved as a practice, as a way of looking at things, is to pay careful attention to the habitual patterns of one's own life and mental continuum. Really pay attention to that, notice it, and then to some extent dismantle some of the attachment and ignorance that's perpetuating those habits.

Right. Like what would be a very simple example of that kind of dismantling? Road rage. Okay. Yeah. Somebody cuts you off and you go, you know, you do the, I'm from New York. I know how to do the whole, the whole bit. You know, you're cutting me off, you know, it's like, you know.

And as a, as a practitioner, that's going to happen to you. Somebody else is, you didn't, you were driving well. and safely, but they are, you know, on the LIE here and they're cutting you off. And you watch, you notice your own reaction to that. Yeah. And, and how it, how it grips you. It's called Shenpa. You know, it's kind of like this tendency for your emotional, yeah, shenpa. Scary. Scary. Your emotional reactivity takes over. Scary. And now you're like, and then it kept, as we've discussed before, it captivates your intelligence. Yeah. You start making logical summaries of what should

happen what shouldn't happen, why this should be this way or that way. So if you can just see that, which is what meditation practice should be about or can be about, is just observing, seeing it clearly, you don't have to be gripped by it in exactly the same way going forward. You, and that's, how do you get to the road? I think that's the best one. Sorry to misinterpret what you're saying. I'm thinking of meditate. Medit. That should be the name of my podcast. Yes. You know, when you meditate, when you're sitting, you're watching your mind, your thoughts, all of the various forms of it that you've taught me.

When, you know, maybe I just, if I meditated more, this would happen. I don't think that I've ever found myself in a state of profound road rage while meditating. That may be different levels of it. maybe a kind of anxiety, paranoia, panic, nervousness, but like that particular form of Shimpah, the murderous rage that can burst into your heart from one trigger, this form of it is causing so much suffering around the planet at any given moment.

People are strangling, punch. And they weren't bad, but they were, they were relatively calm. That's a scary part. They were relatively calm before they got, they got, it snapped on them. Oh my God, it's so terrifying. And when it happens to you profoundly,

like when you really are gone, you only know it's happening when you're realizing, like, why am I holding a croquet mallet right now? I don't need to be brandishing a croquet mallet at somebody. I'll tell you this story after. But you know what I mean? That's a, that's, to me, it's scary. That Shimpah that you're talking about.

How would you dismantle that through a sitting practice or through a meditation practice or through some form of Buddhism? So usually it's probably a two-step process. Awareness, bring more awareness. present awareness sees these kind of arising with clarity awareness is naturally clear in its own way it's just seeing it's not investing in it you're not assessing you know whether do this or do that you're just seeing it um without judging it and without manipulating it that's really a hard thing to learn that's a really good good thing to learn not by avoiding it not by negating it not by bypassing it just seeing it arise and then the

second step would have to be in a really good progression would be shifting. Yeah. And that would be, you know, that you're actually now making your next move in a chess game. You see the lay of the land on the chess board. I got here. I'm trapped between this guy's rook and this guy's queen. Yeah. You assess the situation.

And now you have to make your next move. What's it going to be? Are you going to knock the pieces off the board? Are you going to like tip your king over and say, I think I, let's play another game, you know? right yeah i mean when you describe it like that it sounds very uh heady it sounds very um it's strategic in a way that maybe i don't i don't think most people think of a spiritual practice as some form of chess um well the tricky aspect of it is you're you look across at your opponent

and their face morphs into your face. You realize you're playing yourself in a game of chess. That's what life in the sense is that. Boring! That's what prisoners do, right? Isn't that the classic prisoner game? In movies, it's a trope. The dude in a cell with a chessboard is playing himself.

It's called retreat practice. Yeah, right, right, right. You go into a place. and there's nobody else there. And then, you know, what unfolds in your mind is clarified to be unmistakably of your generation. You know, you generated it. So therefore, you either are going to, like, thrash around with not being comfortable with your own self and your own mind, or you're going to start to work with it with gentleness, all the things we talk about, clarity, precision.

But I think, you know, I'm going back, Dunkin to what you said, because I'm super concerned. about this and when you said it, it just resonated. There's too much aggression in the world right now. Yeah. It's not healthy. Yeah. And that sounds like a dumb thing to say maybe in a way, Kambaya, whatever. Say whatever you want about it.

But people are reactive and going to reactive states. And a lot of equipment is set up to support that style of existence to get you triggered, you know, and then manipulate you for whatever purposes that they might have. So anything that dials that automatic aggression down is good, even if it's just taking a walk or listening to music or having a nice meal or meditating, God forbid. God forbid. He does forbid it. God forbids meditation. He does. Wouldn't that be wild if they made meditation illegal? But this thing that you're talking about, I like one angle that I've done. I really like is the recognition that when a person has upset you, they are controlling you to some degree. It might not be a sophisticated kind of control. In some levels, it is, but if I can get you freaking out, I've already controlled you. It's like I found a trigger in you that I could switch

and make you have a kind of transient seizure. And that's a lot of power. And that's a lot of power. that you could have over somebody. And so I agree with you that there seems to be an intentional, almost pulsed out attempt to trigger people into varying states of aggression that is coming from a bunch of different sources, but strangely it all feels like the same plan or something. It's this, maybe it's the 24-hour news cycle. Maybe it's politics. Maybe it's some, you know, siop from another country or maybe it's, uh, who you could come up with whatever. It's the fucking sun. It's solar flares, man. It's aluminum in the air. I don't know. But it is for sure a quality of the present day that doesn't remind me of the 90s. It doesn't remind me of it. It seems like a hyper aggressive time for sure. Yeah. And, um,

you know, whatever insight can be brought to that, because it's a runaway train at the moment, with a lot of momentum towards exactly triggering people in a manipulative way. And, you know, not many people are just, you know, speaking from their heart, speaking the truth. It almost looks like unbelievable if somebody does that. Like you're a fool, you're naive, you know. Right, right. You just don't get the game. You know, you're not in the game.

That's right. Yeah. What are you doing? Like, do you understand the danger you're putting yourself in by expressing exactly who you are in the present moment? It's not the time for that. This is not the time to be fully yourself. It's going to get you arrested or outcast or. Well, that is that, you know, as a group that moves us towards autocratic forms of, you know,

of connecting with people. Because if people get it's the jealous God realm, and you know when we talk about the six realms. Yeah. It's that idea of power being a currency that is nutritious in some sense. People are looking for nutrition, Duncan. That's why I look at it. Feeding a hungry person is the whole situation.

And depending on the way the mind is shaped and set, power can look like food. Yeah, right. doesn't really fulfill your appetite. You're still hungry. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

It's that, it's that, you know, that Chinese German restaurant. You know that one? What? Chinese German. This is horrible. Yeah, I'll probably get it. We can cut it out. We can cut it out if you regret it.

Let's hear the, it's a joke, people. Go ahead. A half hour after you eat there, you're hungry for power again. That's a. It's very vintage, very old, and it's before all this stuff. But anyhow, that's what I grew up with. Yeah, so coming back to just seriously, power, in the jealous God realm, power, it becomes an attempt at nutrition.

In the God realm, it's bliss or, you know, kind of super, you know, happiness and ease become the nutrition. in the animal realm it's just getting your next meal in the hungry ghost realm it becomes something that continues to recede from you you can't quite get at the nutrition and then in the hell realm it's you're at a horn and hard arts and everything's locked

you know you can't get at the food you can't do anything to get out of your own state of mind and get out of your own way even for a second and that's us all six of those is us and all six of those is Buddha at the same time. Right. Well, how?

Explain to me how, let's take a trip down to the hell realms. You're in the place where the pantries are locked. All the stores are closed. The lights are turned off. You're not getting anything, friend.

Now, how is that? And you hate yourself. And you hate yourself. You hate yourself for having gotten into such a mess, too. Yeah. So I have a perfect example of that. I don't know if you've been following this trial. Have you been following this trial of what's her name, Lindsay Clancy? What's her name, Josh Lindsay Clancy? You know about this, David? Only a little bit. Without just vomiting the darkest thing you've ever heard on earth, the details. The essence of the thing is you have this woman on trial. who murdered her children and she had severe postpartum depression, probably postpartum psychosis, desperately tried to get help. No one could identify like how bad it was and then

she ends up doing just the most unimaginable thing possible that you could do to kill your children and now you have to, you see her on trial. She of course breaks down throughout the sobbing but there's, you look at that, that's the hell realm. I can't think of a more hopeless situation. Let's say you're, it's a hung jury. You get to walk. Or let's say that you get a reduced sentence. Or let's say that you sue the psychiatrist who overmedicated you or didn't identify what was happening with you and you make millions of dollars. You're still a mother who murdered her children. And for the, There's no out.

There's no way out from that. You can't fix it. It's Hell Realm, right? That's Hell Realm. So where's the Buddha in that? Where's Buddha? Where's the awakened part of that? The awakened part of that experience is, would have to center around forgiveness.

Somehow, and this is what some religious traditions are very good at, in my opinion. Like, I think, the Christian tradition. has a very beautiful sense of forgiveness. But you're saying she has to forgive herself? Well, but if you can't do that, you use an intermediary. You know, a priest. Right. You know, a great being of some kind.

They lean in and they help show you how to do that. And you attribute it to their power, not to your own, as an intermediate step. So I think in the hell realm We practice META loving kindness You have to you have to forgive yourself You have to forgive other people And that is so Most of us don't know how to do that at all

Even without the hell realm Don't you think it's hard to forgive yourself Even for just like saying the wrong stupid thing sometimes Sure Your wife You can't even forgive yourself It's gonna like resonate in your mind for like a month Right

Yeah sure I think there's something powerful in that. And then in each of the realms, Duncan, there's a Buddha type of being communicating with those beings according to their obsession. Okay, so that's where, okay, I'm going to pause you there for one second. I need to plug my computer in. But can you hold that thought? Because I want to continue right from this spot. I'm so sorry.

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you I in C.E dot com slash Duncan thank you quince for saving all of us from the horrors of going out into public to buy clothes in this to continue pick up sorry about that so in this using the trial as an example Obviously, even though, you know, some percentage of the population is just like, hang the witch burner in a boiling pot. There's obviously people watching this with compassion. In fact, what I'm seeing out there is way more compassion than one might expect. Like after watching this and seeing what she went through and her legitimate, desperate attempts to get help. So she does she might not be aware of this. I doubt they're letting her

online. Um, but maybe she gets letters, but even in that state, she probably is getting messages or contacts from people she's never met who are praying for her, like legitimately wanting to help like a person who's done. I mean, as a parent, you know, that's pretty much it. Like, that's like, that's like the worst thing that you could do as a human being on this planet. Yeah, yeah. I mean, all up there. There's a few others, obviously. You know, you could let you for, you could not wear headphones in a cafe and watch sports.

That's also one of the worst things you can do on the planet. But regardless. But sometimes if, Duncan, if somebody's in a hell realm, they need help. There's often the situation is like, for example, in the 12, step world. You hit that bottom and you go, I can't make it. I have to admit that I'm not getting where I need to get by myself. So I need to ask for help. And that's a beautiful thing for a human being to ask for help. And some people that's hard for and some people who need that. But I remember hearing that song, Jesus Take the Wheel. Yeah. You know that country song? Sure. Sobbing like a baby

when I heard it. Yeah. I mean, it's such a beautiful, like I can't make it on my own. And in, in, Dharma world, you could invoke a teacher or a guru to say, please help me. You supplicate. Right. But you're not saying you have it and I don't. That's the difference. That's where it becomes theistic. Right. Yeah. You have it and I've forgotten about it. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that is, that's really cool so yeah in all it's i guess i misunderstood what you're saying initially but in all of these whether they're metaphor whether it's you'd want to take it literally in all of these states of consciousness or maybe states of the universe there's this omnipresent awake in mind situation that you can access and that can what i mean it's it's it's it's it's got the word for the

kind of present and awareness dimension of it but it's also said to have a warm quality to it a compassionate essence and this is the same essence as every being has in essence but as we move through those, you know, the realms of being and carmas that we, that we generate, we can, we need to be reminded of that possibility and then sometimes coached a little bit to help reinvigorate our connection with it. Tell me about that. You ask what Buddhism. Yes.

That's Buddhism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. That is really cool. warmth part you know it brought to mind right after god when was this man i'm trying to think if this was after my i think this might have been after my mom passed away but i you know i don't remember

i had to go get like a big test when you have cancer you have to like you have to keep going back make sure it hasn't spread and in the first few years post cancer it's a lot like you have to get like checked up fairly regularly, you know, and then the checkups diminish, depending on the cancer, but too much information there. But I can remember being really freaked out because I was getting the big old MRI scan. This is the serious shit, man. They give you the, I can't remember what it's called. They inject you with this stuff. You feel it rushed through your body. It's what the MRI machine uses to see. I was just freaking out. I just remember I was, I think I was, I don't know, drinking something you have to drink before.

I don't remember the details. But this nurse, and I don't think I was, I probably looked freaked out, I don't know. I was trying to keep it together, but this nurse just walks up to me, like takes my arm. And she goes, it's okay. She goes, I'm your mom. It's going to be fine.

Your mom's here. It just walks off. But it was real. It wasn't woo-woo. It wasn't kumbaya. It was, that warmth was just pouring out of her. And I'll never. forget that it was so quick but it was after that I was less freaked out like it really

whoever that person was or whatever that was that is that's what your that warmth that's what that was that's what that was the fundamental quality of that moment was this warmth in within a fairly alien fucked up mind space and external space and that that that that is the this is what we're cultivating in Buddhism is manifesting that warrant, finding that war. It's said to be inherent. So when you talk about Buddha, it's an unconditional

inherent situation, primordial, without beginning, without end, it just is that way. And it's hard to say, well, is that what human beings are, that's the source code? You could make a lot of arguments against it. But what the Buddha argument

is, that that is the most indestructible part of a That's bedrock. And we're not operating that level a lot of times because of the habits, the formations and the kind of obscurations and the obstacles that we've faced. But she reminded you of your, and if it's not that warmth, it's not Buddha. You don't have a Buddha who's just brilliant and clarifying and penetrating and awake and so smart and so insightful. Without that warmth, it's also not Buddha.

So it has those two elements which are considered some kind of basic nature. You know, and that's why at the more advanced levels of teaching, sometimes the teachers point to that. It's called pointing out. They just point to that by how they're occupying the space with you. And it has to have this sort of clarity of kind of unobstructed present awareness and also this warmth of the kind of compassion. That's it.

That's that's and you have to you you're not supposed to just say oh well so and so said that if you don't feel it then it's not it doesn't work don't waste your what are you doing like why are you even wasting your time like that's the that I mean it sounds wonderful like of course you would want to feel that it sounds maybe for some people a little different from what they might have um envisioned as an awakened state that you know for I think For some people, it's a very heady state. It's a, an astral projection kind of state or a doctor strange kind of state. It's not like, it's not like drinking tea. It's not like having tea with your kids or something or like, you know,

making your kids pancakes. Like that's not, that's not it. Yeah. But it seems more like that than anything else, just that. that and to hear that that's the fundamental sort of ground floor basic goodness it's described different ways but then you have to really test that out because if it's not true um you have to say

what is true uh and then you might get to something like basic badness you know which is or original sin or something like that you you fucked up so long ago you can't even remember it and now we're going to make you pay unless you do X, Y, and Z. Right. So, I don't know. For me, personally, it just has to be gentler and, you know, more heartful than that kind of way of punishing ourselves and punishing others. If Buddhism just becomes a way of punishing yourself and punishing others,

it just goes into the basket with the rest of whatever. Yeah. It's not special at all from that perspective, if that's what it was. Well, you could use the data points in it to manipulate a, conversation towards being a smart person and being perceived as such. You mean, like my new favorite word, excorciate. Now, are you saying excoriate? Excorci.

I said her wrong. I've been saying it for about a month, though, as an example of saying shit to seem smart when you're an idiot. excori. I think I even told my kids, guys, just say excoriate. People think you're smart. I've been saying it wrong. I don't think that's the right word, but I could be wrong. I'm not sure. I give up. Oh, shit. Well, yeah. And, and-

Hey, Duncan, I want to ask you a question. How's it comedy world lately? You're still traveling and- Oh, that, yeah, it's great. It's great. It's interesting. It's like it, it's somehow become a sort of like vacation situation, which used to be my, like you feel like work.

And now because I've got all these kids, I'm, you know, getting these like days of just, you know, silence. But then mixed in with it is, I just miss my kids so much.

And so it's got kind of like, uh, of, uh, somewhat of a, of a bittersweet. feeling to you just want to get back to your kids which is by the way it's so simultaneously wonderful and challenging and I mean that not trying to be a fence around here to come home

to these beautiful like sweethearts just hugging you and like you know asking you crazy it's the best thing to like come home to but you also have to sort of like very quickly shift vibes to sync up, you know, with the family. And maybe the, maybe to get back to your, what we were talking about earlier, maybe the, there could be some way that that experience of coming home is what you're experiencing all the time. That, that, that, if, if what we're saying is this fundamental goodness is the bedrock, then theoretically, that experience is going to happen anywhere.

It's everywhere that you, and it, if, you, if, you, you, if, you, it, if, you, it, if, if, you, you, Maybe this is like ripping off Romdos a little bit, but by saying, oh, my children, my home, my family, this is what that experience comes from. Then you're really saddling your family with like a pretty heavy weight, which is like you guys have to be the bedrock of fundamental goodness in my life. Or whatever the thing is that you think is the caldera of your own fundamental goodness. Right? that's limiting. That's a limiting or a lack of remember. Unless you, as you just said, can extract the maple syrup from the maple tree and recognize that that feeling can be something that can be cultivated,

encouraged in relation to other situations. And then you're on the bodhisattva journey. You're on your way to Buddhahood, but you're stopping along the Bodhisattva. of saying, I can distill this experience of a, you know, kind of something I associate with the best qualities, and I can nurture it and cultivate it and use, excess it, even in situations which make my habits flare up. You know, you're right. That is bodhisattva path.

That's a great path. I don't think there's enough energy and attention. I think in the West people want to skip, you know, all the preliminaries and all the middle steps and just have some kind of, you know, sharp, short-cutted wakeful thing. But to become a compassionate person in situations in which it's challenging is a pretty good accomplishment in this life. Oh, yeah. Give me a break. And we appreciate those people. They're not bullshit and they're not faking it. They just are really trying to become more open-hearted, compassionate, sympathetic. Yeah. You know, in a way, that should be the universal current.

for all of the traditions to come together on that. You know, I used to go to these, you know, retreats and inevitably they start talking about meta, the meta practice bodhisattva stuff. And I would just say it was bullshit. Extreme bullshit. And but why, the reason I would say that, it was FOMO.

I would think it was, or maybe that's the wrong acronym, but I, they would usually start you off with like, think of your, your kids. Four kids coming home just like you just did. That, I didn't have that. So they would be like, think of this or that.

And I would try to think, you know, some sentimental thought about, you know, my mom or my family or my grandmother. I might get a little sort of twinge of what I think they were pointing towards. But yeah, now, like you're saying, extract the maple syrup. I get it. Oh, I get what you're saying. It's like now I have a full experience of that. and definitely longing to be back with them is the same thing, right? Like you could always access that.

If you could just find it, a little drop of it is enough. And that's in everybody. But just a little sample. You just need to tune in to that experience. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Better Help. Look, I have done Better Help commercials for a long time. I love them. They're a great service.

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That's better, help.com slash Duncan. And that coupled with patience and also stability, like the mindfulness practice gives you stability so that your attention doesn't just fluctuate all over the place. The quality of your attention is all over the map. And that and patience, now you have the kind of foundation that you need to begin to look at the interpersonal domain.

Right. But without that interpersonal cultivation, it's very hard to develop the interpersonal. Wow. That is cool. Wow, David. You know, I know you're a musician, but have you ever thought about teaching Buddhism? Well, and here's what's funny about that. I'm trying to bring those things together in new ways.

You know that. I'm writing an animated bluegrass Buddhist musical. And I throw that challenge out to anybody who's listening. You think you could write one. I want to see it. But, you know, the idea of bringing your creative sourcing together with how you express yourself in life, with your family, with your sense of operating in reality,

with your idealized version of how things could be if they were good, and leaving that on the field. Yeah. I think that's my jam at this moment. Yeah. So, yeah, so I'm telling people, don't quit your night job. You know, be a comedian. Be a bass player, for God's sake.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. But do some practice. practice. Do some practice. This practice is universal enough that I think everybody could get a piece of it without hurting themselves, you know? I mean, I think anybody who was like, listen, just experienced what you're talking about. I mean, you're so good at invoking or pointing out that place. You're so good at it. You're so good at it. You, it's in the way that you get there is always, it's at least in our conversations, it's not, it's always different. You know, know the it's really you're just quite talented at that it's really cool well it's like music we use that you know Dharma moon we use that metaphor a lot learn the music first and then you can be a good

improviser right if you're improvising because you don't know the music right you know you never learned fundamentals or you never learned the song right and that was like the great lesson of our you know jazz is really the and bluegrass has become like jazz in the in the younger iterations of it Great improvising. But people learn the tune. And then where they go with it becomes extremely kind of fun and interesting. That's cool.

You know? Right. But learn the music, which means learn that in terms of meditation, it means learn the sequence, learn the methods that people have applied, learn the principles. But don't get stuck there.

You know, don't get stuck just being, you know, automatic pilot with that. Right. Yeah. It would be easy. That's, yeah.

could see how you would get stuck. Not a terrible place to be stuck. You know, stuck in some strict by the book's practice. Better than being stuck watching YouTube videos of people getting arrested. It depends. Well, yeah, there's some good videos out there. That's what's so great. There's another part of the Buddhist tradition people are not as aware of. It became doctrinal. monastic at a certain point, but the earliest adopters of the Tantric Buddhist tradition were all worldly people. Yeah. And you could say eccentric worldly people.

Absolutely. You could say comedians and bass players if you wanted to get really crazy with it. So the idea of that the source code for a lot of this is not so much zooming in on the doctrinal right away. feeling your way into the experience of it. But I think we have such a great variety. And I encourage people as I talk to them, well, what floats your, how do you access information? How do you develop yourself, what's comfortable for you, what's familiar to you? And to me, a good teacher should be speaking the other person's language more than their own.

Yeah, right. Right. I agree. Yeah. David, thank you so much for hanging out with me again. I love it when you do that. It's really cool. So why would it be so, okay, I'm sorry to keep you on the line here, but why would it be so easy to forget such a sweet thing? You know, it's interesting that this thing that, it's like something you texted me before, you know,

it's like so simple. You know, you, it's so wonderful you don't want to believe it could happen to you. It's so simple, though. You know, it's so easy, this thing that we're talking about, you know what I mean? It's so simple. So familiar. So, you know, what you were born into that it's so easy to forget. This thing.

Yeah. This is a, this sort of connection. through the heart, compassion, love, almost anything you do from that place, in that place is going to be amazing. Whatever it is, right? It's like, well, there also has to be, there has to be skillfulness too.

I was about to say that. You know, I mean, as a sort of like, okay, I guess a better way to put it is like, you know, when you're a comedian, you write jokes, you sit down to write jokes. And if my mood is like angry, every attempt at writing a joke sucks.

It's too edgy. It's jagged. It's just not funny. There's not much there. But, you know, in states of like love or where I'm feeling like not some kind of stoned out bliss state, But like in moments where I'm really tuned in with my own life, that is where my creativity like thaws out, you know.

Obviously, have you or anybody else ever written a funny thing happened to me on my way to the gig at the comedy store? No. Like just something happened that was funny. That's so, right, right. That's funny. That's cool. You try to capture those things.

Like, do you write them down? Or how do you remember when something funny happened and then you want to, you know, repeat it? You take notes in your phone? That's what I do. I mean, you're the same as a songwriter. It's the same as a songwriter. Yeah, it used to be people had notebooks. There are still people who are superstitious.

They write their jokes down. They have little notebooks. They carry around with them everywhere. Wow. But I feel like it's probably. mostly moved to your phone because you'd always lose your notebook which is mortifying because inevitably someone's going to pick up your notebook and and read it and be like this is the most brilliant writing I've ever seen in my life right Josh that's the problem that's the problem

as comedians have is like once people see what we write in our notebooks they want to worship us they want to bring us you know gifts and it sounds great and until your home is surrounded by hundreds of people desperately wanting just to touch your hair because of your comedy joke notebook, right? Josh, you've got to happen to you. But the point I'm getting at something funny or something funny already happened.

Oh, yeah. And you were like tuned in and you noticed it and captured it. Yeah, you're talking about just, I know, yeah. We write down everything. that we think is funny and most of the time it's not funny you just thought it was funny and then you go back and look at it and you're like what the fuck did i even write you know my point is is that you didn't create it something funny happened oh and you noticed it okay yeah yeah yeah so i was with my granddaughter izzie who's really funny duncan she's really got sauce and we're walking through the park

at twilight. And this is this blissful, natural, and she starts running around trying to capture something, like a bug or something like that. Yeah. Like a nine-year-old would do. And I looked around,

there were fire, it was starting to be dusk, and there were fireflies all through the park. And she had one in her hand, and she wanted to take it home, put in a jar so she could have, like, a little lamp

to read from. That's cool. The point is the fireflies are there. And we're capturing them, but we're not, we're not, we don't have to invent them. That's, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Well said. And thank you. And shouldn't we plug what's coming up?

You have, you have another Dharma moon. This is, what's it called? Teacher Training Program. Yeah, the 100-hour mindfulness meditation teacher training program. and we have a free info session for that on August 25th. So you can just come and check it out if you want, or you can look it up on the website. I could,

if we could put some links into the show notes, I'll send it. But shorthand, go to Dharmamoon.com, D-H-A-R-M-A-Moon.com. And think about joining us. You know, quite a few folks have continued to study

these things we talk about quite a bit. And it's because of you, Duncan. No. You're like a, what do you call it, a channel, you know? And it's been good. So we say this every time, but thank you for supporting that. And we have quite a creative group of people. A lot of them are talented creatives,

and we're not asking to shave their head and drop out and join the monastery. We're saying keep doing what you're doing. That's what, that's what Trunkerrimich said. If you ruled the world, what would be the first edict you would issue. And he said, tell everybody, keep doing what you're doing. That's amazing. Wow.

Cool. Okay. What's the dating in, David? When is this? This is next week. So the free info session is August 25th. And this hopefully will be in this show notes or go to Dharma moon. And then the 100 hour course starts on October 9th.

So, you know, there's all kinds of ways to get into it. And we have a, we've extended. the program, there's an advanced teacher training program. So, you know, if anybody's interested, just go to the website and sign up for that info session or just come join us for the courses that are indicated there. And, you know, all we're trying to do, Duncan, just to be really clear about it, we're not promoting something. We're inviting. And we're trying to make available a process that maybe we felt was helpful to us

and pass it through to other people. That's the whole trip there. So it's kind of like I call it the bucket brigade. I love it. The retreat that we did was amazing. And yeah, folks, this is, I don't know why I feel the need to say this,

but I just like connecting you to David. As you can tell from this conversation, he's a great teacher. you will benefit. The retreat we did was just amazing. I think about it all the time, man. That was so great and so well conducted and just perfectly balanced. It really was great.

But anyway, look, I got to tell you about this croquet mallet event. I don't want to do it on the podcast. David, thank you so much for coming on the show. Down below, you'll find the links to connect to David. Definitely check out the info session. Thank you so much, David. Thank you. And hello to all the Dunkites out there from the Dunk Camp. That's what I came up with today. Goodbye, Dunkites.

That was David Nicktern, everybody. All the links you need to connect with the info session next week at Dharma Moon will be down below. And come see me at the Emerald City Comedy Club in Seattle. That's September 4th, 5th, and 6th. Until next time, Hari Krishna.