Duncan Trussell Family Hour - David Nichtern and Emil Amos...LIVE from the Bellhouse!

Episode Date: January 22, 2017

A live episode of the DTFH recorded at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn. Opening music by Emil Amos (Holy Sons, OM) and a dive into the depths of Buddhism and meditation with Buddhist teacher and author David Nichtern

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by the saviors of the internet over at Squarespace.com. Go to Squarespace.com and use offer code DUNCAN to get 10% off a beautiful brand new website. Sign up for a year, you get a free domain name. Squarespace, set your website apart.

Hello my dear sweet friends. It is I, Dee Trussell, and you are listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. This is the second intro that has been recorded within the beautiful mansion of Ari Shafir. Right now I'm in the one of the lower rooms. I keep finding new rooms in the place. It's incredible. There's secret chambers, there's hidden gardens, there's wind chime rooms. I found what appears to be some kind of factory where these children are manufacturing something for them. I'm not sure what. The guard there made me leave right away, which is fine.

I'm just grateful that Ari gave us this amazing launching pad to start our lives here in New York. And the good news is we finally found a New York apartment and we will be moving in at the end of the month. But I must admit finding a New York apartment has been incredibly stressful. It's not like finding an apartment in Los Angeles. In LA, you go on Craigslist, you find an apartment, you go to the apartment, smoke some weed with your landlord, and boom, you're in a place. But not in New York. In New York, if you actually have to go into a scanning chamber where a doctor, this crazy, our doctor was this bald headed. He had these glistening fingers and they rub every part of your body.

They feel your nipples, under your nipples, down to your stomach, pushing into your fat, if you have it, down to your legs, into your groin and taint and lower buttocks, they squeeze your ass like ham. And while they need your buttocks, they sing what is called the New York landlord's hymn. Will you be accepted to a concrete hive? It's really fucked up. Then after that, they go through all your bank records, all your receipts. They go through every single thing that they can find. They tumble through your earwax, globules with metallic glistening tweezers. It's a never ending process. Then finally, when you get approved for the apartment, it's just an apartment.

It's not like you're trying to get access to a fucking nuclear missile silo. You just want to move into an apartment. Finally, when you get access to the apartment, you have to take 800 individually signed cashiers checks in a leather bound box into the depths of the financial district. You are warned, by the way, when you go to bring your leather bound box of cashiers checks to your apartment manager in the financial district, that if you go the wrong way, you may never come back. They say there are things down there, pathways down there that lead to places that no man should go. So you have to be very careful. Your phone doesn't work the moment you walk through a certain part of the financial district. The clock starts running backwards. Weird texts started coming in from my past.

I was getting texts from like 12 years ago. Then I got a text. It malfunctioned and appeared to be a text coming in from my mother from 2045. Just strange fucked up mechanical problems, I guess, because they say there's some kind of crystal buried underneath the financial district or some kind of geode deposit or some shit. I wasn't paying attention. You go down into this fucking financial district until finally you come to just this blank wall of a skyscraper. No windows, just it's massive. It looks like a monolith, essentially, with one doorway leading into it. You walk to the door. It does a retinal scan. It's the door leads just into an elevator, not to a lobby, nothing like that. No buttons in the elevator. You shoot. It didn't even feel like it was moving, but I'm assuming it went up.

The door opens up. You go down this. It essentially looks like a mausoleum. Flowers in urns on the wall, incense, the dingling of bells from somewhere far away. Then you enter into this central annex where you have to sign, I don't know, 30 pages of contracts written in very small letters. They actually fucking make you sign in with a quill pin dipped in red ink because it's New York City and everybody wants to be fancy. And then what's really fucked up is they take a tiny little drop of blood from your pinky finger and squeeze that into the ink and mix that in with some ash from the incense. This is how arcane the New York City regulations are when it comes to housing. Like you would think you could just use a regular pen. No, quill pin, big, thick contract, dude in robes with no whites in his eyes, just black fucking eyes. You sign this fucking contract, which by the way, I don't have time to fucking read. I was hungry. I had to use a bathroom.

There were no bathrooms in the monolith. And then right after you sign the fucking thing, a woman wearing like high heels and it looked essentially like a Valkyrie costume bangs a gong and then no joke. The guy and he was in the robes. I guess he's got some kind of New York disease because it's easy to get sick out here. He cries. He's fucking blood. He cried blood like out of one of his eyes, just a single bloody tear drip down and landed right next to my signature on the contract. So it's a pain in the ass to get a place here in New York, but we did get a place, but I am feeling a little stressed out. So I'm not going to complain though. I'm happy to be here. It's a beautiful city. I'm so happy that we got into a place and I don't mean to like diss the powers that be here in New York City. I recognize your power and your omnipresence and I'm glad that you've allowed me to enter into this wonderful hive of humanity and power. We have a humdinger of a show for you today, friends. A live DTFH recorded at the Bell House with David Nickturn and Emil Amos. We're going to jump right into it, but first some quick business.

This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by the weblords over at Squarespace.com. Go to Squarespace.com and you can immediately start creating a beautiful website using their glorious templates. If you want to see a fantastic Squarespace website, all you need to do is go to DuncanTrustle.com for I use Squarespace for this very podcast. I also use Squarespace for all my merchandise. I use Squarespace for all of my online business and I couldn't give them a higher recommendation. Go to Squarespace.com, use offer code Duncan. You could start building a website for 10% off and if you sign up for a year, you get a free domain name. If you don't feel like spending trillions of dollars for a web developer, if you need to get a website up fast, if you want to start a podcast, start selling stuff, publish your manifesto, produce an expose on your parents and their strange relationship with the Russians, then Squarespace.com is the website for you. Remember, go to Squarespace.com, use offer code Duncan. You'll get 10% off your first order. They've got everything you need to start building a beautiful professional level website. Squarespace set your website apart.

My eternal thanks and the thanks of my ancestors to those of you who continue to use our Amazon link. It's a great way for you to support this podcast by avoiding taking your meat body to some dangerous chain store here in the dead of winter, where every moment that you spend outside is a moment that you are likely to inhale a stray rope of pestulent mucus exploding from the nose or mouth or butthole of some festering toddler. No need to risk being infected friends when you could simply go through the DTFH Amazon link and pick up any of the wonderful things that we talk about on this podcast or anything in general for that matter, including David Nick turns fantastic book awakening from the daydream. There's lots of other ways to support this podcast. For example, you could go to our shop where we've got t shirts posters and stickers. We have more items coming in orders are going out soon. For those of you who have been emailing me to let me know we're out of mugs. We're going to have more mugs. Don't worry. Also, if you happen to be a New York denizen and want to catch a live podcast like the one you're about to listen to right now, you can go to dugitrustle.com scroll down in February 21. There is a link to the next live podcast, which is going to be at the bell house. So I hope that you will come to that.

Also, I'm going to be doing live podcasts in Maui at the Ram Dass spring retreat. That's in May. You can go to ramdas.org for all that info. Krishna Doss is going to be playing there. Sharon Salzburg will be there with a lot of other great speakers. So if you want to go hang out in Hawaii in May with me, that's where I'm going to be. Go to ramdas.org for all the info regarding those retreats. Okay, pals. That's it for me. Let's do this podcast. Our musical guest for this live podcast is frequent DTFH guest, Emil Amos. He's in a bunch of great bands, the Holy Sons, Grails, Ohm. All the links you need to find Emil will be in the comments section of this episode. And our guest for today's podcast is a Buddhist teacher, an author and a musician who most recently has written a fantastic book about the Buddhist wheel of life called Awakening from the Daydream. He is a student of Chogyam Trumpa and a true Tennessee mind melter. Also, today's guests are all the wonderful people who ask questions at the very end of the podcast.

One of my favorite things about doing these live podcasts is the questions we get at the end. So, for those of you listening at home, please now reach deep into your chest cavity, rip your heart from its sanctuary, hold it to the light, mutter some incantations and send as much love and good energy as you can to the guests of the live DTFH as well as the audience wherever they may be. We're just going to kick the show off with the music of one of my best friends on planet Earth, the lead singer of the Holy Sons, frequent guest on the DTFH. Everybody please, a giant round of applause for Emil Amos, everybody. Let him hear it. Emil Amos! I was born to love no one. I was born to love no one. No one to love me. Just the wind and the long green grass.

Frost in a broken tree. I was made to love magic. All it's one that you know. But you all lost that magic. Many, many, many, many years ago. I was born to use my eyes. Dream past the silent skies. Not to be tied to an old stone grave.

Paint the world with a brush in the shape of a sling. I was made to love magic. All it's one that you know. But you all lost that magic. Many, many, many, many years ago. Thank you. Sometimes you want the world to spin around you. And you remember the world should never spin around you.

I see that look in your eyes. It made me very upset. And I don't know how I'm gonna get you back yet, back yet, back yet. I don't reflect the others around me. I still can't understand just what it is about me. Tracks from hell you face. To this far we place. And I don't know how I'm gonna need to erase, erase, erase.

The annals of history can skip over me. Get on with it. I never wanted to encourage the fools to be part of it. Don't you know I don't know how, I don't know how. Sometimes you want the world to spin around you. Then you remember the world should never spin around you. Emile Amos everybody, let him hear it, Emile Amos. Everybody welcome to a live Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast being recorded from the Bell House in Brooklyn.

Today's guest, he was a student of one of my favorite Buddhist leaders, someone I consider to be, someone I think about at least three times a day. Chokyum Trumper Rinpoche is his name. An incredible teacher who started the Shambhala tradition of Buddhism. David Nickturn is his longest student. He is a senior Buddhist teacher, meditation guide, and an Emmy award-winning composer and musician. Everybody please a giant round of applause for David Nickturn. Let him hear it, David Nickturn. Welcome.

Thank you. That was quite an introduction there. Oh thanks. Too long what do you think? Too much? I shut up, I went too long. You're projecting some version of the future there, right? I was projecting? Yeah. I mean, I think it's a pretty, I think it's a, yes, I was projecting, you have to project a version of the future, but I would say that it is an assessment that's probably pretty accurate about what we can expect ahead of us.

I mean, I don't think it takes Terrence McKenna to say things are going to get really weird pretty soon. Weirder than they are now. You disagree? That's what he does, he just doesn't talk. There is an interesting atmosphere right now, don't you all agree? Sort of heightened in some way and laced with uncertainty. I've been trying to think if there's anything, if I've experienced in my life a similar energy or time. So, most of you New Yorkers, right, you remember 2009-11, yeah, walking down towards the World Trade Area.

There's a kind of gap feeling to it, like that nobody knows what's going to happen next, which is why I thought it was interesting that you started to project a future into that gap. Well, I mean, isn't, that's what we do as humans, right? You have this emptiness ahead of you. You have to, part of what our brains allow us to do is to construct some kind of prediction for what will happen so that we can plan our next move. That's a good thing, isn't it? Yeah, unless you believe it. Right.

Well, okay, alright, let's follow that. So, yes, okay. So, I'll tell you about believing in something. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. So, I just got the flu, and I'm doing exactly what you should do if you want to get better from the flu quickly. Lay in bed and just look at the internet, because that'll definitely heal you. I'm just like sitting there, jumping backwards and forwards from Huffington Post to Drudge Report, Drudge Report to Huffington Post, Reddit conspiracy, Reddit WTF, back to Drudge Report.

I don't know why I'm doing that. Just snorting, just snorting Satan's fucking shit off of the earth. Oh yeah, just getting baked on demon farts, basically. And then somewhere in the midst of that, I realized I'm sick. I mean, not sick physically, but this is sickening my mind. My mind feels afflicted by this in a way that isn't the flu, like it's like dragging me down. And so, yes, absolutely, I believe in it. Even now, I mean, even you saying like, well, it's the belief, it's the problem,

implying that there's the potential to not believe in it, I don't believe that. Well, like if we could, could we enter the realm of meditation practice? Are you all meditators out there? A lot of people meditate these days, right? When I started, nobody was meditating in 1970. It was kind of not exactly geeky, but off the map. So when you meditate, right, you're sitting still, which is novel and innovative in itself. That's something we rarely do.

And you're just paying attention to some simple experience that you're having, like breathing, listening to sound, just being where you are, right? Like here, you hear the roar of the air conditioning system. So then in that space that you leave, your mind arises, right? And all kinds of thoughts like some of the ones you described will flurry through, like traffic going through an intersection, right? And you do have the opportunity to look at it and go recognize that it appears to have form and it appears to be engaged with this sort of reality kind of thing.

But it's totally ephemeral. Your thoughts are ephemeral, right? So have any of you had that experience meditating that you have a moment of recognition? Oh, these are just thoughts. And they could be good thoughts. They could be really positive thoughts, or they could be scary thoughts. They could be kind of neutral thoughts. But there's a moment of clarity, which you recognize that it is the mind producing narrative, producing discursive thought.

And you don't have to be afraid of it, and you don't have to chase it, and you don't have to repress it, but you can just see it as it is. So that's powerful if more of that was going on right now. Right now, people are chasing their narratives down dark corridors. Isn't that true? Yes. And we're getting sucked into that. Right.

Some people have made a profession of creating dark narratives and sucking other people into them. But we're getting sucked in. So I think a lot of people I'm talking to feel their own mental process accelerating in this kind of time, and fear will accelerate it, and anxiety will accelerate it. But the truth is, as you said, we don't really know what's going to happen. Right. So if there's any way to kind of acknowledge that uncertainty and the space of that uncertainty and not move too quickly one way or the other, I think that's going to be what the next iteration is,

because right now everybody's going, well, what do we do? All right. Well, let's talk about the uncertainty then. Yeah. Because, okay. Does that make sense to you? Yes, absolutely. Okay.

So just because you're a teacher and I think part of getting a chance to be with a teacher is you have to be completely honest or you're wasting time, right? Yeah. So when you say that, when you say it, talk about that, you know, the uncertainty, like land in the world of uncertainty. Yeah. Part of me is like, not me, but a part of me is angrily like, fuck that shit, man. I don't want to do that.

Like that sounds awful. Like the whole point of the part of my mind that manufactures the future and contemplates what's going to happen. You just said two different things though. What do you mean? You said manufacture and contemplating. Yes. Manufacturing is like, are you manufacturing the future or are you contemplating possibilities?

Those are two different things. Oh, fuck. He's been doing this to me for like a couple of months now. Well, I'm actually listening to you. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Well, sometimes a part of my mind is projecting a future.

Sometimes a part, and sometimes I'm contemplating that projection, but they're not happening at the same time. I don't think. Okay. So, but still, then this is the same thing that pissed me off about Shogun Trumpa, which is also what makes me love him is the thing that it produces inside of me is that is a lot of frustrated feelings, a lot of like, like that sounds boring to live in uncertainty like that.

It's uncomfortable. Oh, yeah. Yeah. From a conventional point of view. Yes. Right. What you're used to. Yes.

From what I'm used to. Then you have to look at the things you do to make yourself comfortable and all of us and just look, are we really comfortable? Is that really working? No. Not at all. It's one of the things you did to make yourself comfortable while you had the flu, right? You were lying on the bed snorting.

You had a lot of quite a lot of adjectives there. Yeah. Demons. I caught demons. You know, so that might have been a superficial idea of comfort, but it sounded to me at least like it wasn't really making you comfortable. No. Right.

No, it's more like, I guess comparable to when you have poison ivy and you're scratching the poison ivy and like in those moments of scratching it, it feels so good. Sure. But then when you're like eventually it just becomes this oozing pink blistered thing, which is what this is for sure. It's scratching like a poison ivy. Because I know for certain that I don't need to go on Drudge Report nine times a day. Like there's nothing there for me after the second time.

It's like the same thing. And it's been the same thing for years. Yeah. Yeah, I still do it. I really do. Why? I think I do like it. Duncan, that's what addicts say.

Wow, fuck. Oh, you think it's like an internet addiction? Yeah, clearly. This is an intervention. You motherfucker. You profanity fuck you. Fuck you assholes. I'll never stop.

I'm out of here. Somebody get me an internet. Fuck. Yes, it's addiction. I will admit it and accept it. Yeah. Well, that's the first step. Yeah, that's good.

Where is your mother anyhow? Is she here? What? No, she died. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, me too. What do you got to say something? The other way, if I'm like, yeah, no, it's not that bad.

Just keep moving. I actually would have liked to meet her. What? I would have liked to meet her. She would have liked you. Yeah? A lot, yeah. She's a very spiritual person.

Uh-huh. I think, you know, again, I'm trained in Buddhism, so that's just naturally what's going to flow through. And if there was one thing to say about it that maybe is in common with other things, it's the art of working with your mind as it is. So we are all experiencing our minds in this context, I think, in a heightened way.

And I noticed that, like, we were having dinner last night, and one of my friends is quite politically active, and she started talking about what's happening now. And her energy started to whip up like a tornado, you know? I think a lot of us have had this happen. It happened to you when you were talking about the current situation. Yes. You start to, you know, kind of wind power up, you know?

And it was actually a funny moment. It reminded me of about 40 years ago when I was in LA I mean, a lot of music work. I was having dinner with a bunch of people, and one of them was Linda Ronstadt. And she was a very politically active person. She was talking about nuclear war, which at that time was like a big issue.

And as she started talking about it, I started, in my mind's eye, I started, she looked like she was turning into a bomb, like literally her energy was going, and I thought she was going to explode at a certain point. So the question is, can we view these situations without them stealing our minds away and controlling the way our energy is shaping,

or can we ground ourselves into this experience, which I think is going to become increasingly important. All the things you talked about, the digital, the virtual reality, people are going to become more and more ungrounded and alienated into their own bodies and their own kind of earthly existence. So to me, that's a counterpoint, isn't it, for us to stay grounded.

And in being grounded, you have to pay attention to the present very carefully, and if you find yourself getting too far into the future, you've just lifted off. So in the present, you can have insights about the future. People have had projections and predictions, and in Tibetan Buddhism, they say, sometimes people have achieved a kind of knowingness about past, present, and future, like that it opens up.

Like, did you see that movie, Arrival? Where time is sort of just a loop, and the past and the present and the future are all sort of less distinct than the way we think about it. So, but if we ground ourselves in the present, like we're here right now, right, everybody here? You feel your chair, you feel your body. We're not so hysterical right now, right?

There's a kind of stability here. That's what I think the antidote is personally going forward. It doesn't say what you do or what you don't do. You might have to fight. That's the right way to go into battle, like Duncan and I were talking about going to battle properly. There's been all kinds of battles since the beginning of time. So we were talking about, remember the mixed martial arts thing?

I do. Say something about that. Well, we had this conversation before the day or two ago. One of the things I said before the mixed martial arts thing is I don't want to be part of history. I was thinking I get to live this incarnation without experiencing real American history, like no serious, serious history,

because we've got a bit of history. September 11th was a little taste of history. The war in Iraq was sanitized. It wasn't like World War II unless you fought there or have a friendly member who fought there. It's like just this distance, kind of like clean little war, the war in Afghanistan, no. But this feels like we're on the verge of like history, history.

Like real history could happen. Like the kind I don't want to be in. I want a nice, relaxed, like I want it to be like, you know, like a surprise celebrity death. Just hang out there, but not history, history. So that's what we were talking about. And then the idea is, well, if we are entering this place, you can Shambhala his path.

That's what you'd call it, right? Shambhala is a warrior's tradition, which means that it's not a passive thing. You enter into what's happening like a warrior, ready to fight. Wait, wait, whoa, slow down. Thank you, teacher. Yeah.

Only if you really had to, because the real code of the war is not to fight to find a way not to. Right. And to do that, you have to kind of know yourself and know the landscape very well. So there's a deep need to settle in and really learn yourself in a kind of deep way. Then you see what needs to happen,

but we don't shy away from entering history, right? Yeah. There's another way of looking at history is that you might want to flip that and go, yeah, let's enter history. In a good way. Let's make good history. Oh, yeah. Well, that'd be cool.

Like the invention of a time machine or something. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like... I just want to go to a FEMA camp, man. I don't want to get taken to a gulag. I've got these, you know, hours and hours of podcasts that any, like, just vaguely fascist tribunal would play it

and be like taking behind the building and make love to him. I don't know. That would be good history. A sexual fascist regime. So in your history, you're kind of the star of your history, right? I don't think... The history I just depicted, I don't know if I'm a star,

I'm getting fucked behind a building by fascists. I don't know if that... I guess it's a star of a certain kind of history. But what's happening to all these people? What's that? While you're getting fucked in the ass, what's happening to all these people? You projected the fuck in the ass, Mr. Nickton.

But that is exactly what was happening. Well, they're watching, you know, they're applauding. No, they're not. They're... What are you doing? What are you going to be doing? Filming it. Filming it!

Thank you. Yeah. Monetizing it. Yeah. But the metaphor, going back to the metaphor of the warrior, the metaphor is manifesting some kind of bravery. Right. Actually, that's what the word really means

in the Tibetan, it's pao wo means being brave. And the most powerful thing to be afraid of in this tradition is being afraid of yourself. So you keep avoiding any kind of genuine moment of reckoning with who you are. Right. And you find a lot of distractions to do that. Now, on that note, I can remember

in cutting through spiritual materialism in the very beginning, he talks about the importance of going through your past and confronting it or writing it down. Do you remember that? I remember him describing this process of analyzing your past and then... And it reminds me of what you were just saying right now, which is that you don't hang out there,

but you come to terms with who you are. And he said there's a kind of sweet sorrow in that, which that always stuck with me. But sometimes, for me, I could... I'll tell you, I had a float tank at my house once and I was spending time floating, a lot of time floating. And I don't know if you guys float or not, if you've ever been in a floatation tank.

But meditators, too, you know this from meditating. Sometimes when you're meditating, a memory will just dislodge from in there and this crystal clear memory will float to the surface and you'll see something maybe unremarkable. But in this case, I was floating and I had the most vivid memory of... When I was a kid...

I hate talking about this even now. It still troubles me. When I was a kid in Daytona Beach, Florida, and the float tank just kind of brought this out on a silver platter, like, look at you, look at this is who you are. So this weird leaving, we'd stayed the whole summer, there was some girl there, some girl my age, and I think I was like 12 or 13 or something.

I don't know. My brother and I are driving off and she comes running up to the car. I hadn't really noticed her the whole summer. And she says, like, I love you to me. Very sweet, right? I don't even want to say it, especially in front of an audience, but only because this is...

You froze, right? No, I said, you're fat. Yes, the worst. The worst, the worst, the worst. Yes, horrible. Okay, it's not the worst. It's not like I shot her. It's not like I grabbed a knife and like jumped on her like...

But it's not the best. It's just a shitty thing I did when I was a kid because I thought it impressed my brother or something. And there it was. The float tank presented it to me with just... Like I was there again. And then I got out of the float tank and just... I still feel it now.

Just like, oh, fuck. There's a part of you that's awful. There's a part of you that's just like not that great. That if you don't control it, at least when you were a kid and certainly as an adult, sometimes it'll spring out and say the very worst thing. So I do understand the idea of being afraid of yourself and the potential to cause harm to other people

in a state of being lost in your mind or not in the present moment. You know, we all have... Does anybody not relate to that story? We all have some, you know, moments where... What's striking to me about that story is how mild what you did was. In terms of the...

and how strong the reaction is currently. Well, I'll tell you. The look on her face. It was like... She was a little girl. I was like... I became the part of the universe that's like, this place sucks.

You go to something and tell it you love it and it's gonna tell you to fuck off. I became that part of the universe and I saw what that looks like in the face of someone else and sure, for you know what? As an adult, yeah, whatever. People call me fat all the time. It's like, yeah, I am, so I have to deal with it a little bit.

Whatever the point is, we'll talk about that later. The point is... I... You know, whatever that did, maybe she just forgot about it instantly or maybe that was just one little pebble on the scale that made her universe or her subjective experience of life

not so great in this incarnation and I'd rather not be dropping pebbles like that onto people's scales, which... But you don't, do you? Yeah, I do. Sure I do. Yesterday you did that? Well, yeah, maybe so. You know, maybe like...

Yeah, maybe you don't realize you're doing it or something but I could tell you that when I think about, I don't know, interactions I had with my mom, there's huge moments of regret there. Well, there's a kind of powerful point from my point of view of what you're saying which is that even if you practice some kind of presencing,

you know, however you do that, being present with the current situation, there's still the issue of karma, what you've done and what has happened in the past and, you know, I do talk about that in the book and understanding that process is really interesting because it kind of... You're right, the first stage is becoming aware of it.

So that's... And in order to do that, you have to kind of be a little gentle with yourself because a lot of people when they're trying to meditate, they're so hard on themselves right away that they never even... even minutes even. And that's because their own mind is somewhat tormented in a way,

if you're honest about it. And that's why people will create alternate types of practice where you're just trying to create some kind of tranquility and calm, layered over that underlying kind of anxiety. So if you're going to cut through that level of trying to just use meditation as a way to get high or tranquil or peaceful, as a way to really learn about yourself

and really discover yourself, what's always recommended is a kind of gentle attitude towards yourself. So it's interesting, whatever you did today... I mean, I'm just here kind of talking with you, but whatever you did to that girl seems like you're 10 times harder on yourself to me. Well, that's a fair statement. Yeah, I think so.

So the question is, could you look at that and kind of just be kind to yourself to start with about the whole thing? I don't know who she is at all right now. Yeah. But you're right there. Okay, well, let's talk about the kindness to self thing, because I'd love to talk about that,

because you hear that a lot. And I've said it, and sometimes I believe it, but sometimes it's like, well, okay, think of gratitude. You know, people will say, gratitude's the attitude. Just like, shut up, don't fucking tell me to be grateful. Like, it doesn't work like that.

It's like, you know, that's not how gratitude works. Like, gratitude is a... Well, wait a minute, if I could. Yeah. Let's stay precisely with what we were talking about, which is being gentle and kind to yourself. Okay, sorry, I was using the gratitude thing only because it reminds me of the same principle,

which is gratitude is a spontaneous thing that appears. Kindness to the self. I can like, for example, I can reflect on myself right now. And I could look at myself and be like, well, it's okay, man. As a long time... No, no, no, you're so sarcastic. All I'm talking about is gentleness and kindness.

Good idea or not? Good idea. Okay. And you can do it. It's not a huge leap, but there is a sort of shift of attitude that is engendered there. Let's talk about the shift.

Yeah. Because when you're in a sort of... when your energetic state is not like at its place of like, where you're kind. Where it's just an intellectual conceit, which is like, yes, sure, being kind to myself would be great right now. It'd be amazing.

It'd also be amazing if I, like, grow hair back into my bald spot. That'd be incredible, too. Yeah. But it's not gonna happen. So... The... You're right, it's not gonna happen.

It's not going that way. It's not. Definitely is it. That street is a one-way street. Yes, it is. And it's a hairless one-way street. But this self-kindness thing, when you're in a state of consciousness

where you don't really feel like being kind to yourself or you don't feel the feeling of kindness, then it becomes more of sort of an intellectual exercise. Kind of like affirmations, which I think are great. You know, where you just like look in the mirror and you're like, I love you. Like, even though you don't really feel it and you feel automatically like,

guess it's a back-in-the-midlife crisis talking to myself in the mirror. I love you. But it doesn't feel real. Okay, well, then that's an important point. So it doesn't feel real because you're pushing too hard. In that case, there's too much effort. And really, when we're kind and gentle to ourselves

or somebody else, we're actually softening and using less effort. There you did it. Oh, yeah, that's really cool. Okay, I get it. That's very subtle. That's pretty cool. Right, because I'm like, you're okay, man!

No, you're okay! You're fine! No, you're fine. You're fucking fine. You're great, whatever. Yeah, I get it. So it's more of a relaxed kind of, okay, I get it. You're right, it has to be genuine because otherwise it becomes New Age.

Right. This is old age stuff, I mean, or antiquity stuff. So do you know what you get when you play New Age music backwards? What? New Age music. No offense to anybody in particular. Well, we might as well go there. What do you get when you play country music backwards?

That's how I figure you already know. You must know that one, right? Nobody knows that one? Do you know? No. You get sober, you get your house back, you get your wife back. Awesome.

You know I hang around with comedians, right? Yes, I do. No. I'm doing that right now. Yeah. I don't like, you're the funny one right now, man. I'm like talking about the bullying little girls and hating myself. I don't know why you got me in this fucking fix.

Would you like to switch microphones? Yeah. Thanks. Okay, yeah, it's better. It's a fucking bad mic, man. Guys, your mic here makes you feel really insecure. You should get a new mic. So that thing that you just did,

which produced kind of like a millisecond of some effect, is that considered part of this process that Chogim Champa taught, or is this something that you developed yourself? Yeah, when it comes to this tradition, I didn't develop anything myself. It's like classical music. You interpret and you express your way, but this is a 2,500 years of transmission through a very human process.

So it takes that into account. People are going to be living in different times and different places. Right now we have a kind of interesting situation, which is that certain approaches or views that were developed in Asia are now becoming quite popular in the West. And guess what? The other way around, too. So, for example, I find myself in a super ironic position of teaching Buddhism in Japan.

I've been there five times this year. And I go over there and I look at the people. At first I apologize to say, you have Buddhists here that are older than our whole country. They have 512-year-old bonsai trees there, you know, and they have a kind of deeply traditional kind of mindfulness and gracefulness in the culture that's quite stunning actually, quite lovely. But I would have to say that our people doing the kind of regular meditation practice,

you know, people like us over there who are like living regular lives, no, most people know, very few. So it's ironic, but that's what's happening now. So I think, you know, we have to look, and that's part of the Shambhala teachings, which is what we can find that people have already experienced before that could be useful to us today, that would be helpful in the modern world. And you look back and you, you know, I think the notion of mindfulness is so popular now.

It was on, you know, the front cover of Time Magazine, for example, because the idea of mindfulness or being sort of more connected, the mind and the body, and you're doing what you're doing when you're doing it, like racing ahead or is it a generic, hugely beneficial thing to cultivate. And oddly, we do need to cultivate it. We didn't really learn it actually growing up, most of us, you know, how to just stabilize a little bit and be steady with what we're doing. So that becomes a universal type of medicine.

And then there's a lot, a lot more to this tradition, because it goes beyond the personal level of cultivation into how can we work together, how can we be together as people in a sane way. We're seeing what it's like to be together in an insane way right now. It's almost like, you know, a perfect setting for seeing how it's not supposed to be. Do any of you feel that? I look and I go, this is not how this is supposed to be going. If somebody's talking, the other person should be listening, you know?

So nobody's modeling that kind of behavior actually right now. But I think if we're looking for anything other than a speedy, apocalyptic end to our misery, we could look to some of these things and continue to cultivate even in difficult times. That's the approach of warriorship. Even if you're the only person doing it and everybody else is going around crazy, you still cultivate the virtues that you think are worth cultivating. If you find yourself lost, if you find yourself as you've been explaining in backstage, you're explaining it. So the concept being here we are in this moment right now, I can feel my body,

I'm relating to my five senses in my, you were saying that the primary way of doing that is through respiration. That's the advice in meditation at least, is go back to the inflow and outflow of your breath. That's one approach, but it's common. Haven't most of you meditated that way when you meditate, just feeling the breath going in and out, and just sort of letting your attention rest there and settling into that. And then, you know, the thoughts they come and go, and if you find yourself too caught up in them, you can kind of notice that and then come back to the breath. So you're kind of landing the plane, you know?

Landing the plane is a great way to put it, but how, with this particular form of teaching, this idea of like being in a variety of daydreams, how do you know, even if you are breathing in and breathing out, and even if you are feeling your body, that this isn't just another trick that you're playing on yourself to give you the impression that, oh yes, no, this is it, now we're in the moment, but actually it's just another layer of delusion. See, both you and Pete have this kind of mind and I actually love it. Good question.

Thanks. Just keep meditating. Really? That was pretty fast. I mean, okay, let's say you have a legitimate question. Is this real or not? Are we actually here? Right. Whether I'm doing this exercise or not, now I'm sort of convincing myself that I found the kind of ground

of a hum here of just being and breathing, and now I feel kind of better. But then the room, like I was in Japan and there was an earthquake, I was on the 43rd floor of the building, it started to shake. Now, where's your breath now? Where's your equanimity now? Yeah. So the question is, how deep is your equanimity or is it completely invented, another level of fabrication, another level of fiction? I love that you have that kind of mind.

Well, what is the answer to that? Why are you asking me? You wrote the book, you write books on this stuff, man. But you have a podcast. Everyone has a podcast. Everybody writes books. Yeah. In other words, if you need to answer that question,

then you need to look at who's asking that question. Okay. Right, so who wants to know? The most handsome man on earth. See, I love myself now, isn't it? I know, but it's too much. It's in the middle way. Right.

Who wants to know? Yeah, well, I guess the person who wants to know, I mean, would be the answer would, God, it's such a mind fuck, man. Well, it's definitely me. I'm asking the question. Well, the idea would be to permanently wake up, right? To not trick yourself anymore into thinking that you have achieved

something that you haven't, but to actually, like, obtain some kind of state of lucidity that... I think people make too big a deal of that, personally. You know, and really, if you study any of these teachings, and the more sort of progressed versions of them, you are already awake. That has already happened. This is it right now.

You're already able to be with your experience right now. So to think, project, there's some kind of, like, you know, heavy lifting going on, and then you get the 500-pound weight up. Right. Oh, I'm awake. You're enlightened. And then, you know, people are going to cheer and give you money

and follow you around and so forth. But the idea of smaller weights, you know, and just keep coming back, just keep coming back, to me is a much more productive type of practice. You just, you have so many opportunities to just keep coming back and keep coming... Look, in our conversation, we keep coming back. Yeah.

Yeah, it's amazing. You know, we're not looking for a big epiphany, right? We're trying to communicate. Yes, that's right. I know, I mean, I would like a big epiphany. Yeah? Well, out behind the barn there... That stopped your mind, didn't it?

Yeah, it did. It definitely brought me back here. Was Chokim Trumple like this? Was he a reverent like this? Did he teach you like this? Well, that's an interesting question, because really he died almost, yeah, 30 years ago. So some part of this is my holodeck, you know,

and remember when I started taking that holodeck, I do go on the holodeck and I talk to him today in that way, you know, but in other words, in a projected mind. But as far as remembering the tangible feeling of being sitting with him in a room, there are certain impressions that come, and maybe different ones at different times, but he was very kind, very kind of soft, and then the other side was very powerful.

So I think of it as a kind of yin and yang kind of energy. And, you know, he was responsible, really, if you really study the history of Tibetan Buddhism coming to the West. He was probably the most influential person to make that happen in terms of laying a foundation, you know, he created Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and centers all over the place, and he brought a lot of the Heilamas from India and Nepal and so forth to America.

So he was kind of a first guy, and he was smart about Americans, so you look, there's different degrees of recognizing how we work, and he got it kind of very fast, that was my impression. So I felt like, you know, he was able to talk to us in our own terms, you know, and that included being a little looser, maybe, definitely some good joking around and having fun. It was the 70s, and every, you know, some of you have probably read about it,

but they say if you remember it, you weren't there, remember that? But Trumpo, Trumpo was definitely parting, like he was taking acid, he was getting drunk, he's, like, that's one of the fascinating things about his teacher, is that this is not by any means a traditional teacher, at least from the Netflix documentary. No, no, no, no. He's always got a, he's always got like a drink,

he's, he seemed, I don't want to use the word dangerous because it's not the right word, he didn't seem tame, he seemed incredibly unpredictable in a really good way, but did you ever feel that's accurate? Oh yeah, that sounds unpredictable in a really good way. But also taking LSD, like getting... Everybody was taking LSD. I don't know if it's still around, do you all still have it?

Yeah, it's definitely still around. I mean, you know, in that sense, like the, you know, the vibe of the time was like if you weren't doing that, you would have been kind of not really, I don't know what the equivalent would be now, if you're not doing what, you're not really kind of with the thing, but... Well, I mean, we're talking about a llama, this is a... Well, you see that, he's, well, okay, there's a good point of departure. That's how he was raised and trained, so, you know, he was...

Like they went to a village to find him. They went to a village to find him, he was two years old, he recognized all the trinkets and things from his previous life, they take him back to the monastery, they have his mom move outside of the monastery, and then they're training him from two. So he finished by the time he was 11, most of the practices that people here have finished, like, you know, in the last 40 years.

Wow. He's 11. Wow. So it's like Juilliard, I try to give people that kind of analogy, it's like a prodigal, somebody who has tremendous capacity and they really get seriously trained. But then, you know, if we go into his life for a minute, his life was, and the whole culture was interrupted, you know,

like they had something that was probably pretty similar to what it would have been 500 years ago, no cars, no planes, no roads, you know, and then they got invaded in 1959, I'm sure most of you know this story by China, and it was no longer a safe place for somebody like him to be. So, like your hat. Is it two hats? It's two hats, right? Good.

So, what did she say? She said it's chomping on all the things you're saying right now. Oh, okay. I said good, that's good. I'd rather that than, like, not eating them. So, you know, he was an immigrant, a forceful immigrant. Imagine if we hadn't let him in. I wouldn't be here having this conversation.

So, but he had to shift, you know, when you have a comfortable setup, it's sort of like what you were talking about earlier, you have a comfortable setup, you can get too comfortable, and things, you know, things just go on the way that you're used to them. So, he got interrupted by external forces. So, before he even came to the United States, he stopped being a monk. He was raised as a monk, and he's stopping a monk. He didn't think that was the right way to manifest the teachings in the West.

People were too fascinated with that kind of stuff, and, oh, you know, like, we would just sort of imitate or mimic, and he wanted to really communicate, so he sort of came into our world. And he, I mean, he was very stylish. He, like, wore these amazing suits. He, this is a fascinating human being, and also last night I was talking to someone about him, and they said, and maybe you can tell me if this is true or not,

they said he, like, he, he had cities. Like, he could teleport, that he could, okay, not true, damn. Oh, no, no, I mean, see, this is still, his major contribution was deflating all that. Right. It's called Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. It's a great book. If you don't ever read another book, I recommend that book. People are enchanted, or, you know, to fantasize about those kind of things.

It doesn't say whether they exist or not. There are certain practices that are kind of more advanced that can create, you know, sort of relative cities, you know. Then what? Well, like, there's a Tibetan heat practice in New Yoga. Right. Where you generate heat, and they would go out into the woods and get naked in cold Tibetan winter,

and they'd put wet sheets on them, and how many sheets you could dry off was how well you were doing with the practice. Right. I've seen, I think I've seen... Do you want to learn that, or do you want to learn how to be kind to the fat girl? Hmm. I mean, it's pretty cold here in the winter, man. I want to learn both.

But I think it's an important... I mean, I know that that's not the only city that is considered possible in the Tibetan tradition. Like, they're pretty far out. Some of them don't. They believe that if you are advanced enough when you die, you can, like, transform into a rainbow. Isn't that an intact... You've heard of that, surely.

No, no, I think there's a couple of things mushed up in there. There could be signs, like if you read any biography of a Tibetan Lama, maybe there's a rainbow at their death or something like that. Right. So, oh, you're talking about a rainbow body. Yes. Look, here's the thing. But that's true.

I don't believe that. You're a rainbow body already, Duncan, from that point of view. What? Right now. No, I mean... Because your main body is energy. Oh, right. Right now.

That's what it means. Right. You know... Everything's light. It is light. You know, or energy. Right. Otherwise, if you look at a corpse, you know, it's kind of inanimate, isn't it?

Yes. But if you look at a living being, there's all kinds of energy and movement in them and emotional energy. So, I think the thing he felt, and this is kind of good that you're bringing this out, is that this kind of conversation would be the conversation that people in the West would have, because they want to remain fascinated and they don't really want to address the fat girl. Right.

You know, they don't really want to look at their own heart, their own mind. Right. And that requires some stability, some boredom, some slowing down. So, you know, he was slowing down a very fast-moving train coming here. Right. So, the practice that he started with was very solid. You know, he made us all sit a lot. Like, do a lot of sitting meditation.

But... How long would you have to sit with him? Well, like, there was a seminary for people who really wanted to go deeper with him that he started in 73. That was three months long. And, you know, the majority of that time was some kind of practice all day every day. Ten, twelve hours. Teachings going on.

So, you know, when you look for cultivation, you know, anybody who's looking to cultivate something, you know it takes time. You have to build up the muscles for it, the attitude of it. Nobody's going to go become, you know, a black belt in Aikido in the weekend. They don't have Aikido black belt weekends. No. So, it's even more ridiculous to think of an enlightenment weekend. It's ridiculous.

Right. It's criminal, actually. You're selling candy to babies. Right. Babies like candy. They do. There's actually a big market for it. Actually, the market is to sell it to the parents.

Right. So, to get back to the real world, what is the... What are the beginning phases of this practice? How does... How would I start... I mean, we've had these great conversations and I do keep thinking, like, God, that's... I want to start doing this for real. I'd like to start actually practicing it.

So, how do you... How does someone become a real student of this? Well, you know, all of us are looking for some way to live, you know, some kind of path. For different people, it's different things. Buddhism appeals to certain type of people. Chanting, you know, you... We met at the... In my day job, I'm a musician, so I play with this guy, Krishna Das, who does kirtan, chanting and so forth.

And I produce his records and play guitar with him. And that world is, you know, has a certain kind of practice that people enjoy. And there's a community aspect to it, I think, that people like. So, you have to do a little research, you know, look around a little bit to see what... Some people like Zen. Zen is very popular here. Some people like the Insight Meditation group. Some people like Christian prayer or whatever.

But the general recommendation is to look around for a while and then see if you can settle into something, so that you don't become a dilettante and kind of like supermarket spiritual person. But what about Shambhala? Like, how do you get into that? If you want to go... If you like Shambhala, I mean, there's a lot of books that are great about it. Shambhala and the Sacred Path of the Warriors, great place to start. But there's a Shambhala Center here in New York. But how do you...

You go there. You physically... I'm not going to do that. For example, they have online courses. So between those nine visits to what was it, what website was it? Oh, Drudge and Huffington. Take three of those and do an online course. Right.

With Shambhala. But it's a very nice place. And my son, Ethan Nickturn, happens to be the head teacher there. And he's, you know, people... He also has something called the Interdependence Project here in New York, which a lot of people are aware of. So the idea is you go someplace where people kind of are practicing. You can practice together. You learn a little bit more about how to practice.

You work with a teacher. I guess what I'm fishing for here is like, what's something that we can do? Like, what's something I could start doing tomorrow that doesn't involve going to some center? And I know what you guys do. You go and take the personality test. And then you get sucked in deeper. The next thing you know... I wish it was that organized.

No. The simplest thing, and this is exactly what the Buddha did, is you just do a very simple meditation practice to start with this. Like mindfulness practice. Right. Definitely, I could, you know, give that instruction in five minutes, and everybody could do it for another three minutes, and then you'd have it for the rest of your life. Okay. It's so simple that I can almost guarantee you'll make it more complicated than it is.

So how about this? How about we do that now, and then after that... We've been talking for about an hour now, so let's do this meditation. Then we'll take some questions for about 20 minutes. So, and by the way, if you guys, someone has to, if you have to use the bathroom, don't be shy, just go do it. Like this is a longer maybe than a normal show, so please don't feel weird if you got to go. You'll be a little shy. Well, yeah.

I mean, go out there. Yeah. Okay. So, are you all game for this? Yeah. Okay. And for some of you, it'll be repeating something you're already familiar with or have done a different variation of. So there are really three simple steps to this mindfulness style of meditation.

And the first one is just taking a good seat, like recognizing your body as the ground of the practice. So since we're in chairs, obviously, you know, you can sit on a cushion on the floor. You can sit in your chair, but now there's a feeling of coming into a sort of stronger posture and a little bit more presence. And so you can have your feet sort of flat on the floor if that's comfortable for you. And then a nice strong relationship to the cushion or the seat of the chair. And you can just rest your hands on your knees. That's a very fine little gesture that you can make. And then there's a nice long spine, as you'd say in yoga.

They don't say a straight spine, but a nice long spine. So you feel uplifted really. You should feel good to take this seat. And your back is strong and your front is soft and open. So one of the things we say about it is upright but not uptight. So there's a kind of strength and ease together. Your mouth can be sort of lightly open or lips can be loosely closed. So there's a relaxed feeling in the jaw.

And then the general attitude of the sense perceptions is that we're not going somewhere else. This is not an inner garden type of meditation, it's a presence meditation. So you can just lower your gaze, keep your eyes open though, with a soft downward gaze. So you're quite present in the sensory realm, but not chasing perceptions, just resting there. So that's all step one, that's taking your seat. Sometimes at the end of that it's okay to do what we call checking in to sort of see how you feel. Maybe you had a really busy day today. Maybe you're worried about something coming up, but just sort of touch in with yourself and see how you are.

And then the second step is to, and key to it, is placing your attention on your breath. So you're actually becoming mindful of your breathing. In a very direct physical way, it's not a game, it's not an exercise. It's just become aware of your breath, put your attention on the breath. If you're confused about it, just rest it at the tip of the nose, or you can feel the full cycle of breath throughout the whole body. So the third step is that we might notice, from time to time, that our attention has wandered far away from the breath, and we're lost in some kind of thought, right? Thinking about your exam tomorrow, or your relationship, or dinner, having to move your house.

All the sort of narrative that's going on, and you're lost there. You're not paying attention to the breath, you're not with the breath. So when you notice that, you just label it thinking. Just say the word thinking, and that identifies that whole thing, and then you come back to the breath. Bring your attention back to the breath. The attitude that we take towards the thoughts is they're not bad or good. And so we don't have to, you know, if we're thinking, for example, in this exercise, boy, I wish I hadn't called that girl fat, you would label the thinking, and not dwell on it further.

Let it go. But you could feel the texture of it, and then let it go, and come back to the breath. So we're always coming back. So why don't we just try that for, can we do this? This is dead air on the air? How would that work? The people can just do it with us in cyberspace? Okay, good.

All right, so just for a couple of minutes, let's try it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So when you finish your session, it's a good idea just to let the whole experience go. There's nothing really in it that we're trying to create or cling to. There's no special experience. Some abiding, it's called calm abiding, or sort of staying with what happens.

And maybe we could have, should we have a little discussion based on that? And anything else people want to talk to? Yeah, perfect. So we're going to set it up right now. We've got a microphone right here, and anybody who wants to ask a question, please don't be shy. This is sometimes my favorite part of the live podcast. So anybody who feels like coming up here, we got a mic for you right here. So if you want to try that practice at home, I'd recommend 10 or 15 minutes to start with.

Try it every day for a month. See how it colors your world. Sir. Sorry. That's for you, David. What's your name? Ed. Yeah.

How do you help someone who's depressed? What do you say to that person? How do you help someone who's depressed? What do you say to that person who, you know, doesn't want to be mindful of someone who, you know, doesn't have that inner peace? Like how do you help that person? You know, once we do our own cultivation, of course it's natural then you want to reach out. So the second sort of level of practice with Buddhism is to become more compassionate, you know, by answering questions like that. So of course this is your friend you're talking about.

And I think everybody in this room has had experiences with depression, either themselves or other people. So we all know what it feels like. That's a great starting point. It's not like he's an alien or something like that. We can sometimes help people and sometimes we can't. You recognize that, right? So losing the idea that, A, that you somehow have the power to pull him up and out of it will liberate you in the first place. And secondly, if you're not on strong ground yourself, like cultivating your own strength of mind, then the image that we use is like somebody's in quicksand.

And they're drowning and you jump in to save them, now both of you are in there. So that's what Trungpa Rinpoche called idiot compassion. Isn't that a great phrase? It's compassion without skill, without sort of skillful means. So when we want to help people, it's a wonderful instinct, don't you think? I mean, everybody here went, yeah, I'd help your friend, you know. But we have to kind of have some skill or knowing what the skillful action is going to be. Now sometimes the skillful action can be just being gentle and kind to the person in spacious.

Sometimes it's enriching, you know, making them feel better about themselves. Sometimes it's including them in situations so they can start to feel human again. And sometimes it's cutting through, you know. And if you're going to cut through, it has to be free of any kind of aggression. That's the thing, you have to feel very grounded. But like, I can totally relate to that. I have many friends who are suffering with various addictions and things like that. And the main thing is you have to have a good sense of humor if you're going to work with people.

Because they don't. He has no sense of humor, right? He does have a sense of humor? There's a way out. That moment is a kind of way out. So bring her to one of... Would she come? So she could have been here tonight.

For example, that would be a skillful means. You include her and then you put her in an environment which naturally the energy rises and she's able to kind of feel better about herself and other people. Okay, welcome. I would stand here. Duncan, welcome to New York City, my brother. Thank you, brother. Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

And thank you. Thank you both for combining that humor with that spirituality. And welcome to this day in the world, right? In our civilization, in our society. And really this day that we can now create virtual spaces, right? Virtual reality. And I guess, I mean, I have so many questions. I think you mentioned that plants have religion. There were Buddhist plants that are 500 years old.

And I want to dive deep into so many topics with you. But on a kind of quick level, now that we can make this virtual reality, right? These experiences that are completely crafted from our imagination, right? And a lot of, even some of, guided meditation has the visualization elements of it. Both of you personally, what would the experience be that you would create? You know, for the title of, like, what would you call it? And what would you, what would the experience be? Within virtual reality?

Yeah, right. Which encompasses all reality, right? All possible reality if you can make... Well, I mean, encompassing this, right? This is virtual reality from that point of view, too. Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You want to say something about it? Your question is, if I could make a virtual reality experience...

Right. ...that encompassed all reality. Whichever one, which one would you make, right? If you can make one right now, today? A VR? Yeah, VR. Of anything out there, right? Oh, anything. Anything in that world. Yeah, what would you...

Well, I mean, I've talked about it on the podcast before, and I'll never change in my desire to make it. Which is... It's the VR crucifixion experience. Right? Which no one is... I've said it on the podcast a bunch of times. I've thrown it out there. No one will make it.

I don't know why. There's, like... Sir, what if I will make it for you? Make it for me, but you also have to make the accessory that comes with it. I'm sorry, sorry. A crucifix. No, I mean... Like, it needs, like, a little, like, many crucifix.

You could put your hands on, but... Here's the thing. And I do seriously mean it. The... Just epigenetically, I think that encoded in most of us by now is Jesus Christ, just because it's been around... It's been, like, our culture is based on Christianity. A lot of our culture is.

And the symbol of Jesus is everywhere. This is why so many people, you know, connect with a lot of the teachings to this very day. It's a very powerful thing. This is why there's so many paintings of Jesus. How many paintings of Jesus are there? No one knows. A billion, billion, trillion paintings of Jesus.

They net... So I guarantee right now there's 16,000 people, minimum, painting a picture of Jesus right now, somewhere around the planet, just painting Jesus. Like, that's how... Whatever that was, whatever that was, it was so powerful that here we are thousands of years later and people are still painting him.

People are still praying, thinking, talking, just like Buddha. But the... So the idea is there's some extra power in that symbol. And you can be moved... You don't even have to be a Christian to be moved by a painting of Jesus. Like, I just saw a great painting of Jesus in the desert. And it was...

I can't remember the name of the painter. It's a very famous painting. Maybe someone here, when I describe it, you'll know what I'm talking about, and there's probably 50 million paintings of Jesus in the desert. But this one in particular was really cool because the look on Jesus' face in this painting was a combination of the saddest, grimmest,

most horrifying realization. Like, the most... Like, he... At that moment, I guess he realized what was going to happen, mixed in with the strangest smile. Like this warrior, comedic, almost comedic spot. It's the most beautiful combination. This simultaneous heaviness and the horror of being a Messiah

who's going to get murdered, mixed in with almost a gleeful joy and knowing that that isn't going to stop you. And those two things intersecting, it's just a powerful painting. So, I think how much more powerful would it be to actually translate that experience into VR so that you can look out from the cross at the disciple, at people weeping, at your hands,

and like, even if you're not... Even if you're like the staunchest of atheists, anyone in your family was Christian, theoretically, bad science. There could be some epigenetic marker inside of you that still makes you connect to that archetypical experience. So, just from that POV would be incredible. And then on top of it, you know, the add-on being that you could like maybe put in a coat

and the cross launches into the air, drop bombs, fly across Jerusalem or whatever, but that's a... So, that would be what I would build. That's incredibly fitting, brother. I mean, you... It is the perfect archetype for you, right? Not only are you the very modern day, you know, Christ, right?

You have the comedy of, you know, self... What? You know, when you... Crucifixion? Absolutely, right? Self-crucifixion. But also, you know, very relatable, right? Well, we're all...

The thing about Christ is... And I will go on for another two hours about Jesus, my friends. Well, the thing about that symbol is we're all Christ. That's the idea. Every single one of us is Christ. And that's why the symbol of the crucifix... Have you ever heard this before? The crucifix represents two timelines.

It represents the past, present, and future intersecting with infinity. And that is every single human being's experience. Every... All of us have been nailed to this moment. We are existing in the time-space continuum. And yet there is this sense that there is something in us that isn't really going to die. The soul is what they call Christianity in some religions. I don't know in your lineage if there's a soul.

But that crucifixion, that's why we're all, you know, experiencing this very difficult situation, you know, to be pinned on a timeline. But... So, yeah. V.R. Christ, build it for me, please. That's rock'n'roll. So we actually need... Would you say the cross would get heavier over the experience?

Or how... Do you actually use that? Haptics. Haptic cross. You could, like, depending on what level you want to run it at, it could vibrate. Heat up, maybe. I don't know. I have a small demo for you on this right here.

The Epsomu Vario. Smallest, latest... You want to show me a demo now? I'm going to show you, yes. Well, after the... Let's look at it afterwards. We could all demo. I have an old, you know, prototype that I built with a little hackathon.

Inspired by you, sir. Can't wait to see it, man. Please. Thank you. Stick around for one more minute. Please. While we're on this topic, which is interesting to me, virtual reality. Seriously.

I have a project. I wrote a book called Awakening from the Daydream. That's how Duncan and I got together. We have it here in case you want to read it. And originally, the idea was for it to be a virtual reality. It's based on the wheel of life, which is to go very briefly into it. Six realms, six psychological landscapes that we go through, ranging from the hell realms to the hungry ghosts, to the, you know, things are going great in the God realms.

Donald Trump is presiding over the jealous God realm at the moment. Competition, envy. You know, you have all the human emotions that can become kind of a strong imprint of how you're living and how you're feeling your reality to be, which gets superimposed on what's actually happening, you know? So you might be in a beautiful setting, but you feel horrible, you know? So we're really looking at the mindscape in this book. And I thought at first, this should be a virtual reality game.

You get to play it. And the logo is going to be how to win the game you're already playing. Because you are already in this virtual reality, this diorama of believing whatever you believe to be the tone and mood of your existence from moment to moment. So in the virtual reality version, you could be like, for example, you could be in Syria, in Aleppo, and you'd get to experience that hell realm of that very viscerally and see how would you respond to it, how would you react to it. You would create these different landscapes and you'd be able to occupy them and learn from them,

which is the main purpose of what's in the book. So I wanted to do the book first, so people get more familiar with this ancient kind of prototype and then play with it a little bit in virtual reality. So is that what you do? You design virtual reality? Absolutely. Well, actually, I run a community here in New York. I've developed for a lot of these platforms the HTC Vive, which is quite luxurious. Actually, this last week, we had a most epic week in VR history at Nikola Tesla's original laboratory. Absolutely. There's some people that have come.

Yeah, we have some great speakers and literally teaching you the ideas we now live in this time where our imagination is completely easily transferable from online to onto others. The communication of not having a sacrifice from the beginning of tribal societies where you had to, you couldn't tell somebody a three-dimensional scene. You had to paint it on flat surfaces, right? And all through the Renaissance and only today, only now, only this year. What's your name again? My name's Lex.

Lex, so there's also some virtue I think you'll agree in not doing that. Absolutely. Well, I was going to ask you about your specific game, right? No, what I mean is not creating anything, just being with what already is there. So that's the counterpoint. Do you understand what I'm saying? Absolutely. So stop your dream, asshole. Get the fuck out of here. We don't want your VR. Right, there should be those.

There should be one that is, you know, traditional, right? You should say no, but then also you should say yes. No, is there not both? No, that's what I'm saying is both. Well, you could be in the moment in VR. In the game, though, right? In your game with the circle of life, was it to win the game to get into the circle or to leave? How was the victory achieved?

To win the game, you have to first enter the human realm of being a good human being. You can't get out without that. You can't skip that step. Wait, your game is to be good in the human realm? Starting. I'm not going to sell anything, man. No one wants to fucking do that kind of run over thing. Not goody-goody. Okay. Like have a compassion, have wisdom, you know, use this very life to develop those things.

But then the idea is that you don't get trapped anywhere in that game. The Buddha is not trapped in those six realms. The Buddha is outside of the six realms in a kind of awakened, non-conceptual state. It's perfect. Okay. Thank you. Sign on. Thank you for the question.

Talk to you after the show. I asked this of a lot of teachers, so I'm very blessed to be able to ask you, someone who's from a more active tradition. What's your name, please? My name is Evan. Evan? Evan. Evan.

Any advice beyond what you've already said this evening that you could provide for us on how to figure out where to suss out burning off karma and political activism? Yeah. You know, how do I not be a cis white male pillow sitter? And how do I, but how do I not, you know, be adding to destruction of other people's enjoyment or positive life? I don't know. However you would like to interpret that, I'm curious what you'd have to provide.

Of course this is a huge, and we've talked about it, this is a burning issue of the day in a way is how to balance contemplative and active, right? So it's not the right time for people to just go away and be deep contemplatives in my humble opinion. That's why I follow these particular teachings which say that you have to engage the world on its own terms. So is there some formula for that? There are a few kind of principles that I believe in. Like for example, I don't think adding aggression to the mix is what is needed. That's my personal belief.

Now that doesn't mean you can't have what we call wrathful compassion, which means you interrupt certain things that are really dangerous and harmful to people. But if it's coming from your own aggression, that's not going to help probably. So if we don't know ourselves at some level, we might just pour gasoline on the fire. I'd say do some practice. Continue with your practice and find where that action needs to lay within that. Well continue your practice and while you're cultivating that, move out into the world and see where you can be of help. And that's going to be different in different times.

But I think the things that's not helping everybody right now is just strumming up anxiety and aggression. I don't see the fruit on that tree. Thank you. Welcome to New York, man. Thank you, sir. Hi. Hi. You had another talk with...

What's your name? Cornelius. You had another talk with Duncan where you talked about the wheel of life. And at the center, you've got desire, aversion and aggression. I think you use different terms than the ones you were familiar with. Aversion and aggression are the same. Ignorance is the third one. Ignoring being dull.

Or sloth. It's a pig, a rooster, a cock. Well, because that's the horny one. That's the desire. That's the horny one. That's the desire. And a snake. Yes.

Snake's the aggression. Right. And the pig is kind of like we'll just eat whatever's in front of it. Ignorance. Kind of dullness. Just to clarify, for those of you guys who don't know what we're talking about, the idea is there's this mandala at the center of it. The cog that the whole thing spins on has these three fundamental delusions at the center. Which is ignorance, aversion, slash aggression and desire.

There you go. Three modalities are what's constantly sort of rolling through your operating system subjectively. And that's what's causing you to experience suffering. Suffering. That's it. Yeah. Right? Well, because you're always off balance in those.

There's a lack of, right? You're tipped by those three things. Yes. Yeah. It's not that they're bad. That's not the point. The point is the way that we relate to them puts us all out of balance. Okay.

Okay. Okay. What I took away from that was you gave the example of going into a yoga studio and experiencing each one of them saying, well, that's a pretty girl. That's where your rooster comes out and says, I'm going to go put my mat down over there. Yeah. Yeah.

Put out a little control over the universe. Downward dog. I'm going to get my way. I'm going to get my comfort out of it, right? Yeah. Downward dog. You just started blowing your nose and your aversion slash aggression came out. And you're like, get me away from this person.

Again, wanting to get my way, get in my comfort zone, right? And just all of this expectation and failure to get that comfort zone caused suffering. Yeah. And this person wanted to go to do yoga. The most relaxing thing that came out with all this heap of suffering because of their, they found them a dollar. Right. Literally spinning in the Mando.

Yeah. If you, who are so acutely aware that these are the sources of potential suffering for you and your existence. Well, you seem acutely aware of it. I've been listening to him. And you were on the show. How do you let yourself have dreams and desires to do things to go compose music? If you know that any attempt to manifest your own destiny is bound to cause suffering.

Well, okay. That's a great question, Cornelius. And I think it shows a layer that needs to be clarified of these teachings in general, which is that in the West, Buddhism is taken to be nihilistic. Like, oh, don't do those things because they create suffering. Like, you know, your, your sort of uptight grandmother was a Buddhist, you know, and she said, don't play in the dirt. You'll get dirty and don't chase those girls.

They'll get you in trouble. So the point is not that those energies themselves are problematic, but how we relate to them is so if you, there's a, like, let's say there's a pretty girl in the yoga studio. I like that one. Do you like that one? Love that one. Yeah. Okay.

Poor girl. Poor girl. She just came to do yoga. Someone's like, God damn it. I have my wheels spinning here. Let's say she's on one side of you and the fat girl from the previous. Baby, why can't she be the fat girl? Maybe the fat girl, like, was in shape and now she does yoga.

Yeah. All of these are metaphors. Please don't take any of these personally. What's happening to your mind is the point. Like, when you're in a state of craving, you stop seeing that person the way that they are. You just put your projection onto them, right? Have you found that when you're sort of chasing? Your idealization of them.

Yeah. You're delusional. So that creates the suffering, not the attraction, not falling in love, not being a man, not being a woman, not being a human being. It's the sort of fixation and your mind stops being dynamic and fluid and you go into your fantasy world. That's what we call waking up. And then the general energy of those things is actually quite healthy.

Is a part of fantasy not what inspires your creativity to compose music, though? No. I mean, speaking personally as a composer, I would say almost nothing's happening when I'm doing it. It just, even sometimes a full song and it comes out in a dream. I feel like, you know, this is a creativity discussion and it's a fun one for a group like this, but being creative, I think you're kind of, the best bet is to clear out and just let it come through.

You'll write some great music. The more I listen to smart people, the more it sounds like you're just a channel and maybe we have an over-identification with being the source of the creative process. Because it's highly romanticized to be you are the genius. You are the idea maker. Is your duty, your purpose on this earth to sing that song? Yeah, and then that will create a kind of relationship to the art form that's sort of toxic for you. Bound to suffer.

Yeah, but music's everywhere, you know. You like music? Yeah, I love music. Yeah, so that's it. That's the part of attachment that's healthy. That's already out there. It's already in here, out there. Sure, sure.

You're just connecting and communicating. So that's the alternative to the fixation element of the relationship. And changing how you identify with it. It perfectly said. Sort of owning it. Yeah, good one, Cornelis. Thanks. Okay.

Thanks. Cool. We are the channel, right, Cornelis? David, thank you. Duncan, you rock. Thanks. Really appreciate it. So I'm like completely fascinated with two things that I think you're fascinated with

too. And this is actually a perfect question for you as well. So I think in some ways humanity is kind of on this journey of bifurcation, if you will, right? So we have this, and we've talked about it a little bit, you know, VR and this interconnectedness and AI. And it's kind of the interconnectedness of ones and zeros versus the interconnectedness of the zero, which is the mind.

We kind of have two different things happening because as, you know, the future of interconnectedness through technology is taking off exponentially, we're having a neo-renaissance of the future of the mind. You know, psychedelics are starting to be re-explored. We're literally in a room where we're doing, you know, an own session together. I mean, this is really fascinating. And these two worlds are happening at the same time. And for me, I'm like, wow.

And for other people, it's like, whoa, okay, what's going on here? So my question, I guess, to both of you would be, you know, I guess, do you think that humanity will eventually have to choose a path where we're going to be interconnected? You know, and I know, you know, you know, on Joe Rogan podcast, one thing he talks about is, you know, a line is going to be very difficult. We're going to be able to speak through ones and zeros interconnectedly where everything is going to be, you'll know exactly what I'm saying before it even comes out. Yeah.

Versus a sort of organic feeling where we're actually getting and connecting through the jewel of Indra sort of way where we're going to be reconnecting ourselves through this organic way by disconnecting, if you will, which is what you've been talking about. So I just kind of wanted to splash that idea around and see what you guys thought of it. And then maybe is humanity ever going to have to choose what path to take? Well, I think, you know, I think if you unpackage your question, it's interesting. See what? I'm already picking it up.

If you unpackage the question, then you find within your own question that you've created this hierarchy kind of like it sounds like there's the synthetic world of digitalized interconnectivity. And then there's the jeweled net of Indra world of some kind of like nature thing where I guess we commune by arming together, getting into the rhythm of nature together. And you've made these two things completely separate. That's one thing. The other thing you're saying is, will humanity have to choose?

You know, which is like, let's hope humanity as a whole never has to choose anything because we can't figure anything out at all. One of the big problems of us as a species is that we are, it's really hard for us to collectivize in any real way. And anytime we do collectivize, quite often it's like in the worst way possible, like the Nazis or some or like Marxism, like the gulags, like when you look at like the kind of compulsory collectivization of the species, it usually doesn't manifest in any kind of positive way.

So, or the collection could be what we just did here as well. Temporal, temporary, you know, and that's the other side is like, yeah, like the temporary autonomous zone, you can create these little moments like these flowers grow out of a community temporarily, and then they have to dissipate because there's not enough energy to keep it going. This is Burning Man, this is any of like the really great music festivals, this temporary amazing thing that represents what humans can do. But to answer your question, I would refer to Tail Hard De Chardon, who says, well, first

of all, it's not a choice. It's we're being drawn into a kind of harmonization that will incorporate both sides of the, what the spectrum that you just created, it will encapsulate the entire thing. So, we're being pulled in to this. We're not choosing to go in that direction as much as we are being drawn closer and closer to this thing, which has as its manifestation increasing levels of complexity and simultaneous harmony. So, that's what's happening.

And to finish, I think really what we're seeing is a UFO is landing, like it's a UFO. Like we're witnessing an alien intelligence is coming to the planet, but the way it's coming to the planet doesn't look the way we thought an alien was going to come to the planet. Like we thought the alien would come in a UFO. They said the aliens are actually robots, that's what some scientists have been saying is that aliens aren't an organic thing, but they're actually super intelligent interconnected robots.

Yeah, right. That's the idea. That's the concept. The concept is like what's happening is a super intelligence is coming into this planet using human inspiration as like precursor material to create technologies that will allow it to become more fully manifest. But is the super intelligence inside us in the organic realm, and I guess I would point this to you and I guess I'll take my answer up there so these guys can ask questions too.

Say that question again. So going back to what I was talking about. You're just very concise. Yes. What's the essence of the question? Is the next level of human interconnectedness the interconnectedness of technology through the ones and zeros or is our new level of interconnectedness the organic meditative interconnectedness that may be the ancient India and ancient Egypt we're trying to connect to?

So is it organic or inorganic in essence? I think a lot of people are talking about these exactly singularity or whatever you want to look at in terms of these things. So I myself like to speculate about these things and sometimes I've actually sort of had the idea that I was from the future, which is that's why that movie Arrival was kind of interesting. And so if you were from the future, what reality would you be creating to that you would receive when you re-arrived?

But it's equally interesting to me. So I'm not disquieted by your question or like, but it's equally interesting to me to just find all the roots and strands and leaves and branches of what you just talked about in this room right now. And so we probably know the answer to your question on some level, but I also want to know how you are. How are you? I'm surfing, man.

Surfing? I'm surfing. Okay. We'll have a good ride, okay? Thanks. I really appreciate it, guys. Thanks for the question. How's it going?

My name is Boris. I'm really great listening to you, especially here at the Mindful Exercise. Did you say Boris? Yes, Boris. The Mindful Exercise is really great in this space. Duncan, my question is for you. This is referencing something that you said during your introduction. So you talked about Terrence McKenna's novelty theory.

So the novelty theory, and tell me if you know that the end part of it is that sometime around November 2012, you were supposed to reach peak novelty, where the most novelty on the earth that's possible can happen, and there's going to be some sort of a cataclysmic event, and everyone's minds are going to be blown. And I take myself back to, you know, kind of mid-2012, sometime in the summer. And I was also drawing parallels where the Mayans predicted that December 21st, the calendar is going to end, so the world's going to end. So going back to 2013, and I was freaking out a little bit about the end of the world,

but not taking it too seriously, and then come 2013, the world's still there. Something exciting really happened, the movie that came out wasn't that good. So my question to you is, in your opinion, who do you think lost more credibility 2013 going forward? Was it Terrence McKenna who ate a lot of mushrooms and came up with a Stone Age theory, or was it this huge ancient civilization that was wrong about the populace, and also the Spanish invasion? Okay, so to answer your question, McKenna, so what McKenna said, a lot of people accused

and he did, I mean, in some of his lectures, he was just like, I studied the Yi Qing, December 21st, 2012, that's the end of the world. But if you read some other interviews with him, he says, even if they're off by 50 years in one direction or the other, 100 years in one direction or the other, it's still pretty tremendous that a civilization, pre-internet civilization, pre-television, could come that close to predicting a time period in the history of our species, where if there ever was a high probability that we were going to migrate to another planet, if there ever was a high probability that we would witness the emergence of technologies on the planet that would fundamentally

alter the way we do business, the way that we function, then to predict it within to 2012? Okay, sure, we didn't have self-driving cars in 2012, but we're going to have them in 2025, and by 2035, 2045, right around there, that's where Ray Kurzweil and a lot of other people predict that we're going to start seeing a strong AI. We're going to start seeing a computer that has the operating power of our human brain, and then the subsequent year, we would see a computer that has the operating power of every human brain on the planet, so this is no longer somebody eating mounds of mushrooms

in the forests of Peru with his brother talking to aliens. These are people who are like hardcore technologists who are making these predictions, and it's only a little ways away from 2012. So I think that number one, to say that anyone's been discredited is a misapprehension of the slow boil progress that we're experiencing right now, because if you think of the world right now, and you go back to say, I don't know, 2001, it's a different world, man. We've entered into a completely different, we've gone around a bend in the river. The former vegetation that we're used to, it ain't there anymore.

This is a whole new place we're in right now. 2001, walk down the street. What do you see? People looking like this. Now walk down the street, what do you see? Bing, looking into the rectangle, looking into the rectangle. That's universal, and that's a change that happened that has never happened before. It's such a profound change to think that the majority of our times are since been staring

at glowing rectangles, and that that change is just one of the many, many changes that have happened that does coincidentally fall right around the time period that it was predicted at the end of that calendar. So what in nature, what that's part of the, think of the way the seasons change. You know, it's like fall's supposed to start, when does fall start, September? Like towards the end of September, middle of September, I don't know, when does it start around here? What?

Maybe September 20th something. Let's say September 13th, someone, when's the equine, when does it, what's the 21st? So let's say September 22nd, you look around, it's like, well, leaves are still green, there's not going to be a fall asshole, you know? So in the same way, it's like, look around, man, the leaves are changing, the colors have changed, the leaves are falling off trees, and trees are falling down right now. So I don't think anyone's discredited, I just think that if there was a mistake he made, it was in being a little too staunch on the exact date in some interviews, and not giving

some leeway for the potential of there to be a 10, 20, 30 year cushion in there somewhere. So the idea that he wasn't wrong about peak novelty, he was just wrong about the date, you know, I'm just having trouble with the term peak novelty because in my, in the way that I conceptualize it is, you know, what is that going to look like? Are we ever going to read, what would peak novelty look like? Because in my idea, novelty is never going to expire. The world is always going to change, and to have a singular point cataclysmic event is to imply, well, there's not going to be anything new anymore because we've reached the maximum

of things, and do you think he's kind of right about that concept, or am I misinterpreting the name? Well, I think what you said, what you're saying is like, when I interviewed the folks from Singularity University, they, one of the things they said is that what we're looking at here is that there will be a point in human history just based on the way progress is happening. Where, or there is the potential for this point, let's say, that there, not that there will be, but there could be. There could, there's a high probability, you know, unless we get hit by a comet, solar

flare, the usual like list of things that can like slow progress, that we will experience in one day 20,000 years of human progress, right? So that's called the Singularity. So to understand that, imagine going back in time 20,000 years, and saying to someone 20,000 years ago, predict 20,000 years in the future what it's going to look like. And that person couldn't do it. There were no matter how hard they tried, no matter how they looked out at the world, they couldn't, they didn't, they wouldn't know that there was electricity.

There certainly wouldn't know there was cars, satellites, space stations, the internet. So in that same way, all we can say about the particular corner, the hard singularity, as it's called, or peak novelty as Terence McKenna called it, is that it is fundamentally impossible to peer around it, which is why it's called the Singularity. It's like a black hole is a singularity. We can't look the Big Bang. We can't, we don't, it's considered irrelevant what that data was prior to the Big Bang. So the answer is, it's impossible to say, you know, if he's predicting some, I think

his idea was like everything happening at once or something. I won't even pretend to understand it, but people like the folks from Singularity University just say that it's a kind of inconceivable thing because it's so fast and so many things happen at once. The only thing, the other thing about that, it's a discrete timeline, is that when you say something like 2012, it makes you think that it's going to happen within our lifetimes. And you referenced 20,000 years from now, and then, you know, if people are still around with Standard the Common Glass, perhaps the innovation that we can picture further, you

know, the novelty that's going to happen 20,000 years from now, it's going to be, you know, completely mind-blowing and on a completely different scale, which is why I'm kind of questioning the idea of ever-reaching peak novelty within 40 years, 20,000 years, 20 years, et cetera. Well, you know, getting caught up in that, if you get caught up in that, you know, actually I just was reading an essay by McKenna where he was saying, I mentioned in the beginning of the show, the more you get into the present moment, the more you will experience novelty, that getting caught up in this concept of this thing that is coming, and I think he

said we live in the shadow of the strange attractor at the end of time, like we can feel its shadow now, you know, upon our civilization. But to get caught up in what is coming is to miss out on what's here, and what's here is already weirder than weird, stranger than strange. It's almost inconceivably odd what's happening in almost every field, in almost every family, in almost every mind. It's already so weird that it's fun to prognosticate, but then to get too caught up and tangled in that is to miss out on just the joy of the particular moment, which is that we're

experiencing together here. Joy listening to you guys. Thank you. Thanks for the question. Hi, guys. Hi. I'm Tom. So the thing that like won me over, so to speak, with you was years ago on Rogan's podcast,

you compared life to like a dolphin, if you remember, coming up out of the water and then once you breach the air, like hopefully you can do a trick, you know, that's life. Hopefully at the top you can do something and then you go back down into the infinite is the way you put it. And I was just wondering, you know, that was years ago, you obviously think about religion and things like that. How do you, how does that still sit with you and how does that sit with you as a comparison to the life that we live?

Well, thanks for asking that. I still, I mean, I, it still feels like that, like I still think about one of the things my grandmother said to me when she was, I think in her nineties is, and I've said on the podcast before I think about it a lot, is she's like, I look in the mirror, I see a 90 year old woman, but inside I feel like I'm still 14. I don't feel like I've, of eight, there doesn't seem like a passing of time or I think about like those moments when catastrophe strikes and you knew catastrophe was going to come in your life at some point, but then suddenly it comes and you know, I'll, I'll tell you

like once when I was like getting radiation therapy, I was driving, driving to go get it and this was, actually this is before it's getting radiation therapy. This is when I was just fine when I had cancer, didn't know where it was in my body, had to go get like the results of all these fucking tests, really miserable drive and I'm driving and I'm like, because in that moment, you don't know what they're going to say, it could be all over your fucking body, you just don't know. So I'm driving and I'm looking out at the world and I'm thinking, fuck man, this world is like, it's still going to be here, but I won't be here and I won't matter that I,

I'm not here. It won't, the impact isn't going to change the pulsation of like this, of civilization, right? But suddenly you're like right up there against the wall of your own, of your own mortality. Like right there, you're there, you're at the fucking precipice. This might be it. This might be where the doctor's like, yeah man, it's like, well try, but you know, I don't know, six months, whatever, they're going to give you a fucking wall that you're

going to run into, right? So there it is. And then all of a sudden all that shit that was your life that you thought was going to go on forever, all that shit, it's in the, it's back here now and there's just this wall coming and then you realize, oh fuck, there's no time, you know, and so ever since then I've realized, oh, there, it will be a moment where I'm going to wait, I'm going to look around and be on my deathbed, hopefully nowhere, nowhere in the near future. But certainly in the future, fuck the singularity, there's no question about it, but there's

going to be a personal singularity which is right on the horizon. And based on my general experience of time, it's like there's no such thing as time. So it's already happening, right? So the dolphin thing is this idea that for this very fleeting moment we appear out of the nothingness, no idea where we came from, I don't know, I hope there was stuff back there, millions of wonderful incarnations that were amazing, but I don't know, could just be a fucking nothing. And you come into a something and you're here for a second.

Not like in a lot of people say that life is but a flickering of an eye, it really is. You're here for a fucking second and all these things you have to do, you have a body, you have thoughts, you have a mother, a father, a family, people you love, love. You feel love and scared, right? And it's fucking confusing. So in the midst of all that, if you can pull off some incredible thing, the flip is the dolphin flip. Like, you know, because you're on the fishing boat and you see dolphins show off, it's funny

because they see us and then they like, one of them will be like, look, I can flip and it's like, fuck, that's amazing and flipped. So a human life, you know, like if you could do a flip as a human and the flip can be anything, you know, it could be something like, look, I became a Kanye West or, you know, that's a cool, because that's what Kanye West, that's what any real, real super famous person, just a dolphin doing a flip. That's all it is. No matter what Kanye West, all of them are going to plunge back into the nothingness

with all of us other dolphins who are like belly flopping and like, I don't know what this is, a fucking dive alcohol poisoning. That's my flip. Belly flopping and like divorcing each other and like, that's my kid, give it to me. That's our fucking flip, which is okay because you just get a little second here. You're not expected to be a master of flipping right away. You know, I just hope that, you know, once we dive back in there, we come back out again. That's maybe what he can answer.

I expected that from him. That's what I expected. That was unbelievable. Thank you. Thank you. And I think that is your flip right there. Oh, good. I'm done.

Right? No. And there will be another one. You know, the whole time I was thinking about a guitar solo, just like taking a great solo, you know? But then it's over and I think the real question about the manifesting that peak kind of expression and emptiness or impermanence is what haunts us as human beings. It's that we can't attach to the emptiness and we can't attach to the form either.

So we're kind of caught in a really poetic way between recognizing just everything that Duncan was saying, that there's none of it that's substantial, none of it is gonna last. It's immediately, you know, it's like writing on water the minute you take the pen up. You know, it's already dissolving. And then they say it's already broken. They look at the cup and they say it's already broken, which is sort of a summary of what that was about. Yet on the other hand, we can't sink into that nihilistic thing, which could be comforting

in a weird way, to go, well, it's empty, it's impermanence, so I don't have to do my flip. I don't have to be a dolphin. And the irony is, yes, you do. So that's expressed in Buddhism as form and emptiness, those two things. And they're kind of not a true duality. They're kind of interwoven. So when you look at your existence, it's permeated by both of those things. Some kind of expression, some kind of individuality, some kind of creative force, some kind of manifesting.

And it is empty, fundamentally, in the sense that it's not made of anything substantial. It doesn't last forever. And it doesn't have independent existence, that's what we say about emptiness. It doesn't have substantial existence. It doesn't exist independently, it exists interdependently. And it's impermanent. And yet it's not void. So this is deep when you contemplate this kind of thing or practice in that way.

You're always on what we call the razor's edge, that's what it's called. There's a sort of edge quality to life. And you appreciate when other people are dancing on their edge, like our friend here. That is, there's some sense of risk, there's some sense of taking a shot and doing your best with it. There's a poignancy that's connected with it, that's a heart energy, where you recognize other people are going through the same thing. Even animals, other beings. And so we have sympathy hardwired into us in that way. And there's also a kind of dance or mirage-like quality of it.

And that's who we are. So I didn't, I don't think I made that up. But maybe I did make it up. Well, thank you anyway. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. From, I can point you to the information later, please.

I would love that. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much. I'm sorry we're not talking. Thank you guys for coming. Thank you guys. Two sides. Please.

David Nickturn, everybody. Let him hear it. David Nickturn. It's Macy's friends and family. Get an extra 30% off. Great gifts for her just in time for Mother's Day when you use your coupon or Macy's card. And take 15% off Beauty Essentials or shop specials. Get an extra 30% off.

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