Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 503: David Nichtern

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

David Nichtern, incredibly talented musician, principal instructor at Dharma Moon, and Duncan's good friend, re-joins the DTFH! Dharma Moon’s 100 Hour Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training led by David Nichtern starts May 18! (Note: an early bird discount of $300 will automatically apply if you register for the full training by Saturday April 16.) Dharma Moon's Intro to Mindfulness & The Path of Meditation (Level 1 of the Teacher Training) can also be taken as a stand alone program. David also has a new album! Listen to Pandemoonia, by David Nichtern & Matt Oestreicher, performed by The Dharma Moon Orchestra with special guests Randy Brecker, Julian Lage, Ada Rovatti and Jerry Marotta. Available everywhere you listen to your music! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Super Speciosa - Visit GetSuperLeaf.com/Duncan and get 20% Off your first order! Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Athletic Greens - Visit AthleticGreens.com/Duncan for a FREE 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase!

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are probably dead. And it's spooky. And when I go to a funeral, see the people weeping, and a body in the casket. And it's spooky. And then the Casper, the friendly ghost, car too. I always wondered how it was. And he died.

And it's spooky. Sometimes when I'm watching television. That was a cover of It's Spooky by Daniel Johnston and Chad Fair, a true power couple. Speaking of power couples, today's guest and I are a power couple. At least he helps me a lot. I have had an ongoing conversation with this man

about Buddhism and meditation. I guess it's been going on over for many years now. And I love sharing him with all of y'all. You know him from the Midnight Gospel. It's David, David Nickturn. He is the principal instructor at darmamoon.com. And he's also a good friend of mine and incredibly talented musician, among other things.

And today, we had a really wild conversation about war, violence, secret mystery schools, the roots of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. And we even brought up the great mystery that hovers around anyone living today, which is the roots of the term OK. I hope you'll stay tuned. It's a great chat.

But first, this. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by Superspeciosa, purveyors of the finest Kratom on planet Earth. Kratom gets you in a really cool zone. It's a wild buzz. Kratom's been around for centuries. People have used it for all kinds of things,

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for people in the audience that have already used it. So there you go. Thank you, SuperspecyOSA. Send me more. And we are back. Friends, I want you to come see me do some stand-up comedy with Johnny Pemberton this weekend in Austin. The last time I was there attempting to do stand-up comedy,

I was beset by the plague and had to spend 10 days in a hotel room. But I'm flying back to make it up to you for canceling all those shows. I hope you'll come out. It's at the Vulcan Gas Company. All the links are at dunkatrustle.com. Also, to my sweet LA friends, I'm

going to be there at the end of the month doing a live DTFH for the Netflix is a joke comedy festival. Dan Harmon is going to be one of the guests on this episode. So it's going to be epic. You can find all these ticket links at dunkatrustle.com. And finally, won't you join my Patreon? It's at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. And now my dear sweeties with us here today

is David from the Midnight Gospel, AKA David Nickturn, AKA principal meditation teacher at darmamoon.com. If you like him, check him out over there. Take one of his classes. They're offering a teacher training program in May and lots of other stuff. You can find it all at darmamoon.com.

But before you do that, tune in for this conversation with David Nickturn. Hello. Good to see you, David. How are you doing? Everything's OK, Duncan. But do you know what OK stands for? No. Neither do I. Oh, my God. I've never considered that.

We say it all the time, right? OK. OK. OK. Well, there's the O part and the K part. OK. Holy shit. Wow.

I didn't mean to derail you completely. This is just going to destroy my life. I've been saying that over and over. Never once have we thought to look it up. Is this the clue? Is it hidden in that? If we look up OK, suddenly it reveals our true reality. Well, if we looked at it as mantra, O is opening, right?

And K is cutting. Open and cut sounds like a scary mantra. But yeah, I get it. I mean, that's kind of revision, right? The opening part is the writing. Then the K part would be when you have to go in and actually work. My favorite part of writing is the very initial vomiting

out of some idea onto the page. Everything after that not quite as fun. They call that writing down the bones. Yeah, right. Have you heard that expression? I have, yeah. I have. Yeah, writing down the bones.

And then that's when the real work kicks in. I think that's why a lot of people aren't never become writers is because they don't want to go through. They like the bone part, but they don't like structuring the whatever it is they're working on. I don't. Most writers I know hate the revision part and the trimming

part. How do you feel about that part of the process? They like the old part, but they don't like the K. They don't like the K. Yeah. This is, the creative process is so interesting that it dawns, and it just kind of opens up. Yes. It comes out of space and gap and nothing in particular.

Right? Whenever you have a creative idea, it just seems to come from nowhere. Yes. And then your right to follow through is what separates the manifesters from the dreamers. Yeah, exactly. Right, exactly.

Because the dreamers, if you can stay dreamer, if you can stay the O part, then you can fool yourself into thinking that there's something, I don't know, soft about you, sweet about you. You know what I mean? You can trick yourself into it. But because anytime you see the people who are into the K part of stuff, there's

this weird rugged quality to them or an oxen-like quality, where they just keep, like I've run into many people living in L.A. Of course, you're surrounded by people who are good at both parts. But the second part, the first part is like riding around on your fancy horse in front of some nice palace and some fantasy countryside. It's a sort of like you feel like a poet or like the fool

in the tarot card deck or whatever. The second part, it really is more like digging trenches or planting seeds or, you know what I mean? It's hard. It's hard work. And I think it turns a lot of people off. Well, and then you can have too much K. They're not on a pole. Well, this is why they say, write stoned, revise sober.

That might be interesting to switch it around. You can't. Because if you get stoned and try to do revisions, this is just not me. I've talked to editors, and they have told me that they cannot edit. And I'm sorry for the editors out there, like this is I'm always stoned.

But some editors I've talked to, they're like, I can't edit stoned, not because it incapacitates me, but because I become too. I zoom in too much on just the little bits of the thing. You can become like it too into the little parts. Yeah, are you getting stoned a lot these days? No, I haven't been as much. You know, I'm always like getting stoned here and there.

But no, I go through phases with marijuana. I mean, my last big marijuana phase was years ago. And I stayed stoned for two years straight. But I haven't come back there. It was fun. It was a fun two years. Fun. Yeah.

I was in the best shape of my life. You mean because you exercised a lot? Yeah, because I liked I had I had wrapped together getting stoned and jogging, which is one of the great experiences in life. Have you ever even ever done that? Well, you know, I don't get stoned all that often. But sometimes.

And I jog even less. OK. Ah, well. Maybe I'm missing that it's a couple. Oh, my God. Yeah, that's like I think that of all the substances out there that I'm aware of, marijuana is the best for exercise. Wow.

That's the first time I've ever even heard that. Really? That's wild. That's about eating and, you know, kind of spacing out and listening to music and things like that. You can do I will I would eat while I when I used to jog. I would carry a backpack full. Oh, God, that's a formula for potential disaster.

Well, dogs, the problem is dogs chase you. But the the no getting stoned and exercising because, you know, marijuana is a very like earthy high. Like you're you're in your body. This is why a lot of people get paranoid because they're like it reminds you of all the earth stuff that you need to take care of. You know, whereas like other substances like ketamine, LSD, they're more ethereal.

You know, you can say I think you can say argue that mushrooms are and very earthy high like they but some things seem to not be earthy at all. They seem to be alien or sort of, you know, disassociates associatives in particular. Anyway, yeah, job getting you should try it, David. I'm serious. You would like it. Yeah. Well, you know, I practice Tai Chi. And that's my main and I'm studying a sword form with the Tai Chi.

That's very interesting. Tai Chi is really cool. I took a Tai Chi class in college and I didn't. I couldn't. I just didn't understand it. But now and now I think about it sometimes wondering what is going on there? Like you see people doing it in the park and stuff and it's like some form of dance. But also it's moving energy in a certain way or what's what's going on with that?

Yeah, so it's got a knowledge of the inner landscape, the channels and energy channels. So it's the same knowledge as acupuncturists would have. Usually a good Tai Chi person can also do acupuncture. My teacher can do both. And energy just gets blocked in your body. You know, look at the way anybody's sitting at any one time. You can just you can see almost an energy diagram around them of their physical energy.

All right. So. But in terms of all in K. You know, I think that's a we stumble upon stuff. Don't we, Duncan? You know, yeah, we just kind of like put on our goggles and go down. Yeah. But there is something about the. Allowing space, you know. And I saw your podcast the other night on BHN.

Oh, yeah. And I was just thinking, you know, how many people just leave a little bit of space at all, even in the conversation or in their day? Right. You know, just and that's oh, you know, it's just like there's nothing to do. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I think maybe, you know, people might think that drugs could enhance that. Do you think that some people take drugs to enhance that sense of oh,

and spaciousness and yeah, sure. Definitely. Yeah. It's a tool to to get there. It's one of the ways to get there. I mean, it's just one of the problem with drugs that we haven't fixed yet, which I hope we will, is that you there's this. It's like, OK, balding medications. You want to take the balding medication?

Guess what? Your dick's not going to get as hard. Right. You know what I mean? So why wait a minute. What? That could be one of the effects is maybe you're putting it in the wrong place. It can fuck up your sex drive. So like you're putting it in the wrong place. What you mean? I wasn't pushing into your cock.

Holy shit. I got to get more. No, like this is the. So this is the trade off, right? You know, certain types of MDMA, right? It makes you want to cuddle. It's like makes sex great.

But guess what? You can't come. So there are these like satanic things built into certain substances where there's either a price you have to pay that that is not equal to the experience, but can sometimes exceed the experience in suffering. You know what I mean? Like MDMA, at least if you've done it as many times as I have, I don't take it anymore because the it's not worth the two days

when my brain doesn't have enough happy juice in it. And I go into a depression for a couple of days. So I can't do it anymore. And I know a lot of people who just they just can't. And then to try to mitigate that, there's all sorts of things you can take after and before that might help you balance out a little bit. But it's just to me not worth it anymore. In the beginning, it was great, but now not so much.

I'm down to only a few drugs that I can like take that don't have a repercussion marijuana being one of them, at least as far as I think you could. What would be the consequence of you just stopping completely for a year? Probably like I've become too productive. You become productive. No, wow, you're pretty productive already. What do you mean? No, I'm just like, well, I don't like, again,

I'm not really I'm not a stoner anymore. I used to do it all the time. I mean, so that I don't know that there would be any consequence. Anything would really change that much. You know, any habit is so interesting to shift any habit. So even I sometimes say, do this with your hands. OK, I just reversed it. The placement. All right. You feel that?

Yeah, it's totally different. It's totally different. It's and it doesn't feel comfortable or normal. All right. Yeah, right. So resting in spaces that are comfortable or normal. It's almost a good practice. So yeah, this was OK. So Crowley in his book, Lieber four, I believe it's in that book.

He in that this is the beginning phases of magic. He would recommend exactly this, except it was weird stuff like stop using your left hand for a month or, you know, don't say I for. A month, you know, things like that. But then he because it's Crowley, he added to it. And again, sorry for my felonites out there. He added to it, like the punish yourself if you mess up. So like, you know, and he recommended, I think, like cutting yourself,

like hurting, hurting yourself. No. Yeah. But it was I think he was mirroring the in India. And in fact, isn't this when the Buddha goes into the forest? He encounters the ascetics and the ascetics were doing stuff like this. They were not eating. They were in India. You see people who was like out of some penance have put their hand up and won't lower it.

And so it just, you know, that thing. So this is what you're talking about. What Crowley was talking about. It's like a way to shift out of your comfort zone. Yeah. Of course, he walked on by. In the words of the immortal Bard. He walked on by. Buddha hung with the ascetics, tried the ascetic thing.

He was down to one grain of rice a day, according to some stories and sitting in campfires. And, you know, the general notion was if you if you can switch off your attachments to sense perceptions and physical sensations that you will experience some kind of mental quietude and, you know, space in which something is more luminous is revealed to you. But he tried it and found that it left a residue or a trace of that effort of trying to do something in or get rid of something.

So that that didn't work for him. I mean, he you could say, well, we should try it too. I mean, I'm I'm I'm intrigued by if somebody else has already tried something like you've tried all the drugs I ever need to take, you know. OK, sure, David. I OK, David, like you've never taken drugs. Of course, I know you. I know this. You're in the 60s.

I know you're hanging out with you. But my point is that you can learn from other people's experience. If you if you like the whole idea of Buddhism, you know, well, it's just one guy in the forest, as you said, twenty five hundred years ago. So why should you even care anything you said or what he did? Because you have to find out for yourself. But there is some efficacy in hearing other people's stories along the way and learning, benefiting from their experience.

Right. Yeah. Right. You can save some time that way. I just the the you have to verify, though, you have to verify. But just to stick around in the forest with the aesthetics, you know, this is I like this part of this of the story of Buddhism. And I like how it's generally it's sort of like at least as far as I'm aware. Maybe you can correct me on this, not detailed. There's just this sort of thing he goes in the forest, he does penances.

He gets so thin, you know, there's the emaciated Buddha statue that you see sometimes and as an example of his discipline and all that. But they don't talk. It's like Jesus, when Jesus disappears, it's a similar thing where like and this is like in the stories of these avatars, there is inevitably a period. Muhammad goes up into the cave. There's a period where they kind of disappear from society. We don't know what happened in a lot of cases.

I think in Islam, we know that he was visited by angels who help who gave him the Quran. But with Buddha, same thing. He goes off into the forest. He trains with these people who represent. Ancient lineages in India that many of them might just be gone forever. So we don't even know if they even exist anymore. But again, he's in the if you hear the story, you imagine him

maybe just hanging out with like, you know, people in, I don't know, loincloths and dirty robes or, you know, I don't think that's what it was. I think like he came into contact with a mystery school, some sort of group, perhaps, or some kind of religion or a cult or something in there. And they did teach him stuff. They did, in a way, you could say, open the pathway for Buddhism to exist in the world, because would you have come to that epiphany if not for the starvation period and the asceticism?

So I think one could argue that those ascetics were not quite as like unintentional as people might imagine. Oh, yeah. I mean, you could you can color the story however you want. But the fact is that now you have your choices to make about how to live. And the amount of rivers that come together to inform your options is this massive at this point, unprecedented. So the question is, how do you choose how to how to format your own existence?

And all these are just rumors, basically, how somebody else did in the past. Well, yeah, I know. And it's speculation. The reason I think it's it's it is a good form of a good thing to think about. Yeah, is because you want number one, you're in Buddhism. You are invited to do this form of analysis. And in other words, like, you know, that's a big difference, right? You're actually invited to use your discriminating awareness to process

whatever somebody's suggesting that you process. Not just if you have to. It's not that you're invited. It's if you're going to do it, right, you have to. There's no choice. You can't get faith your way out of the damn thing, unfortunately. And so that so in so in the reason I so aside from that, the reason I think it's cool to think about that period is because to me, it implies

something that I that I think is really wonderful, which is in the world. There are anonymous groups of people who seem are directly responsible for shifting the planetary culture for thousands of years. And no one ever knows who these people are. But the one thing they can erase from the stories, and I think they would, if they could, is these periods of time that the great teachers spend in seclusion that aren't detailed at all. It's like they and they don't, you know, that they can't get that off the record.

They can erase themselves in the sense that no one knows who the names as far as I'm aware of the people Budo was sitting with in the forest. You said, why don't you stop eating for a little bit? You know, it's good to cut out habits, you know, matter what they are, just like what you said to me, that's what they said to him. And he was like, all right, I'll give it a shot. And so all I'm saying is it's cool as a fantasy to imagine that those people haven't really gone anywhere.

They're still there in their little spirituality Messiah factories. Who knows, you know, sculpting some new Buddha right now that they're going to release into the world. Oh, God bless today's sponsor, Athletic Greens, for sending me, finally sending me a vitamin powder I can use. I'm not a vitamin person. I feel embarrassed when my friends have big fat Ziploc bags full of vitamins. Oh, what's going on with you?

It's not good for you. I've seen my friends vomit, projectile vomit, fall down on the street and have mild reactions to the massive amounts of vitamins that they're taking. Aside from all that, I just don't have the discipline to do the thing. What are you going to, in the beginning of the week, what do you do? Put your vitamins in your, in your, in your medication. If I'm taking medication, it's going to be benzos, baby. When I'm older, I can't take it now because I get addicted.

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immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com, slash Duncan. Again, that's athleticgreens.com, slash Duncan to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Thank you, Athletic Greens. Well, when you do any form of retreat practice, you're mirroring that process to the extent, you know, if you do a weekend or a week or a month, but like somebody like Dilco Kensei, who was Trunker Rinpoche's one of his teachers, supposedly had spent 15 years in a cave.

Exactly. That's old school. You know, anybody these days, it's going to be the hard thing to orchestrate. I'm sure there are people doing it actually, by the way, right now. In fact, I know there are. But, you know, is that going to be the right orchestration for your life with two kids and a business? And yes, and is there some way that you can?

Is it even possible for you to consider achieving any kind of understanding depth of realization without doing that? That's a really interesting question. Yeah, yeah. Well, OK, two answers to that. Number like number one. And again, this is like a fantasy. But they're like, I think that there is the possibility.

And I've you know, I did a podcast with Lama Somo. Have you ever heard of Lama Somo? She's cool. But she's like we talked about the four immeasurables in Buddhism. But the within the conversation, she was sort of talking about how and we've had this conversation to this idea of shared mind, you know, shared mind. And so or this concept of, you know, being connected to everything, everyone on the planet, everything connected.

So in other words, these beings, whoever they may be. I don't even know. Maybe they're not even planetary. Who knows? Maybe they are or they sort of like channel through people sometimes. Or who knows? I don't know. It's all speculation. Well, that's not just totally speculation.

For example, there are documentable oracles within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Yeah, I've actually met the two principal oracles of the Dalai Lama and actually got to talk to them about their process. So there is a pretty definable process in which they vacate the premise of the body. They're not really there. They're sort of nearby, but they're not really there. And another entity, another discreet form of intelligence actually occupies that situation and has access to a different field of knowledge.

And there's the Necheng oracle, who's kind of a very ordinary monk and very lovely person, but doesn't claim to be any kind of particular teacher himself. But they do a ritual and he is gone and then Necheng comes into his body. And it's quite, anybody who wants to look at this, you can look at it on YouTube. It's just look up Necheng, N-E-C-H-U-N-G oracle. And he becomes this other entity, which is kind of startling. Yeah. Anybody who's seen it.

And then he speaks an arcane Tibetan language that only certain of the monks can understand. And the Dalai Lama consults with him. Yeah. And that's the oracle. That's the person who said to the Dalai Lama, you have to leave Tibet tonight. Yeah, right. Right. So it's not like horoscopes, like the data that they give them is very usable.

And he's given him imminent information about things, like actions that need to be taken right away. He probably is the reason that Tibetan Buddhism made it to the West is because of that oracle. Well, and he's still very much alive. There's a monastery in Dharmasala, which is the Necheng monastery. And that's where he resides. So, and the quality of, there's a big O there and another entity comes through the O. Yeah, right. Yeah.

There's an opening. And these are people who, for whatever karmic reason, have the capacity to just open themselves. There's another one, which is a Khandro Seringma, who's a woman oracle, which is quite extraordinary, but a very lovely kind of grounded person. But you can feel that there's operations going on on more than one level of the elevator. You know, it's like the person's elevators at the ninth floor and the third floor at the same time. That, right. And we have that right now.

Yes. There's multi-dimensional quality, but it depends what we're paying attention to and how obsessed we are with whatever we're trying to get done. Yes, right. That. See, that to me, that's why the consideration of not just the fundamental, down-to-earth basics of some of the wisdom traditions, but the stuff that's left out, but is clearly like the progenitor of the thing itself. But it gets left out. I mean, that's just to me, that's always the, that's where things get really curious is because those are always the smartest people.

Like the smartest people are the ones who, who don't want to be the mascot. You know what I mean? We're like, I don't want to. OK, so, or another way to put it would be, Brian Eno has a term called Senus, the genius of the scene. So like anytime you get a David Bowie, anytime you get an Andy Warhol, anytime you get an Alistair Crowley or any of these people, whether they're, you know, teachers or whatever, there is a whole community behind them that's been cooking up the ideas that they're expressing through their particular mode of communication. And you hear that and you think, ah, wow, well, I guess David Bowie lucked out because he got to be David Bowie.

But some of these people who are cooking up the David Bowie, they don't want to be David Bowie. They don't want to be on stage. They don't want to be, they don't want to be in front of anything. But they're the ones who are like offering it to the world in the most selfless way. Well, Duncan, it's like Lenny Bruce, you know? Yeah, I know Lenny Bruce. But what do you mean? We're all singing, I have the mouth.

Yeah, right. That, that, that. Yeah. I think that's, isn't that what you're referring to? Exactly. Yeah. And it's the, you know, dummies like me, like the mic, I like to have the mouth, but the, the, like there's. I'm going to interrupt you with a K. See, this is the K part.

K, K. Why are you saying dummies like me? Why did you say that? Well, because like, I think that, that the, the impulse to get it into the spotlight. Yeah. I'm not, I'm so happy it exists because I love movies. I love movie stars. I love performers.

I love art. I was just listening to Miles Davis on the way here. So glad that he decided to stay in front of a microphone and make music. Cause he seems like someone who maybe didn't want to necessarily do that. I'm so glad these people exist. I mean, by that, I mean, like he seems so like weirdly reclusive or I don't know. When I'm listening to his music, there's a loneliness in it. It's a different podcast.

My point is, and I don't want to emphasize this too much. I just think it's cool to contemplate the behind the scene people. More Oh, more Oh, behind the scene people are interesting. The, uh, like that to me, to me, they're particular. They're very interesting. We, you know, paranoid people tune into this and they call them the deep state or they come up with these really crazy conspiracy theories

about these people as being shadowy, dark creatures. But the really, the reason they seem so shadowy and dark, I think, is just because they're like, I don't want to be president. I don't want to be the Buddha. And in fact, I think Dilgo Kinsey, Rinpoche, didn't they have to like, they told him, you need to come out of the cave. Like, wasn't he invited out of the cave and he didn't want to leave? Well, circumstances sometimes transcend one's own intention.

Yeah, right. And you, you, um, if you have a general, I think what could unite the O and the K is a sense of service for both. Yes. And, and then you go, you know, you almost would say, let me be where it would be most helpful for me to be in the O realm or the K realm. Or what I think is, you know, there's a lot of art in balancing the O and the K these days where you have some contemplation, but you also manifest in the world.

That's, you know, that's kind of my song. Yes. And yes. And that's the second, the second answer to your question regarding like the contemplation of these things and the reality, like most of us, I know of a cave in the forest, but I sure as fuck wouldn't sit there. There's broken glass all over and it's slimy. So I'm not going to a cave.

You're, I know most people listening to this probably are not going to go sit in a cave for 20 years. But you could go to your meditation cushion for 20 minutes. And it'll feel like 20 years. Maybe it actually is 20 years, you know, depending. Yeah. Right. I mean, this is to me that like the where too much fixation on the cave stuff and the

that part of it can accidentally create a weird sense of guilt. You know, I think some people have a family. They are fully in service to their family. They wake up with their kids. They put the kids to bed by them. They're so tired. They fall asleep. They're, they're going to work to feed the kids.

They're engaged in this like purely selfless activity that I think for some parents, it's incredibly pure. And even if it isn't incredibly pure at the base of it is this selfless activity that is no different than the going away down from the cave like Dilgo Kinsey Rinpoche did or that is no different from any of the great servants of the world. But because, you know, I think we live in a culture where the centralization is celebrated that we like love to focus on the apex of things is why there's the Olympics and football and all that, that accidentally a lot of people just at their home serving their kids.

They feel like, oh yeah, but I'm not up in a cave like I should be. If you took that parent and that parent did some practice for 20 or 30 minutes a day, that's a powerful cocktail. Yeah, the combo of a combo, one from column A and one from column B. Yeah. You know, seriously, I think it's overlooked how transformative and how potentially good for the whole system and the whole gang of us would be that kind of balance of O and K or deep contemplation, actually skillful action at the same as part of the same equation.

I'm totally committed, you could say, to that equation. The at our home at my house, I came home, my brother-in-law is there. He and Aaron are watching like Fox News, which we have managed to cut out mostly, but I sat down to watch it a little bit. They're watching it because they couldn't find their remote control. So, you know, you're sitting there just, you know, talk about the Oracle, right? Like the reason that Dalai Lama's Oracle seems spectacular or is interesting is because it's a human channeling a being.

If the Dalai Lama had a special radio that tuned into a radio station somewhere else in Tibet where there was a monk who just told him what to do, it would be cool, but it wouldn't be as interesting, right? So, in other words, we, everyone at their own home has oracular devices. It's not a person, but you flip on the hypno rectangle and you can channel the howl of misery, suffering, violence, fear, and anger in the world right into your house and fill it with a perfume of fear and get it into your body. And so I'm just backing up what you're saying, which is if there is this possibility of slowing

down, getting still, and it's not just a one-way street, but in that practice, you're opening up a little bit to something bigger, then you are going to not, you're going to bring not just your own self into the house, but you're going to bring with you just that whatever that is, whatever that is. And that, I think, is, that's what, I mean, that to me is the, you've told me a little bit about the, what are they called? Dralas, I think? Dralas, yeah.

Yeah. Can you describe that again, like the house Drala or the? So, Drala is just the notion, well, the literal meaning is beyond aggression. Okay. So, La is above, you know, like Lhasa or Lama, it means above and dry, it means war or aggression. So, what kind of energy field is there beyond aggression? It has a kind of uplifted, fragrant, light quality of energy, you know, it's, you can feel it in certain spots, power spots in nature, you can feel Drala energy.

The home has Dralas spots in it. People have Drala, you know, so it's a sort of a general form of understanding the sparkly energy that comes when you stop struggling and fighting so much. Okay. So, it's natural energy and you can tap into it. That's the idea is there's particular Dralas you can tune into with certain rituals and things like that. Whoa.

Oh, wow. Like what rituals? Well, like there's one, you use cedar smoke and you raise smoke and then they come down on the smoke. It's, you know, it's a way of organizing rituals, a way of organizing people into a kind of process in which these things, you know, you clear away the deck so that you can invite the Dralas in. But there's a, there's a corollary to it, which is called wind horse, which is a sense of raising

one's own energy level. So, when you raise wind horse and, you know, you can just visualize what a wind horse looks like. It's a powerful, uplifted, kind of confident kind of energy. When you rouse that in yourself, because it's there, it's resting, nesting in you, but it's stifled by your doubt and it's stifled by your hyperdiscursiveness and it's stifled by your fear. But when you raise that energy, the Dralas are magnetized and they come.

So, you know, it's a way of talking about rousing confidence and, you know, your own energetic field and then it meets the world in a more magical way and a very spontaneous way. I want to thank my beautiful sponsors over at Squarespace.com. I can't tell you how many times a month people ask, how do you do a podcast? And I tell them, well, you need a few essential things. Number one, a quiet podcast studio, somewhere where you won't be interrupted by lots of noise. Number two, you need a place where your podcast can live online and that is where

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Again, squarespace.com forward slash Duncan. Give it a shot and then use offer code Duncan and you'll get 10% off of your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you, Squarespace. Like the way rainbows appear. If you have the right conditions, sprinkler, sun, you make a rainbow appear. It's not that complex. You can do it, but it's always incredible.

And so that's kind of like what you're like the drawla. It's like a rainbow that appears when you the right conditions are in a certain place. Suddenly you're like, holy shit, what is this? Things do, you know, I have noticed sometimes just not like we'll be playing music and the kids are like I made them breakfast and everyone's eating and like smiling and laughing and it's good. And then this other thing comes in all of a sudden, you know, it's not it is us, but there's something more than us. And then things get really luminous or like there's a quality that's incredible.

And you know, my whenever that appears, I notice it and then I want to like, how do we make this out? How do we make the house like this forever? I want it always to be like this. Yeah, there's a lot of letting go involved. Right. You create the right circumstances. You magnetize that kind of energy and then you have to let go is a sort of an important part

of the process to but there's drawl is in all kinds of cultures more in the pantheistic cultures, polytheistic cultures, because they don't rivet so hard and there's just one big thing and it's a blob of, you know, all or nothing kind of approach right spirituality. So every like Greek culture had drawl like energies, you know, early Truscan cultures, you can you can see them names for them and everything like that. So they yes, they it just we aren't like in like, in our culture, you even coming close to talking about it, you have to replace it like it's not raising wind horse. It's not contacting some sort of divine energy.

It's like getting confident and keep your house clean. And yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's right. If you're manifesting some kind of dignity and, you know, kind of steadiness of mind, state, you know, clear clarity and stability of mind, that that is energizing and magnetizing to the drawl is if you're, you know, course and out of control and kind of out of sequence within yourself and struggling, they're repelled by that. So there was a very interesting thing that I back in the day, I was at a house in Boston,

where we're trunk room, which I used to stay and there was a calligraphy there. And it I asked somebody what it meant was Tibetan and they said, and this was when he first came to the West like in 1970, the calligraphy said adult body's children's minds. Wow. That was his take on the West. And then there was a quote from one of his Dharma brothers, Trangur Rinpoche, who was a very great lama. And Trangur Rinpoche said that Trangur Rinpoche, when he came here, he saw that the

drawlers had been scared away in America by things like strip mining and just a general lack of regard for the environment and also how people are taking care of themselves. And he said that he instituted a number of practices and rituals that would invite them back. Like what? Well, like raising wind horse and also there are certain sadhana practices where you can tune in. It's like tuning into a frequency.

You know, if you and I are sitting together, we go, let's listen to Love Supreme, John Coltrane. We're tuning into that frequency. Right. If we watch porn, we're tuning into that frequency. What if you listen to John Coltrane and watch porn simultaneously? And meditate at the same time. Yeah.

Now you've invented a religion. Now you've started a cult. I don't know. I think it's all been done. But lurking beneath what you're saying is it possible to enjoy sense pleasures going back to the ascetic discussion and do that in a non-degraded way, in a way that doesn't make you unhappy, basically, fundamentally. And definitely in Patanthic Buddhism, you have to do that.

You're supposed to relate to the realm of the senses. Yeah, right. You can't boycott it. But I think, here, why do sense pleasures so often make you unhappy? Yeah, it depends. I think even if you examine your own reality, you would say you would come up with the answer that it depends. Because have you had a nice cup of coffee this morning?

Oh, absolutely. But I'm talking about the easy mistake you can make. I love the description of the skandhas. And I believe the initial skanda was described. And maybe it's the second one. I don't even know the name of the skandhas. But this is the way that the self forms into time, I guess. And so one of the descriptions is a pig rooting around for food.

It's like that's the initial skanda. You have some separation, some sense of a thing in the first place. Sense of duality, but it's quite vague in the beginning. Yes. And so you're like snorting around looking for something. And so maybe you found something that was at some point in your life. As we call it chasing the dragon, instead of chasing the dralla, chasing the dragon.

You find a thing, oh my god, that's really nice. Like anyone who's ever been addicted to a drug knows what I'm talking about. You know what I mean? You find this thing and it's like, oh my god, I've been looking for this my whole life. This experience is amazing. Wow, I'm connecting with the universe. And then cut to like six months later.

And it's like nothing's happening anymore. It's gone from being transcendent and beautiful, which I think is the tantric invitation to being like worse than a course. Course and pointless and embarrassing. And you're like, what am I even doing this for? So it is, I think, interesting to note that a lot of the ways people think that you're going to get that big burst of whatever, it's not working for you at all.

And you've been trying over and over again with no success. As you said, cut to, you know, which is we know what we mean there. But that's what contemplation is. In contemplation practice, you cut to, you look analytically, then the outcome that you know is from time in memorial has led to a certain causes. They've led to certain effects. Right. So therefore, through the power of, you know, really applying your intelligence to it,

you have enough strength to say, I think I'll take a pass on this at this point. Right, yes. But then you have to marry that to some kind of practice because otherwise the contemplation, you see clearly that it's not, you know, like, for example, the eating buckets of sugar is not great for you. But your body is tuned into it and you can't cut the habit. So you need both the analytical and the sort of rehabilitation part to achieve good habits. And there's such a good thing as good habits, don't you think?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, sure. I mean, this is, for me, this is why having a family has just been the most enlightening experience in the sense that you hear all the service, you know, service bullshit and like, you know, become a servant or help other people or the meta nonsense. You know what I mean? And if you, at least if you're like me, you're like, all right, I don't know, sounds good, whatever.

But then when you have to, when you're, when you have a family, you really, there is a binary, which is like, you can either like be selfish or not. And except when you're the consequence of selfishness in a family versus the consequence of selfishness when you're living by yourself, you can't, what are you, your dog's going to seem like grumpy or something because you're not petting them all the time versus like you're, you know, you're seeing in your kids, like the way your karma is sort of radiating into their lives and imprinting on them. It's a whole different type of mirror.

You know, and then also when you just the most basic stuff, the most basic stuff, you know, putting them to bed, making them food becomes the most transcendent experience, you know, and this is where I, from watching the other day, I think it is true. And, you know, we Buddhists can be very analytical and intellectual, but I, I feel especially at this point that if you center in your heart and you drop your energy literally physically into your heart center, you have a very different access point for, for doing the right thing. Yes.

And a lot of times people's energy lifts up with wind and it goes into their head. Yes. And moves around kind of quickly in the head and it's harder to, it's harder to find the natural thing to do, the organic thing to do. So that's why stillness, you know, just dropping and dropping into the heart center and simplifying, I think is the essence of everything we've been talking about for years, you know, just slowing down. Everybody's slow down.

Can you imagine that if like, if people had to meditate before they bombed each other? I think, sadly, I think some people probably too. Oh God, that's a horrible thought. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I know, but I do think probably it like gets people's like minds focused enough to be able to, you know, I don't think meditation keeps you from, I don't believe the idea that if everyone meditates, we all have this dream that it's the classic like anyone who's taken acid is like, if only we could get this and imagine the every president taking acid or

whatever it may be. And that is a really, I think naive assessment of, you know, like, it's the, it's, I don't think it necessarily is going to cure the world's problems. And then, of course, I've heard that, you know, a lot of people in the military are practiced mindfulness and have been taught mindfulness practices in the Russian military. I would not be surprised. I mean, because they did have science experiments going on for sure about, you know, remote location and things like that, for sure.

But I'm not talking about meditating and sort of orchestrating your mental activity. I'm talking about feeling. And I think that's when people go a little deeper into meditation, they realize it's not, it's not just folding the sheets up in your brain, you know, and color coding the underwear of your brain, so that it's all organized and neat. It's what happens if you just touch in and look and feel. You think they're doing that? I don't think all of them are, but I do.

I think in some warrior traditions, actually, you kill with love. Like when you're killing, you're killing in your heart. Like you're in your heart. It's the most honorable way to kill is to kill from that place. Instead of killing from your head and being all numb, you are, you have such a respect for the person that you're killing that as you're killing them, you're seeing them as you and you're loving them and doing it. That's not what's happening though, Duncan.

What's happening is being driven by speed, aggression and greed and ignorance. 99.9%, don't you think? Yeah, I mean, yes, absolutely. I do. I think like most of the time what you're seeing is people doing something that if they don't do it, they're going to get arrested. You know, we did it. The United States did it.

We took a bunch of kids and threw them in the fucking jungle in Vietnam, forced them to go there. They, you know, we like, which to me, I mean, you know, any, I think you see right now, people who are saying in the United States, you really don't have a right to say anything about the fucking what's going on in Ukraine because your country has been doing this shit over and over and over and over again. And for the, you know, anyone in the United States to take issue with what Putin is doing is the height of hypocrisy. I think it's the stupidest take because I've been to the peace marches.

I've been to the, like when we tried to stop the war machine and they don't listen to us any more than the people who are trying to stop it and Russia are being listened to, meaning that you are allowed anytime wars spring up because of aggression and greed to be like, this is horrible. Don't do this. Stop doing this. You know what I mean? You would, no matter what country you're in, whether in Russia, the United States, you

could, and also you're allowed to recognize like how fucked up it is that a lot of these rushing kids, they didn't know they were going to war and said they're just cannon fodder. And these are, these are all people. So I think you can kind of a universal sense of compassion for all, all sides involved. And I'm not suggesting that like all of them are meditating and stuff. I just know Putin like is a martial artist that he's judo and any, I know. I mean, you know, I've had that conversation and here, here's, here's a kind of caveat around it.

Mindfulness alone, you know, the focus point of meditation. See, a lot of people have thought a meditation just means you focus your mind and control, learn how to control your mind. That is very primitive approach towards meditating. If I could say so, it is foundational because if you don't have any concentration, it's hard to cultivate anything. Right. It's hard to cultivate judo or anything.

Yeah. But mindfulness alone could make you a perfect assassin. Yes, exactly. I've said that many times, but if you add proportionate to it, if you add loving kindness to it, if you add some kind of compassion practice to it on that foundation, that begins to destabilize that, that sort of colorless quality of mindfulness. And the kind of purely functional part that is so popular in the West. Look at the ads.

Oh, this is going to make you calm. This is going to be stable. It's going to make you efficient. It's going to make you productive. You know, that's a very early, you know, stage in the Buddhist path of practice. It's just laying a foundation. It's not a house that you want to live in. No, I know.

And, but this, I think this is why Trump Arimpashe was like, had all this cautionary stuff in his teachings because he knew he could tell right away what we are like. He saw what we are like. And adult bodies, children's minds. Yeah, adult bodies, children's minds. But I think he also saw something else in us that was probably for him, which is why when I've seen him speaking at lectures, there's just this lonely quality to him.

Not a, not a neurotic loneliness, but like I'm on another fucking planet here. You know what I mean? Like I'm like, he's wearing our clothes and he's trying to like use our language to communicate these ideas. But I just think he wrecked, he was like, Oh my God, if I don't, this could just as easily turn into something people use for eating. There weren't even drones back then or drone pilots back then. But he grogged.

This is something that if people decide to stop at the part you're talking about, then now what have you done except created like sociopaths if they want to be, or, you know, or, you know, cause you can hear, you can hear we're all the same person or we're all completely connected. We are, when you see another person, that's just you. They're literally Tong Lin, right? Becoming another. That's what Tong Lin means, right?

Like, not exactly. Not exactly. It means exchanging your sense of self absorption with attention and care for others. Like swapping. It doesn't mean you become the other person, right? You're willing to take on some aspect of them that makes you less comfortable. Okay. Give out something.

It means sending and taking. Sending and receiving. Yeah. So what are you sending? You're sending out your own, you know, kind of positive feelings about wanting to do well and to be healthy and to thrive. You're sending that to the other person. And what are you taking in is their sense of discomfort,

which usually makes you want to avoid them. And you're saying, no, I'm not going to avoid them. I'm going to take it in. Take it in. And that's a big, that's a, like Tong Lin, for example, is a powerful transformative practice that's not like just becoming, you could not become an assassin and do that. Actually, it would stop you from being an assassin. Right.

I mean, there's a, I think it's a toll story or this wonderful book called The Kingdom of Heaven is Within. Have you ever heard of this book? But I haven't read it. Well, the book is like a profoundly anti-war essay stating that you cannot be a Christian and a soldier. You can't do it. Onward Christian soldiers.

Yeah, exactly. That whole thing, onward Christian soldiers, the Crusades, all of it is an example of, I guess the rather obvious point I'm making, which is religion can be warped in ways that turn it into the most horrible, violent, but insane thing. And Buddhism is no different. Like you can, from a muddied comprehension of it, just as easily decide that there's really like no point. You can go nihilist.

I'm just saying from a muddied. Oh, it could be worse than nihilism. It could be imperialism. Right. Which is actually worse than nihilism. Explain that to me. Well, you feel like you have divined a superior perspective, a superior point of view. And from that point of view, for the benefit of beings, I'm going to impose that point of view

through manipulation, cleverness, seduction, whatever. But the fundamental self-deception has gone unexamined. Right, that's why it's so dangerous. That's why in our teacher training program that we have at Dharma Moon, we always have self-assessment as the ground practice. Because there's no other way. I could tell you whatever, but somebody else could say, Duncan, unless you would look at yourself and want to know, or I would look at myself and want to

know, probably none of these processes can. And that's why Buddhism is not theistic. Nobody can save you. Right. That's a big difference. A lot of religions say somebody could save you if you only just dropped your trial low enough and surrendered or whatever. This energy is going to come and it's going to save you, but Buddhists don't say that.

Right. And if you do give somebody that power, you're missing the point. Right. Yeah. And maybe that is the danger of Buddhism is that in that saving yourself an accidental egomaniac and spring up, mania can spring up, right? That's the problem. You can, I'm doing this myself, pulling myself up on my fucking bootstraps.

I don't need anybody else. No one saved me. I saved myself. You have to save yourself because I'm not going to. But it's nihilism. That's nihilism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is the nihilistic one.

And the other one is that some, you don't have to do the deadly squat, but, you know, just open the grace or surrender to whatever and somebody else is going to save you. That's eternalism. So, you know, this is a tricky thing about the Buddhist practices that you don't ally with extremes. If you can identify them. Right. It's non extremism.

It's kind of moderation in a way. Right. Yeah. And moderation is a good intersocial practice. Like if you and I are talking, we don't agree. It's good if we be more moderate and try to understand the other person better. It's healthy. But let's go back to the K part, though.

We got there right away with that. You know, because that is the, that there is, there is that quality in Buddhism as well, though. I mean, it is a, you know, there is, it is the fucking Mongols were Buddhists. Many of them, they started the Genghis Khan. Would Tibetan Buddhism exist without Genghis Khan? Well, that's, you know, that's, you know, that's not a multiple choice question or yes or no question.

But yes, there's no doubt at all that the, and let me just frame this out a different way. What we would call neurosis or confusion. There is no way enlightenment would exist without it. Right. Right, right, right. Yeah. Okay. So that's a, you know, a broader stroke.

Now, so what do you do with, I think there's a different levels of how to work with it. One is definitely abandon poison fruit, you know, ground up. If you know something's bad for you or bad for your family or just stop doing it, period, over now, if you can. But then there's idea of transforming and seeing its essence as maybe there's a confusion built into it that could be, could be a knot that could be untied. Right. And then it's just energy, you know, like, like for example, when people are having a good

debate, you can say, oh, they're fighting with each other, but they're not actually. Right. Because they haven't stopped communicating. Right. The point where they stop communicating, they start fighting. That's where there's real trouble when they, It is, and everything gets tight and you can feel it, you know, you feel like, and passion is the same thing, right?

When you get tightened up with your passion, stuff's flowing between two people becomes, you know, a constricted experience. So the, oh, thing is really important to come in here. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to, oh. Both. Yeah.

Both. I just, no, I, you know, I, it's a, it's a, there's something where there's just something I've been thinking lately and it's, and I just can't get it out of my head, which is there's a certain sort of person in the world that could destroy the world. I mean, it's every person, but there's a certain sort of person specifically that can get into a place of power and then cause incredible amounts of suffering from getting into that place of power.

There's a personality type, you know, that, that, and it's, we're seeing it play out now. Jealous gods. The jealous gods. Yeah. The jealous gods. And because we, okay, so we know this, people know this, we're aware of it, right? Like people know, and again, I'm not, I'm saying any of them, Putin, Biden, Trump, Obama, any of these dudes who find themselves in the position, who have put themselves in the position with

lots of energy, gotten into a position where they have control of nuclear missiles, right? Like any of them are a danger to the planet. The, they're not helping at all. Is that, but I don't mean to interrupt, but is that fundamentally different than, for example, a domestic fight between a husband and a wife? And let's say you had a little red button that you could push and your wife would blow up. Yeah, right. Would you finger not be hovering over that sometimes?

Well, no, I mean, everyone has that. This is like everyone has in their stupid domestic arsenal, like the thing that you pull out, that's the big mean thing. And then they'll pull out a meaner thing and then you have a stupid nuclear war fight. You have to go to marriage counseling to repair the radiation from it. You know what I mean? So yes, I know what you mean. Exactly.

Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's in, it's in all of us, but But who are these people and how did they get so powerful over the whole situation? And is there a way to like defang it's like poison. Is there a way to defang it? That's really a great question. That's to me, I think that that that's, you know, even more imminent than, I guess you could say they're interconnected really, because a lot of these people happen to be

connected to oil. But more intimate than dealing with the climate stuff is like recognizing like, wait a minute, we have created a system that is up pushing up to the very top or the front of the bus, the craziest among us. And once they get control of the bus, it doesn't matter if they've been like, let me drive y'all are a little drunk. Where do you want to go? Don't worry.

I'll take you where you want to go. Sure. Pretty soon. It's like, wait, we said right. And they're like, yeah, we're going to do a little fucking detour because I'm driving the bus. You know what I mean? And so I'm just saying like this. I still think though that that's basic ego is who's doing that.

Right. And you're just on a very large scale with it at the moment. Yes. But that exact dynamic is at work in every situation that I experienced during the day. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wait, I thought we're going over here. No, we're going this way.

And so I'm not saying this is a glib answer and a kind of new agey kind of answer to like, what do you do with global titans who are like, you know, every day we're watching the horror, horror show. And I just, I've been really upset lately. I'm sure everybody's been upset just watching. How could somebody do that? You know, how could somebody say, yeah, send tanks into this relatively peaceful place and just start blowing the shit out of everybody?

Yeah. What logic? The how and new or do you have to be to human suffering to even and then create a whole set of propaganda and lies around that? You know, what's going on with that person? What the hell, man? Right. Well, they they're there.

I think I know what's going on with those people. Like, you know, when you I don't know if you ever went hunting as a kid. But like, well, you have to learn how to kill animals. You know what I mean? You don't you don't want to do it. Like you have to learn to do it. And then you can do it. You if you will, you know, and so I think it's just the exact same thing, but with people

for them, like they don't really think like we like there's a humanist. Like I there's a lot of idealism in people like us where but in that there's this weird assumption that well, it's the heart of everyone is this. But maybe you are you know, the thing you might be onto there and it's, you know, is the predator prey model. Yeah. Which are you going to be? Right.

Right. That you talk to certain warriors, they're really tuned into that model. Yeah. Look, it's me or that one. And if you're going to be one or the other, be the predator. So I know some very intelligent people who argue that point of view, but a bodhisattva would not argue that point of view. Right.

I'm not saying that we should argue that there's only one choice or the other. I'm just saying, well, wait a minute, though, we should make sure we didn't overlook the possibility that there's something to it. I do think that it's safe to acknowledge that there are some very mentally ill people who have managed to work their way into political systems that don't belong there. And that this is one of the grand flaws of democracy is that it is like, or just the thought, the flaw of whatever is inside tribalist. Like the try the idea of it.

We need a chief. We need a head. We need the top. We need a daddy. You know what I mean? I think we need a guru. We need a blah, blah, blah or this or that or someone to save us. We need to end this idea of needing someone to save you.

That is the fertile ground for dictators. Right. And for the predator prey model to really achieve full force. Exactly. So here's another thought is like, if you go into that model and you say, well, we as people, we as the people are the prey right now. So maybe we need to learn about being more of a predator. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. And that that's the K part. Yeah. Right. How do you get into the machinery and, you know, kind of create some kind of more positive attitude towards leadership? And I, you know what I think the answer to that is, is it's just what you were saying earlier. It's like, look, you're, you're, especially if you're in the United States, what are you going to do?

Go to Russia and like run for the run to be the new food and like stop. You're not doing anything. But I do know when I'm being Putin in my own house, you know what I mean? It's like all these world peace, all these people yapping about world peace. It's like, have you been able to achieve any kind of harmony in your family or your own domestic situation? Because if you, if you're finding that you can't do it there, then forget the, we're all fucked. You know what I mean?

That no one can do it if you can. It's like, well, that brings it right back Duncan to, you know, small, conquering through the small, like it says in the Yicheng, you know, taming through the small. And if you at least preserve the hegemony of your own little domestic kingdom and your own world and improve your relationship to it through practice, through study, through, you know, learning about compassion and learning about, you know, what tools you have available to even pull that much off. I think it does have a ripple effect.

I take that view that it has ripples. Some people might say it's useless because it's too small. No, it ripples. It does, it does ripple. I don't think it necessarily ripples in the way a lot of us would want to imagine it's going to ripple. But I do think that no matter, like no matter what, it's still great. I mean, no matter what, it's, you know, if, if, yeah, okay, great. If we all hit a certain frequency, then the whole planet turns into Shambhala vibrates out of this

part of the time space continuum and appears in a paradise world or whatever. Great. I don't think that's going to happen. Or if things become increasingly chaotic, you, you are going to be one of the people who helps, you know, you don't know how you're going to help or what it's going to look like. But if you're training up now, you know, and then, because that's who I would want to be. If I was, if I had to be something, I wouldn't want to be the person dropping the bombs, you know, I would, you know, what it might come to though,

is when you saw that loneliness factor, when you saw Tung Brumichey, you saw he looks very lonely alone. That's a real quality of warship. The way we learned it, you have to be willing to be alone. Yeah, very, very deep way. And that means, you know, nobody's going to confirm or deny your perspective. It means you're not going to get a medal. Yeah.

It means maybe nobody even knew that you existed or did it. Yeah. But you still have a feeling of like, I'm going to do this the right way. Yeah. I'm going to do the right thing. But that's, that's a very personal level of integrity. And then, you know, I think you can cultivate and train in that perspective. I do.

Oh, that's so nice to hear. Yeah. Because I, you know, I, One can. I didn't mean you personally meant one can. But I know, I think we all, I think, but that's why I mentioned this stuff earlier, because I think there's something really quite, and again, it's just great. Maybe it's creating a romantic reason to meditate and stuff.

But I do think like, if you imagine that we are all Christian soldiers. No, but if you do, if you do imagine that there is like, is that the O and the K and there is conflict. And that there, there is a sort of like an interesting back and forth conversation, I guess you could say happening between a very like two seemingly opposite ways of living in the world, then you can immediately join up and immediately join up. But like what you're saying is you're not going to meet, you probably won't meet the generals. You probably won't meet any sergeants, lieutenants. No one's coming out of a cave to give you a jewel that is magical because you decided to

join the part of the world that's trying to cultivate compassion or whatever. And the reason for that, aside from probably there aren't people living in caves that we're going to give you jewels, but the bigger reason would be strategically an army that has no commanders, no King, no visible upper echelon doing the plans, but it's just completely decentralized and yet fully in the world and present is undefeatable. There is no way to stop it. Use any of the techniques that work if you're on the other side, which is on that side of things, the conversation is, oh, I'll just blow it up.

Poison it, kill it. But who are you going to capture? Who's out there? There isn't anyone other than this basic intent, right? A basic undefeatable intent, which if you tune into that, that is signing up for something, I think. Well, that's a phenomenal world. You can have it.

Why not? A medal? Sure. Why not? Right. Medals are dumb anyway. You can dress up the world. We've talked about it a number of times on our conversations, but absolute and relative truth.

The word for relative truth, which is kun-sup, means all dressed up. Kun-sup, K-U-N-D-Z-O-P. It literally means you put on the outfit, you put on your vest, you take your canteen, you go for a walk in the woods, you buy your hunting cap, you subscribe to magazines, but you don't confuse it with some kind of definitive level of reality. It's just a relative situation. Yeah, but you do work with it.

If you don't engage kun-sup, and that goes back to the Buddha, those people were not engaging kun-sup. They didn't have a good sense of relative reality. They were going for absolute truth, and that's considered the imbalance from a certain perspective. So if you can keep both levels braided, that would be a very powerful way to live. Braided is what they say? I'm saying it. That's so cool.

They say inseparable, and absolute relative truth are inseparable. But braided is the way to think about it. So, and it's O and K. You have your mantra. David, these are some talks. I just love chatting with you. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I just really love talking to you. Thank you.

Yeah, it's, you know, I have a kind of rule talking to Duncan, which is that we always start from zero and end at zero. I know. I was ruined, too, because I had a couple of serious questions I was going to ask you, and then I realized, don't do that. Like, let's just talk and see what happens. I'm so glad I did that instead. David, I know, can you tell people a little bit about what's coming up with Dharma Moon

and ways they can connect with you? Yeah, there's such a sweet magic between Dharma Moon and Duncan Dressel. It's really notable that, you know, some of your friends come and take our trainings and then reenter your ecosystem. And they're such good people, Duncan. It's so honest what's going on there, and it's, you know, not, we're not conquering the world or changing anything, but we are teaching people how to work with their own state of mind and being a little more gentle and compassionate with themselves and more precise.

So that, the main form that crystallizes into is this teacher training program that, you know, a lot of the folks have taken. We have one coming up starting May 18th. So if you just go to DharmaMoon.com, you can log in there. And the first weekend of it is, if you're not ready to sign up for the whole thing, you just take the first part of it. And we're doing it not on weekends in the summer. You know why?

Why? I think people want their weekends back this summer. Yes. I don't want to steal their weekend on front of a computer. So we're doing it Wednesday and Thursday mornings. Wow. Okay, cool. And also it's set up so that in European time, we have a lot of people starting to come in from Europe.

So it'll be like four or five o'clock European time. But if folks are working, how can they, they can't participate? Well, nobody works that way anymore. Okay. Thank you. You know, I mean, we'll see, but it's 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern time, which is 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Okay. West Coast time.

So, okay, you did that before you went to work. Yeah. Or you took them a couple of mornings off. And then in Europe, it's, you know, four or five o'clock. So you finish your work day and you end a little bit early and you still have your evening with your family and friends. And you have your weekends free in the summer. Love it.

So we're, it's all indicated in the, if you go to damamoon.com and maybe we can put it into the chat, into the, you know, written thing. So I'd love to just continue the tradition, the grand tradition of the Dunkites invading Dharma Moon is and then sending them back with a little training. I love it. So please everybody just, just check us out. And if you have any questions, you can, it's easy to write in and there's, you know, there's payment plans and scholarships.

We're trying to make it easy for people to do this. Thank you so much, David. All the links, if you can't remember, damamoon.com will be at dunkitrustle.com. Thank you, David. I really appreciate it. And I feel like I just stayed a plump. Yeah, me too. You know, Duncan, you're really a sweet person.

Thank you. I know, I know that you get pissed off at times and so forth, but I think your heart is really, it's really good, Duncan. Thank you, David. You're the best. Howdy, Christina. Thank you. That was David Nickturn, everybody.

Take his class. Go to damamoon.com. You'll find all the Nickturn related stuff you need, much thanks to our wonderful sponsors, Squarespace, Super Speciosa, and Athletic Greens. And thank you for listening. Come summon drawl us with me in Austin or wherever I'm going. All those dates are at dunkitrustle.com. I love y'all so much and I'll see you next week.

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