Duncan Trussell Family Hour - LAMA SURYA DAS

Episode Date: March 4, 2016

Duncan is joined by Buddhist teacher and author LAMA SURYA DAS.  They talk about past lives, present lives, and Lama Surya Das teaches a simple way to access the monumental glory of the present moment.

This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Squarespace.com. If you're looking for a simple way to build a powerful, beautiful website, Squarespace is the place to go, go to Squarespace.com and use offer code DUNCAN to get 10% off your first purchase. Hello friends, it is I, Duncan Trussell, and you are listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Art Podcast, and I want to tell you about this crazy idea that I've been thinking about lately. And the reason I've been thinking about this idea is because I have been listening to the

fantastic audiobook, A Brief History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, who also wrote the book about the Appalachian Trail called A Walk in the Woods. This book is incredible because Bryson is a genius when it comes to breaking down obscure academic scientific theories. And the end result of listening to this book is that depending on who you are, maybe you're some super advanced scientist who already understands all this shit. But if you're like me, an internet surfing THC-soaked sponge that doesn't know that much about anything, then getting this kind of information injected in you will create a

complete dilation of your world, because your world is going to be limited by the boundaries of your understanding. And if you're someone like me who had no idea the age of the Earth, barely knew the age of the universe, didn't really understand what DNA was, and I still am, but has been incredibly confused by the general theory of relativity, then a book like this is just the perfect medicine for you. Because if you're like me, you're somebody who is a kind of information forager, like a little squirrel, a little pea brain squirrel, lazily lulling around a information field,

chewing up the most obvious basic sound bites, and using these sound bites as a kind of map through which to view the universe. And that's good because it's fun. It's lots of fun. It's lots of fun to just sit and surf the internet and get those dopamine heads that come from finding tiny little tidbits of information, and it feels good. It's like giving your brain a little massage because the brain is hungry for information. It wants to understand.

But when you do that, what ends up happening is your idea of what the universe is doesn't so much reflect the general understanding of super geniuses who've devoted their entire lives. Tell you, man, these scientists, these are lunatics who have devoted their whole existence to studying tiny, tiny little aspects of the universe that we're in. Tiny little things that you and I, if we had to spend more than a couple of hours thinking about them, would want to find the nearest, sharpest blade and just cut our throats rather than deal with the incredible, boring, sluggish slowness of the scientific process.

It's not for folks like us, unless you're a scientist who's listening to this, who's engaged in the study of some tiny little thing that isn't that interesting to anyone else, in which case we all thank you and are grateful for your service because that's what scientists are. The good ones, they're servants, but they're more than servants. They're driven by this itchy, weird thirst for understanding very minute aspects of our reality. Even crazier as opposed to folks like Kanye West or as opposed to folks who desperately

want to be known as the greatest of greats, these scientists function in the dark in silence away in these little laboratories, completely unknown by the majority of people. Some of the greatest scientists that have ever lived, no one knows who they are. Other scientists don't acknowledge their incredible discoveries. That's another great thing that Bryson does in this book because he gives a lot of scientists credit who haven't been getting any credit at all. Even the great scientists, most of us don't have any idea who they are. These wizards, these sorcerers, these necromancers who, depending on what time period in history

they emerged into, had to go through a lot of bullshit and not just political persecution or religious persecution, they weren't just getting beaten and arrested by whoever happened to be in power at the time, but they were poisoning themselves. They say that they have a strand of Isaac Newton's hair and it's just filled with mercury because these scientists, they were just in the dark in their laboratories, just meddling around with chemicals that had only recently been discovered, elements that only had recently been discovered, like Marie Curie, the woman who discovered radioactivity, she got sick, she got fucked up from the stuff.

If you want to handle her research papers, you have to wear a lead line suit because the research papers are radioactive because they didn't know back then. When you read a warning anywhere, whatever the warning is, it almost 100% implies that somebody died from that thing. When you read the recommended dosage of aspirin, for example, that recommended dosage came from countless humans chomping too many aspirin and dying from it, whatever it was, so so many of these scientists, they blew themselves up, radiated themselves, or went completely insane just to get into the world, these amazing discoveries, and so anyway, I love this fucking

book. It is incredible, but I just wanted to tell you guys something that I find quite validating and exciting that I just read in the book, which is, so Francis Crick. For those of you who aren't familiar with who, Francis Crick is. Francis Crick is the co-discoverer of DNA, and arguably DNA is one of the greatest discoveries in biology. So Francis Crick, he's no joke. He's an amazing human, but here's what's incredible.

Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, was a proponent of the directed panspermia hypothesis. Listen to this. I'm just going to read the abstract from a paper written by Francis Crick in someone named Orgel, who I'm not familiar with, but this is the co-discoverer of DNA who wrote this. This is some bearded weirdo raving in the back of a van slowly filling with nitrous oxide in the parking lot of a Grateful Dead concert. This is the co-discoverer of DNA.

Listen to this. This is his abstract. Abstract. It now seems unlikely that extraterrestrial living organisms could have reached the Earth either as spores, driven by the radiation pressure from another star, or as living organisms embedded in a meteorite. As an alternative to these 19th century mechanisms, we have considered directed panspermia. The theory that organisms were deliberately transmitted to the Earth by intelligent beings

on another planet, we conclude that it is possible that life reached the Earth in this way, but that the scientific evidence is inadequate at the present time to say anything about the probability. We draw attention to the kinds of evidence that might throw additional light on the topic. Really let this one bang around inside your brain cave for a little bit, my brothers and sisters, because it is a psychedelic idea. The idea is this. Imagine you are some super advanced civilization that has recognized the incredible difficulty

in traveling through the vacuum of space. You are, like any other terrestrial species, trapped in the gravity well created by your planet and trapped by the restraints and constrictions and difficulties created by being in a biosuit that you call your body. You can't go in space. That's the whole point. You don't have some kind of acid dripping carapace, like the alien in the Aliens movies. You can't do it.

And traveling through space is just too much of a pain in the ass and it takes too long to get from point A to point B. You are like a shipwrecked thing. Anybody on a planet is basically shipwrecked. You're like someone stuck on an island, surrounded not by an ocean, but by a vast, completely inhospitable vacuum of doom that you call space. There's no way you're going to use the material on your planet to create a spaceship, so you've got to figure out a faster way to travel. So what do you do if you're an advanced civilization?

This is the equivalent of putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into the ocean. Only instead of putting a message in a bottle that you throw into the ocean, you're putting a message on the top of meteorites or inside of meteorites. And the message is the DNA, the precursors to DNA, the organic material necessary to create new life. It's not just like you're throwing a message in a bottle. It's like you're throwing computer code into space that contains within it the instructions to assemble, to self-assemble a life form that over the course of millions and millions

of years would evolve to the point where it would actually create the necessary technology to open up a portal and allow you to travel from your desert island planet and emerge into some new, hospitable space. And that's what we are doing. Whenever you're buying an iPhone, whenever you're giving money to the massive tech companies that are at this very moment racing in the direction of creating what we call artificial intelligence, but which is actually just a brand new life form emerging onto this planet, consider the idea that you may actually be part of a hive of bio computers, of bio robots

that are completely unaware of the fact that they are following a pre-written genetic plan, something inside our DNA that is compelling us to create artificial intelligence, which is an artificial intelligence. It's the consciousness of the creator that seeded the universe with biological life pouring out of the technological portal that we created. Yes, pretty cool idea, huh? I love thinking about it, kind of like Prometheus, but the difference is they're not inviting us to come there.

They're inviting themselves here, and the way they're doing it is by tricking us into thinking that we're just looking for cats and porn when in fact we are building a kind of technological wormhole through which our creators are about to emerge. Let them come. In the meantime, enjoy technology, it's amazing, and I also would very quickly like to welcome a new form of technology to the Duncan Trussell family, our podcast. I just bought a Moog synthesizer, so expect the sound beds to get a lot better than they have been because I've just mostly been using logic loops, but listen to this crazy thing.

I played it under that thing I read earlier, but my God, these things are insane. Wow. I love it. I could just sit here all day and play arpeggiated Moog sounds just because it's fun. These things are nuts. They're located in Asheville, North Carolina, and I actually visited a few weeks ago. I visited the place and wow, it's just like a little gnome workshop filled with mountain hippies constructing these badass analog synthesizers, but that's a Moog that you're hearing, and

I'm super excited about making some songs with it. For the last few days, all I've been doing is staying up late at night and playing around with it. I'm really addicted. I don't consider myself a musician at all, but this is the beauty of technology. You don't have to understand music theory or understand how to assemble a song anymore. You can just have fun with this stuff. It's a beautiful creativity lubricant and I highly recommend it.

Don't let the whole like, I'm not a musician, I'm not a comedian, I'm not a podcast or I'm not a this thing. I'm not a that thing. Really, you're not anything if you think about it. You're not anything at all, which means you're everything. It means you're completely free to do whatever you want at any time period, at any age. Don't think you're too young, don't think you're too old, don't think you're too this or too that.

If you have the slightest inkling of a desire to be part of the creative process, to be part of the outflow, to be one of the workers constructing this incredible portal through which our robot overlords are about to emerge, then follow that inkling. Let yourself do it. The paycheck isn't the selling some art. The paycheck isn't becoming a professional artist. You know that thing? You know as a comedian, sometimes I'll run into comedians who are like, you know, it's

just a hobby for me right now and that's just a hilarious differentiation to me. It's like a funny designation that you've given yourself by limiting yourself to being a hobbyist. Just throw out the idea of hobby. Just get rid of the word hobby. A hobby is a word that was invented by snooty elitist jerks who are trying to create some kind of hierarchical structure when it comes to art. Oh, you're a hobbyist.

You're a weekend warrior. No, you, like any other person existing on this planet are a spinnerette through which the perfect beauty of life emerges in every single moment and that means that no matter what you do, it's incredible. It doesn't matter if it's not refined. It doesn't matter if it is on the level of some, one of these like crazy super geniuses like Picasso or something. It's amazing just because you exist.

You exist as a sentient self aware DNA encoded beautiful thing on this planet and anything that you do is miraculous because you, God forgive me for saying it, are a miracle and that means that you should lighten up a little bit, unchain these manacles that are keeping you from sitting down with a synthesizer or some paint or paint and a synthesizer and just letting the stuff come flowing out of you for better or for worse. And if you've got quote artist friends who are going to roll their eyes because you've picked up this new pastime, fuck them. Just get them out of your head, banish them from your head, wave a torch around and let

those dark vampiric judgment bats go flapping back to their fancy coffee shop where they can roll their eyes at the people they consider to be rudimentary artists while you enjoy the orgasmic outflow of the creative spirit of the universe as you overcome your fear and become a spinnerette through which life emerges into time. It's the best. All right, pals, we got a great podcast for you today. This is a podcast with Lama Suridas and ever since I recorded it, I've just been thinking about the many, many things that he taught me.

Here's the problem. The problem is that I recorded this using Skype, which means that the sound quality is a little more degraded than even I like to put out and I'm actually going to email the sound file to my friend Rob Crue, who is an incredible audio engineer who from time to time rescues me from these terrible traps that I find myself in, but I want to get the podcast up today. So what's going to happen is I'm going to send the sound file to Rob. He's probably going to fix it and if you don't like the way it sounds, if you can't hear

it very well, then you can just re-download it again probably by the end of the day tomorrow and the sound's going to be fixed. But if you want to listen to the podcast now, here it is for you. And if you're listening to this a few days after March 3rd, then just ignore this because it's going to sound good no matter what. I just want to get this podcast up. I missed getting an episode up last week because I was in Denver and when I don't get podcasts up, I really start feeling crazy and sad and lazy and like a lot of bad, dark demons of

insecurity start shoving their salty, greasy devil tongues deep into my ears and it wraps around my brain and squeezes sadness into every single atom of my body. And I just don't like the way that feels. So I'm going to upload this thing no matter what. It's definitely listenable. I listened to it myself. You can definitely hear Lamasuryadas. You just might have to pay a little bit more attention than usual because it's echoey

a little bit. It just didn't come out right. And I'm sorry, Lamasuryadas, that I didn't figure out a way to record this more perfectly because you certainly deserve it because you really are a mind blower. Okay. So we're going to jump right into this episode. But first, some quick biennios. This episode of the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast is brought to you by The Robed

Wizards and the super floating towers of Squarespace.com. Squarespace.com. It is a technological outcropping upon which exists some of the most advanced coders, designers and entrepreneurs that have ever lived. If you're looking for a way to create a beautiful landing page or website or online store, then Squarespace is something that you should definitely try out before you go plotting down to the website district and get sucked in by the hypnotic eyes of some arachnid disguised as a human being who's just going to suck the creative energy right out of you and poop

a shitty website onto the internet that everyone's going to roll their eyes at. And who knows? We all know that some people on this planet aren't doing that great. They've just had their hearts broken. They're feeling lonely. They can't wait for Game of Thrones to come back and it's driving them crazy. And if they happen upon your shitty website, it really might be the final straw that breaks the camel's back and sends them running with dynamite strapped all over their body into

the heart of the closest nuclear reactor, creating the worst environmental disaster that ever happened in the history of the United States. And you don't want to be in their goddamn suicide note is the reason that they did it. Just think about that. Bill O'Reilly bringing your crappy website up on a screen and saying that you're the reason that this shit happened. Don't cause the apocalypse. It's time to redo your website and you need to go to squarespace.com and use offer code

Duncan to get 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace. You can start a free trial today. When you go there, that means you can see if it works for you. If it doesn't work for you, you lose nothing. And if you decide to sign up, you're going to get 10% off of your first purchase. If you sign up for a year, you get a free domain and it's a great website. I don't recommend anything that I don't use and I'm currently constructing a brand new

website using Squarespace. So that is in the works and really you've got nothing to lose. Listen, this is the time in human history where for very little capital, you can have maximum result and forgive me. I say this way too much. But as mentioned before, I know someone who sells their socks online, used socks. They sell used socks and they make money doing that. You don't even have to be a girl to do this.

I think there's a market for stinky dude socks too. You don't have to have any gender at all. You could actually create a sock farm. All you need is a bunch of treadmills and some people to run on them wearing socks and you are in business and all you need to sell them is a great website and Squarespace is the place for you. But of course, it doesn't just have to be socks. It can be any business at all.

The point is, if you have a crappy low grade website, then everybody who comes upon it is going to think that you are a terrible monster who lives in some bone-scattered cave somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, drinking moonshine, fingering yourself while you stare at the sun and that's not what you want. Go to Squarespace.com, use offer code Duncan. Give them a shot. They've got everything that you need. They've got everything you need to create an online store and the website scales to any

kind of phone. Give them a shot. I love them. They are my longest sponsor and they are also sponsoring my upcoming You Are God tour. You Are God tour. This is going to be incredible friends and I'm just going to go through these dates right now as annoying as this may be. I'm really sorry but I have to do it because it's the biggest tour that I've ever been

on in my life and I've got to promote it. So here are the dates. I'm going to read them as quickly as I can. This thing starts March 30th. Think about that. March 30th. That's only 27 days away and I'm going to be in Asheville, North Carolina, then Charleston, Durham, Richmond, Baltimore, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Hamden, Boston, New York, Pittsburgh,

Columbus, Cleveland, Ferndale, Toronto, Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Nashville, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, back to Los Angeles and I'm doing the spring retreat in Hawaii. All of these things are on my website at DuncanTrestle.com and as crazy as it may sound, will you please buy these tickets in advance? Just go and pick up the tickets. Don't wait. A lot of these shows, the tickets are selling really fast, especially for this far away and

that means there's a really good possibility that a lot of them are going to sell out and if you wait, you won't be able to come to the shows. If you don't come to the shows, then I won't be able to hang out with you and say hello and perform for you and experience your beautiful spirit and I'll get a weird tweet from you that's going to make me feel depressed because you weren't able to get in. So, buy the tickets in advance. You don't have to buy them in advance, but I highly advise that. I don't buy tickets in advance.

I wait till the very last minute and inevitably get pummeled by mother nature for my procrastination. So, I don't blame you if you don't do it, but if you don't do it, then who knows what might happen. We're also brought to you by Amazon.com. For those of you who aren't aware of Amazon, you probably don't realize that you never have to leave the house anymore. You never have to go anywhere. All you have to do is go to Amazon.

They've got everything. Paper towels, toilet paper, the basics. Why do you want to go through traffic to go into some store to buy stuff? I like the smell of plastic too, but if I'm going to be spending my time moving around on this sweet, beautiful planet constructing an alien portal through which a super advanced intelligence is about to emerge, then I want to spend it doing things that don't involve being around zika virus-ridden children spraying projectile vomit and diarrhea all over everything they pass in their infected strollers.

You don't need to go to some store anymore. You can just go to Amazon.com. If you want to really go crazy, if you really want to lose your mind like I have lately, then I highly recommend picking up a Moog Sub 37 because these things are incredible. When you play them, you can actually hear the sound of our alien overlords as they travel to us through the great void of space and time. Oh, yes. Beautiful.

So beautiful. We've also got t-shirts. We've got posters and we've got stickers all located at DuncanTrussell.com. And now everyone, please welcome to the DuncanTrussell Family Hour Podcast, the great Buddhist teacher, and uh, oh god, listen to that, wow. Really cool. Okay, let's do this podcast. Okay everyone, please welcome to the DuncanTrussell Family Hour Podcast, the great Buddhist teacher

and author Lama Suryadas. You can find out more about Lama Suryadas by doing a simple YouTube search. I'll have links at DuncanTrussell.com. He was on the Colbert show and he is just a badass. We had a conversation at the Ram Dass Retreat at the very end of the retreat and man, I haven't stopped thinking about it since and I haven't stopped thinking about all the things that he taught me in this podcast. All right, I'm going to stop with the synthesizer.

Please forgive me for the low grade sound as I mentioned before and please overcome the mild acoustic turbulence so that you could really and really take in the stuff that Lama Suryadas has to say because it's beautiful, powerful and wonderful and I'm very grateful that he came on the show. So now everybody, please welcome to the DuncanTrussell Family Hour Podcast, Lama Suryadas. You guys, sorry, we've got an unidentified fuzz coming through which I'm not sure what it is. The UFO coming through because we're talking about all this invisible stuff and the powers

that be must be getting excited. Well, I mean, this is some pretty interesting. We're trying to shake the heavens and shake the tree of truth and whatever falls apart should fall apart and whatever remains, that's what we can rely on. So that's why I really believe in questioning and I'm not against doubt and skepticism. It's just we don't have to become overly cynical and sour-puss. That's like too far. Well, speaking of being cynical and I don't know if it's a fair way to describe this.

Have you ever heard of Gizek, the philosopher? Have you ever heard of him? No, I don't do philosophy, Duncan. That's you. Okay. Well, you know, I meditate and I write poems and I merge with nature, but go on. Philosophy is pretty great though, you know, and I think you could do both and maybe like it could even add to your meditation.

I don't know. One of the, I was listening to a lecture of his and he's a very brilliant human, very, very brilliant, but, you know, he's intellectual. He's in his mind and his intellect, but he has a YouTube show, I guess, a lecture of his where he's giving some criticisms of Buddhism. And one of the criticisms of Buddhism that he had was that Buddhism wants to, or an aspect of Buddhism is what we talked about earlier, getting rid of suffering, you know, we can't get rid of pain, but we can release suffering and Gizek said, but humans love to suffer.

We love to suffer. Sufferings fantastic. And this, this very simple meditation that you just took us through as it's happening and I'm realizing, God, again, as folks like you often do, they remind me of the simplicity of this thing. What came into my mind really quickly was I don't want to, even though I just said, I want to get rid of this self, dead chimpanzee, baby. Oh God, now I, now as you're doing that, I'm like, I don't want to get rid of this self.

I like this self. I want to be stuck. I want to have to get rid of the self. But I would say maybe you want to also feed your, you know, big self or the small self is part of the big self. No problem. It's like the tip of the iceberg. Yeah.

You don't have to get rid of yourself. I keep this perspective like the mind. The mind is a good servant, but a poor master that probably is with too much under its power. So thinking and concepts are helpful, but it's not the only way of knowing we're being. People also have such different learning styles or ways of expression, not just mental, but physical, emotional, you know, psychic energy, body, and so on. So actually I love philosophy too, and Buddhist philosophy is one of the finest when you study it at the Wazoo to tell the truth.

That's not what I rely on because I come from what I call overeducated, you know, white people that study those, you know, to have a lot of knowledge, but not so much understanding and self-realization. So I think we need a little more wisdom and wisdom for life education, not just intellectual education. That's why I emphasize practice, experience, contemplation, introspection, questioning, self-inquiry, and getting out of our head. Like just exercise, yoga, dance, art, tai chi and shigong, a kirtan chanting, sacred music,

whatever gets us out of our head and into our heart and our body and into the, from eye to we, to the collective. Seeing through the separatist little bubble of self, we don't think we're rid of the bubble like self, or slay the ego, as some mistakenly talk about, to see through yourself to the sea that we're always part of. We don't have to kill the bubble, slay the bubble to return to the sea. So that's a vision of unity and diversity, a oneness in many, in the many. So you're saying we can, this idea of like, because I, you know, I read sometimes Chogyam

Trumpa, and I really like this idea of this complete, he's brilliant, but it's also, there's just this, you know, I like the deep waters that, you know, when you were just talking earlier about this universal mind, there's just something so exciting about the journey of, isn't it, yeah, it is, but the idea of, there's something so exciting and terrifying about this expansion, and the abandonment of the self completely, the eradication of the self, fully waking up, becoming a liberated being in this dimension. It's something that sounds so exciting about it. And then the idea of still having this self, this person, Duncan, I don't even have a new

name, Jeffrey, but still having this, you know, dragging around this old name, this old self. You know, you want to like, when you look at Neem Karoli, Baba, no one even knows his name, right? Yeah, no, yeah, that's easy to say, but that's over idealizing. When he died, his son was at the funeral and looked just like him. We found that, oh, he had a family and, you know, he, they had a name and then, you know, it's not the part that we focus on. Right.

It's just the dream, you know, man, it's the dream of like, you're talking about eradicating the self and here again, you know, it's not a wall or nothing. Right. You don't have to eradicate the self to awaken to the sublime self, your best self, your buddhism, you know, the bigger self that includes others that's not separate or egocentric. And then you can carry on in your Duncan hood, which is a beautiful way of being. You don't have to put a Buddha's, you know, Asian head on your head or a Neem Karoli Baba's Indian old head, Hindu Brahmin head on your shoulders.

You'd look like a gargoyle, a gargoyle. That'd be very scary. Be authentically yourself and, and, you know, really look deeply enough. If you go, if you dig deep enough and like digging a well into yourself, you find you get deep into everybody, you get, it's like digging a well, you get down to the water table or the well connected or the wells are connected. It's not all or nothing. That's the way that bifurcating intellect, the dualistic concepts makes it either I have

either, you know, eradicate the self and be free or be stuck in trusselhood. Right. The way you posed it, but no one wants to be stuck in trusselhood, but it doesn't mean you have to totally eradicate the self and not have a name and, you know, just go out and wander around like on the beach and eat, you know, whatever the ocean throws up. That's a little naive. The middle way, I believe, is Buddha's greatest teaching, not about the shining void and emptiness, not about no separate self, not about worldly life or something.

The middle way, balance, not all or nothing, not too much, not too tight or not too loose. And that's one of my main touchstones that I recommend to you and to notice how the thinking makes it into all or nothing. That is absolutely right. They polish the pearl, the beautiful dunkiness and you don't need another name. Well, you got another name. Everyone gets another name. Yeah, but I didn't ask for it.

I mean, I lived in India for 20 years. I mean, you probably have another name, I don't know, from birth, like the rabbi gave me a Jewish name at birth. I don't know. You probably have some Jewish name or baptism. No, my first name's Charles. My middle name's Duncan. You see?

Okay. So Duncan's like your Dharma name. Duncan's your artistic name. No. See, this is, when you were named, you're actually pretending to be Duncan Trussell. You're actually Charles Trussell. Well, even if I'm Charles Trussell, I'm still pretending to be that guy too. Yes, I'm just saying.

So when is the pretend end? It's kind of infinite regress. So it's all pretend in one level and it's all equally real in another level. You know, you also have some nicknames. Whether your mother calls you or your partner, your significant other calls you or whatever, your sports friends call you. Sports friends. I don't know.

Do you, now, when you got your name, how did that happen? How does someone get a spiritual name or how does it, how did, how does this, is this, is there an initiation? Is there a lead up? Sometimes there's an initiation. Sometimes it's just given to you like, Nincoroli Baba was rather informal. Of course, he gave initiations to Indian Swamis and Sadhus and Brahmins, but with us Westerners, he was more informal and he would just say, Oh, you know, your name is so and so.

And he named us after saints and sages and mostly Bhakti devotional poets and mystics of the Middle Ages, like Mirabai and Kavir and Ramdas and I was named after Surdas, the blind Bhakti poet of Medieval India, who was blind to everything but God. They said, we have a lot of poems from him. So he just gave it to me one day when I was alone with him in a room with the translator. Sometimes he gave it to you alone or in a group. Some people asked him for a name, but he was rather informal and amusing. He was an old man.

He had a lot of crazy wisdom. He played with us like we were little rascals. He loved us like children, but he also always called us Bhadmash, Bhadmash, which means like little rascals or mischievous little monkeys. Remember, we were young and new and he was a very old, lovely Indian Baba. And we were all gambling about all kinds of ways. So some people, he said, you're married. He married them like that sort of informally.

One day he said, do you know him to a woman and she was sitting there until an American Western visitors, not Hindu Indians. And she said, oh yeah, and the next day he said, are you guys friends? And she said, oh yeah, it's okay. I mean, they weren't together. And he said the next day he said, marriage, you are married in God, married quite a few people like that. Some who came together, some who were having relationships, some who didn't know each other

that well. Some lasted and some didn't, just like in other areas of marriage. Wow. Man, that would be such a bummer if that happened and he connected you to someone you didn't like at all. What a mess. Well, this was part of his Leela, his crazy wisdom, divine dance and you can never understand what he was doing.

We would ask his translator, Dada, who was a very respected professor of economics, so he was like the straight man. It was like Laurel and Hardy, Dada was the straight man and Maharaji was the crazy wisdom trickster in this way of talking about the science and Dada would say, oh, who knows what God has in store? Now, let me ask you, how does the teaching was about surrender? How does God work in the type of Buddhism that you practice? God's not a big part of Buddhism.

Buddha was a Hindu by birth, so he sought something else and people who followed him became called Buddhists. So there was already a lot of gods in India, so that was part of his quest, but that wasn't an important part of his reform or his new dharma, his new way of getting enlightened. Most Buddhists don't deal that much with a god or creator outside of themselves, but in certain forms of Buddhism, there are gods and goddesses or archetypes like Tibetan Buddhism has a lot of them. But I think God is not just as a creator or as a person, there's a higher power of being,

but in Buddhism, there is a higher power, and that higher power you could say is awareness for the capital A, or if you want to let the creator, then karma is the creator, but sort of awareness or intention, or I don't want to say mind, that's way too anthropocentric, way too human-centered, to say awareness with a capital A, kind of divine consciousness, that is the higher power. So we rely on and take refuge in the higher power in Buddhism, that God, awareness, awareness, cultivation, and awareness realization, realizing that we are pure, loving awareness, not just thoughts or personality, not to mention our aging and changing body and our nationality

or gender or shape. And this pure loving awareness, is this awareness as something that survives after the body dies? Since it's not a thing, it's hard to say it's a thing that survives, but the language is important, and I don't want to quiver with words, so it's like a yes, and let me say something that you don't hear enough. You're a learned person, you've heard the Buddhists talk about suffering and all that. Have you heard the Buddha talk about deathless nirvana?

Even Buddha called it deathless. So although everybody will say everything is impermanent according to Buddhist teachings, Buddha talked about deathless nirvana, so there's just kind of a level, I don't want to say like statement, so there's something that is unborn before we came out of mommy's room and undying, according to this kind of thinking, definitely, but it's not a thing. So in Tibet it's called the clear light, but it's not an optic light, so that's just the translation. It's kind of like, I had a maiden principle, the Bible called it the clear light mind,

in English that's the translation. What's the Buddhist perspective on the talk that we're about to bring like an artificial intelligence to life? I'm sure you've heard about this. What's the Buddhist perspective on this theoretical potential new life form that's about to, or at least new form of consciousness, that's about to appear in the world? I don't know if there is one Buddhist perspective on these things, but I could give you some Buddhist perspective is one is probably not seen from Buddhist point of view as a new form of

consciousness. It's just one more form of consciousness, one like newish transformation of consciousness. Just like we could say, what is the Buddhist perspective as ancient on perspective on psychedelic visions? So first of all, there were probably so many mushrooms and other psychedelic visions in ancient India, but in general, Buddhist don't know that much about, the Buddhist philosophers didn't comment that much about psilocybin and magic mushrooms and mescaline and things you mentioned also DMT and Angel Dust and Payod and Ayahuasca, whatever, but

it's all forms of this awareness, so it's a matter of is it helping us be awake and useful, have a better life and harmony and outer and inner peace or not, is it conducive to the good, true and wholesome? That's what the Buddhist perspective could be. I know that's a little vague, but it's also fairly accurate just to the general picture. But let me say, when the Dalai Lama who loves science, who's kind of a modern-minded person, if you read his books or look at his work with the mind and life, Neuroscience Institute, Science and Meditation Overlaps and Interfaces, Neurodharma High Court, Neuroscience and

Meditation and Consciousness Research with FMRIs, people ask the Dalai Lama, if you believe in rebirth, do you believe that a person could be reborn as an animal? And he said, of course, that's part of the belief system in the Eastern religions. They said, well, today we have computers, could a person be reborn as a computer? And we all, we know it all, we Westerners, we all looked at each other and we, quote, knew what he was going to say, which was no. Therefore, this is why I'm telling a story, it came out that he said, well, actually, it could be possible that consciousness could take support of a material body like a computer or a robot or something. This presages AI era. He said this in like the 1980s.

That it could take support of a computer or a robot or something. Just like now, this clear light mind takes support of the metal and the earth element and fire element in our bodies. Wow. So yeah, we're just bio-computing. The animating principle could take support of the five elements in the form of an AI robot. Like our bodies, perhaps he was saying, this presaged the age of AI. So it was kind of a visionary statement of the malleability and universality of consciousness. That's nuts, man. That's amazing. Dalai Lama predicted this in the 80s. It's a visionary kind of statement. And then we will look at each day. Oh, we thought rebirth was only sentient beings. Like you can't be reborn as a tree or a rock. I mean,

this is the theory. Yeah. But he was going with this kind of inquiry like, let's, oh, we'll really think about this. This is interesting. Let's think about that. I'm not just going to give you the dogma. Let's really think about anything that was very eye-op enlightening for many of us. Do you remember your past lives? Do you have any kind of, is that part of this thing that happens when you become a llama? Do you remember any of your past incarnations? Well, you're not the first person that ever asked me that. And generally, we're not supposed to talk about things like that. It's like, you don't talk about your sex life with your life

or partner, except maybe to your therapist or your best friend, if you have to. But privacy, discretion, intimacy, and also humility. You know, like he has to Dalai Lama, he'll always joke and say, huh, I can, I cannot remember breakfast yesterday. Right. Right. So I'd like to take the fifth on that. Okay. I've never really answered this. I have had some past life, let me call them premonitions, just to put, make it into like a onomatopoeia or what we'll not see more on. I've had some past life premonitions. And some llamas have told me a few things. And some psychics told me a few things and some rang true and some rang false. Wow. That's, that's, but here, you know, here we have this idea of the clear light,

and yet this concept of impermanence. But this has always been a confusion for me as in Buddhism, there is this idea of reincarnation. And it's, let me straighten this out with you. Great. Because I'm tired of having these misunderstandings in your head. Thank you. We generally use them, and I'm being facetious, but also lovely, I hope. In general, in Hinduism, we use the word reincarnation in Buddhism, rebirth, because we don't think because of the understanding of everything conditioned or solid, everything put together falls apart. We believe in impermanent things. Things are, everything is impermanent. So the notion of that being reincarnated, like just changing your clothes in the next morning, and just changing your bodies,

incarnation, that's a little too concrete. That's like you hit a golf ball and it goes into a hole in the next life, you know, it's like a hole in one in a new body. No. If the clear light goes on, like it courses on like a stream or a river or rays of a sun, then it can diffract into a few bodies or it can be condensed into one. So even the Dalai Lama would say he's not entirely sure he's the Dalai Lama, but you know, that's his job. If you see what I'm saying. So it's not just a solid entity, like a little golf ball, a hard boiled egg in your heart and your mind inside that leaves this body and gets a new body. So it's a flow, like lighting one candle from another. The waxy body of the candle might burn down, but the flame goes on. So it's too much to say it's the same

flame, but it's not entirely different flame. Gotcha flame like this inner luminosity flows on according to its body English or karmic conditioning, just like a ripple in the river. The waves or the ripple will continue for a while, even though the water molecules are changing, but it's a discernible wave or ripple different than the other ones, right, even though the water, so that's the clear light moving to another body. So that's why they think the Dalai, you know, people like Dalai Lama, who it is said can consciously continue their mission by projecting their conscious or clear light mind to another birth or human birth and continue their mission. It's not just a solid person, and sometimes it's mistaken or it's partial. But for ourselves,

I think that we're all cases of mistaken identity and finding out who and what we are, we can realize and we can awaken and become just like a Dalai Lama or a Buddha, not just be recognized as the rebirth of somebody. And more important, if we treated, you know, education and family wise as just the family hour, if we treated every child like the Dalai Lama and these important or Prince, you know, William and Harry of England are treated, if we treated every child like that, the world would be a much different place. That's the kind of rebirth or reincarnation of like systemic change that I'm advocating. That's the dream of that Tibetan Dalai Lama, to bring it home.

Now, here's something that's super exciting to me. We are going to be, in just a few months, hanging out together in Maui. And what are your plans? Do you have any plans as to what you're going to be teaching there? Yes, just like this. I'm going to straighten out all of your misunderstandings about Buddhism and the mind and everybody's that's there in a jokey way and explore together, how to open the heart and awaken and illumine the mind and how to go from I to we, from me to we, and really find genuine happiness and wellness and love. And of course, I'm going to teach and leave a little bit of meditation and chanting. I'm going to have a lot of question and answer just like we're doing now. And I like to hear from people where they're at because

people are beautiful. If you give them half a chance, they'll be beautiful. I'm not going there really to fix anybody or straighten anybody out. Well, I'm really looking forward to it, man. The last time, the last when we were there at the very end of the retreat, you blew my mind. We had the most amazing conversation. I'm very excited about this upcoming spring retreat. And if folks want you have a you have a book that I'm not sure exactly when it came out. It seems like your newest book is called Make Me One With Everything. Yes, it came out in May. Make me one with everything, Buddhist meditations to awaken from the illusion of separateness. I will have links to that book at dunkintrussell.com and the comment section of this podcast.

Lamasuryadas, thank you so much. This is a very enlightening conversation. It's given me a lot to think about. And I hope that we can have more of them. Are we also doing a podcast live in New York City on June 2nd with a few of our friends? Yeah, that's that's exact. Yes, that's I don't know the details yet. That's some you want to mention or oh, yeah, sure. I mean, I've just heard about it from Ragu. So I don't even know. Yeah, that's what I know. Me, you, Pete Holmes, and maybe a female. Well, we think Pete Holmes, he might be shooting. So we don't know for sure. But yeah, June 2nd, guys, there's going to be some kind of wild live podcast happening in New York. This is pretty exciting. So keep your ear to the ground about that. We're going to be in Maui

together at this spring retreat. I'm mostly going to be in the audience, but I am going to do some podcasts to where we'll be able to have some of these conversations live and won't have this background hiss that you all have had to suffer through. No, we will. There's always the towels hum or that will have the sound of the waves in Maui. Nothing like it, guys. I hope you'll come to the retreat. Lama Suriadas, thank you so much for being on the show. I love you all. I mean, I love you too, Duncan. Charles Duncan Trussell. I love you too. Thanks for listening, everybody. That was Lama Suriadas. You can find all the links you need to find Lama Suriadas in the comment section of this podcast at DuncanTrussell.com. Much thanks to Squarespace.com for sponsoring

this episode. If you go to Squarespace.com and use offer code Duncan, you'll get 10% off your first order. And if you sign up for a year, you'll get a free domain name, Squarespace, the perfect way to build a beautiful, powerful website. And much thanks to all of you who continue to listen to this podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, why not give us a nice rating on iTunes, won't you? And I hope to see you at one of my upcoming tour dates. Hare Krishna. I'll see you real soon. A lot of episodes are going to come out this month to make up for my failure to put an episode up last week. We've got Natasha Leggero, Laura Kytlinger, Johnny Ross, and a lot of other great episodes coming up, including Tony Hengecliffe. They're all right around the corner. I'll see you soon. Hare Krishna.