Duncan Trussell Family Hour - David Nichtern

Episode Date: December 10, 2016

Buddhist teacher, author, and Emmy award winner David Nichtern joins the DTFH and we talk about the buddhist wheel of life.

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And oh, and oh, and oh. We love you, we love you. Love you, love you. May Poseidon's blessings be upon you. My brothers of the sea. Friends, I've just returned from the Ram Dass Open Your Heart and Paradise Retreat in Maui. I've just had the demons fire hosed off of me by some of the great teachers of our time. Jack Cornfield, Sharon Salzburg, Ram Dass, Mirabai Bush, Krishnadas and today's guest,

David Nickturn. So I feel great. I go to those things just swarming with foulness, just covered in neuroses. The callus around my heart, it gets thick. Thick is the yellowed callus on your aunt's foot that you shall be massaging on this holiday season. I've been sitting here trying to summarize all the stuff that I learned at this retreat and I can't do it.

Either it's too complicated and my explanation is too complicated or it's too sappy. I don't know. It's not a pithy way of explaining what this stuff is, but here's a fantastic quote that I think does in some way or another summarize what these retreats are all about. The quote comes via Jack Cornfield and it's from someone named Guam Guame Apollinaire. I can't pronounce it, but at least I could say the quote. Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. That to me sums up what these retreats are all about and there's an argument that's been

raging all around the planet for a long time and the argument goes something like this. This is a catastrophe. We're in a catastrophic situation here where by some kind of rotten series of coincidences our molecules have harmonized in such a way that we've temporarily become aware of ourselves and that our realization of what we are is limited by our biological lifespan. We are assembled by accident into a world of pain and in some painful way disassembled and pushed back into an infinite field of oblivion to which people like Jack Cornfield respond by reading poems like this one.

Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things. Feel the future dissolve in a moment like a salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness is the deepest thing inside. You must know sorrow is the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you've been looking for and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. That's a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye that was given to us by Jack Cornfield and the whole retreat is made up of stories and poems like that and teachings and contemplations and you end up feeling like somebody has rescued you from a tub of hot diarrhea that you didn't even know you were taking a bath in. So I'm so happy that these things exist and I'm very happy to present to you today's

guest David Nickturn who blew my mind. He's a student of Chogium Trumpa and for those of you who don't know Trumpa, check out Crazy Wisdom on Netflix or you can check out his book or he's got many books but cutting through spiritual materialism is a particularly good one. He's a fierce teacher and Nickturn is also a fierce teacher but a funny teacher and I'm thrilled to have gotten a chance to have this conversation with him. We're going to jump right into this podcast but first some quick business. Hey New York on Tuesday January the 17th, I am going to be at the Bell House in New

York doing a live DTFH if you want tickets you can find the link at DuncanTrussell.com. Friends if you notice a sudden decrease in sound quality it's because I'm using a poop microphone because my old microphone just blew out. So we're going to make this super quick. The holidays are approaching everyone's happy now and that's one of the beautiful things about the holidays. Every single person everywhere around the planet their hearts are filled with joy, love, happiness, benevolence, compassion and they understand the most important truth which

is that if you want to show love to other people you should give them material objects. It's the only way to truly express that deep part of the self that says I love you. It's why we shop. And for this Christmas season I have placed inside the DTFH store a very special thing. So special it's difficult to describe and so special if you happen to be listening to this on Friday December 9th it might not even be in the store yet because we have to stock it. But what it is is handmade LED DTFH logo lamps and we only have 10 of them in stock.

It takes a long time for these sweet darlings to get constructed. They're all made by one person in a workshop much like the elves make beautiful gifts for Santa far underneath the ancient mushroom of life that dwells in the heart of the sun that floats in the center of the hollow earth. So check out the DTFH store if you're interested these things are crazy. They're glowing magically infused LED lights that I have enchanted and incantation over and which I've also signed the back of they're super cool we only have 10 of them. So if this sounds like something that appeals to you hurry over to the store won't you.

Also if you're planning to do any kind of Christmas shopping at all might I advise you to not throw yourself into the terrible rat warren that is a mall or a chain store. Why do you want to experience what it's like to be a parasite in the intestinal track of a gnashing demon howling in the depths of time the gnashing demon of course is known as consumerism and materialism and though we all most of us can't avoid the necessity of existing in the marketplace we certainly can avoid the horrors of having to squirm through the Jacobs ladder style entrails of a public shopping area gazing into the glassy eyed horror of all those who have been sucked into the terrible hypnotic vortex that is

the strange compulsion that has been injected into our brains that we should at this time of year when days are shortest and darkness is particularly greasy hand each other gift wrapped presents or even worse feel bad because we happen to have managed to be alone this Christmas oh yes you turn on that TV and the glittering lights of the view will convince you that you're in some kind of hell realm because this Christmas you happen to not be surrounded by people but let me tell you friends if you find yourself in a situation of isolation during this Christmas it only means that you are special and that you are blessed for the rest of you who are going to be exchanging presents with other people

why not go through our Amazon link it's in the lower left hand corner of our website if you have ad block up it might not show up we also have it in the comments section of any of these episodes you click on that link and you buy anything that we talk about on this podcast or anything at all and Amazon will give us a small percentage of that an HTC Vive an Oculus Rift the new amazing PlayStation some kind of phone thing recording equipment musical instruments are always a blast annoying bells and gongs for your friends children whatever it may be boxes of glitter it's all there for you at Amazon.com all you got to do is click through our link for those of you who continue to support the podcast this way my eternal

gratitude upon thee we also have t-shirts posters and stickers in the shop I hope that you will take a Christmas look through our wares okay friends here we go I feel very happy about this podcast if you do happen to be listening to this on Friday December 9th and you live in the Los Angeles area you want to go see David Nick turn on Saturday tomorrow know it's last minute I wish I'd gotten this podcast up sooner but I ran into some technical difficulties so I couldn't but if you do happen to be in town and you want to go see David Nick turn speak then there's going to be a link in the comment section of this episode all right everybody now please place your hands together put them at your chest forming the sign of the enlightened Buddha and bow

in the direction of the incredible Buddhist teacher meditation guide and did I forget to mention Amy award-winning musician and composer David Nick turn who's got a brand new book out right now called awakening from the daydream links to that are going to be at dunkintrestle.com if you feel like picking up a copy I am almost finished with it and I love it he gives online workshops he gives meditation classes and he's an all-around super cool human being all links to get to him will be at dunkintrestle.com now everybody welcome to the DTFH David Nick turn welcome to you David thank you so much it's my pleasure I think we'll find out you know I have um been coming to these retreats and what I've watched you play guitar um but I had

no idea I completely missed out on the fact that you were a student of chogum trumpet trumpet and this is he's always been one of my favorite Buddhist teachers and also he's irritated me more than any other teacher there's such a quality to his teachings that are so frustrating and confusing can you talk a little bit about how you came into contact with him in the beginning and what it was like to be a student of one of the great Buddhist teachers sure you know excuse me um well it all started innocently enough so in 1970 I was going to the Berkeley College of Music hence the music side but I was also studying yoga hatha yoga at a studio near the near Berkeley on Marlboro street and the woman who owned the studio was one of the people

who brought trunk remember to over to the United States so um she helped sign the papers and so forth so when he came to the United States that was one of the earliest stops was teaching a weekend seminar at her at her studio and it was called work sex and money that was the title of it cool kind of blew my mind a little bit and I would say at the time I was kind of more in my yoga hippy phase and um I was completely startled when he came he was in a western business suit right already why did he choose that form of dress well what happened was of course he was raised a lot of people don't really completely understand this is a high llama in Tibet right before the he was an incarnation yeah he was the 11th trunk patil coup right very long line of a

kagu llamas so they they they did the ritual of finding him they took him as a child yeah brought him back to a monastery yep exactly that and if you want to read about that there's a book called born in Tibet which is a really great travel log if if not way more than that for people so when he was nine years old he was doing advanced tantric practices you know and when he was 12 years running the whole group of monasteries so called surman so probably at a fairly young age I'm going to say he must have been in his late teens or early 20s they had to escape from Tibet so he took it's this whole story is told in that book born in Tibet he took a group of about 300 people through the mountain passes being pursued

by the Chinese soldiers so and they would go off into caves and do divinations about which ways to go to you know and they were at some point eating their own boots they're cooking pieces of leather from their own boots the sustenance so it's a very harrowing escape that he made and then they made it to India like a lot of the Tibetans did and once he was there he spent some time there and then he kind of to make a long story short when did his way to England and he studied at England and while he was teaching in England I think he noticed a lot of fascination about the Tibetan thing and he felt like he wasn't really going to be able to teach people that way so he really his changing garb was really him entering our environment and

trying to connect with us and he also married a young British girl at the time so I think it was part it was part of his journey to do that. Is he considered an apostate was he considered sort of someone who was outcast from the religion that's that's how I that's how I understood the story no no that's a complete mistake that's not true so he was even at that time wearing the suits marrying somebody he was still considered to be in high standing absolutely well here's the thing is that's part of the Tibetan tradition the Tantric tradition some of them some of the Lamas are married Lamas okay cool yeah no there might have been one or two of his close associates who were concerned about it but really Trump is the one who you have to really remember brought

all the high Tibetan Lamas to the United States because we had an organization at that time and we had a platform turned into land so he brought over Karmapa he brought over Kense Rinpoche Kalu Rinpoche we hosted those teachers so he was in very high regard by those teachers in fact that Karmapa gave him the title of Vidyara he gave him he really empowered his what he was doing tremendously can you talk about that first class yeah for whatever reason it's astoundingly vivid even though it's 45 years ago um but the funny thing about it was kind of like a workshop like we do now he would just go around maybe there are 18 or 20 people there if that um and he would give a talk about Dharma topic then there'd be discussion and then we would practice meditation together

but at the time you know he would give each person individual meditation instruction so you went up into a room with him and he gave you instruction alone with him yeah what was that like didn't know I would you hear all the time about qualities of these great teachers especially incarnations did he did were you fascinated with him in the beginning did he emanate some mystical field work sex and money was the title of the workshop you know um actually here's what really happened the Friday night of the workshop he gave a talk and it was kind of dry um you put together oh this is his high llama and now he's talking about these sort of charged topics actually was very flat and very ordinary and I I got slightly bored actually and so when I

was walking home that was where I had a mild mild epiphany I went Dave to myself what are you what are you tripping on what are you looking for because he was grounded he was down to earth so I flipped the switch and I went like this guy really kind of is connected to reality it wasn't like some spiritual realm it wasn't like that at all okay yeah so he wasn't meeting an expectation someone might like because we I'll tell you what I would want levitation of vivid aura yeah a sense of I've known him forever well let's let's modulate a few of those things okay I remember somebody asked him about levitation at a public talk and he said well sometimes when I eat this particular kind of blue cheese I get close but he had a great sense of humor and he had a very subtle

communication sense so you could feel that somebody was you know operating between the lines and really really very spacious but very sharp so if I had to tell you his quality it was kind of very spacious but very clear very sharp and very friendly very open I always felt very like oh this is somebody you really want to sit and talk to for a while well you and you did and I did he became your teacher yes so how does that work so you use it starts with a yoga workshop you take this this class and then what happened so that weekend went by and that was I guess the fall of 1970 I think that's as close I can figure out to when it actually was and then I kind of wanted to explore it more so he was beginning to set up communities one was

up in Vermont at this place called the tail of the tiger famous place that's where I met Ramdas okay that's what's funny about all this being here at the retreat in Maui so and he would just start teaching and again like it's similar to what we do now it would be on a topic of Buddhism like the wheel of life or something like that but you went up there I went up you moved no I didn't move at that point no I was living in Boston uh later on I was the director of tail of the tiger karma chili but that wasn't until 1978 so I was studying with him while I was moving around I would go back and forth between my regular world and go into take classes with him and also finding his little community of students and practicing together with those but during that time I lived

in Boston then back in New York and then I moved to California okay so I had you know my my musician life was in full bloom at that point and I would be like not unusual week was you know I had a band with Jerry Garcia for a while in in northern California called the great American music band and I'll be doing that one weekend and the next weekend flying a boulder to take a seminar with Rinpoche that is so trippy it it it was trippy and ordinary because that was just my life at that point well and not that your life has gotten any more normal you travel around yeah Krishnadas do you attribute this kind of good fortune to reincarnation or to to anything like that how do you explain it I mean to to be in a band with Jerry Garcia while studying under Chogyam

Trumpa it sounds to me it doesn't sound normal at all no no it sounds spectacular but it sounds so far away from maybe what most people's experience of normal life is well I like to live this way these will be the good old days right right so we are here in a spectacular you know just for your listeners we're here at the retreat that's headed by Ram Dass and Krishnadas who for the listeners if they don't know I'm his record producer and I play guitar with Krishnadas so that's really why I got here in the first place but then the connection with Ram Dass and this year I did a little teaching also in the Buddhist framework and we also have a couple of great Buddhist teachers here usually Jack Hornfield or Sharon Salzburg so we're in a pretty spectacular

and we're looking out at the ocean here right ladies and gentlemen yeah it's pretty spectacular and we all just had an amazing morning together and it's a group of 350 or 400 very warm good-hearted and smart people yeah so to me this is pretty pretty this is kind of spectacular yes it is but this is just another bead on this incredible necklace that you've been putting beads on for decades and I look we don't have to get into whether or not you saved what you clearly did at some point probably saved a village from Avalanche in some past life or who knows who knows what you did we don't have to get into but I as I was sitting with you on the beach when we first started talking and you were talking about Trump or Rinpoche and then you were telling me that you had

written this book which this is really exciting to me because it's something that I have been interested in for a long time haven't really understood it very well you have a book called Awakening from the Daydream Reimagining the Buddha's Wheel of Life and the Wheel of Life is really interesting to me because years ago in my early days when I took LSD I can remember hallucinating what I think if I could go back in time I would I think it was probably something like the Wheel of Life some fiery mandala some incredible back then I was just like this is nuts man crazy wheel and then uh you and any lots of people have seen this symbol and I don't think they they know exactly what it is yeah so um what I love about it is uh particularly with Chogun Trump is some of his

writings are impossible for me to understand I it's very complicated and simple at the same time infuriatingly simple maybe that it becomes complex but what I love about the Wheel of Life is because it it is a visual representation of the teachings of buddhism and so I can at least in some way I it helps me understand it and now that I've been reading your book halfway through it's such a concise teaching about this that's what I'd like to spend the rest of the podcast talking about um so can you just sort of describe the Wheel of Life for folks listening and maybe tell them where on the internet they can go to pull it pull it up if they want to if they want to look at it while you talk about it well the Wheel of Life is a classic as you said buddhist

mandala or arrangement or symbol I call it a powerpoint presentation from the past because it's uh thick with information it's dense but all unpackable so that's the key right so it actually dates back to the time of the buddha the original drawing supposedly given at the advice of the buddha from one king to another king like here's a great gift that you could give this other this other king so the the buddha described it to him yeah here's what it looks like yeah okay as far as we know okay now it's on the outer wall of a lot of monasteries because it's considered a teaching even though it has the dense sort of concentrated aspect of the buddhist teachings or really all in there like if we spend a month on it we could unpack the whole right thing but it's considered

somewhat secular in the sense that it's was given from a king to a king as opposed to a monastic kind of tradition okay so it's for people like you and me to decipher our lives right you know here's the thing Duncan I see you working at the puzzle down in the lobby there yes that's what this is it's like this is the puzzle that put up put together and it'd be great to tear this apart turn into little pieces and have you put it back together pretty cool and that would be exactly what we're doing in a way just so you guys know there's a very addictive puzzle in the lobby of this retreat and somehow many of us have been sucked into this awful vortex of the thing but the so the the I'm really interested I guess what why don't we just start yeah the center of

the thing okay so at the center of the uh this mandala you have a pig a snake and a rooster right and these are considered the fundamental delusions well let me just I'll get to that in one second but just to frame it um if you do want to look along as we're talking you could um there's as I said the classical diagram but what I did is I had a modern painting made by an Australian artist and um with wisdom publications in the book and so we tried to update the imagery right so it has the same meaning but it's very much more accessible to a modern yes person so cool it's beautiful and it's yeah it's kind of sort of like Japanese anime kind of vibe to it yeah but it's so the book is called awakening from the daydream uh by David Nickton

you could go to amazon.com and you could see the picture and then you could also blow it up you could zoom into it which is what it's meant to be done excuse me so um there Duncan's implying what what there are is concentric rings of information um and it's interesting to start with the outermost ring and the innermost ring and then work your way to the most prominent ring which is the called the six realms so let me start with the outermost phenomenon which is there's a skeleton which actually looks like a grateful dead kind of thing in this drawing this is okay I was looking at this skeleton this is like a vampire skeleton this isn't just a skeleton you gave the skeleton fangs yeah this is a nasferatu skeleton well the idea of this skeleton is

and and you know uh the Dalai Lama has said this and many people have said this this represents impermanence it's it's really it's not so much a vicious kind of you know energy as much as just a fact of life all of these experiences just like this podcast is going to be subsumed by impermanence right you and I are sitting here it's really vivid it feels really strong we're having whatever energies reactions we're having it's going to be over right that's the biggest one of the big buddhist facts of life that you that you uh kind of address but the depiction of this impermanence in in this updated version and in the old versions it's not they don't never make it benevolent it's not benevolent no because it's ruthless right in the same way that death is ruthless right it comes

to everybody um there's uh you know the buddhist don't court death we don't we don't go like how can i jump off of the balcony here yeah but we know it's coming and we contemplate that uh to to you could say to sharpen our insight about um the whole situation that we find ourselves in right not be deluded about it you're living in a you're living in a memory you if you even remember anything you forget almost everything it's well that's the daydream idea is that there is a kind of awakened quality to the present moment that everybody's here is talking about yes but we tend to drift off from that right it's it's not considered a a kind of a crime or a sin in buddhism it's just kind of a habit sure it's just a habitual mind just takes you into one of these six realms so we'll

get to that in a minute though okay so the center of the wheel as you pointed out are the three um animals the pig the snake and the rooster and again these are metaphors the pig represents ignoring kind of dullness yes the snake represents aggression you know fighting back pushing back and the rooster is passion yeah right for obvious reasons i hope humping exactly what is the rooster trying to do it's so funny though because i whenever i think about humping rooster is not what comes to my well but what about hands if you if you it's a horny bird i get it that's a horny bird back then that was like you would think like what's the hornyest animal i guess you'd say the rooster well it just represents the aspect of passion that's acquisitive you want to you want to pull

things into your territory is it always a rooster traditionally it's a rooster so we left that alone okay those are the same three traditional animals that it's like that we didn't change that and and so the rooster is desire the rooster's desire the snake is a version right and the pig is ignorance exactly and i changed some of the words around a little bit because there's nothing actually wrong with desire that's not the problem the problem is grasping right that where you desire something you objectify it and then you try to possess it that's when we get in trouble and and and what's interesting about it and is it this entire wheel of suffering yeah spins on that central spoke which is the interaction of those three modalities very very beautifully stated

something yeah so uh and and there's an essential point there which is that those i call them the rgb of of the whole wheel of some sorry in other words there the three like on a tv screen you have red green and blue that's all you have but then you create the entire world or mandala of experience from those three basic instincts that's it and it's not like you're in any given moment just one of those is functioning it or are they all three kind of interacting in different ways exactly the same so in any given moment of these three something is probably more prominent than the other but they're all for a moment yes they're they're all interacting in some way well that's why those animals are holding each other's tails right if you look at the subtlety of it

they're creating kind of spin cycle by by relating to each other and then that creates the entire activity you're exactly right of the rest of the wheel so again looking at this i don't choose to look at any of this material as arcane i'm not a historian i'm not a scholar i i want access to information that's relevant to what you know ordinary day-to-day living situation yes so in this case you just go you i tell people walk into a yoga class and you'll see um you i want to put my mat right down next to this person right oh i thought you were talking about a version walk into a yoga class you're like what the fuck am i doing this for well you could you could well that okay good enough yeah or you could say

you know this person next to you is kind of sweaty and blowing their nose a lot of their tissues right between your mats get them over to the other corner of the room we immediately are starting to orchestrate our experience around our own uh kind of sense of personal comfort right yeah right and you don't even notice most of the people in the room you're either pushing yourself through a self-imposed force field or you're getting sucked into some or you're rushing towards the thing that you want i understand it does i understand a version and i understand desire but how does the how does ignorance work what is that's why change transformation used to call it ignoring he made the moment of verbs because it's an active process

we think of ignorance as a kind of dullness or pastiness of mind yeah but really there's a kind of um you could say at the level of the the awakened mind there's a choice being made to black out certain phenomenon yeah like i'll pretend you're not clearly a white supremacist right now because you're my uncle and we're having lunch well that's really specific yeah uh yes my that would be as as you said that would be a mixture of aggression and and ignorance right okay right right which what do we call it passive aggression right so um yeah as you start to mix those colors together they start to look like different things you know if you're um you know if you're into s and m that's a mixture of passion and aggression right yeah sure so the ignorance is the most

pervasive though because we're really not noticing most of what's happening and that's considered that's the most wow that's interesting i wouldn't think that you think it's the least harmful but it's actually the most pervasive huh so that's why we say waking up or awakening or use words like Buddha or Bodhi coming out of that field of ignorance is is really the job wow that's really cool um okay i never thought that i would always i would think aversion was the big problem aversion creates the worst karma because you're kind of like um actively destroying something that is is you're creating harm um that creates a lot of momentum as you know like abuse you know if you beat the crap out of somebody there's going to be consequences that's considered aversion yeah that's

aggression so that in dharma talk you know in in buddhist dharma talk that's the one you mute first you dial that down a little bit really interesting to think aversion equals aggression that's confusing to me i i think of aversion is like well i don't really want to go to this party or i don't want to go to this do this job or i don't want to sit down and write or i don't want to exercise i don't feel like eating that food or i don't that to me how is that aggression well it's interesting your aggression is sort of mixed with ignoring it's just what we just were talking about i'm not going to go there i won't do it but what if you are living with somebody and and this is a typical guy thing i think you'd admit i need space you say i need space that's called ignorance

how so well in other words you don't you're not comfortable in the field when it gets hot or you know there's some edge or aggression and and you try to subdue it by creating a false sense of space or spaceless right that's cool i think calling it passive passive aggression is good enough for the eating needing space is an illusion like if you're oh yeah there's nothing but space why would you need it that is so tricky so wait if i'm laying in bed and the cat and the poodle and the chihuahua and my girlfriend in that order huh okay but it's okay you know there's a realm for that we'll see that's the animal realm but if i'm or so but if i'm so if i'm

in that situation and i start reacting to it yeah in a way where i'm like god i got it i just need a little bit of space here sure that youth you're saying that that's just an illusion i should be able to grab the space no matter how many animals are laying well it is a kind of space right it's it's just not the kind that you want right so that's aggression a version you don't want a simple definition of aggression could be not wanting to be where you are wow and acting either you know then you either mix it with the sort of passive or the active version of it so for example in the lowest realms we're not there yet but when you go into the six realms start to spin let me just get us there so these three basic sort of feelings and we don't have time to get into it in depth but

but but people who read the book will get into it in depth and people study it will get into it in depth the these kind of three torques or or kind of momentums that are created begin it's not enough to just feel like i don't want to be here you create a narrative that's where the whole birth of the blues is okay the samsara or the cycle of suffering would not it wouldn't be enough information just i don't like this you'd be like a caveman you know i love her i don't you know you'd be kind of just the stupidest version of those things but we need to create a whole narrative around it like the reason that i'm upset now is because not just because my poodle and my chihuahua and my girlfriend are making me feel claustrophobic but my whole life i've had this tendency to feel this way

because of my family life and now you're in the therapist chair and you're spinning the narrative of the hell realm wow right which is now there's a whole realm a whole disney world that you've built out of this simple kind of quality of a version right so there's a lot of support it's like you start making the movie of that right and it's just not true it's situations created how did this come to how did we come to be sitting here and then also what we're doing the present how that's going to ripple into the future right so it's the past congealing as the present and then the present rippling and creating the future that's that's the process of karma it can be a more or less confusing or more or less enlightened type of patterning that's the whole point of this okay

so like for example if you practice the loving kindness practice you're forecasting a better future for yourself right right you're creating a better narrative yes right so that's called the relative truth it's not that you buddhist would never say you don't exist and say your existence as an individual is a relative phenomenon okay okay it's based on relative causes and conditions right it has no absolute basis whatsoever though and that's an interesting point okay there is no Duncan template anywhere no this is just a bunch of an infinite number of modes of phenomena that happen to be swirling together and just the right way to temporarily create yeah a yapping dude with a beard yapping dude with a beard but we don't belittle that this is a very important

point in buddhism that's misunderstood I think we don't belittle that or say like oh that's just your ego you know that is the relative self right okay um and there's words for it and so forth and so on the problem is we get too caught up in it I mean you could almost say it's as simple as that you get fixated you get stuck right so these six realms are kind of expressions of like you went way overboard with your feeling of retaining a sense of depression and claustrophobia you could let go of some of that yes in the present now you couldn't change the past a beam of light comes into the room for a second uh it's my well we um both have to do stuff now this is clearly a conversation that you can have for hundreds of years oh yeah and people

have been having for hundreds of years they have actually so where can people find you because I know you you teach this you give seminars and classes right yeah well uh I if you go to David Nicktern uh David the usual N I C H T E R N dot com that's a good way or facebook page the professional facebook page um usually there'll be postings and you know workshops and teachings that are going on but you know to start with the book it's called awakening from the daydream reimagining the buddha's wheel of life and it's on amazon.com that's the easiest way to get it or in bookstores near you or on Barnes and Noble any of those places so I think that's a great way to start the conversation and then um if you if you go to if you usually pick

up people pick up a thread like somebody like you will just start talking about something like this and that turns into a thread right that's you know uh and then I'm actively teaching out in the world in addition to playing music as as you know beautiful yeah thank you very much you're welcome thank you Duncan thanks for listening everybody that was David Nicktern all the links you need to find them are going to be at dunkintrussell.com god bless you for using our amazon link and if you like this podcast give us a nice rating on iTunes subscribe to us and subscribe to the idea that the present moment is all you got because we're in a spinning wheel of delusion being eaten by a vampire skeleton I'll see you real soon friends Hare Krishna