Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 595: Ethan Nichtern

Episode Date: December 24, 2023

Ethan Nichtern, incredible, scholarly author and Buddhist teacher, joins the DTFH! Check out Ethan's books, including The Dharma of the Princess Bride, available wherever you buy your books! You should also subscribe to his podcast, The Road Home. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/duncan and get on your way to being your best self. Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. FÜM - Visit TryFUM.com and use code DUNCAN at checkout to get 10% Off your first order!

Sorry, you gotta get back. Sorry, you gotta get back. This three people still fuck your system. I'm not in a lotion, and you're my most hand. Then I gently help her wax her back. Give her some suit, then give her a bath. This is how I show her how love lasts. What are you mom?

What are you mom? Jolveda, a human being has. A human being can actually reach a state of perfect and complete awakening in it. You didn't listen to me that, so I'm ready to go back. Me time I can't face. Sister or sister, you're always on my mind. I wish I could go back and set it like a stone. Please just stop me fucking yourself. I wish I could get a little back, something like a stone. Please, just don't leave fucking your sister. Just to see that the power to liberate others arises from seeing the true nature of reality more deeply.

Listen. One has to aspire to remove all one's subtle veils of ignorance and to realize the supreme awakening. Listen, listen, listen, go back. Yeah. I saw her there, smoothing with a hot dog. Oh, love with you. No sister. Properly in an absolute sense.

Thus, the bodhisattva has two great aspirations. Look, just try to be nice, Mr. Harding. Don't fuck your sister. Watch your cute walk down that house so bliss, my mind proves back the days long gone. When we were just kissing in our own soul. only or merely mind, as at the Sravaka stage, at the Sittamatra stage. I remember the words to my heart, though, with a mischievous grandmother laugh, oh, those memories play in my mind, never. No self that could be the creator of such a fantasy world. Essentially the sit-to-materon approach, like any Buddhist approach, is based on direct experience.

Following the straw. Do you really want to just keep going back there? Is it still making you? Reef party. How sister get old? I'm a pretty pretty fucking sister, you know. Dad, just don't fuck your sister. I'm a pretty pretty girl. I'm a pretty pretty girl. I'm a pretty pretty girl.

I'm a pretty pretty girl. I'm a pretty pretty girl. I'm a pretty pretty girl. I'm a pretty pretty girl. I'm a pretty pretty it, with goodies and plenty They look it eye-n-o-w I'm a sister, hide and seek friend I saw her there, smoothing with a hot dog

Oh, the love was in me, and maybe it got she not okay I'm gonna make you a hard cast at this time and I heard Father singing calling out to me he was calling through my darkness from his son let the wrong singing songs of freedom that caused children home. Helping me remember I never was a long foot father had been there with me wherever I had wrong. Yet then with me at the glory hole where

Lord Kenty found. Yet then with me and I walk the streets of the darkest side of town. If I only listen, I might have heard his tune, and if you listen closely, I'll thank you here M2. He is calling through darkness from his son, it's wrong singing songs of freedom that call his children home. Helping you remember, you've never been alone.

For he is always with you, wherever you may roam. So pull the cotton from your ears while you still have time. Don't worry about your dollars, your nickels are your dans. Cause the song that money sings, it only leads us straight, But father's song of freedom is showing you the way. He is calling through your darkness from his son, let's bronze singing songs of freedom that calls children home. Helping you remember, you've never been alone for he is always with you.

Wherever you may roam. It is I, it is I, it go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on.

I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on.

I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna go on. anything like it ever. You just prompt it and it will make a song for you. And as you could see, I made a lot of high-level beautiful, romantic songs with Suno.ai. And I made them all for National Sisters Day. But yeah, check it out. It will blow your mind. It's crazy.

It's less than five minutes. It just spits out a song and it's worth learning how to use it because you can actually, at first you might think you could only make one minute songs, but there's ways to continue the song. And you don't have to prompt it. If you have lyrics that you want it to sing, just type your lyrics in, say what genre of music you want and it'll spit out two different versions of it. They are not a sponsor, but I feel indebted to them because they have created a technology that if you've been listening to my podcast,

you know this is a dream come true. And it also freaks me the fuck out. Then minutes, this thing can just make a song and not that bad. Some of them suck, but every once in a while, it'll just spit out something that's beautiful. And then if you do not do any kind of sound design, production, anything, my God, you can just drop that baby into Ableton and shine it up. It is so fun.

So definitely check them out. sueno.ai. If you're in a fight with your girlfriend or wife, my god. You can make her a love song unless in five minutes. It works. Today we have a wonderful podcast for you. I'm sure you're familiar with David Nick turn. He's David from the midnight gospel.

He's been on the DTFH many a time. Also I'm lucky enough to call him my meditation teacher. Maybe not so lucky for him. But did you know he has a brilliant scholarly son who has written many fantastic books on Buddhism, including the Dharma of the Princess bride, and he has a great podcast called The Road Home, which I hope that you will subscribe to. This podcast couldn't have come at a better time because Ethan's dad recommended this intense book that I finally finished

called Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness. It's definitely one of the best, if not the best books on meditation I've ever read. Very simple, yet the simplicity of a razor. It's incredible, it deconstructs your identity. I had a couple of moments of existential vertigo. And if you do decide to read it, I hope that you will stick it out because it really does,

pull the rug out from under your feet and the walls, and the stuff behind the walls and the thing seeing the walls and there's a real intense moment that happens right around the middle of the book at least for me, but it resolves in the most beautiful sweet, incredible way and part of what was awesome about reading this book is I got to do this podcast with Ethan in the middle of it and I got to interrogate him about some of these podcast with Ethan in the middle of it. And I got to interrogate him about some of these really intense, very complex, seemingly complex Buddhist topics that I really don't know anything about because I have an acid-fried dead brain and it's like an old chicken tender that somebody wrapped in a few sheets of very high grade acid and then folded up in a nice bundle of marijuana leaves

and then rolled in a ketamine flour and then baked in the oven of time for 49 years. So I need help. I'm not ashamed to say it. I'm past the point in my life of having to feel like I'm smart. I admit, I don't know what this means. And when I listen to audiobooks like this, I'm so good. It just, I don't know what that means. I don't know what a mod of a zakadah stage of the darmic realization on the third level of the seventh tried peak is, which is why I need people like Ethan and David in my life. You know, I don't blame anybody living in the West for having a real

aversion to the concept of the spiritual teacher. You know, you get the wrong spiritual teacher, their fingers are gonna be up here. But in two ayahuasca ceremonies, but, I mean, maybe you want that. Not my thing, not in ayahuasca, but you do need someone. I mean, everything, my friend is teaching me how to do kettlebells. That's not exciting, basic, just picking up like a lump of,

I don't even know what they're made of, neutron star material and figuring out a zing it around in a way that doesn't cause me to go into a full paralysis for the rest of my life. I need someone to teach me that. I need somebody to teach me how to change diapers, full diapers, you should see me try to fold up any baby related anything.

I will go into a furious rage within seconds. These bastards who make anything that a parent needs to haul a child around that has to get folded to go in the car and unfolded, they're the same people who made the fucking how raiseiser cube. And if you're listening, why? You know that the transitions are the most difficult time, not just for parents, but

also for human beings because we go into the fucking bar, and you know we get chased by our own projections all around until we reincarnate and then have to deal with an incensed parent, sweating stress, sweats, stinking of cortisol and vodka, as they try to figure out how to unravel the puzzle box that is your stroller. So come on. It's the age of AI, asking AI how to do it. I want a button, a simple simple button even better a voice command and obviously I don't want my kid to be able to voice command the stroller to fold up because they would do it instantly

The point is if you need help with strollers and kettlebells you're probably Gonna need a little bit of help when it comes to Gonna need a little bit of help when it comes to an over 2,000 year old highly evolved philosophical system. So this is why You're about to hear me riddle poor Ethan with dumb dumb questions regarding this amazing Buddhist text Which again, I hope you will check it out. It's called progressive stages of meditation on emptiness I couldn't recommend the audible more though again, I hope you will check it out. It's called progressive stages of meditation on emptiness. I couldn't recommend the audible more, though I am going to order the book itself so I can read it again and do that stupid thing where you underline stuff, imagining that at some point when you become

a scholar, you're going to go back and look at your underlines. Would you never do? Or even worse, you're like maybe someone will actually see that I read a book. It's like if the way dogs piss on fire hydrants, because you want people to know you read. Isn't that embarrassing? Get ready my friends for a wonderful podcast and also this is very accessible. It's a cool conversation just on identity itself on manifestation. We're not just gonna go like full Buddhist nerd on you, so don't worry. Don't skip it. You'll like it. I have some wonderful dates coming up. I'm really excited to get out there on the road though. I do. I think either one, they're the only people who live all night.

Ah! I'm gonna be a happy child! She's a happy child. I'm a happy child. I'm a happy child. We're a better world, we're a better world. But I'll love my child. And I'll get a move.

We'll get a move. I'm gonna be at the comedy works downtown January 11th through the 13th. That's Denver, one of my favorite clubs. Then not long after that, I will be at Helium, I love Heliums and Indianapolis. It's the 25th through the 27th. If you are a witness, by the way, there are tickets left for New Year's Eve. You wanna come celebrate New Year's Eve with me

at the mothership, I would be honored to bring in the New Year with you. You're gonna sit at home, smell in your farts, watchin' that stupid ball. And what's his face, get hammered with what's his face? No fun. Watch me get hammered with you at the comedy mother ship New Year's Eve.

I'm gonna be there. Helium already said that. Hyena's comedy club April 12th. And there's dates in between that I have yet to populate my podcast website with. They'll be up soon but you can find all these dates at Dunkitresslet.com. Following me on Twitter, Instagram, I announce when I have shows coming up if you forgot any of these. Also, if you want commercial free episodes of the DTFH and what is currently a sporadic gathering

of people, I'm sorry about that. My dear patrons, we will get back on schedule after the holidays. Go to patreon.com for it's like DTFH and subscribe. Please. All right, one last plug, but not for me. If you are interested in taking the, probably the deepest dive you could take into Buddhism,

outside of getting taken by sleigh stacks down to the hollow earth and studying with ancient Tibetans who've been living down there for the last 2,000 years, then you should go to dharmamoon.com and sign up for Ethan's upcoming year-long course. It's a year-long course. It's Buddhist studies and after you listen to this episode, I think you'll realize how powerful and incredible and probably a little intense this course is going to be. It's at darmammoon.com. If you can't remember that link, you can find it at dunkentrustle.com.

Okay, everybody, please welcome back to the DTFH Ethan Nictr. Yes, that's gotta be the wings. Wings, nice. Where'd you order wings from? Louisiana. Enjoy a wing night in with Popeyes. Popeyes hand-battered wings a marinated full full 12 hours in Louisiana's seasonings and with five irresistible flavors,

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Welcome, welcome, one of you. Let you all win, let's shake hands, know me to you. It's the D.T.F.H. as it going. It's going well. I mean, I feel like the last time we talked, not over brief text, a lot of things were different in both of our lives and the world. So it's great to see you. Great to see you too. Yeah. Well, yeah, and you're right.

My God, we talked in a different universe, basically, than the one we're in right now. We were in those four times. I have wanted to tell you for a while that watched the midnight gospel, which I'm sure a lot of people who listen to your podcast have watched, but I haven't gotten to tell you and watch the whole thing. Obviously was fun to see my dad cursing as an animated character, but that's pretty, that's pretty on brand for him. So I mean, my whole life is my dad kind of as an animated character in real life. But that last episode with your mom just absolutely destroyed me. That was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen about the cycle of life and death. So I just wanted to tell you, thank you, thank you for that. For folks, in listening, um, even is David Nicktern's kid. So they're both. 40 something, you're old kid.

They're both, well, yeah, yeah, kid at heart. They're both Buddhist. And you are working at Darma Moon. Now you're helping your dad out with his foundation. What do you call it? Is it founding? I would never know what to call it. Since you're an organization Is it found the, I would never do it to call it.

I mean, it's a organization. It's online, so where are things centered? You know, I'm in Brooklyn right now, you're in Charlotte. Like, where is this, where does this live? Yeah, so Darwin is kind of like that. But it's an online meditation and Buddhist community with lots of great, you know, as you know, programs, meditation teacher training. I lead the year-long Buddhist studies program, which has two years in it, you can just do the first year,

but starts up in late January. And yeah, it's a really great growing community and lots of great online downloads and, you know, full-on-live courses with other humans who are either near you or far away. So definitely recommend it. You know what's fascinating to me about Buddhism is that the Buddhism you think it is,

is so different from the Buddhism you start finding out. It is the more you study, the deeper you go into it. You know, I remember the Buddhism I learned about in college, basic stuff, four noble truths, a full path, middle way, but then when you start digging deeper and deeper and realize how complex it can get and how detailed it can get. And how it's sometimes I feel like I'm reading a medical journal or something and it's analysis

of the psyche. And now, you know, detailed and complete that analysis seems to be. And that to me, it's on the same level as any Western psychologist, Freud, young, anything like that. And the fact that it is so much older is really astounding. I wonder what Freud would have thought if he had found like the right Tibetan bet in texts, you know, breaking down the workings of the psyche or what the mind is.

Yeah, I mean, I have studied quite a lot of Western psychology. It's also a philosophical and metaphysical tradition. So because it's so much older, I would say it's actually much deeper. That's in a way to disser drag as the kids say, Western psychology because there's so much good cross-pollination between Eastern thought and modern Western thought. But it would be more like if Freud had lived 2,500 years ago and you know all these other modalities that have come out like Internal family systems has a huge amount of growth over with Buddhism neuroscience evolutionary biology

And there were 2,500 years of people kind of steeping in those practices and teachings evolving them Taking them into different cultural locales, you know, which in the early world was mostly in Asia. So the idea of the globalization of meditative practice and those contemplative disciplines brings in a lot of different, you know, cultures. And so, yeah, it's much deeper and broader. And then it's also a philosophical and metaphysical tradition. So it's also mediated, you know, conversations with like what Nietzsche or Sart did, you know, so it's great. It's, I don't think it's any better than those. I just think it's older and because it's so much about personal, reflective, contemplative

experience, it's evolved through so many generations. It's, you know. I was watching Netflix. I like to watch the cooking shows on Netflix, the like chef shows. There's one about a restaurant in Mexico city called Pujo, where I can't remember the name of the head chef, but he seemed like a really cool character. There's a mole sauce that's over three years old when it gets served to you, which sounds like it could be gross, but it's dangerous. You know, it's a three Michelin star. It could be, yeah, it could be dangerous, but it's a three Michelin star restaurant and that idea of the sauce, keeping steeping, keeping adding

spices, keeping adding experience. So,, Western psychology gets to 2500 years old. I would say then it's a good Buddhism is now. Great point. Yeah, okay, that's really cool. I wonder if you could help me help me understand something that, and maybe you're not familiar with it. I've got all these books on my kendo

and just randomly pulled one up that I don't remember downloading called As It Is. It's a different students of this Tibetan guru sort of describing him. It's a devotional text basically. But in it, they talk about a practice that this guru, their guru, did called something like pointing out a mind. You ever heard of this before? The mind pointing out? What is that? Yeah, that is, I mean, I believe that book was, I think it was Tuku Ogeon Rinpoche, who was the father of several younger Tibetan llamas who are

prominent now. Probably the most famous of them is Mingyur Rinpoche. Oh, okay. She's a light in the West. Right. I love this book. They're incredible. Yeah, he wrote a book called In Love With The World about leaving his monastery in the middle night, freaking out all of his, you know, because he's a beloved Lama and just going and living as a homeless person for three years in India and almost dying. So his father Tuku Ugin is considered one of the greatest

tantric teachers of the 20th century and was a holder of a lineage called Zobchan or the Great Perfection, which is a series of very simple, meditative techniques working with resting in mind as it is, right? The idea of awareness as it is, already having wakefulness to it, that is then obscured or covered over by layers of our inherited habitual reactivity and confusion,

et cetera. inherited habitual reactivity and confusion, etc. And so pointing out the nature of mind, or sometimes called introduction to the nature of mind, it's basically the central premise of all tantric Buddhist practice. So when I say tantric Buddhist, that's the form of Buddhism that really flourished in the Himalayan region, especially sometimes it's called Tibetan Buddhism, although at this point we're so post-abetan. So I think, I think, I think, the name for it, and the idea is that you're doing all these practices. Some of them are very ornate visualization or mantra practices, but at their essence, they're also very simple. They're working directly with resting in

awareness as a space that is containing all of our experience and are mind at essence being this wakeful, warm, luminous, but ungraspable container for whatever emotion, whatever experience of ourselves or the world arises. And so the introduction to the nature of mind or pointing out the nature of mind is a set of transmissional instructions that are hard to describe because they're done in different ways and it's very simple where whoever is the lineage holder, often called the Lama in the Tibetan tradition, will introduce or reintroduce because you can receive this instruction

multiple times, that notion of pure awareness and the ability to just rest momentarily in pure awareness to the student. And that's the basis of the student's path forward in working with whatever actual formal meditation practice they're working with or just being in the world in relational spaces or you know, it'd be nice if we were introduced to awareness while on our smartphone, right? But that's a hard experience. Is that impossible? Is that possible?

There's a lot of force. I think it's possible because anywhere experience goes, mind goes, which also means awareness goes, from the standpoint of a supportive environment for doing that, I would say it's designed to be an unsupportive environment. So it's like one of those video games where you get more and more challenging as you go up the ladder. It would be a more advanced practice. I mean there's literally hundreds of psychologists working on the bigger apps trying to figure out how to steal our awareness

rather than empower us with it. So there's a lot of smart people trying to figure out how to make it harder. The other book I'm reading with your dad introduced me to, it's called Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness. I think it's what it's called. And, oh, it's good. Right. Really good. Really, like, it's my favorite thing in that it's kind of painful And it's kind of painful because it's sort of pulling every time you feel like you've sort of assimilated what it's saying. And you've found some ground there. It's pulling that ground out from under you. And you get to really encounter that part of the mind that doesn't want to recognize its

emptiness. want to recognize its emptiness, you know the part of the mind at least at first, it seems to be at odds with anything that is sort of pointing out the inherent dependent or empty or imaginary quality of everything. And it's the best, I'm glad you brought up Sartt because I would get the same kind of feeling reading like hardcore existentialism, just this sense of like, ah, like to someone touching, like, I don't know, this is a weird way to describe it. You ever have anyone put their finger in your belly button?

I have, yeah. I hate it. I mean, not a philosopher. I hate you. Look more like a girl. My daughter likes to get the lint. No, never. It's either a girlfriend, a wife, or a daughter.

And my daughter actually likes to get the lint out of my belly button. I was so lazy to play. I was like, I broke my belly button. I guess I'm weird blessing, but that is, it's just weird. I just want to tell you, listen,

as my daughter's in first grade. So it's still appropriate. If she was like a teenager trying to get the lens out of my belly button, I'd set a boundary. But she's, I'm crying. Oh, yeah, no, it's no good. Boundary. It's a squirmy feeling. And it's that same kind of feeling. But guys, the, you know because the rational part of your mind is recognizing the how it's stoot and

clearly well-thought out the entire systematic description of how consciousness emerges as a Skandhas as they, or the, and then the sort of, it's so good, and also that like he presents, you will be thinking a counter argument to what he's saying, and then he will say, you might be thinking this,

and it's your shitty counter argument, which he then dispels, leaving you, with a rug pulled out from under you. But I was, I'm really interested in the, I can't remember the entire name, Alia. It's sort of like with the Skondas, you have the, this sort of layering that leads to what we would call our identity or reality or the experience of reality.

And at the base of that, there's this description of this kind of oceanic primary fundamental primordial place that all of this stuff has its is emerging from. And that place, you sometimes in meditation, sometimes just walking around, I feel like I can tune into that place. And it's wonderful in that, you know, it's a remembering of, I think, something from my childhood of like, oh, you really don't have to have any reason

to be happy. Like, this is not gonna get better than this place. And but the part that I'm confused about and the part that really like just as I was like, Oh, okay, well, this is a good place. Now there's a place to rest in here. He then points out that because this place of awareness is dependent on something to be aware of. It also is not some permit structure. It also is not anything you can, you know, put your tent poles into. Am I misunderstanding this description?

No, I mean, just to give a little more context, that book, which was written and was a series of oral teachings by another Tibetan scholar named Kempo Sultram Giamso, compiled by his students. So there's Buddhist practice and then there's Buddhist philosophy, which has also evolved over 2,500 years. And the Tibetans more recently put all of the different, within Buddhism, there's multiple philosophical systems

that evolved in different cultures and different teachers that kind of make different frameworks. And all of the frameworks are really around exploring relative truth and ultimate truth, right? So just simply put, relative truth is the fact that there's a guy named Ethan, you know, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. There's a guy named Duncan in Charlotte, North Carolina, told me he had to perform last night in a place

with not a good ghost, like a bad ghost. That's what happened before we had on, right? So that's the ghost is relative, I completely believe you by the way It's a so that's all of that is relative truth, right? We're in a we're in a position Relative to other things we have an existence. We have thoughts we have personalities This is all real on the relative level. Yeah, and then there's ultimate truth, right and Basically when you look so there's different systems of philosophy that evolved over time.

And in that book, basically, what he's doing is arranging the systems of philosophy in stages so that the sort of different philosophical arguments about what is relatively true and what is ultimately true sort of go up a ladder of increasing subtlety. And it's completely around this idea of increasingly subtle ideas about ourself or ideas about reality that we might be holding on to. Right. Right. And you know, I mean, when you look at the thing about, you know, I mean, evolutionary biology

and neuroscience has done a really better job than Buddhism explaining why this is true recently. Basically, you know, the human mind and the human brain to survive, we try to create patterns, right? We try to recognize things in patterns, which that's not actually what's happening. You know, like nothing that's happening in our visual field is actually kind of definable through a pattern, nothing that's happening in our mental or emotional field can be solidified into like just these categories, right? But we try to like,

solidify it so that we can label and know, you know, and we know that's what that kind of Experiences. This is what this kind of experience. Yeah, right basically to survive, right? Like we want to know what food is poisonous What food is sweet what food it has nourishment and that we don't have to It's a neurological augmented reality. So there's reality and then you are overlaying on top of that reality. Some series of judgments. This is brown. That's red.

This is a stop light. That's a green light. That means I can go friend, enemy. And so this is all happening instantaneously on top of, and this is that, and that's that and those are two separate things, even though on one level they might be separate, but there's certainly part like if you're in a building, there's the door, there's the wall, and you might say here's a little door is different from the wall, but if you're looking at the building, it's just one building. It's one thing, but you're breaking it up in this spontaneous, instantaneous way.

And this is how reality forms around you, right? That's the idea. Exactly. And sometimes we form those categories and make those patterns in ways that are mostly accurate, for example, knowing psychologically, if I'm a person who experiences a lot of anger or experiences a lot of addictive desire, that could help me navigate the world being kinder to myself and more skillful towards others. But what happens when we define patterns and categories is there always is an inaccuracy because it's like trying to hold the water in a river still. It's not... Right.

The water is not actually there the next day. It's somewhere... Right. ...right away. And so the idea is if we just rest in our conceptual patterns or just rely on our conceptual patterns, they ossify, they harden. And the more we do that, the more we mistake reality, the less present we are, the less compassionate we are, and the more we suffer, and the more we probably cause suffering for

others as well. So the relative truth gets at the idea of how do we hone our pattern recognition so that we actually are making mostly accurate assessments about our relative and relational reality. But ultimately speaking, no pattern is fixed, right? And that gets at this notion first of non-self. Then it gets at this notion of emptiness, right? And yet, there is this, you know, the alia, which you're talking about, which literally means something like ground, right? Is this sort of, it's related to the conversation we were having about the pointing out the nature of mind. It's this basic space of knowing, of

experiencing that is holding the whole thing, you know, that's not a pattern. It's actually just a knowing luminous space of what you could say unfabricated mind, right? So going through the philosophical arguments about here's the arguments people made about what is real and verifiable and what is not, you get slowly to this truth of emptiness, which is, you know, he's in dialogue and discourse with other philosophical traditions throughout that book, because that's how Buddhism evolved. all kinds of different philosophical systems, philosophies that were pretty nihilistic about the universe, like there is nothing and nothing matters,

and philosophies that to use the Buddhist framing would be considered transcendent or eternalistic, like there is a permanent soul or permanent God and all you have to do is reach for them and fix yourself to them and then all will be good, you know. And figuring out the subtleties of all these philosophies where they basically fixated on some relative truth and mistook the relative truth to be ultimately true, right? And so that

ultimate truth in Buddhism has this placeholder name of emptiness, right? Yeah, that's that's what we call the idea that reality is not solid, right? But none of this is so it's happening very much. The flip side of that is luminosity, which means it's brilliant. It's a flow, it's energy, it's movement, it's perception, it's emotion, but it's not happening in some fixed way that we can hold on to, but it is brilliant at the same time. Now the problem is emptiness and luminosity are just words, right? Right. They're more pattern recognition,

right? So the idea is ultimately you have to let go of the words too and work with awareness as a direct embodied, you could say experience embodied his. Because that's the trap. It's very popular. It's a trap. You start catching glimpses of this thing and then of course the first thing you want to do is like, oh that's the thing. And in the moment you're doing, oh that's the thing you've in some way differentiated yourself from it by the assessment, the analysis, and for me, the infinite river of thoughts regarding what that is. Thank you, Better Health, for supporting the DTFH, and thank you for supporting so many people during the holiday seasons. You know, if you're like me, you might be one of the very few people out there. It feels a little weird during the holidays. Most people in fact 99.9% of

people during the holidays feel great in a Stanley Kubrick report three out of five adult men say nothing is happier than me on the holidays. I love it! Nothing better than the holidays. It never, ever bothers me. Everything is perfect! But you might not be one of those people. And there's a lot of reasons for that. Who knows, you could have an allergy to Christmas trees or maybe you incarnated in a frenzied chaos vortex disguised as your family.

Regardless, I am so grateful to my therapists of the past. It's one of those things that nobody wants to really do. It's like the gym, it's like eating right, it's like going anywhere outside of your house, but the moment you do it, you realize, whoa, I wish I had started doing this sooner. It really did change my life. Sorry if that's a cheesy thing to say, during a podcast commercial,

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That's better help. H-E-L-P dot com slash Duncan. of the way you're doing. And then you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing, you're doing,'s the thing. And in the moment you're doing, oh, that's the thing you've, you've in some way differentiated yourself from it by the assessment, the analysis, and for me, the infinite river of thoughts regarding

what that is. And one of those thoughts I've had is I do see how, in the Hindu tradition, if there were people meditating, if there were people exploring consciousness, and they came upon the Aliyah, the ground floor. I do see how you would say, that's my soul. Well, that must be the soul there. That is some... Or that's God. Yes, both. I mean, that this is the, uh, both of these things have popped into my head, which is, oh, it's some divine quality. It has a kind of divinity to it or a, or an eternal is transcendent quality to it. It is very exciting. And, uh, and then the other thought is, oh, this must be what they're talking about me talk about the soul the op-min

This this must be it and so that was sort of the disconcerting moment Because I'm listening to this and then of course like that's what it leads into like you're saying. It's progressive That right away it talks about no don't get get confused, not this old, not God, actually as dependent as anything else, and that for awareness to exist, it must have something to be aware of, and thus it can't have any kind of real permanence unless you want a bank on there forever being things to be aware of. Which is, you know, I didn't feel like I was good news. It really bothered me.

Like it really threw a sand in my diaper. Am I very empty diaper? Why did it bother you? Well, because like I want some part of me wants to have to be a soul, some part of me wants to have there to be a soul. Some part of me wants there to be an individuated packet of meanness or some, you know what I mean? That is me. This is my soul. And you have your soul and I have my soul. And this thing is lasting.

This thing does persist. And also just basic hedonism, like, encountering the thing, I don't want it to go away. Like that, I want that to be forever, because it's so incredibly, it's such a relief to stumble upon that thing. I mean, it's you know, you it's a relief It's a cool. Why I don't have to be happy for any reason. I don't need some excuse to be happy Or maybe happiness is the wrong balance or feel peace. I don't need the world to align with my desires

For for this thing doesn't seem to give a shit about any of that at all. And that feels like really good. So yeah, a lot of attachment, you know, a lot of not wanting them to go away, even though it's like thing you that has always been there underneath everything it appears. Yeah, I mean, I think that's where the relative truth becomes really useful, which is in terms of you want your individuation, I mean, you already have it. You know, that's the good thing. Right. Like, there's never going to be another person living dunk in

trussle or Ethan Nick turns subject positions in this time and place, with this kind of unique conglomeration of experiences. So the relative truth is already happening to a certain degree and also, without the relative truth, without there being an experience or set of experiences arising, there actually couldn't be this experience of emptiness, luminosity. It would just be voidness. It would be nihilism. It would be the black hole. But it's because

there are these specific expressions of sentiency and luminous moments happening in a stream that have very specific experiences that it's empty. So that's the flip side of the coin is that relative and ultimate truth can't actually exist without each other. So, but that idea of arrival is an interesting one, right? Because that exists throughout spirituality, throughout our, it exists if you get into a more fundamentalist approach to Christianity

or another tradition. And once you accept Jesus, that's it. You're done. It doesn't matter what happens after that. That's some people's approach to Christianity. It happens if you have a peak spiritual experience with plant medicine or Iowaska, right? I had this amazing insight, you know, it's a great how are you living your life? You know, you're back from Peru now, now, how's life going?

You know, and it happens if you go on a Buddhist meditation retreat and you're like, I real my mind slowed down, I was open, I made friends and I've done this. You hear the sounds and you really understand the dialogue of birds talking to each other in the trees, like full on, like they were having their podcast and you're like, I know emotionally exactly what these birds are saying to each other. It's a lie. And it didn't feel like a trip. But then it's the next moment, right? The conversation ends and there's something else to show up to.

So that grasping, it makes so much sense because it's the long to live from a more genuine open heart experience. Yes. But then you have to do it again. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. But then you have to do it again. Right. Yeah, right, right. You have to do it again. There's another moment.

Yeah. There's another moment. And it is a different moment altogether. And yeah, and so that's the collision to me. I mean, that is the collision worth it's suffering emerges from. That's the fault line is that that is truth, what you just said. And you just don't want that to be you honestly like I I there's a comedian Mark Maron he's got a great joke about

Scientology yeah he's afraid to read dionetics because he thinks he's like you know because like at some point I'm just worried, I'm like, you know, this makes a lot of sense. And yeah. But Scientology, I did hear one thing, a Scientologist term, which is, you're in, oh, you're in disagreement with the universe. You have a disagreement with the universe. And you know what I mean, this is not,

this is probably not a good position to be in, is to be at odds with as things are. And yet, that seems to be the general human predicament is one of this kind of, I don't want it to be moments. I want there to be some connective tissue between these things that carry over to some degree that allows me to transport the epiphany's moment from one to the next to the next thus no longer having to reset repeat the exploratory process. It's laziness I guess. Exploratory process. It's laziness, I guess.

Well, there is a connective space that is sentient. That's what we're talking about. In Buddhist terminology of the tantric or what's called Mahayana tradition, it's either called Rigpa, you know, primordial awareness. It can be called the alia in Sanskrit, the ground of awareness or ground of consciousness. It can be called ultimate bodhicitta, a waking heart or a waking mind. But it's not a thing, right? It's not it's not objectifiable. It's a space that is containing. You know, I mean, that's how I felt about, you know, the last episode of your show where you and your mother are, you know, becoming, right, there is a continuity there. That's actually what Contra literally means is threat of continuity that there's a

There's this constant become one becomes the other's child and then grows old and then rebirths Yeah, like that that there must be a connective tissue, you know to achieve that that level of of real estate You must already know that there is that connective tissue. It's just the tissue is not it's um I made with my daughter uh because we watched this series called Emily's Wonder Lab I think. So there's this there's this substance ubleck that you can make out of uh is it cornstarch or um but it's basically when you just let it sit in your hand it solidifies but the second you try to grasp it it liquefies yeah that that's what awareness feels like that's cool yeah that's cool it's a new tone it's

a non-Newtonian super cool yeah that's a good description. Exactly. Okay, so I want to bring up something, it's an angle on Buddhism that I don't hear brought up a lot because in Buddhism there's a lot of acknowledgement of certain possibilities when the acknowledgement is an invitation to explore these possibilities but generally a warning regarding these possibilities. So in Tonskirk Buddhism, you do hear about sorcery a lot, stories of sorcerers and the sort of shitty karma that comes from it. But before I get to the main point, I've been reading, have you ever heard of Neville Goddard?

Heard the name, but not familiar. I've been reading, if you've ever heard of Neville Goddard. Heard the name, but not familiar. So he's, I guess you could call him like a Christian mystic. And so he takes his perspective on the Bible, is that it's not, it's disguised as a history, It's not, it's disguised as a history, but it's really a psychological analysis of human existence that contains within it all of these keys that were meant for like the initiated, like the pre-sense, that what used to be the pre-sclass, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre-sense, the pre true meaning behind these stories to you. But then he said, you know, the priest has forgotten that. So now everyone's a literalist when it comes to the Bible. And so they're just licking the side of the jar that has the honey inside of it. And so an example of this would be, you know, the Virgin Mary, the story of the Virgin birth. He says, this is an about some teenager who gets humped by God and then has God's The Virgin Mary is a symbol for what I think he would agree was the

Alia, the ground consciousness, which is this untainted, untouched room, a space within which the divine consummation is the identity, the body, the human incarnation has come into this perfect, original space, and then the birth of Jesus is the birth of your own realization. That's the divine birth. But that's an example of how deep and weird he gets with his analysis of all these things, but that sounds great. It's cool, man. It's like the next it because you know, having studied Buddhism for so long and then hearing this stuff and

having being able to connect these completely different traditions in ways where oh my god, well that's the case. I know that I know both of these maps, but his premise is that the this Ground consciousness and again, this is where there would be a disagreement is God. So this is the I am in the Bible I am that I am this is God. And that because it's the ground floor of things, it's from this ground that everything that is in the world of humanity emerges or anything

in general. And there seems to be a parallel in this progressive stages of meditation as it talks about how this anything you're seeing in the world is just this ground oceanic consciousness undulating in certain waveforms that you have identified as reality, but the it's all coming from this ocean of experience. Now here's where it gets into something that I guess at least I have it or a lot of embudism, maybe you could correct me. He is premises because of that, because you are fundamentally the ground floor, that's you are the ocean of reality, that is the thing from which all things manifest. You can, by tuning into that ground consciousness, begin

to make things happen in your own life. Begin to manifest that prayer itself is a connection, is not saying like, you know, words to someone and hoping that it gets the letter, but that it's reconnecting with that and in that reconnection, a natural emergence of not just awareness, enlightenment, a nirvana, whatever you wanna call it, but literally you can start producing any kind of reality that you want in your own life, which, and then I thought, oh fuck,

so is that sorcery, is that a magical system? Would Buddhist look at that and say that's magic? Like that a magical system? Would Buddhist look at that and say, that's magic. Like, that yes, maybe possible, but don't get caught up in this possibility that seems to be attached to waking up. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can probably find Buddhist texts where they say, you know, don't don't engage in this these arts or that arts There's the Tibetan story of Milarepa who, you know To get back basically had a Cinderella story and to get back at his Antenonko who stole his mother's fortune when his father died He engaged in dark magic and ended up killing like 30 people and started

studying Buddhism because he was sure he was going to hell for, you know, having accidentally killed 30 people through through magic. I don't think there's anything wrong with sorcery. I mean, I think the Buddhist view is, I mean, if you can do it, I mean, I think I think technology to a certain degree is sorcery, you know, I mean, AI seems like sorcery that's not quite manifest yet. Every time I'm on chat GPD, I'm like, this is kind of silly, but this thing does not really know what it's doing yet. But I think, you know, in terms of manifesting possibilities on the relative level that haven't existed yet, I think that's just figuring out the way relative reality works. So I think the key thing from a Buddhist standpoint is the view with which we are pursuing outcomes

on the relative level. Right. And I think when you look at the modern kind of wellness influencer or spiritual influencer take on manifesting, I do think, I mean, in Buddhism, prayer is called making aspirations. So you make aspirations for your own awakening, for the benefit of your relative conventional circumstance for the benefit of others. So I think it's a view and, you know, in a sense, you could say that the truth of interdependence, which is the way relative truth works, is

we have influence over our relative circumstance. It's very, very complex. The influence depends on our personal karma, depends on the relationships that we're trying to influence depends on our social situation, whether or not they're supportive or oppressive forces. So tapping into awareness and saying, through my aspiration to really declaring an intention, can I shift the manifestation, can I influence?

Yes, that's true. I think there's a little bit of, or a lot of bits, sometimes of commodification of saying, like if you just, you need to learn my trademark system to make something. And then there can also be a cruelty to that because there's either unspoken or an outright spoken idea that if you don't have the life you want, it's because you haven't tapped into your powers of manifestation. Like it's your fault, you know,

that certain things happen to you. And I think that's really problematic. I need a website for my podcast. I want to get murdered by a web designer. I don't want to deal with somebody who might have toxic lasmosis. No offense to the designers of websites. Just don't want to smell you in my house. So I use square space. Yes, I use square space. Yes, I use square space every single day. Next year is right around the corner waiting for you, back in you, pointing to his feet and saying, check it out, fresh pedicure.

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Use offer code Duncan. It will give you 10% off your first order of a website where I domain again. Squarespace.com Enjoy them, try it out, go to the buffet, make a beautiful website, realize that all these years I wasn't blowing smoke, and then when you're ready to launch your software code Duncan to get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you Squarespace. You know, there's either unspoken or an outright spoken idea that if you don't have the

life you want, it's because you haven't tapped into your powers of manifestation. Like it's your fault, you know, that certain things happen to you. And I think that's really problematic. So, okay, but let me start. Let me start. Let me pose an account argument to that, which, you know, I've thought the same thing. I mean, you know, someone up the worst case. And I would hear Rumbas talk about this, and I would really like rail against it, and

I still disagree with it, but it's an example, and like earlier, I don't think he would have said this in his later life, but it's early Ramdas, something on the lines of, you know, a child, a victim of sexual abuse, chose that incarnation, to grow to learn or something like that. And that really, I found that to be a very lame, woo-woo-y way of dealing with the problem of suffering. You know, it's like, well, the boy to think the guilt that I are the shame that I'm okay in this person's not, you know, what's it called, a survivor guilt or whatever. Like, you know, or just general existence in the world.

If you like stop ignoring the reality of what's in your computer, what's in your e-car, that if there's any kind of lithium in there, that shit's getting mined by children, that in the interdependency, in the web of connection, we're not just connected to a lot of suffering people, but dependent on their labor to have the modern Western experience. And so I found that to be like a way out. But, so these are extreme cases,

but to argue for the point, certainly whatever happens to be around you right now is there because of decisions that you have made mostly, you know, that mostly. Maybe there's aspects that you didn't make, you didn't decide to be born if you're a materialist. I certainly didn't decide for my tab-dye peas. Well, I did decide that actually, I was a ez because of decisions. I didn't decide for my tab-dye peas. Well, I did decide that actually, I was as because of decisions. I didn't decide to go bald. I didn't decide for my hair to start thinning.

I didn't decide for my hair to go gray. But most things that I would tell I'm in, the clothes I'm wearing, and most importantly, my interpretation of what's around me is a decision that I'm making, maybe not on the conscious level, but instantaneously based on a habit of thought. So I think that's what he's getting at is, is, you are whether you want to deal with it or not, summoning up the flavor of reality that's around you. And if you've lost track of this fundamental ground floor,

womanous space, then probably that reality or summoning up around you is anxiety provoking at the very least because you're happy to manifest, it depends on a set of causes, a set of conditions to be aligned in some perfect way before you can be happy. Why wouldn't I would be you're in a ocean of phenomena. You need the slot machine to hit a certain number of like whatever golden nuggets before you can feel good. So you're going to be anxious, whereas what God heard is saying is, no, it doesn't matter

what the numbers are hitting on your slot machine. Don't even worry about that. First, and he quotes this all the time, I think it's Matthew, Seek ye first, the kingdom of God, and all things will follow. But for him, that kingdom of God, I think, is the Aliyah fundamental ground consciousness. So, when I'm going to disagree with somebody these days, I always like to empathize first, because I think disagreements are never complete. And I think when we speak empathetically to say, okay, here's what I can take from that, you know, and I am going to have to disagree somewhat with Ram Das, which is never fun, right?

Yeah. A wonderful, wonderful human. But, spirit, whatever that former gentleman is right now, whatever that former gentleman is right now, different views on where that energy would have gone, but it's certainly still, still pervading. So one argument that I think you could look at in support of what you're saying is that people of similar backgrounds or similar

causal situations can manifest, can seem to manifest in terms of the way they're working with their experience moment by moment very differently, right? We all have that experience of two people come from the same family, you know, or two people come from the same background, or racial background, or class background, or culture, and one seems to be really, really like reality is out to get me, and the other one is, I am the one in control of my karma, or in control of as we're using the term here manifestation. So I think that's very true,

and I do think how and there is a level of reality that is incredibly important, that individual saying, I can work with my experience directly is incredibly powerful. And we're never, we're never going to get away from that as a, as a spiritual truth. That being said, I think there is an issue with the verb choose or decide, because the way relative truth works from a Buddhist standpoint is interdependence, which means there's always a complex set of causes and conditions, you know, that bring things into being. And it is never moment, the word choose determines the idea that it is, it's moment zero, right? That there's nothing comes before as a history and it's never moment zero, right?

We're always working in this flow of dynamics. And so and the system of dynamics you know I mean you know whatever we think about the the Middle East right now and I've been listening to a lot of people on that because I feel very uneducated. October 7th was not moment zero in that situation, right? I mean, everybody would have to acknowledge that there is a much longer, much more complicated history before that, before that happen. That is influencing how the parties show up and what the different systemic forces that craft the current current awful experience are. So, you know, for a person to choose their birth,

I mean, there is this notion in Tibetan Buddhism that you are in the cycle of reincarnation, you're kind of knocked about by the pure projections of your karma and then you are driven towards something that seems the most familiar of what's available. And that is what leads you to the womb of your future mother. So there's something familiar, comically or habitually about the situation in which you take birth. I think that's the Tibetan or the Tantric Buddhist view of the Bardo's.

By the way, Pemetro Dhrins latest book on the rebirth and sort of the depth of how to work with dying and rebirth from a Tibetan Buddhist standpoint is just really fabulous book. How he lives, how he dies. That's how he dies. Yeah, so I definitely recommend that. So, so there is there is a patterning that lives in our individual consciousness that if we don't develop awareness of it, we do follow it kind of blindly and you could

say that's a choice, right? But it's really the patterning of a mind that's making the choice. Unless we are touching into that awareness, which gives us much more flexibility, right? Because it starts to see that there's space around the patterning that we can move in a different direction. So we can have influence for sure. And I think that's how you get to people. I mean, you know, I always see this like you're going because I'm in airports a lot, you're in airports a lot. You know, when there's a fricking shit show at the TSA, you know? Yeah.

And one of the TSA agents is I hate myself and I hate all of you. Yeah. Be hating myself and hating all of you is how I'm gonna get through my shift right now. Yes. And then there's another TSA agent who's like, all right folks, we're all in this together. Let's be kind to each other.

I'm gonna bring the positive energy. How did that person make a different choice? So individual choice definitely exists. I don't doubt that at all, but it does choices that are made out of ignorance or that are made out of both intergenerational and previous lifetime, if we believe in that, and social patterning. I do think it's a little blind to call that a choice.

And also, if you do manifest something because you did somebody's workshop, it's also because causes and conditions arose for that to happen, which we don't always know. Why did you become a successful comedian? Do you think it's entirely based on choices you made or is a little bit of it right place, right time. This episode of the DTFH has been supported by FUME. Look, I don't mean to brag, but I do have a bachelor's degree in psychology. Yet you heard it right. Bachelor's degree in psychology.

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Thank you, Fume. Why did you become a successful comedian? Do you think it's entirely based on choices you made or is a little bit of it right place, right time? It's a very little place, right time. You're literally kidding, you're a look, but I will, you know, I've said it a lot. Oh, so you're just, you're, you're disagreeing completely with Ram Dost then. What? Well, what are you doing? He would say you chose to be a successful comedian.

Oh, I do. No, I, I do, I do, I, I find that in the, in the, in the sort of philosophical, uh, on, like, philosophically, when you're presented with a problem of suffering or evil in the world. Especially if you want to take a theistic approach, you have to figure out a way to deal with some divine, perfect consciousness that is creative in nature and intentional. And I think the example I heard that's horrible is like a squirrel just barely survived a forest fire. It's dying. It's laying in some scorched grass, slowly expiring and agonizing pain.

And so using that as an example, how does your God react to that squirrel? It's the argument of you, you can't have more immoral God, an omniscient God, an omnipotent God. You have to pick two. You can't have an all-powerful God that's moral and that's the squirrel suffer. You see, you have to like pick two, you can't have all three. And so if you've defined your God as all three of these things, then you have to deal with the fact that you're fucking God. I wanted to scorch a squirrel with a forest fire. It for some reason that you will never understand. Or another way out, you would say, well, the squirrel chose that. The squirrel was in some reincarnation spa in afterlife looking at the menu of possible births. It was like, you know, I think I could learn a lot from getting scorched

in a foreign, a forest fire. Now, now the blame goes from God to the squirrel. It's like, shit man, now you shouldn't have picked that. I don't know why you picked that on the menu. Nobody picks sports school these days. But you did. So, so, so, I, why look at all the other things. Well, you've been, you've been about a thousand dicks. Getting sucked in the same time, by your thousand heads. They're perfectly aligned above your dicks. But no, you did scored squirrel-wide. So, so this, again, this is all,

it's just all thought experiments to sort of deal with, I think, which is more, we align here to deal with like, hey, you, you're trying to find someone to blame here. And that's a really interesting thing to do when it comes to any big societal issue in the world, which is, where does the blame? How far back do we go? If we're looking for someone responsible that we can blame for this situation, you know, especially what we know about epigenetics and stuff, how far back do we go to find the villain, to find the perpetrator? Because you inevitably like the example with Israel, you could say the same thing with Ukraine. Right? Any of the big geopolitical issues right now, they didn't just start with September 11th.

They didn't start on the day that the event happened. There was so many things leading up to that to the point where if you keep going back, you can always find some factor that influenced the horrific event even if that factor was hundreds of years in the past. And so in that this blame gets diffused in this fascinating way. And also maybe autonomy a little bit too I think it's more what you're saying. Or the general sense of free will or autonomy starts getting a little foggy when you do that. Right. And we need room because of the example

of the TSA agents, right? We need room for autonomy and free will to be there. So, but I think that whole paradigm of blame, you know, I we're always trying to do something basically good and You know most of the time what we're doing is blaming ourselves, right? I'm such a fool up. I'm not living the life that I wanted and I think when you step into this this paradigm of really Looking at the mind moment by moment and looking at this ground, the awareness moment by moment, accountability is important, right?

Like, oh, wow, right there, I deviated from my awareness, right? I abandoned awareness and I acted habitually and I hurt myself or I heard someone else. That's not blame though, that's that's some level of accountability and I think when we try to live in awareness, there's nobody to blame. I mean, again, if you want to look epigenetically, we end up blaming Sabertooth Tigers and then the Sabertooth Tigers are like, you know, because they were there are predators that gave us these goddamn nervous systems that just get traumatized and reactive and Really are maladaptive to the 21st century and then the saber to tigers like don't blame me It was you know it was reptiles, you know, and then the reptiles are like Jesus Christ it was the dinosaurs, you know, and the dinosaurs are like we just learned how to live, you know

And the big bang is like you can't you can't blame me. I'm just exploding. I want to do a explode. You think I want to be bang. I was happy being a fucking singularity. That's all. And then the same entire fuck. But what if under instead of the, and this is what's so sad about the world right now. What if there was just a paradigm of caring for ourselves and caring for each other? You know? Yeah. Like, it's nobody's fault.

We do need, you know, we do need some account, we often need accountability when somebody just constantly escapes. I didn't do that, you know. Yeah. You know, we have a quadruple indicted president who's our former president who is really, I mean, he's, he is the maestro of a great accountability, right? A great man. A great man.

And we're great. I mean, great is it will be our future president. Are you about to say he's going to fix everything? I know. No, I'm not going to say this. Why you want to know? Is this where you're added with this your Are you?

You can never judge you you can never judge from outside But I have gotten to know a little bit about sort of spending time in a person's presence and saying does this person living their awareness? Do they have compassion for themselves, compassion for others? And that would not be the person I would choose to embody those leadership principles. But back to the question in hand, is like, can we actually create a paradigm of actually

caring for our own experience and caring about others' experience without blame, right? Without blame. And, but maybe with some knowledge of the different interdependent histories that have made this world, that's great. And we can disagree. And, you know, I'm sure you and I do disagree

on some of those and that's great. It's great to disagree as friends. It's great to agree as friends. It's great to agree as friends. We both disagree with Ram Das. So we both put ourselves out there a little bit. And because you don't want to take responsibility for being a well-known comedian. He would celebrate, push back.

I don't think he ever wanted to be like everything I say is correct. I think he went through. There's so many phases to his spiritual evolution and you get here and some of the things he was saying early on, things that don't necessarily run counter to what he was saying later on. It was always went back to the central love everyone, tell the truth, be yourself, where you're at, just where you need to be but some of the metaphysical stuff you know when I was my god like when I was probably like in his 30s Maybe when he was saying some of that stuff and Jesus Christ. I mean you should have heard me give ear beatings when I was reading the celesteam prophecies or like whatever weird woo-woo-y shit that I was trying to trick myself into believing. So I think it's great that he was trying to make some attempt to, I don't think his intent was to

anesthetize people to the suffering of the world, but I think probably in his heart, he was hoping that people who were going through profound suffering could experience a little bit of like liberation because I, or it might act as a wedge for them to not feel completely victimized by the universe, to give them a sense that there is a possibility to choose not to be the screaming TSA person, that in relative reality at any given moment, you can choose just what you're saying to be kinder. You can choose, even if it's fake as fuck, even if you don't feel like it,

even if you're just pissed and everything sucks in the world, you can make that choice and it's a simple choice. You can just help. It's so simple. There's always someone who needs help, especially in the fucking airport. And in that, regardless of your epigenetic history, regardless of whether you're,

and I think that's what's exciting about any monster of the day, whether it's Biden or Donald Trump or Netanyahu or Putin or Zelensky or whoever the fuck you decided is your monster of the day, you have to acknowledge that we're regardless of past activity. And though if you're betting in Vegas, you can look at past activity, you can bet what future activity will be central to every human.

And I think rooted in that emptiness is this possibility that in the next moment, you can do something totally outrageously different than what you've been doing. You can do something completely positive, completely like with the intent of helping. Even if you've been a neutron fucking star for your whole life, a selfish piece of shit, a masturbatory narcissist, you can still at any moment just stop. I believe that. I think that's what makes the human incarnation the most precious incarnation is that quality of, yeah, but just like you said earlier, then there's the next moment. I mean, not everyone's having the great epiphanies. Some people are having like opposite of epiphanies. What is the opposite of epiphanies? What's the opposite of enlightenment?

The opposite of enlightenment is stuckness. You know, yeah, we just have a recurrent narrative or a recurrent about, yeah, so yeah, no, I think for that, you know, again, this is very easy for me to say because I have issues with both my parents, but I'm not a survivor of sexual trauma. So, but we can work with our mind no matter what. That probably means, you know, that we need some supportive conditioning, right? So part of that would probably be a trauma therapist and other supportive conditions. Yes. But just that decision to say, this is workable. I can make progress with that. Yes.

You can make progress. And we can help, you know, and also we can help the TSA agents, right? By being kind, maybe for advocating for a slightly higher salary, I don't know what they get paid, but probably not enough, not enough. You know, and if you're mad at the TSA fucking agents, which is, by the way, how you can spot the people who don't travel a lot is because they haven't surrendered to that reality of like this combination of an Orwellian dystopian nightmare and a shopping mall that is the modern day airport. They they they they can counter the T.S. thing. It mad. They're like, what is this? That's how you know people don't travel. Like, well,

yeah, this is what it's like by the fucker. But you know, I might, if I am feeling pissed at some shitty TSA agent, I remember they have to drive to the airport every fucking day. I just have to walk through this, get my shit searched, let them fucking grab my ball, and then I'm done. But these all day long, they got to wipe the back of their hand against strangers, crutches. They've got to listen to libertarians rail against them as they go through fucking TSA. They've got to dig through people's bags and get poked by fucking diabetes,

needles and like pull out old fish that someone's trying to smuggle through so you you know I mean like you can't do worse to them than what they're already encountering You can't what what is is there a more horrible job? You're on x-rays all day looking at the gross shit and people's bags But plugs dildos weird fucking I took my dad's ashes to scatter them through the TSA. Of course, the bad got pulled because they probably thought it was like cocaine or something. I'm like, yeah, it's my, it was my dad and he was very cool about it. He's like, do you want,

is it okay if I touch to him? Do you, I'm like, it's fine. My dad would have thought I was funny. But then I'm like, you get a lot of ashes coming through here? And he's like, oh yeah, oh yeah, tons of ashes. He's like, a horse came through the other day. Like horse ashes. And he's like, it was like so much ash. So that's their reality. They're fucking dealing with cremated remains, butt plugs, dildos, and fucking gr grumpy as people try any home for Christmas and they have to drive to the airport

Every day, so you can't do much worse than that to them Maybe where maybe that's the the spiritual advice and the spiritual practice we can recommend for for listeners Because we're recording this about a week before Christmas travel. So it's gonna be nice I don't know when it's going to air. But next week, perfect time. Next time you're in the airport, thank a TSA agent and see how that shifts your airport experience. Yeah, try and try that. See what happens. Yeah, try to be nice to them. They just get more mad like you know, they just think you're smuggling dope at that point. Now you're trying to get my chip. They just think you're smuggling dope at that point. Now you're gonna get pulled away for the real fucking

the rectal probe. Now this is an empathize with your situation. I find your advice to be beautiful and loving, but we do disagree here. I see I did what you taught me to do. I say ignorance is bliss. Put on your fucking sunglasses. Try not to look at anyone in the eye and just go numb as a fucking

dapper in an ice box and just get through there and try to shield yourself from the psychic emanations that are blasting from all the cortisol soaked people dealing with that fucking TSA checkpoint. But they also be doing this for Christmas. Everybody gets to make a choice. You can either completely shield yourself, see how that affects your experience, or you can open up and say, thank you

for helping all these holiday travelers and choose your own adventure, folks. And now you know that that just want to point out. Duncan's in Charlotte, North Carolina right now, which is possibly the worst airport in the United States to transfer in that things laid out like the long strip. And it is always at least a 15 minute walk. If you're transferring, it is. People are in Charlotte Airport. It might as well be some kind of

gym where you run with your bags because you will not go to the Charlotte airport. It's not it is. It's not galloping with their bags like running running. You do get people on those the conveyor belt, the moving sidewalk., they're not walking down that sidewalk. They just wanna stand still and ride, and you gotta shove past them, so you're right. You're very smart, obviously, you get why right now, I don't feel like being nice to the DSA,

and all those things. Have you been to LaGuardia recently? LaGuardia has gotten such an upgrade the last few years, and the best tweet I saw about LaGuardia is, it used to be like a bodega with some planes around it Which is absolutely true. It used to be like so not and now it's just the most cool. It's such a gorgeous airport now LaGuardia Airport go Queens. LaGuardia Airport to be nice to the dull isn't a grumpy ass Duncan be nice to the CS agents like yes and Ethan can you especially for searching your butt plug?

Yeah, they're really yeah you don't want you don't know what they're gonna do that they put up they secretly have a pepper sauce on your butt plug if they don't like you. Ethan thank you so much for coming on the show. And can you again talk about this year long Dharma Moon Buddhist program? Yeah. And you're, you're one of the teachers or the main teacher in this? I'm the head of the fact.

We have a faculty of five across the two years of the program that I'm the head of. Also want to, you know, on air so you can't escape and value on my podcast, the Road Home, which is released weekly. And yeah, folks should subscribe because it's free. And, you know, if you just need noise in the background while you're, while you're gardening or getting your butt plugs searched at airport security, you can go to a great podcast. You should listen to a Buddhist podcast. So the road home. Yeah, the Dharma Moon, which has a lot,

DharmaMoon.com has a lot of really cool stuff on it. Has a new video course that my dad teaches, which is really easy to download if you want. Total go at your own pace, intro to meditation. But your long Buddhist studies, it's, it's, meets every Tuesday night live and then everything's recorded. Starts with the basics and goes all the way through the Tantric Buddhist teaching. So it's a deep survey with the great community or Sangha.

We're having a couple infosessions. I don't know when this is going to air but December 19th, which is this Tuesday with Sharon Salisberg, the great Sharon Salisberg, finding stability in an unstable world, that'll be me and her, and then January 9th with my friend Shelley Tegelski. So those will be chances to learn more about the program, but yeah, I mean, it's in it like fifth or six year, and it's a, it's just a really great way to connect deep in your meditation practice, start a meditation practice, make it actually sustainable past your New Year's resolution, where it lasts for only eight or nine days. And, and me with the great community of people,

you know, all over North American, Europe, who are all trying to, yeah, trying to just awaken a little bit and become more grounded in compassionate people. And as Duncan said, the Buddhist teachings are really deep and really broad. And this is just kind of a really good year long survey course. So definitely recommend checking that out at darmanloon.com. And, yeah, and Duncan, please come on the Road Home podcast because we need more of what plug and old fish references on the podcast. Those are my two favorite things to talk about. And also I will plug my new line of butt plugs

that are shaped like old fish, which is an imperfect shape for a butt plug. Well, I'll talk more about that on your show. Ethan, thank you so much. You're brilliant. This is a wonderful conversation. Thanks for clarifying some stuff. I was sort of trying to understand that I just read recently and all the links that you need to sign up for that course will be at dungatrustle.com. But of course, it's Dharma Moon. You just go there. Thank you, Ethan. Happy holidays.

Thanks so much, Duncan. That was Ethan Nick turn everybody again. Take his course. It's at DharmaMoon.com a year of studying Buddhism with this genius. Anyone would benefit. Big thank you to my sponsors. Big fuck you to the stroller industry. A big thank you to the stroller industry. A big thank you to sueno.ai that helped me create some of those beautiful songs that you heard up front. Those were all generated by artificial intelligence. And every month a new thing comes out that

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I love them. So check out soonau.ai. Thank you all for listening. Come see me live. I will not be putting a podcast out next week because it is ex-miss, but I will be back after that for the rest of 20, 24. And 20, 23? I didn't sleep much last night. I was making a robot sing to me. God bless you and goodbye. Yes, that's gotta be the wings.

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