Duncan Trussell Family Hour - RAM DASS and ROSHI JOAN HALIFAX!!!!!!!

Episode Date: May 11, 2013

Ram Dass and Roshi Joan Halifax join the duncan trussell family hour.

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Hello, dear sweet friends, and thank you for tuning in to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. This is a special episode, perhaps the most special episode of the Duncan Trussell Family Hour,

because this episode is dedicated to love. And what better way to start an episode dedicated to love off than with a Daniel Johnston song? True love will find you in the end. You'll find out just who with your friend. Don't be sad I know you will. But don't give up until true love will find you in the end. This is a promise with a catch.

Only if you're looking can it find you. This true love is searching too. But how can it recognize you unless you step out into the light, the light. Don't be sad I know you will. But don't give up until true love will find you in the end. Isn't that great? That's true love will find you in the end. You can find that on iTunes, Daniel Johnston.

So I just returned from a meditation retreat in Maui with Ram Dass and Zinn Roshi, Roshi Joan Halifax. It was an amazing experience, perhaps one of the most incredible experiences of my life. And it was the opposite of what the cynical part of my brain expected a meditation retreat to be like, which was a place filled with sycophantic, flowery, bug-eyed, crystal-gazing, hemp-clad, recently divorced channelers on vacation from their food co-ops. The reality was that I found myself surrounded by a group of people who are all actively working on themselves in an authentic way. And that experience alone was life-changing for me. Because I've spent most of my life with my head buried in books about spirituality.

Tig Nhat Hanh, Alan Watts, Terrence McKenna, Ram Dass, the Dalai Lama, the Bible. It's so easy to get just into the thing where you're just reading about this stuff and reading about this stuff and reading about this stuff. And you can be this solitary practitioner for your entire life. It reminds me of a phenomena that happens when people decide they want to start stand-up comedy. And usually what happens when someone decides they want to start stand-up comedy is they spend months and months and months and months and months trying to compose perfect jokes to use before they go on stage. And really all this is a kind of logical procrastination that puts space in between where they are and the inevitable terror of having to get on stage by yourself and tell jokes. The reality of the thing is you should spend your first year of stand-up comedy just getting comfortable on stage and it has nothing to do with what you're saying. You just have to do it. You have to jump in.

But in a kind of similar way when it comes to spirituality or working on yourself, you can sort of just get into the language of the thing and get into reading about it and sort of contemplating it and thinking about it. But this is a great thing at first in the sense that it can sort of open your eyes to the idea that there's a spiritual dimension to the world. But if you don't take the leap into getting into some kind of spiritual community or getting around a group of people who are practicing together, then it's kind of like having read sheet music for a very long time and never going to a symphony. Eventually you should go and hear the music and see what it looks like when it's being performed and see what it looks like when a group of people are bringing the music from the page to life. And that's what the spiritual community is and that's what happened at this meditation retreat. In Buddhism, they call the spiritual community the Sangha and I've even heard the spiritual community described as the body of the Buddha. And I think in Christianity in the book of Matthew, there's the Jesus said, where two or more of you are gathered in my name, there I will be. Well, those are just sort of ways of describing this insane, beautiful thing that happens when a group of people get together for reasons other than watching spandex clad football players smash into each other on a putting green

or buying 700 pounds of cashews at Costco while completely ignoring each other. When people get together to work on each other together or to practice bonafide spirituality or yoga techniques or Zen techniques or just to evolve themselves when people get together with that purpose something else enters into the picture. And at our current level of human evolution, we describe this ineffable thing as love and which is unfortunate because love is a word that has been hijacked by greeting card companies, cult leaders, sentimentalists, pop singers, false prophets, pedophiles, rom-coms, McDonald's and a million other unsavory types who transform the most incredible thing that humans can experience and do an inflatable, gaudy imitation of itself that they use for their selfish desires and nefarious marketing campaigns. These bastards have made the highest and most intense experience accessible to humans, almost impossible to talk about without feeling embarrassed. You don't want to seem like a sap love you happen about love you don't want to seem like some fairy living in a flower floating on a pond singing to a duck. So many phony freaks out there just use that word to try to get laid and to try to make money. So the word itself is a problematic thing because it points maybe it points to something that isn't really what it is because because what it really is is something with a subjective supernova level of energy.

Now this love, the love spirituality or the active pursuit of love is a form of spiritual practice is known as bhakti, bhakti yoga, the yoga of love, the yoga of falling in love with the universe or falling in love with God or falling in love with Krishna or falling in love with the guru or falling in love it's it's the spiritual it's the acknowledgement that all of us want love and it's the thing everyone wants more than anything else it's the most important thing. If you really sit down and think about it and are quite honest with yourself, you can see that all you really want is love. We want to fall in love. We want love from our friends. We want love from the people we work with. We want to be embraced. We love the feeling of being embraced and the opposite of it is is is terrible. You never hear somebody you never hear somebody talking about yeah God I had the greatest day today I walked down the street nobody looked at me. My waiter was a jerk and no one let me through let me in and traffic and when I got to work my boss and coworkers ignored me and I went home and no one called me on my phone. That's not a good day. A good day are those magical days when you go outside and someone you don't know smiles at you and says hello and maybe whoever you encounter when you're buying stuff or when you're at a restaurant is very sweet to you

and you're complimented on the work you did in an authentic way and the girl or the guy that you like calls you to tell you that they love you and you get home and you get to hang out with friends who are all very happy to be around you. Why is that a good day? It's a good day because the theme running through the entire day is love. It's the best thing. When you have a pet when you have babies all of these moments these are the moments you remember. More than anything the moments that love bubbles up and emerges into your life so. This phenomena this this this this. This truth which is love is what we all want more than anything is something that was identified by super brilliant advanced beings many many thousands of years ago. And I think their great discovery was that love is not something that we obtain from the external universe but love is something that we are.

That radiates out of us and reflects back to us from the screen that is the field of phenomena that we call reality. So that when we say we're falling in love we're not really falling in love we're seeing ourselves. So Bhakti Yoga would be the process of waking up to your true identity which is becoming or transforming into love. The retreat was called love and awareness and I won't go into the details of what Ram Dass and Roshi Halifax talked about because what they said is secondary to what they were both radiating love. These two people have spent at least the last 40 years actively working on themselves in a disciplined way and the end result is that they have transformed themselves into love radiators. This is an inspirational thing because being around it makes you want to be like it. Once you've seen it in action once you've seen what it looks like and not just these two people but all the people surrounding them and all the people who have been following. Who consider them to be teachers when you see the the effect that their teachings that's had on on on these people you think well yeah I want to be like that.

I don't I don't want to be some closed hearted cold menacing angry egomaniacal thing anymore. I want to be like this these people these people are. Love fireflies. And it's real it's not phony I'm not talking about this crappy be as drum circle patchouli soak beach love or someone's yapping about love but the only thing that they want to do is get in the sack with a weed dealer. I'm talking about the real this is the real thing. So it was being around these people is amazing but the height of the retreat for me happened when my friend Raghu Marcus who you can listen to on an earlier episode of this podcast or on his own podcast the mind rolling podcast. Took me to Ram Dass's house. Now those of you who know me know that this is identical to a teenage girl being taken to Justin Bieber's house.

I felt like I was in some kind of intense fever dream. I actually ended up in a swimming pool hanging out with Ram Dass and Roshi Joan Halifax. Where I was mostly speechless as I watched these two old friends play together in the swimming pool laughing and joking with each other just like kids. No heaviness no self importance no intense spiritual talks just two beings purely in the moment having a great time in a swimming pool. This is what a spiritual practice can give you the ability to actually enjoy existence while melting the brains and expanding the minds of all those around you in the process. We went back into Ram Dass's house and this is where this is sort of the peak of the whole thing. He came up to me I was sitting on the couch and he's in a Ram Dass isn't it for those of you don't know Ram Dass I highly recommend checking out the documentary fierce grace which is available on Netflix which sort of shows how he has been coping with the effects of a stroke that he had which has put him in a wheelchair and has in some ways impaired his ability to speak is sort of slowed down. His language a little bit.

And the documentary the documentary is great because it shows you how not only does the spiritual practice make it so that you can have a super great time in a swimming pool but it can also make it when the inevitable collapse of your physical body happens it can make it so that that seems as as small and as. As irrelevant a thing as getting something stuck in your teeth. It doesn't matter that the man is in a wheelchair it doesn't matter that the man is that his language has been slowed down a little bit because he's just blasting love out and you don't notice the wheelchair after a few moments of being around this person. You don't notice any of the weird effects of the stroke after you've been around this person all you notice is Holy God this person is blasting me with love which is what happened he can he rolled up to me in his wheelchair sitting on the couch. And he sat in front of me and he just was smiling and this is all this stuff is really when you when you describe it you're you're limited to language you're strapped in language and languages really can't get a get across. What what this is like. It's very hard to do it will I'll probably never be able to really describe this in a way that they can they can fully get across what it felt like. But it was this beautiful moment with Ram Dass and he's smiling and he's looking at me and it's unconditional love he's giving me unconditional love and I'm looking at him and I start thinking about how I wish my mom could be there

and she just if she could have I just kept thinking God if she could if she could see this this happened and so that made me made it made me start crying a little bit and and I told him you know my mom passed away a few weeks ago and I just wish she were here to see this. And he just smiled and beamed at me and said she is here and it was real it felt so real and I felt her there I could feel it he's right she was right there. And we talked a little bit more and he said to me he pointed to his head and he said you his forehead he said you have to move from here and then he pointed to his heart and he said to hear. Now this instruction simple instruction is something that I will think about for the rest of my life. Because I think that really does encapsulate what this is all about the meditation the working on yourself whatever it is that that that you're you're engaged in out there. That's it that's the most that's the movement to get out of the the shrieking howling confusing endless download of the mind and into the heart. And since this meditation retreat I've been working on it and I I have to say that there are there there are moments where it feels as though I've been living in this mansion or temple or house which is my body.

And there's this whole other part of the house in fact the actual it's almost as though I've been living on the porch that's the way to put it if you've been living in your head it's like you've been living on on on the porch with the barking dogs. It's like you've been living on a porch in front of a mansion with a bunch of yapping barking dogs and suddenly you realize the doors unlocked and you can walk into this spacious expansive beautiful place that has a feeling of familiarity to you because if you when you were a kid that's where you lived. That's the place you were you hung out all the time. But at some point you decided you'd rather go sit on the porch with yapping dogs that bark and how and and endlessly bark about taxes and money and things you should have done and things you should do and things you didn't do. It's a noisy porch up there in the brain but the heart another overused term it's this other place all together and when you go into that place suddenly you get out of the mind you get out of the endless yapping of the brain and you get into this still place where suddenly there isn't as much to say. Because you're just experiencing what is and that's what Ram Das Ram Das teaches. That's what Roshi Joan Halifax teaches. That's what Ragu Marcus teaches and that's what Ram Das is guru.

Neem Kareli Baba was all about just being in the moment or being here now be here now check out the book Ram Das wrote it if you haven't seen it and and if you and if you can. I highly recommend that you come to one of these meditation retreats. You can go to Ram Das.org. There's one coming up in December that I'm going to go to. I cannot recommend this. Enough. I have done. Countless.

Doses of LSD and other psychedelics. I've been to the raves. I've hung out with freaks. I've gone to the desert on mushrooms and stared up at the sky. Been to India. Been to Varanasi watch bodies burn on the banks of the Ganges River. Been in love. I've taken long baths.

But nothing. Compares to this this thing which is actually happening in Hawaii. So highly recommend that and also if you're if you're drawn more to Buddhism and to Zen you can also go to the upaya meditation center which is was founded by Roshi Joan Halifax and they have meditation retreats all the time there and you can go there and you can meditate. But what I recommend is get your nose out of the books and find a group of people who are meditating out there. You might have to look around a lot. I mean I've gone to group. You know I have ended up around groups of people who are practicing this thing or that thing that I didn't really resonate with and you just don't go back. And don't get yourself hot tied in the basement of some cult leader's house staring at an oil painting of the Virgin Mary while somebody drips hot candle wax on your back.

You don't want to do that. But I'm sure that there's where around you there's got to be groups of people who are practicing some form of meditation guaranteed. You can do a Google search and find it. But go and do that. That's my new multiverse freak out challenge. I challenge you to get out of your house and go to some place where people are practicing together. It's out there. You can find it.

Go to round us.org. There's a message board there. I'm sure there's people who are who are involved in the love server member foundation around you who are doing this stuff. I think they're everywhere. But I highly recommend it. And anyway, not only did I get to sit down with Ram Dass but I also thanks to Raghu Marcus got to do a podcast with Ram Dass and Roshi Halifax. And so let me just let me just apologize in advance if I seem giddy or weird or tight or shut down or if my voice seems weird. Just understand that this is like for me this is this is like it's like being around a love supernova.

So I apologize for any stammering quality to my voice and also the background noise. We were in Ram Dass's house and so what you're hearing is people in the kitchen and just the sounds that's the sound of Ram Dass's house. So sorry for any weird ambient noise in the background. We're not going to do commercials for this episode but I do invite you to go visit Ram Dass.org or go to upaya.org and check out go to one of Roshi's programs. Get involved. Go listen to the mind rolling podcast at mindrollingpodcast.com. I'll have all these links at Duncan Trussell.com. So now everyone please dilate your heart chakras, expand your third eyes and allow your astral bodies to welcome to the Duncan Trussell family hour Ram Dass, Ragu Marcus and Roshi Joan Halifax.

This is Duncan Trussell and he's had a podcast for a couple of years. He's been doing podcasting as a comedian. And during his podcasts, because of his love for Ram Dass, he would talk about Ram Dass, talk about some of the books that he had read, be here now. Now this audience is in their 20s and 30s and there's like, I don't know, 40, 50,000 every week are pulling this podcast out. And they all, not all, but it seems like a good part. Obviously they're interested in what you're talking about when you speak about telling stories about Ram Dass. They love it. Well, they love, you know, many of them are using psychedelics.

A lot of people have come in contact with psychedelics minus the spirituality. So I am, you guys, I just had, I'm going to say this, I just had the, literally the greatest day of my life. I just went swimming with Ram Dass and Roshi Joan Halifax. And I feel like, I definitely feel like I'm probably going to wake up from a dream any second. I'm here with Ram Dass and Roshi Joan Halifax. Thanks for, thanks for letting me record. Just thanks for letting me put you guys on this podcast. Wait, what about me? Oh, I'm sorry. And of course, Raghu Marcus, my friend who's been on the Duncan Trussell family.

I already have a jettisoned you. Got him. Got to the source, screw him. Thank you. What about me? Yeah, what about me? And Roshi? Well, did you ever really use psychedelics, Ram Dass? You? I mean, you should see this guy's face right now. You know, he's red from being out in the sun, but now he's twice as red.

So tell us. Drugs. Yeah. And they led me to Maharaji. And they made a transition from psychologist into eastern mysticism. You would never cross that barrier. And psychedelics were the bridge. And, you know, I've been reading after death experiences in William. And I remember one psychedelic trip. I was, Caroline and I were having sex. Who is Caroline?

His girlfriend. Was my girlfriend. And that plus, the psychedelic was too much for me. It was too much. And I went and floated up in the ceiling. And I, a luminous cord from me up in the ceiling and down below. And I watched the whole process. And that luminous cord was, because I was thinking the cord was keeping me up there like a balloon. And they're keeping from, but in fact, I was there in my soul with, and I was keeping the body going.

That's a very interesting perspective. Wow. Yeah. So then what happened? We never had a baby. Okay. Well, Roshi, may I ask you a question?

Sure. How, how do you become a Roshi? Oh, it's a case of mistaken identity. Obviously from dust is laughing with a sense of fundamental agreement. You can't, it's a, it's a kind of accident or something like that. You know, you don't go into your teacher and say, you know, I'd like to be a Roshi. In fact, when I received Inka Shomei, I, When you received,

When I was, you know, made a Roshi. Yes. I had this deep sense of bread and I was accurate. What was the, what was the feeling of dread? The responsibility of the role? You know, I mean, you become the recipient for phenomenal projections. Right. And you just wish people would retrieve their enlightenment and enjoy it for themselves and lay it on you.

It's something I imagine both of you must encounter all the time, that must be incredibly confusing to have people, because I can't, I mean, after, I can barely look at you, Ramdas, but just because I've, my whole life, I've been influenced, you've influenced me more than anyone in my life. So it's very, it's a real intense thing to be around you. And after, I wish we were filming that.

Oh, it's hilarious. But it's an intense thing. That is, but when you say this is a projection, your people are putting their enlightenment on you. Is that your job? Is that what you guys do? Try to point out to people that it's inside of them, that it's not coming from you?

That is the role of the guru. Dispel the darkness. Right? Yeah. You know, but I don't, I don't think that people like me, I can't speak for Ramdas, go around thinking of themselves as anything special. Right.

You know, we're just, you know, we're just in the weave of things. And this will not happen. And so we're playing with it. You're playing with it. And it is playful. I can feel that from both of you. There's a beautiful playfulness. Yet you can't deny the fact that both of you are having

a monumental impact on people's lives. Well, I'm not, but you know, I'm sure Ramdas has. You have. No. Of course you have. Are we going to start bickering again? Anyway, let's not get. In the dying moment.

Yeah. You have, you have been the prime movers of that movement. Well, you know, what's really interesting is to look at what you did in the area of dying and also in prison work and in the whole sort of field of service. You're kind of like the grandfather for all of us, even though I'm barely younger than you, she says, honestly. But you opened that door in a major way.

That was true, didn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was fairly beyond being. That was, that was caused by psychedelics. Because when I was LSD, all this was, all this was, gave us the Tibetan Book of the Dead. All the taxlee.

All the taxlee, yeah. And he, and I had, I had tripped on Saturday and I couldn't, I couldn't say what it was because I couldn't tell anybody because it was all beyond words. And on Tuesday, he gave us the book and I started to read it. And it looked like it was, this book was. Written out of your experience. Yeah.

And that, that, that was, that's when I went to, I then, went to India. But that became the dying stuff was formed by psychedelics. Well, that's, that's, you know, when, when I, when Stan Groff and I got married, then one of the things that we did was we did the work at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center with LSD assisted psychotherapy. It was really powerful, you know, being able to work with people

who were facing death, you know, in the process of active dying, not, you know, we're all facing death, whether we know we are or not, but these people were in the process of actively dying. And to administer 600 micrograms of LSD, sandos, you know, just those little ampules, I'll never forget, pop those puppies open, put them in. And, you know, to be able to be with somebody who is in that

process of actively dying on the journey with LSD, amplifying their experience was really powerful, totally changed their life. Yeah. Can you describe the effect that that has on dying people? Well, Stan and I did a book about it. It's still out there somewhere. But the book is called The Human Encounter with Death.

Kind of interesting because it was under the aegis of the National Institute of Mental Health and IMA. So it's, you know, fully sanctioned at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. And it was done as a research project. So, you know, we had parameters that we would evaluate patients on, pre and post, and all that kind of research stuff. And the outcomes were extraordinarily positive.

People went through experiences that showed them about the nature of their mind, which was indestructible. So I'll tell you, we had one guy, his name is Dean. He's dying of colon cancer. And we had this, you know, the session day. He was an Afro-American guy. He was really powerful. He was dying at home.

His family was very present and supportive. And then we brought him into the research center and, you know, he had his LSD day. And he had a fantastic experience. And the BBC actually filmed some of it. I saw a little bit of footage from it recently. It was like, oh, wow, that's interesting. I totally forgot about that part.

But he ended up going through a near-death experience. His kidneys shut down. And he was hospitalized at this point after the session. And they resuscitated him. And he was so sad. He said, you know, when I was dying, he said to Stan and I afterwards, he said, I had this realization that LSD had completely prepared me for this moment.

And then they saved my life. And it was disappointing that they did. Yeah. I mean, he was, you know, he died shortly thereafter. But he was, you know, not happy about being brought out, but back. But he was, you know, he felt like he was having another amazing psychic experience. And, you know, then the medical system ruined it.

But never mind. I mean, really, we're all standing around the bed singing, you know, gospel. And then they came with the gurney and popped him on there. And out he went. And then the poor guy. But he was very grateful that he had been given an introduction to what it's like to die, because that's what he was experiencing when he was in the dying process. Both of you have done tremendous work with dying people, hospice work.

I read that you actually will lay with people as they are dying. Is that true, Roshi? Well, you know, Ramdas, don't look at me like that. I didn't mean to. You would too, if you could. You know, I think it depends on the role that you're in. But unfortunately, I have the ability, because of my little job to be free of certain constraints that are put on people in other vocations.

Yes. So, you know, holding somebody in the dying process is an honor. That is beautiful and powerful, because I, you know, I just, my mother just passed away. And this was three weeks ago. She had cancer. Wow. And I've had this discussion with a few other people. There's this sort of picturesque version of death.

You know, you sit around the bed of your dying parent, and it's this beautiful thing. Angels come down, and it's like little house on the prairie, a sort of beautiful... I don't think so. No. Nothing prepared my brother and I for what it was really like. And what it was really like was not pretty. And both of us remark on how we can't, it's very hard for us to get the image of those last moments out of our minds. So the idea of both of you putting yourself in that place again and again and again is mind-blowing to me.

That place is truth, is truth, and spirit. And the whole thing is the change in consciousness that we go through and the people go through. And I teach a course in San Francisco with how to sit bedside, and I say a loving rock is the best place. Oh, that's so great. A loving rock, because then they can push against you, and then you're stable, and you're loving. And of course the bedside sitter has worked on himself, herself, so that they can go through the dying process with the dying person. Because in the dying process, they go in as an ego, and they go out as a soul.

And they go, and it's just brilliant. They go in with looking backwards, like the doctor had helped me and things like that, and my family and stuff like that. And they go out, like further on, looking ahead, and the light, and the love, and the boy, oh boy, oh boy. But if you're sitting by the bed, if you don't know anything about that soul, you can't go with them to the culmination of the ceremony. Yes, that was, I was disappointed in myself, because I have spent years reading various spiritual texts and studying them and pretending that I knew what any of it was about. Zero practice. This is something that you say, the necessity of a practice. You have to have a practice.

My mother had a practice, and her dying was graceful and beautiful, whereas my brother and I were just flailing and floundering around her. It was too much. It was too much. It's too big a thing to understand. It's too big a thing to, we can't wrap our heads around what it is. So, and I think that, you know, clearly if a spiritual practice will help you deal with having your face shoved into oblivion by fate, it obviously will help you deal with everything else. And what spiritual practice could you guys recommend for a person to start now who might be listening? Something that someone can do to begin the process of preparing for this moment, whether it's their own expiration or their parents or their friends?

I think that they should go to find a dying person and sit by, sit by the side. That's the most powerful, powerful, powerful thing to get into that environment of truth and spirit and emotion and all of that. And I think maybe, and there are plenty of places that need volunteers, that these places in every city. And I think that there are a lot of spiritual practices. She knows them and I know them. They are minor bhakti. Minor Buddhist. You know, seeing God's name.

Ram. Ram. That's what the one I... And that's Ram, Ram, Ram. Ram, Ram, Ram. That was Maharaj's mantra. And the name is synonymous with light, with consciousness, with...

with love. These are the things that God makes up God. God isn't a physical being. It is a consciousness, a consciousness. And he... Don't he, it's not a he. Thank you. God is peace, compassion, love, joy, and wisdom.

Those are the end products of spiritual work and their end products of dying. You know, when I was in Delhi a few years ago, I went to Gandhi's place. And one of the most powerful stories for me is about when Gandhi was shot and what came out of his mouth was Ram. Ram, Ram, Ram. You know, instead of something that would be less attractive, you know, he uttered the name of God and became that really, really powerful. Yeah, I mean, I feel like, you know, there are structured practices, whether they're bhaktik or mind training that can really help people come into a space where they can be a loving lock. Oh, I love that. It's just so great. I'm going to remember that because I'm doing a big training next week as you know.

I'm going to say all these to these doctors and nurses, all you got to do is be a loving rock. I like it a lot. Yeah, so the structure of practices, but the most powerful practice field in Hinduism and Buddhism is practice in the charnel ground. You know, practice in the charnel ground. Oh, yeah. And that means, you know, going into the graveyard, but the graveyard is actually everywhere. Yeah. You know, you don't have to go to Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah to get it or to Mount Kailash to the charnel grounds there.

Right. I mean, the charnel ground is right here in this very moment. And so the powerful thing is to practice with what is just this moment as it is. And yet what R.D. is suggesting for me makes the most sense because mostly we're delusional in the midst of this immediate reality. We just don't get it at all. Yes. So we have to put ourselves in a privileged situation and that privileged situation is to enter into the mystery of the dying. Beautiful.

That's beautiful. And I just want to say that when you get into spirituality, truth, truth, truth, truth, you talk about truth, you want truth, you want to find truth. And then when you finally get truth in that moment of watching your parent's mouth open and they're going into nothingness, it's not pleasant. The feeling is not the truth. I think in especially in Buddhism and especially in Zen Buddhism, that truth is such a... I'm trying to think of the way to put it. It feels like I've gotten something in my brain that my brain can't digest and it creates this sort of discombobulation that has driven me so crazy that I've ended up at Ram Dass's house. See how lucky you are?

You got the booby prize. He's booby Ram Dass. No, sorry. Sorry, RD, I just couldn't help it. So both of you are advising. It sounds like you're both advising volunteering with a hospice or with a... I don't think you have to even volunteer with an institution. Try your neighbor.

Try your mother. Dying is all around us. So you don't have to go very far. Read them newspapers. Right. You know what Chandru Tupa Rinpoche said? He's gone, but he said... I said, Rinpoche, why do you watch television?

He said, I love watching TV. And I said, why do you love watching TV? And he said, it's the best thing to practice with that I could ever have imagined when I was living in Tibet. I couldn't imagine something like this. The first time I saw TV, I looked around the back because I saw these little people on this screen. Then I realized that it was all fabrication. It was just light dancing. And then I realized, well, that's no different than reality.

Wow. Well, that's what I feel like. We are in a kind of pixelated world. It's like sitting in front of your computer screen. You think, oh, this is one model of one reality. That's very interesting. There's another one, equally pixelated. And I think you said nothingness.

That is my world. After death is far more than nothingness. It's love. It's spirit. All you do is go to the light. Even our souls, pardon me. Maybe we should explain Duncan. He and I have had a long series of disappointing discussions on the nature of souls.

But go ahead, Rambas. The next week's podcast. Well, the soul is light and consciousness, all these things. And it's much bigger. The bigger span of seeing things is bigger than we are. And when you go into this graduate course. This is the graduate course.

And we are our souls just going from incarnation to incarnation to incarnation to incarnation. And these are just courses. And so we are all courses in learning how to stay learning from our karma. To stay out from our karma. And we are all in the learning period. That's what physical reality is. You have to learn the soul wants to find out about separateness. Because once you get out into the soul, there's no separateness.

There's light, but dying. When you go into the expanded universe, it's a relief. In that learning experience, all kinds of family and economics and all that. But the soul has the learning from this and this and this. And this is only one incarnation. And that's all of the incarnations. And we are souls taking a certain learning experience. And we take ourselves so seriously.

What would you call that thing? I'm just not going to get into it. Please stop me if I'm wrong, but obviously in comparison to Hiroshi, my tiny understanding of Buddhism is that there is no permanence in anything in any way at all. The notion that there's some spiritual structure that somehow retains its form perpetually for eternity is an impossible thing. That there's only this wave form that's constantly transforming itself into the various phenomena that we happen to be in this one momentary bit of time.

In that moment, the neurology breaks down. We continue on, but not as some personified soul, but rather the slow disintegration of our atomic particles into infinity. Well? You're an incredible Dharma teacher. Guru. We call him Guru. I think it says Rondas' version is a much more pleasant version

than many versions that are round. But from my point of view, it's a mystery. I can only say that it's a matter of various forms of speculation. And there are some speculations that I like better than others. And I love Rondas' speculation. I love the notion of having my final exhale carrying me into unmediated, unfiltered brilliance, into vast luminosity. I mean, that's a fantastic vision.

And that's not a vision that is actually apart from certain Buddhist schools. It relates very much, for example, to the Tibetan Buddhist school, where the continuity of the subtle mind is projected through various bardos. Right. But, you know, I don't know. And that's where I live, really, in the not knowing. But we don't know. It's all fantasy.

Thank you so much. You finally have shared my opinion. After decades of discussion about this very subject, we finally are aligned. I live in my fantasy. And I live in my fantasy. And sometimes our fantasies converge, like right now. I feel so relieved. You know, I think we ought to end this on a high note, because I see the pie.

The raw pies are coming. Let's wrap it up. Thank you both. Thank you so much. Not just for this podcast, but for so many other things. You called it a podcast. It's a podcast now. Thank you.

And Roshi, thank you so much. Where can people find you? You should come. Your Pius N Center is absolutely beautiful. It's in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And you're just in Los Angeles. There's a non-stop flight from LAX right into Santa Fe. Maybe that'll be my next stop.

One of the coolest places in the world. I tried to do a Sashin once. I lasted six hours and drove home. Well, obviously you didn't do it in the right place. Ah. Good answer. Good answer. And Ramdas.

Ramdas.org. Be here now. You guys know that. I've said it a million times. Thank you guys so much. And of course, none of this would have happened. If not for Raghu. And yes, all of this happened because of my friend Raghu.

Please check out the Mind Rolling podcast. I will have the link on my website. Thank you so much, you guys. And check out www.upiah.org. Yes. I'll have the link up at dunkintrussell.com. All these links will be there. Check out.

And I'll have some awesome YouTube clips with Roshi that I'll put up too. Oh, wonderful. Thanks so much, you guys. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening, everybody.

That was Ramdas and Roshi Joan Halifax. If you enjoyed this podcast, why not go to iTunes and give us a nice rating. You can also go to dunkintrussell.com and all the links that we discussed will be located there. Thank you, everyone. I'll see you next time. Hare Krishna. This song is Blue Lotus Feet from Bonnie Prince Billy's album, Blue Lotus Feet. See you guys later.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.