The Blindboy Podcast - Sultans Cunny

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

Body Image, Asceticism, Buddhism Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, you Julian Boulevard's. Welcome to podcast number 54. I think it's 54. It is 54. Fabulous response to last week's podcast actually. It was a live podcast with the economist David McWilliams from Vicar Street. And yeah, fuck it. I think that's the, with the exception of Spike Lee, with the exception of the Spike Lee podcast, which I don't think counts as a live podcast, but the David McWilliams podcast is the most amount of positivity I've gotten from you from a live podcast and for me

not only was it good crack and was it interesting you know I learned a lot from it you'll notice in that podcast I was fairly quiet because I was sitting back and listening to the cunt um but the fidelity of it I was thrilled but the fidelity of it I was thrilled with the fidelity of it the quality of the recording had the perfect balance of

the sound of our microphones but without too much crowd noise you know because that's a weird one like we'll say a stand up comedian if they're putting out audio they want the audience to be loud because if the audience isn't loud and it's stand-up it can just

sound like a person screaming into a microphone quite manically in an empty room but with the live podcast i just i think excessive crowd noise can fuck it up because what you want from a good live podcast is the intimate podcast hug you want the sense of eavesdropping on a conversation that happens in a kitchen so if the audience is too loud in the recording it can fuck up a couple of moods just basing that on previous comments so what have i been up to for the week oh no my microphone's acting the bollocks no my earphones are acting the bollocks here we go what have i been up to for the week? Um. Yeah, I noticed, I noticed recently, as you know, I love running and I love going to the gym.

Um. My microphone has been a real cunt. Two seconds. Yeah. Yeah, I, I, I exercise six days a week and i've said before the reason that i exercise is it's part of my mental health regime like there's physical benefits to it obviously but that's not the goal and i've been exercising for fucking years and what i found and this is quite important if you want to stick to an exercise regime

if you're doing it for physical results then it becomes difficult to stick to it i don't know why it's just yeah because everyone falls off the wagon a bit and then what can happen is that if you're going to the gym or if you're running and your specific goal is to look what you consider to be better

or to lose weight what happens is that you'll be getting on ground for six weeks and then naturally you'll fall off the wagon you mightn't go to the gym for a week or you mightn't run for a week and then you'll notice the negative effect of that and that can be very disheartening and that causes a lot of people to quit outright and that's a cycle i had like i've

been fucking going to the gym since i was 14 i love the gym but for years and years and years i would find myself in negative cycles and the reason was I was going to the gym and exercising exclusively for physical results and then on top of that those physical results would have been tied up in my self-esteem basically placing my self-worth, my value as a human being in looking muscular or not being overweight or looking fit. Placing my value as a person in how I think others perceive me. So that's a losing game first of all. So that's a losing game, first of all. And as well, it means that if your self-esteem and self-worth is rooted in how well you look as a result of the gym, what that does is it means that falling off the wagon in the gym

or losing progress or not doing as well as you think you should, it no longer becomes about something as simple as lifting weights. It becomes about your sense of personal identity, your self-esteem. And that was very threatening. That can be very, very threatening. You know, the stakes now are colossal. It's because I haven't gone to the gym for a week

and I'm a little less strong or because my fucking arms aren't as big as I want them to be I am now a shittier person than I was and that can cause someone to just completely quit but I'm on a streak of about maybe five or six years of consistent regular exercise because I changed my goals the reason I exercise is because I fucking love it I absolutely love the process if it's going to the gym I love lifting really heavy weights and feeling just the endorphins in my brain flying all around my body. And I love the flexibility it gives me. I love the extra bit of strength.

Exercising weights can be quite good for mindfulness too. Because what it does is you end up being aware of these muscles in your body that you didn't know you had. you end up being aware of these muscles in your body that you didn't know you had. Do you know? Like a muscle on your back or your chest or your leg that previously you simply wouldn't be aware of, but because you're working it out and you can now flex a muscle that you couldn't flex before, it can, for me, now this is my hot take,

I found this to be very useful in my mindfulness because a part of mindfulness and meditation is like a lot of mental health issues depression anxiety they're all about the head mostly you're up in your head so when you're trying to be mindful or to meditate or to live in the here and now you try and bring everything back to your body so what I'll do often throughout the day if I'm trying to relax myself is I'll do what's known as checking in with my body where in my head I visually map and feel and I acknowledge and notice that's what I do I'll acknowledge and notice that my feet are on the ground and then I'll visually travel from my feet all the way up my body to the top of my head.

I'll acknowledge my calves, my thighs. I'll acknowledge my sides, my arms, my fingers. And all the way up to the top of my head. And it'll take about two minutes. But what that is, it's a grounding exercise. It's a grounding exercise. It takes you out of, or takes me out of the anxiety of my head, or whatever's worrying me, into the here and now, present moment,

which then gives me a sense of control and responsibility. And I've found that lifting weights is very good for that, because it's just, if you do a leg day in the gym, you're aware of your legs for a day, you know, because they're kind of sore or the same with your back. So I love the process. I fucking adore the process of going to the gym, coming out of it, the invigorated, energized feeling that I get from doing it. If you do go to the gym, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you don't go to the gym, and it's something you're considering doing, same thing I'll say for running, like, it's, the first six weeks are going to be awful.

They're going to be terrible. Lifting shit you don't like. Do you know what I mean? Your body doesn't want you lifting lifting weights above your chest your body wants you to relax and eat as much food as possible because your body thinks you're a caveman but it's horrible at the start but trust me after about six weeks when you notice you start to get good at going to the gym. You'll just get addicted to the release of endorphins and energy and all this stuff. So that's what I focus on when I'm exercising.

If there's positive physical results because of it, fucking class, brilliant. That's a side effect. But what keeps me going consistently is the process. I love the process. And I love starting my morning that way. Because what it also does is... If I'm not exercising and not going to the gym,

no matter how much sleep I get, I will have an excessive and continual feeling of tiredness throughout the day. And lethargy. And it's really unpleasant especially when like me like i'm i'm i have to motivate myself i have to write a book i have to write a tv series i have to prepare this podcast there's no one telling me what to do i have to manage myself and to motivate myself if i'm feeling generally lethargic then that becomes difficult but if I get up in the morning have a cold fucking shower do a lot of squats or military presses then I'm prepared for whatever

the day is thrown at me I'm already motivated the same with my running I'll do three days a week of a 10 kilometer run because I love it it's a form of meditation it's absolutely gorgeous and if you're listening to this feeling sceptical I believe you because

I know what it's like to begin either going to the gym or running and to fucking hate it because it's not nice at the start it isn't but just trust in the fact that it's unbelievably beautiful after a while it's the body's antidepressants that's what it is like a lot of a beautiful endorphins for the brain

so anyway yeah going to the fucking gym that's what I do obviously but as well so I noticed there's a certain exercise that I do called a pull up where you basically you pull your fucking your weight your entire weight of your body up

a chin up you know what it is and I've noticed they've been getting really difficult recently and I couldn't make head nor tail of it because I'd been doing them consistently so I'm like why've been getting really difficult recently, and I couldn't make head nor tail of it, because I'd been doing them consistently, so I'm like, why are these getting more difficult?

So I jumped onto a weighing scale, which I tend not to do, and I noticed over the past six months, I'd put on a stone, and I didn't know why this was, I was just like, fuck it'm after putting on a stone that's why the pull-ups are harder I have an extra stone of weight that I didn't notice so I said right okay I need to get rid of this stone so I went I started that process on last Monday. Now the thing is with losing fucking weight, it's a horrible

thing to even Google because you just can't get the right answer. You've some people saying if you want to lose fat, then you must go on a no carbohydrate diet that has only fats in it. Ketogenic.ogenic right that's too extreme for me i know people who are doing ketogenic diets and they look fantastic but i don't know waking up in the morning drinking a cup of coconut oil having 10 slices of bacon for lunch and then a steak with some broccoli for dinner it just doesn't seem right it just doesn't sit with me i don't know why it it seems a bit mad so what i prefer when i'm trying to lose actual fat is and it's worked for me the basic rule of if you eat less calories than you expend is that right then you will lose weight

basically you're looking for a calorie deficit the food that we eat contains energy in the former calories and if you use more than you eat then your body will turn to your stores of fat to get rid of them so i fucking downloaded an app called my fitness pal which is a grand app and what my fitness pal does is whatever food you're eating throughout the day first off you open my fitness pal at the start and you say uh it'll ask you what height ask you. What height are you? What weight are you? So I typed it in. And it's like.

Yeah. I'm about a stone overweight. So then it said. What's. I'm 13 stone. And I'm 5 foot 11. So they're like. What stone do you want to be?

So I said. I wouldn't mind being 12 stone. So it says. If you eat 2000 calories a day. For the next 5 weeks. If you follow follow that you will be 12 stone so what i do every morning every anything that goes into fighting my mouth i'll either scan the barcode of the food with the my fitness pal or i'll just type it in and as well what i've started doing and this is the first time I've started doing this. And thank you to the Patreon subscribers.

For this. I just went into Argos. And I bought a food weighing scales. For 20 euro. Which is something. I wouldn't have done that last year. Because I'd have needed that 20 euro too badly. But with the Patreon.

I was able to go. Yeah I can spend 20 quid on this fucking this uh little food weighing scales a digital one so i put the exact weight of the food if i'm eating my smoothie in the morning we'll say i'll weigh out my berries i'll weigh out the banana i'll weigh out the oats weigh out the protein powder and then chalk that into the app and it tells me exactly how many calories so i was hitting my 2000 every single day and it's a good app, it's a good crack because at the end of the night then

you complete your MyFitnessPal and it says you reached your goal of 2000 calories today in 5 weeks time you are going to weigh your weight that you're looking for so it's brilliant, I love it but then the weekend comes around and I was gigging up in Wexford and my cans It's brilliant. I love it. But then the weekend comes around.

And I was gigging up in Wexford. And my cans. My Polish cans that I drink at my gig. They were on my rider. I started lashing into them early. Kept it going. Kept it going. And then I got home.

And kept drinking the cans until about 2 in the morning. So the next morning I woke up. I didn't have a hangover. Because I drank my water the night before. And I was pacing them. But I said fuck it. I must put my cans into the fitness app. So I did.

And 8 Polish cans was 2000 fucking calories. So those Polish cans at the weekend completely negated entirely negated all the calorie deficit that I had tried to achieve all week and it was fucking eye opening because I knew the cans at the weekend wasn't great

but I didn't know it would entirely negate all the boiled chicken and unflavourful food that I was eating all week. So that was a shocker. That was a fucking shocker. So now I have to literally look at possibly not having my weekend cans or maybe make my weekend cans monthly cans or there's no way around it really like i was even looking at okay in fairness a can now is they're like 200 calories a can and that's slightly unnecessary you could move that back to we'll say 120 if it was a gin and tonic but it's still a big load of fucking calories

so i used to think i had a slow metabolism I probably don't have that slow a fucking metabolism I'm just literally ruining all my good diet and exercise during the week with weekend cans so there you go but I will let you know in five weeks time

if it worked and I was actually able to lose a stone by following this fucking app don't use the app if you have obsessive qualities you know some people

as part of their mental health spectrum could veer in the direction of OCD. I wouldn't recommend the app if you are in that way triggered. And also, if you have a history of eating disorders, these apps are fucking detrimental for anyone who has a history of eating disorders because they're too obsessive. But for me, it's grand. I don't mind putting all my calories into it and looking at it all day and micromanaging my day.

It was nice actually because it gave me a sense of routine and took me out of chaos. The chaos of just eyeballing food. But you know what I will say? I am not advocating for the fucking losing of weight. not advocating for the fucking losing of weight, the reason I'm speaking about it is because, me personally, I'd like to lose a stone.

Because, it just, it crept up out of nowhere in the past six months, and, I'm less flexible, and, I have a little less energy, so it doesn't work for me, personally. So, I'm making a decision with my body yeah i'm gonna sort that out but for you if you're overweight or you would call yourself

fat your business 100 it is your business nobody else's and whatever the fuck works for you and everyone is different as well lads. We've got this. Being fat and overweight. It's completely fucking demonised in society. And it fails to take into account. That people are just different. Okay.

People are just fucking different. People have different body shapes. People have different metabolisms. People are very very different. And there's no one universal solution or truth so i suppose what i'm saying is there's a very silly unfair attitude that it's okay to take the piss out of people. And their bodies. Because you're doing it to improve that person's health. Fuck off. With that shit. All it does is.

Affect the person's mental health. Like just. Opinions about other people's bodies. Keep them to yourself. It's even one of the things that annoys me about fucking Donald Trump Trump is a prick but people

people use it as an excuse now to take the piss out of Trump's weight and the thing is if you slag Donald Trump over his weight you're not slagging Donald Trump you're slagging anyone else who isn't comfortable with their weight and a lot of people

can get very hurt from that em it's personally for me it's not something I find very hurtful because I can literally just go yeah I'm after putting on

about a stone three quarters of a stone I know how to get rid of yeah, I'm after putting on about a stone, three quarters of a stone, I know how to get rid of that. So I'm actually going, I'm looking forward to the journey of doing it. That's a new task that I have. I'm looking forward to the process and the mindfulness that I get to bring into my day now. That's the other benefit, you know,

using this app with my food. I'm an advocate of mindfulness one aspect of mindfulness too is to mindfully appreciate and enjoy the food that you're eating so when i'm counting my calories when i'm looking at my meal and going i'm gonna have two eggs instead of three or i'm not gonna have the toast with this meal instead what I'll do is I'll take the carbs out and I'll add in extra protein I enjoy that because now I'm mindfully truly appreciating and kind of holistically taking on board the food that I'm eating and I appreciate it more so I'm quite looking forward to it other people just can have they can have complicated complex relationship with food food can be something that is an external uh an external stimulant that makes them feel better inside and that's that's part that's that person's business it's it's not our business so if you are the type of person who thinks that calling someone fat or

slagging someone for being overweight that at the end of that is some type of Machiavellian goal of actually doing that person a favor you're really not just don't bother leave Leave it out. And if you're the weight that you are, your business. If you're comfortable with that, your business as well. I'm only speaking about this shit for me, personally. It's what works for me.

I like being the weight that gives me the best quality of life, flexibility, energy. And for me, that's about between 12 and 12 and a half stone in my experience and the majority of fat people that i know are not fat because they eat loads it's just that's how their fucking bodies are and they try really hard and their body just it's like no sorry this is your shape you can try your best but this is ultimately your shape you know so we have to take that on board

there's a real hatred for fucking fat people and I can't get my like yeah it is a hatred for fat people we'd like to think, oh no, it's not, it's, it's a hatred for greedy, excessive people, but it's not, that's not the

case, look at, we'll say YouTube channels for competitive eat, not competitive eating, but a huge thing on YouTube is you'd get somebody usually quite a muscly bodybuilder type person and they will they'll say i'm doing a 10 000 calorie challenge today and you have this person who looks in great physical shape munching through 10 pizzas and people love that and that person is seen as a legend if a person who's overweight or fat was to sit down and eat 10 pizzas on youtube they would be vilified and demonized same thing with influencers if an influencer on instagram fits into the category of what our time place and culture.

Has decided is physically attractive. They can post. Pictures of burgers and chips. All day long. And. It's empowering. But god fucking help. That influencer.

If they were overweight. The comments would. You'd see like even a female influencer and she could be thin, good looking and she'd post a photograph of a plate of burgers and say

Monday goals, I don't know whatever the fuck they say you'd have 20 lads underneath going that's the type of woman I like now, a woman who's not afraid to eat. If that influencer was overweight or identified as fat, those lads, they'd be,

if they weren't, if they weren't roaring abuse at her, they'd be saying, are you sure the burger is what you want today, love? Maybe the fucking Saturday is the option for you do you know so it's not about

consumption it's not about greed it is a a demonization of overweight fat people so what am I advocating for

what I would always advocate for is first of all, to achieve self-knowledge, as in an understanding of who you are, a real deep understanding of your body, of your mind, to be able to have the authority to say for yourself what works for you. If what works for you is. Going on a healthier diet.

Exercising. Improving yourself physically. Becoming more flexible. Becoming more energetic. And doing these things. Solely for the purpose of improving the lived experience of your own life. Not for someone in your life who's telling you to look a certain way or be a certain way. Or for the imaginary people in our head.

A lot of the time when we change ourselves for other people, you're not really doing it for another person what you're doing for it's it's for the judgmental people in your own head do you know do you get what i'm saying it's like we've fabricated these judgmental people but they don't exist because they might be too worried about their own shit to be concerned about us but that's what i'm advocating for enjoy the process of self-improvement and don't get any form of self-improvement confused with the path to happiness.

Okay? The little voice in our head that will tell us I will be happy when I lose this stone. I will be happy when I lose this stone. I will be happy when I've got bigger shoulder muscles. I will be happy when I can run 20 kilometers.

Do you know what I'm saying? We always fool ourselves into thinking that happiness is this achievable thing, this grass is on the greener on the other side, that once you get to this goal, that at the end of it, what we're actually looking for is happiness. That doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. Happiness is not something that can ever be attained. If your appearance or your health or your weight or anything is currently causing you to be upset, obviously improving around those issues will remove the reasons for being upset.

But if you're not, if self-acceptance in general isn't the vibe, a new sadness will replace the old one. No aspect of your physical appearance, no aspect of your behaviour, can affect your intrinsic value as a fucking human. And it's as simple as that. Self-acceptance. No matter if you're embarking on anything. You go first.

Where is my level of self-acceptance in this? So for me. Saying I'm going to lose this fucking stone. I'm not doing it because I think I'm going to be happier in a month's time when I get rid of it. I'm going no. I accept the way I am right now. I no I accept the way I am right now I'm happy with where I am right now but personally I think I'd be more comfortable in a month's time or in six weeks time with this added flexibility and energy that's that's the better life that I

want to live happiness happens in the here and now at all times it is not something that's the better life that I want to live happiness happens in the here and now at all times it is not something that's going to happen in six months time happiness is the choices that you make in the present moment and how you enjoy the process and any old school bandits fans listening

who are thinking Jesus blind boy but don't you have a song called Bag of Glue that talks about having sex with a girl who's fat yes we do and i would love to go back to 16 year old me and to 16 year old mr crom when we wrote that and explain concepts such as empathy but we didn't have it didn't have access to it, too insecure, too wrapped up in our own shit,

too immature to be seeing the world from, in another person's shoes, you know, but that's the benefit of hindsight, that's the benefit of experience and growing, and just taking on board past shitty behaviour, and trying to use, a new mature understanding of it for a better purpose you know to use that to fuel a better purpose let's have an ocarina pause and then i'll get on to talking about

something silly maybe oh where's the here we go so the ocarina is my south american spanish clay American Spanish Clay Whistle. And. I put it halfway through the fucking podcast. Because there's digital adverts inserted. So. We played the ocarina. To let you know. There may be. An advert for some shit you don't need. You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishikesh Herway,

the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Gimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca.

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what? Yeah, the fucking Patreon. em what yeah the fucking patreon this podcast is sponsored by you the listener via the patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast some people

who listen to the podcast like to donate the equivalent of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month to keep the podcast to keep the podcast going I suppose if I wasn't getting paid for it I wouldn't be doing it every week

I'd be doing it when a hot take arrived into my head in a very leisurely fashion but because I've got patreons and people subscribing and donating I make sure this thing is regular every single week to give you your weekly podcast hug so thank you everyone who donates on the patreon page and if you don't want to donate That's fine you can listen for free It's a suggested donation Completely up to you Also what you can do

Subscribe to the podcast Like it on iTunes or on Acast Leave a review of the podcast Give it a couple of stars Or a little review Recommend it to a friend Recommend it to a friend. Recommend it to a friend in a foreign country.

In particular. I love. Just the mad little pockets of listeners. I get all over the gaff you know. Strange little communities. In Canada. Or Australia. New Zealand.

Fucking Spain. Small little groups of friends. Like there's, there was a group of friends, there was about, a book group got on to me in Italy last week, and they're people who meet to discuss books. Somehow they ended up with my book. I don't know how. And then they ended up listening to the podcast, and now this group of Italians discuss my podcast at the end of the book group.

And I love that. I just think it's fucking weird. That is weird as fuck. So shout out to you, Sophia and Benvenuto, you Italian cunts. Do you know what we'll talk about actually? To take kind of a. A weird twist. On what I was talking about.

Before the ocarina pause. Do you know the practice of. We'll say depriving your body. There's a thing called asceticism, right? Now it's kind of a spiritual practice that's thousands and thousands and thousands of years old. It's, how would I describe it? It's a form of self-punishment. No, punishment isn't the word.

It's a way of depriving the sensual qualities of the body, right? The, the, like the senses, touch, smell smell sexual senses uh eating depriving yourself of these senses as a way to achieve spiritual enlightenment a kind of a spiritual goal and this goes back before fucking organized religion. Like, I mean, you'd find it in, the Greeks were up to it, you know. It's present in Hinduism, Christianity, Islam.

You know, Ramadan is, in a sense, has elements of asceticism. But monks, Jesus, the monks were, like, interestingly with how asceticism was practiced in Ireland with the Irish monks was they'd fuck off into an island

you know what's that one that Star Wars is filmed in bollocks it's near Valencia fuck you know

Irish monks their asceticism was to deprive themselves of other people you know the

the aesthetics ascetic sense of aesthetic I'm getting aesthetic and ascetic mixed up now the Irish monks were depriving themselves

of socialising other human beings as a way to achieve a spiritual enlightenment a Catholic priest's abstinence from sex and nuns

that's a form of asceticism you know if you take away the pleasure and feeding of the flesh that this will bring you closer to a spiritual awakening or whatever the fuck you know

satanism interestingly is the one kind of religion that straight up says fuck off to asceticism satanism is about the animal pleasure the pleasures of the fresh the animal animal pleasures of the flesh and hedonism you know that's what satanism is about it's about feed your desire for sex and for anything, for food, the lot, that's what, that's a tenet of Satanism. To an extent, even some of the shit I was talking about earlier regarding

mental health practices is a form of asceticism. me getting up in the morning and yeah when I go for a 10k jog as well I do it on an empty stomach that in a sense is a form of asceticism what I'm doing is pushing

my body what my mind wants first thing in the morning is a big breakfast and to sit down in front of the laptop and to kind of waste my morning a bit. Now if I do that, if I sit down in front of the laptop or in front of the TV with a big breakfast,

like the second I get out of bed, then I will have a lethargic, grumpy, irritable day. So what I do is I get out in bed, then I will have a lethargic, grumpy, irritable day, so what I do is I get out in a pair of shorts and run, and if it's raining, all the better, running through the fucking rain for 10 kilometres, to deprive myself of, what am I depriving myself of? Lethargy, do you know? depriving myself of lethargy, do you know, it's, it's, I'm depriving myself of what's available to me as a comfortable human being in the 21st century, which is social media, a breakfast and a couch, so I get out there and get my knees cold first thing in the morning and it is spiritual you know

meant being committed to your mental health is a spiritual practice it's taking yourself towards a very here and now process based experience of happiness not pleasure but contentment and happiness but asceticism has been around for a long time not to be confused with aestheticism which means when something looks nice

or sounds nice ascetic and the most famous I suppose practice of it would be the Buddha now the story of the Buddha the Buddha obviously being he's the Christ of Buddhism

but the Buddha was an incredibly rich young fella born into he was born into like a royal family An incredibly rich young fella. Born into. He was born into like a royal family. Now I'm getting all this from memory. So if anyone's a Buddhist.

Get prepared to be offended. While I make shit of your fucking religion. With my scant memory of it. So the Buddha was a rich young fella. He had everything he wanted. Right. Fucking everything. Well this was mainly his dad's fault. So the Buddha was a rich young fella. He had everything he wanted, right? Fucking everything. Well, this was mainly his dad's fault.

The Buddha's father didn't want his child to ever experience any form of suffering whatsoever. Now they say it's because his ma had a fucking dream. That's it. Buddha's ma had a dream that Buddha would grow, while she was pregnant with him, before she gave birth to Buddha, his ma had a dream that he was either going to be

a mad ruler king, very powerful powerful king or else a religious leader and i think she said that to buddha's da the da freaked out and said fuck that i want an earth of the throne i don't want the buddha being a religious leader i want him to fully embrace the power that i want to I'm going to hand him um as my son because I'm the king so from a young age his dad was like fuck this uh this young fella is not going to see a shred of unhappiness or human suffering so what he did was he gave him all the food he wanted he gave him you know the best education the best games like he made sure that the buddha was never ever bored because there would have been jesters and musicians and then when the buddha got to about 13 and he started to get a horn and grow pubes his father gave him a harem which was

basically like from the ages of about 13 to 20 the Buddha was just having gangbangs all day it was just in his bedroom with 16 of the finest looking bheers from all around the village and this was his life consistent, continual, physical pleasure for every one of the senses

every one of them. And that was the Buddha's early life. So when the Buddha got to his 20s, you know, all the riding, you know, the non-stop, you know, as many guards as he wanted, all the food, the food, all the games. He kind of, he was like, yeah, but what's outside the palace? Do you know, he started to get curious. So despite the efforts of his dad to keep him inside, he snuck out with like a guide and snuck out into the villages around the palace where he had been imprisoned in physical pleasure his entire life and the first thing

he saw is he saw I saw an old fella he saw an old man and he was like what the fuck is that what the fuck is that and

his guide was going what do you mean what is that that's just a man but buddha was like no he's all like frail and wrinkly and the guide said yeah he's old and buddha was like what do you mean what does that mean it's like that's what's going to happen to you that's what happens all of us us. We age. We get old. And the Buddha was like. Fuck. That's bleak. So then he went out again.

And at this point now. He wasn't able to enjoy. Any of the. The pleasures of the palace. Because now he's. You know. He's there in his harem. Of women.

Eating apples. Or whatever. Fancy shit they had back then. And. He's going. I can't enjoy this. It doesn't matter how many. How many of these women I have.

Or how much food I have. Or how much entertainment I have. I know that I'm going to be old someday. So he went out again. With the guide. Snuck out of the palace. And. What did he see the second time

a sick person he saw like a leper and the leper was like his own age and then he's like what the fuck is this and he's like that's a sick person

what's a sick person well you know a disease can happen it can happen to you you know we don't know why it's just some people get sick

and it can kill them really early so again this was for the buddha was like fuck this how am i supposed to enjoy my my gangbang now and then out again finally for the third trip and they come across a corpse and then the buddha's like what's that it's like that's a human being that's a dead person that's what happens at the end that's what death is do you remember I was talking about the sick

fella and the old fella that's what happens it's that it's dead so this kind of throws Buddha into an existential crisis because he'd been protected from all of this his entire life and then on the last trip

actually no was it four trips the last trip he sees he comes across an ascetic right and the ascetic was basically just a lad with nothing and that got into Buddha's head that

because he had lived his life as this man of pleasure the solution would have to be in depriving himself of all these pleasures he believed that if I take away sex, food, the whole lot my money, the lot

that I will escape death, old age, these things. It was his way of escaping it. So in a way he became, he was like the original hipster. to the village threw everything away and became a mendicant which is a form of ascetic where basically it was he would beg he would sit on the side of the road and the only way that he would get food is on the generosity of other people he would beg for food and meditate in this extreme ascetic lifestyle in his way of escaping death sickness old age so on the kind of buddha's path of asceticism where he was testing the limits of his body you know he was like um going off to train in the mountains with mad yogis and things like that he would abstain from food

I doubt it doesn't mention it but I doubt he was wanking he would abstain from anything that was experienced in any way pleasurable by any of the senses and would just meditate for days and days on end

in in a way to essentially to avoid the inevitabilities of human existence and like one day he was meditating so hard and had turned himself into skin and bone that a young girl assumed that he was a ghost and gave him a bowl of rice, which he accepted because she thought that he was a ghost that had granted her a wish. But what made the Buddha different, we'll say, from, like I said, meditation, yoga, asceticism, these have been around long before the Buddha, but what made the Buddha the awakened one or the enlightened one, I think that's what Buddha even means, he discovered that his asceticism, he was fooling himself. That what he was doing, he was avoiding inevitabilities. He was trying to avoid the unavoidable.

That his extreme treatment of his body and that his extreme deprivation of the senses was as indulgent in pain as his previous life of harems and food and entertainment was as unhelpful so he his enlightenment revealed to him a thing called the middle path or the middle way and that's what Buddhism kind of is, it's about

the middle way is humility and moderation it's not extreme asceticism where there's punishment of the body going on to deprive

the senses of pleasure and it's also not extreme indulgence in any of the senses it's a present moment just getting by just living

and focusing on the here and now. Which sounds quite similar to all the shit that I go on with. Because, you know, my, I won't say religion, but my doctrine, we'll say, is psychotherapy, psychology. That's where I kind of get my guidance from, Doctrine we'll say. Is psychotherapy. Psychology. That's where I.

Kind of get my guidance from. And a huge amount of psychotherapy. Has it's roots in Buddhism you know. It genuinely does. Especially. Carl Rogers. Who I spoke about. A good few podcasts back.

But anyway yeah. After I butchered the story of Buddha there. I just want to talk about this particular sect of ascetics that I find quite interesting and they're very extreme there's a sect of Buddhism in Japan called the Sokushinbutsu Sokushinbutsu that's it and basically what they do is

they mummify themselves they they kind of go about a final act of meditation where they die during meditation and their bodies don't decay and

it's incredibly rare sect and quite extreme but it's a thing the bodies don't decay there's like only about 24 25 examples of it but researchers have found bodies of these

soko shinbutsu monks some of them from like the 12th century that are perfectly preserved and didn't decompose and their bodies are in a meditative state dead obviously but no decomposition dead obviously but no decomposition now it stems from there's a belief nearly across all religions that incredibly holy beings

when they die they never decompose that these spiritual beings not even religion it's a human thing you'll see it political it's one of the reasons when like when Eamon de Valera fucking died there's dead body on tv for two days you know using media as a way of mummification but the same with Lenin the the Russian leader the Soviet leader Lenin he took a while to decompose and I believe Padre Pio.

So it's something within. The depths of the human unconscious. That these. You know great beings transcend death. And death can't win by. Eating their bodies up and decomposing them. But these. Japanese lads.

How they kind of went about it like obviously to meditate to the point that you mummify is going to be incredibly fucking unpleasant and they also don't consider it an act of suicide so how they go about it is that there's a 3000 day training process

and only special kind of ascetic monks are chosen these are monks who already have a long history of practicing asceticism and starving themselves for long periods of time, going days without water, going days without sleep. The first thing they do is they remove kind of all carbohydrates from the diet. Wheat and rice and millet. These are gone.

And they start to eat things, nuts, berries, pine needles, the bark of trees and resin. And over time, their diet like just... They essentially slowly starve themselves. You know, getting no nutrients. over time their diet like just they essentially slowly starve themselves you know getting no nutrients there's also a theory too that

what they're trying to do is like purge the body of like human fat, water all of this stuff to even purge the body of natural bacteria. They also would be eating certain

kind of herbs and these nuts that they were eating called cyad nuts and these are poisonous and researchers claim that eating these poisonous nuts kind of toxifies the body to the point that natural bacteria just

leaves the body you know now this ends in death so it's not you know it's not something you'd advocate like these these lads are the eventual goal is death so they're toxifying their bodies and some have said that it's almost like by eating some of these berries and these chemicals a lot of them are very close to embalming fluid so they're embalming themselves

before they even die so once the ascetic monk decides that he wants to become a Soko Shinbutsu, they build like a stone burial chamber. And he gets inside it, essentially buried alive. And they leave a tiny little opening in it for fucking air to get in. And the monk goes in essentially starving himself

chanting meditating and also occasionally ringing a bell as part of the meditation and once the bell stops ringing then

the other monks go and seal the chamber that's when they know right he's dead now and a few years later they open it up to see if the body is perfectly preserved

and if it is then that monk has like transcended death or is seen as to be not truly dead but in kind of a zombie zombified state of suspended animation Salvador Dali tried to do it to himself salvador dali the famous artist near the end of his life read an article that fruit flies can

deprive themselves of water and dry themselves out to the point that they can enter suspended animation and then reemerge as a living being a thousand years later if you just put water on him and dally tried to do that to himself tried to starve himself of water nearly killed himself to become a transcendental fruit fly so yeah the monks who could you know after a few years when when you open the chamber like the ones that just turned into a pile of bones and dust. They were not considered. The. Soku Shinbutsu.

But the ones who remained in state. Mummified. They were the Soku Shinbutsu. So their bodies were like delicately. Removed. Dressed in robes. And a shrine was built. And humans come and worship the mummy

who will one day come back to life now some say there's a bit of cheating as well that when they would drag the mummified body out of the chamber they would essentially smoke the body with incense which would preserve it as a form of human worship jerky.

There's another mad, quite similar practice. Now, we're going back thousands of years for this. This goes back to Assyria. So you're talking four or five thousand years ago. And it's known as mellified men. ago and it's known as mellified men and what this was was a very strange form of it's like the 5 000 year old equivalent of donating your body to science or donating your body to medicine so what certain people would do in a syrian society to become a mellified man is that they would live out their last days i think mellified the mell word as well refers to honey so these lads would live on a diet

exclusively of honey for the past few weeks of their life and essentially die of a strange honey starvation but I mean the extremity of it was something else like they were essentially fucking sacrificing themselves like they would say that like the

person living on this honey diet, exclusive honey diet for however long, before death their piss would be honey their shit would be honey, their piss would be honey their shit would be honey their sweat would be honey they would be honey from all of their pores because there's nothing left in the body other than you know gorging on honey honey itself at the time as well lads there was no sweets this is assyria and honey is this magical source of sweetness that comes from a paper bag surrounded by insects that can kill you. So, like, it would have had serious spiritual significance, this fucking honey.

And it would have been expensive. And then after they'd eaten only honey for weeks and weeks. Once they died. Their body was. Stored in honey. Which is a fantastic preservative. You know. And. And they'd keep the body in the honey for. Fucking ages.

Like a hundred years. Of the. The body. Resting in honey. And then the body was dug out. Chopped up into little bits. And. This would be seen as.

One of the most expensive medicines. Within the culture at the time. People would buy little bits. Of honey preserved corpse. Of a malified man. And eat it to cure all ills. So there you go. So I'll answer a couple of questions I haven't answered questions

in a few weeks most of the questions if you ask them on Patreon that's the easiest way well you can always fucking here's the thing yeah I've tons and tons of direct messages

on Twitter Instagram fucking Snapchat and I try and get through them all if i haven't replied if you sent me a direct message and i haven't replied i'm sorry i literally get 60 70 a day i answer what i can so the questions i usually take them on patreon because that's the it's the easiest place it's a smaller number number of people so Daniel O'Keefe asks what is the origin

what is that? what is the origin of the Irish slang word quare do you know Daniel, I actually have a fucking interesting factor on that one quare is, it's an Irish word it some people

will say you know it means queer and not queer in the LGBT context but queer as in

strange odd most people in the Hiberno English sense queer is used as you know I had a queer big cup of tea in the Hiberno-English sense. Queer is used as, you know,

I had a queer big cup of tea. That was a queer strange film I just saw. It's used as, I don't know the name for that type of word, but it can be used very flexibly. You know, the subject matter of this podcast

was queer diverse, we'll say. Queer is interesting because around Wexford, where I was just doing a podcast recently, but Wexford is where the Normans first invaded Ireland. Normans first invaded Ireland. So the native Gaelic Irish, we were invaded in, was it around 1120?

It was about 40 years after 1066 when the British were invaded by the Normans. So the Normans came to Ireland, to the coast of Wexford, around 1110, 1120, from the coast of Wexford around 1110, 1120 from the coast of Wales right and these Normans were the Normans who

had taken over Britain William the Conqueror you know his children essentially so the Norman that came to Ireland was Strongbow and he brought with him a small force of these Normans

now it's not fair to of these Normans. Now it's not fair to call the Normans Brits. They weren't. Britain was the Anglo-Saxons. Around 1066 Britain was Anglo-Saxons who were, after the fall of the Roman Empire, these tribes of, Germanic tribes, eventually started going to England and became the Anglo-Saxons. So when the Normans, the thing about Normans, Normans were French, but they weren't really, because the Normans were Vikings.

About, the Vikings from Norway, Denmark, places like that, a warlike people who were classed at ships, the Normans started exploring down around France and into the Mediterranean. And one Viking called Rollo went to Normandy in France. And what the Normans used to do was they would raid like Paris and they'd say like give us a load of money and we'll fuck off

that's what they used to do because they were fearsome that's what the Vikings were fearsome so the king of France said to Rollo one day okay here's your money fuck off and Rollo said we don't want money this time.

Give us an area of land in France. And that's what happened. So they gave Rollo an area that became Normandy. North man, men from the north. So the establishment of Normandy in France, these people became the Normans. So that's 900 maybe or 1000. Then you go to 1066.

These French speaking people who are essentially Vikings, they go down to Britain, take over Britain, William the Conqueror in 1066. Then they go, let's have a crack at Ireland. Now they did this and I've spoken about it many times because they had a father called Gerald of Cambrensis, who wrote a scathing fucking,

I did a podcast on this, a scathing kind of assessment of Ireland as being this lawless, lunatic land. So the Normans came to the coast of Wexford in about 1110, thereabouts, and settled. And what was interesting is these kind of French-speaking people were a little bit, they would have had, no, at this stage they'd have been nearly exclusively French,

early former French. They wouldn't really have been speaking English. They settled in Wexford and they started to intermingle with the people of Wexford who would have been speaking Gaelic and this pidgin dialect that was half French, half Gaelic by the name of Yola, the Yola dialect and Yola culture and I don't know why it only happened in Wexford this established itself in Wexford and it maintained this little separate culture and dialect

of half French half Gaelic it kept as a small little culture up until about the 1700s which is quite recent you know and the only word that we have left from the Eola dialect is Cuir Cuir is

a mixture of Norman and Gaelic it's the only word left and that's why quare is a special word um i wrote that into one of my short stories i have a short story about a if the character ends up fingering the banshee i don't know but it's said in Wexford and the word quare features into it but yeah there was that, that's where quare comes from the yola dialect which was a pigeon

of French and Gaelic there was another interesting similar culture that emerged called Fingal or Fingalese up around the area of North Dublin Fingal, the Fingal area which would be fucking Rush, Lusk, Donabate

Blanchardstown but Fingalese was a separate little culture too, with it's own language so I hope that answers your question you prick Michael asks, what is your theory what's your thoughts on the flat earth theory, is it truth or spoof it's spoof on the flat earth theory?

Is it truth or spoof? It's spoof obviously. The earth is round. Right, we know this. This is evident. But what makes the flat earth theory so interesting and the fact that flat earth really only gained traction in the past four years because a rapper called B.O.B

was very fucking clever very clever B.O.B who was promoting an album comes out and says the earth is flat and the entire internet said what are you talking about you lunatic and all of a sudden everybody

is now talking about B.O.B and his flat earth. And it probably ended in a few extra gigs or a few tickets sold or whatever. Flat earth theory, which is utter bullshit, obviously. It is the theory that the earth is not round but is flat, which shouldn't exist. It's a great commentary on our times. It relates to some of the... I had a podcast two podcasts ago where I spoke about the nature of knowledge today in the clickbait kind of post-truth world. Truth is hard to get our hands on because we're living in this new era of spectacle and theatre, you know, where it's hard to know if anything is true because there's so many multiple viewpoints on the internet and flat earthing is one of those things.

It can only exist today in the world of clickbait and unstable reality that we inhabit and that's what makes the flat earth thing bullshit but also interesting that in this kind of that it only exists now fine if it existed before we fucking circumnavigated the globe. But today, are you for real? The flat earth? Come on. But there's people who actually fucking believe it because you've got a president of the United States calling truth fake news. Reality has been fully destabilized.

So within that destabilization, it's possible for flat earth to be believed. There's people who believe that the earth is controlled by interdimensional shape-shifting lizards. Why not a flat earth? They believe that these lizards live inside the earth. It can only exist now, in this time where reality has been fully destabilised. Truth has been destabilised. From the top down.

Okay, that's enough for this week. Regarding last week's podcast, was it last week? I was speaking about my video game, my problematic attitude towards video games and my potential video game addiction. What I've been doing is, I'll only play video games at night time. That's it.

The day time, no video games, I'll have an hour or two of video games after 9 o'clock and get all my work done during the day that's really been working for me I have a live podcast with the author Roddy Doyle which I I might spoil you

and put it out this week in the next couple of days because his film Rosie is in cinemas and I want to help him promote it. And Rosie is a great film. Please go and see it. But I'll try and put out that Roddy Doyle podcast over the next couple of days. The reason I didn't put it out last week, because I was supposed to put Roddy out last week, I didn't have the proper recording. I recorded a version on my machine that had too much crowd noise

and Vicar Street recorded a better version that was just the mics so I was waiting to get that recording alright I'll leave you go you fantastic boys and girls I hope you took something from this week's podcast I enjoyed doing that

it was a nice old school flowy rant you know alright look after yourselves rub a dog be compassionate to yourselves be compassionate to other people

yart Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.