Comedian Duncan Trussell: How Psychedelics Can Help You Connect To The Divine | Podcast Interview

foreign happier podcast I'm your host Dan Harris [Music] hello my fellow suffering beings Duncan Trussell does not like being called a Buddhist comedian and I get it that label really unfairly pigeonholes him in two ways first because he is a legit successful hilarious comedian no matter what his spiritual leanings this dude performs stand up all over the country he's either appeared on or written for very big TV shows like Funny or Die presents Drunk History Mad TV and Curb Your Enthusiasm and the other way in which that label pigeonols him is that when it comes to the spiritual stuff he's not just a Buddhist the guy is spiritually omnivorous and he knows his [ __ ] for real he has practiced extensively and over on his podcast the Duncan Trussell Family Hour he interviews big time meditation teachers like Jack cornfield and Sharon Salzburg people who've come on this show regularly in fact his podcast is so successful that Netflix turned it into a cult favorite animated TV show called Midnight gospel this was a truly and unusually delightful conversation Duncan is able to talk about really serious stuff while also being extremely funny in this conversation we cover depression anxiety death his interpretation of God how meditation helps him handle the insanity of Hollywood and the fact that he only has uh one ball after a bout of testicular cancer and we get even weirder we talk about Quantum expressions of the universe psychedelics as a bridge to the divine and how all of this relates to the creative process there's something I hear from a lot of people who listen to this show and care about uh their Mental Health they will tell me Dan I want to meditate but I just can't find the time listen I cannot make the stressors of your life evaporate but I do have good news even if you meditate for just a minute it actually counts Studies have shown that even a very small amount of meditation can change your relationship with your own mind with your annoying and often intoxicating or totally destructive thoughts and to prove this to you my friends over on the 10 happier meditation app have put together the one minute stress Busters meditation pack and it's available for free until September 30th these meditations are all just 60 seconds long and they're perfect to help you catch your breath in the middle of a long and stressful day download the 10 happier app today wherever you get your apps and get started for free Duncan Trussell welcome to the show thank you for having me on great to meet you likewise I'm a fan so it's cool to meet you wow thank you that's incredible so I understand that you don't like to be called a Buddhist comedian but you are definitely interested in Buddhism so I'm interested in how you got interested in Buddhism oh okay well I mean to respond to the Buddhist comedian part first it just sounds cheesy like it's not that I mind because of some lack of connection to Buddhism or something but the two together it just doesn't sound I prefer comedian you know like think of Christian comedian like when you hear that the first thought is like boy this is going to be funny that's not your first thought so similarly Christian rock yeah exactly whenever you attach the religion of the performer to what they do it dilutes it to some degree so that's why and to answer your second question you know what happened was I was doing these interviews at the these ramdas Retreats they have in Maui and so I would interview ramdas and I would interview whoever the speakers were and as part of the retreat it was just like a podcast essentially and then I've been doing these for a while years and Ragu Marcus who is the I don't know you call him the director of The Love server member Foundation he said Duncan somebody said they think you're a really nice guy but what's your practice he said do you have any kind of practice like what do you what's your thing and my ego got really annoyed at that because it was so true and so the person who had said this is now my meditation teacher David nickton and we started having these conversations and then finally in some informal formal way I asked if he would be if he would teach me Buddhism and so that was I think the real beginning of true interest but prior to that I of course like anybody else in to spirituality had read Pima children tick not Han but I sort of gotten fixated on Shogun Trump uh rinpochet and the fixation was taking the form of just profound irritation at everything that he wrote and how I felt accused and called out by him in the most powerful way but I never thought oh my God I'm gonna study with one of his students I just thought God this guy seems like an [ __ ] all right okay first thing to do is just for people listening who don't know the names you've thrown out I'm just going to briefly say ramdas was a white Jewish guy from Boston Harvard Professor got fired for something having to do with LSD and then he went over to India met a quite a famous Guru whose picture I can see hanging behind you name carlibaba and then he changed his name to ROM Das and became like one of the big early proponents of meditation and Eastern spirituality in the United States time of children is also a white American woman who fell in with a big Buddhist teacher named Jojo who is Tibetan quite controversial we can talk about him in a second and he trumpa had a pretty large Western following including David nichturn whose son Ethan has been on the show but David's never been on the show so we should probably Rectify that but okay so just having cleared that up let me step even further back in your chronology because you say that you got into Buddhism when you asked David Nick Turner about maybe teaching you but like something was drawing you to all these books and all of these teachers and you ended up at ramdas Retreats interviewing people like so what was all that what kind of suffering LED you to that well yeah I just got really lucky if you're in the world and you have a human body you are probably suffering and this is something on a podcast I just did with rain Wilson we were talking about suffering I realized oh my God I'm a suffering snob and I think this is a really interesting form of snobbery where one person's who considers themselves to be suffering sees another person suffering and it's like that's not real suffering compared to my suffering so you get this bizarre hierarchy of suffering I realized oh my god I've definitely been doing that the luck part of it was just that my mom was very interested in that last part of her life in a lot of these teachers and she was a real Seeker when I was a teenager and so I got lucky and had all these books scattered about the house and I would look at them teenage me thought they didn't want to admit that there was something in them that I really liked because my mom liked them so there was always a sort of a embarrassing kind of rebellion happening in relation to them you know it comes to mind I'm sitting on the back porch with one of my mom's boyfriends in between marriages pretty sure she just dumped him he's back there smoking a cigarette I'm sitting with him and he had introduced my mom to some of these teachers and he said to me you know yeah right now you might be looking at some of these books or whatever but at some point you're really gonna need them and it was very smart to say that he was right too all of us will have these time bombs that explode in our lives and when they explode is the only question but we know they will explode death of parents illness old age and so I think that that's what's beautiful about some of this stuff is that you come to it you get excited about it you might drift away from it and then the rubber hits the road when you realize that you're becoming angry in moments where anger does not serve any purpose other than to magnify the chaos of the situation and I think somewhere in there you begin to realize oh wow yeah I need I need this I need this because these moments keep coming and my ability to be graceful in the midst of them is I don't have that ability to the degree that I think I need to have it if I'm going to be a good friend father mother student that's when it becomes important how graceful are you now I just got back from a water park with my kids whoa we made it to the very last night my wife and I not a single fight we are in the bedroom congratulating each other we did it we didn't fight she's like I saw some parents fighting boy were they in a big fight and then from the oldest room a howl of pure toddler pain he had his eyes were burning from the chlorine from swimming all day my wife is pregnant she's exhausted and when you're like I've been trying to put a child to bed and you think they're in bed and then you realize oh no oh no they're not only is he not in bed I mean he's screaming like he just someone just set him on fire in the bedroom and so then in that case my wife and I oh my God that's just explosive fight so I would love to say to you So Graceful just one deep peaceful big river flowing towards my own Oblivion but sadly no but the difference in is my wife and I continue to recognize oh right the marriage is the practice the marriage is the path those fights that would have lasted days compress into 20 minutes where you get through whatever that is back to the love connection and so that I think you could call that Grace and so there's that which I'm very grateful for for most humans being more graceful does not mean never being graceless it just means recovering more quickly I think I think you're right I think you're right I think that in the weird sort of binary that exists between like pleasure pain Grace gracelessness we a lot most people seem to be very addicted to the grace part obviously to the Bliss part to the Joy part and somehow forget that you can't get those without the other side of the coin that in fact the other side of the coin is like the roots of a flower or something growing into time but we don't want to be the roots we want to be the beautiful rose we want to be the beautiful flowers not the the dark dank boring roots and so when the those dark moments come it's easy to forget that that's just you growing into something potentially like really much more beautiful than where you're at right now that's easy I mean I I I've been doing this thing I've got to stop some people I keep saying these people external people it's me like for me I forget that those dark times lead to uh better times you said before that you're a suffering snob what is the suffering that you've done specifically that allows you to be on the Mountaintop and looking down at the rest of us amateur suffers you amateur suffers listen here I'll tell you about real suffering my mother died of cancer I have one testicle because I had testicular cancer my father died of COPD and I had my ball chopped off and my mom died in the same year so I get a gold medal from I actually did I got a golden apple National suffering award it's getting sent to me or I'd have it on the wall that actually I know you're making light of it but that really sucks um I mean the worst especially the part about your mom the worst yeah the ball who cares it's like you got two though but yeah the mom you just have one and you can't get a prosthetic mom [Laughter] it's sucked it was horrible it's horrible when we lose our parents it's horrible God you know I was just listening to this wonderful autobiography by Thomas Merton and he's talking about when his father died and he's such a great writer and he's so like you feel it it's just so poignant but he was sort of talking about without some connection to God you just have to take it you just have to take it like a dumb animal that's how he put it just like an animal you take it and that's it there's no Grace you just take it that really hit home to me because you know in those moments where you're down in the roots and you'd lose that connection you forget yeah it's like it's it's a gut punch isn't it and there's no there's how do you recover from it other than like oh yeah this is the world I'm in our parents they they die many times in horrible ways and then that'll happen to us our kids will mourn but there's no sense of some Transcendent reality there's no sense that there's anything other than that that's it and that you know so that's the pathway to cynicism bitterness certainly like if you really want to achieve high level suffering snobbery removed from the equation God or remove from the equation whatever you want to call it and then yeah all you're left with is just endless suffering kind of stupid your little stupid bit of genetic protoplasm extending from The Big Bang almost an accident and then it can be so dark well but so are you saying I'm not quite sure here are you so are you saying that you subscribe to some metaphysical plan Allah Christianity or you say absolutely the protoplasm well both I mean this is why I love Christianity and Buddhism and I think that there's so many wonderful points where they meet and some points they don't but the reason neem Crawley Baba ramdas is Guru he would send these hippies off to go to these vapassana meditation Retreats and the reason romnas would always have these hardcore Buddhists mixed in with the practitioners of bhakti yoga The Yoga of unification with the Divine is because the two work really well together on a certain level one the practice of mindfulness practice of tuning into your body to what to the reality of what you are or what you're not however you want to put it this is wonderful almost a palette cleanser so that you can maybe be a little less distracted by your thoughts and tune in to this other reality that exists the reality of love compassion the joyfulness the you know just the the raw Beauty in everything now I think God is a term of convenience isn't it but I do subscribe to that and I think Christianity of all the religions that I've looked into it really checks a lot of boxes for me in the sense that it has within it this perfect existential hero and the answer to all the various demands of the world is so beautiful which is you know surrender I love that I love it and I think also the brutality of the crucifixion the symbolic realities in there that's that are woven in so it's a beautiful symbol for the predicament of Being Human in the sense that we're kind of being crucified on the time space continuum do you view the Jesus story as poetically true or literally true well I get real bored when people start arguing over the literal reality of Jesus Christ I I read that wonderful book by Reza Aslan it's so good it's trying to like find the historical reality of Jesus and apparently there was mention of this Jesus that was wandering around but he never was that according at least in this book that that Jesus was not described as Messiah but as a magician which I think is really cool and interesting makes sense healing people raising the dead but one of the things took him Trump uh said you should look for when you're exploring religion Buddhism whatever it is it should feel like fresh baked bread not old stale dead some dusty old thing from the past and so that's another beautiful I think gift you get from working with mindfulness is that in the moment you reach out for what I think people call Christ Consciousness or some sense of a benevolent strata of reality a personified benevolence that seems to be so absolutely smitten with you not in some narcissistic way but in a more of a parental kind of loving way and so I think in the moment I mean regardless who cares let's say Jesus did exist well who cares if there's no no connection in the moment now who cares just another guy who has yapping back in the desert in those days completely irrelevant to me the Resurrection The all the miracle stories they're really cool but to me that's isn't very important it's just a distraction I think hmm so you seem pretty omnivorous from a spiritual standpoint well I'm a little omnivorous I spent years working with David and working with a very simple meditation practice very simple mindfulness practice because I didn't want to I I wanted to do what children jumper recommends and when his book cutting through spiritual materialism which don't be the human version of a shop that sells religious gizmos don't be that Buddha here Jesus there some some Taoist Scrolls laying on the floor next to some I don't know the wiccan books you know don't don't LeapFrog don't don't do the thing that it's a very natural thing to do which is if any of these things are real you're gonna feel like you got short changed because where's the Bliss what happens when all of a sudden you're suffering actually seems to be magnified by the thing that was supposed to alleviate the suffering well something's wrong with this religion let's try the next one and then you jump to the next one and it's real so sure enough you start feeling that same suffering I'll try the next one so I think the invitation of all of them is like wait hold your hand to the fire here for a bit and then you can be omnivorous you know you just have to be careful not to Leap Frog when the going gets rough from one to the next but something is really driving you here something is really compelling you to do this looking around I know you're not leap frogging but to try all of these different traditions and to weave them together for something that works you know if not perfectly at least well enough for you well yeah that's kind of the delightful thing about any of these you know I'll tell you once I was friends with these awesome Goths and I had eaten edible marijuana I was way too high and this was the moment one of them decided to play this I don't I I am not into this kind of music so forgive me for those of you who are because I always get it mixed up that there's something called Death Metal and then I think there's black metal there's all these this is this hardcore like nor I think it's Norwegian this is like you know Viking Doom music and so he decides in the midst of like a coming up on powerful edible marijuana he plays music by a band that as the cover of one of their albums had the a picture of the bandmate who committed suicide and one of the band members would wear his his skull fragment on a necklace when they played so you know he's playing this music that just is this pulsating darkness and he looks at me it was just perfect timing he's like do you feel the pull and I'm like yeah I feel the pull it's horrible it's like getting stuck in a Whirlpool or something of Doom and so that is a pull that's a real pull that will exists in the world so if that kind of pull exists the other pull must also exist maybe there's no difference between the two maybe it's just different flavors of the same pull maybe that stuff is like shaivism in India you know like the recognition that there's Beauty in the darkest places but that's not for me and so I think whenever I find myself listening to an audiobook by someone that I love by one of the teachers or reading the Bible or reading some Buddhist text yeah I feel drawn deeper in there's a pull to it I don't it's a two-way conversation for me there's a some amazing back and forth happening with who I'm speaking like I I don't know it depends on what day you catch me on but certainly it doesn't seem to be like a one-way phone call into the void coming up Duncan Trussell talks about the Transcendent Realm of the universe why it's great to have friends with different perspectives a spirituality and psychedelics and the Buddhist hell Realms and why he thinks about the Buddhist notion of Hell Realms as psychological States good [Music] you know I've heard about masterclass for years but I never actually checked it out which is now making me feel a little bit stupid the good news is the folks over at masterclass are now sponsoring this show and they gave me a subscription and as I look at this app I realize that this is a great place to feel a lot less stupid the lineup on this app is incredible the people they've recruited to teach it just kind of blows my mind they've got Aaron Sorkin on screenwriting Gordon Ramsay on cooking also Thomas Keller they've got Anna Wintour on creativity John Cabot Zinn on mindfulness and meditation which is probably interesting and attractive to people who listen to this show Noam Chomsky on Independent thinking Steph Curry on basketball I could go on I can't believe I've been sleeping on this app and as I look at many of these videos they're so well produced so informative and really really tight so that you're not wasting a minute you're just getting these learnings in a very attractive and interesting and entertaining way with masterclass you can learn from the best to become your best anytime anywhere and at your own pace annual memberships start at ten dollars a month and you get unlimited access to every instructor thousands of online lessons exclusive content insights and much more get unlimited access to every class and right now as a 10 happier listener you can get 15 off when you go to masterclass.com 10 that's masterclass.com 10 for 15 off an annual membership masterclass.com 10 percent audible lets you enjoy all your audio entertainment in one app You'll Always Find the best of what you love or something new to discover as an audible member you can choose one title a month to keep from the entire catalog including the latest bestsellers and new releases members also get full access to a growing selection of included audiobooks audible originals and podcasts you can download or stream our included titles all you want a friend just texted me about the new Ann Patchett novel Tom Lake as narrated by none other than Meryl Streep I think that's going to be my next lesson new members can try audible free for 30 days visit audible.com 10 or text 10 to 500 500 that's audible.com 10 or text 10 to 500 500 to try audible free for 30 days audible.com 10 percent [Music] you've traveled I think more widely than me in all things spiritual slash religious slash contemplative I've stayed pretty squarely in the Buddhist and psychological sometimes psychiatric Zone cool and I I'm just going back to something you said a while ago but like there's this Transcendent Realm of the universe that is smitten with you and I have no gut instinct that that's true or and certainly no evidence that that's true how do you arrive at that conviction oh wow what a God what a great question and I will try to answer it right now but that's the kind of question I'll spend like a year thinking about probably because it's a good question an important question what are you talking about what are you what what is this thing you're you're saying all this there's some benevolent God force or whatever it may be what is this thing how is how do you prove it or what is that and I think that before I answer I want to say this is what really pissed me off when I was reading Shogun jumper for the first time he said he didn't use the term hippie I know that's my he was talking about in those days he was kind of annoyed by the hippies and he was saying these people they say I experienced something Beyond expression I don't have words for it it was so powerful I don't even have a way to describe what it is and trumpet says that's like taking your confusion putting it on an altar and burning candles to your confusion you have now turned your confusion into God the fact that you can't express it is not some sign that it's mystical or Transcendent or anything of that nature it's just you've found a way to enshrine your own basic ignorance and confusion and just give up just give up I mean I think this is like critique of Kierkegaard it's like come on man really Faith that's your thing that's that spiritual suicide you're you're that's uh that's suicide that you might as well kill yourself if this is where you've parked your car some [ __ ] parking lot marked faith parking for the faith you know parking for the faith so and there's been times in my life where I've really loved that I've loved it so much the the attack on faith the attack on the ineffable God reality it's been really delightful to like read various people dig into that from like Dawkins death is the anesthesia that saves us from the pain of life to Trump uh you know I think we need this all of these things are really good it's they're challenging things they're challenging things so what is that what is that thing that that people would call the Christ Consciousness what is that is it quantifiable I don't know that it's quantifiable outside of some kind of like what do you call it when they do a research paper where they analyze tons of data from lots of other studies you know in other words we're talking about a human experience that has been reported over thousands of years by countless people now that's not enough to prove anything I mean that's that you could say yeah it's called Mass hysteria yeah there's lots of cynical ways you could sum it up and I I don't think that that is the that that's certainly not enough to do anything at all other than infuriate secularists like okay great a lot of people believed a lot of things throughout time that we're totally wrong but so then now we're forced into the subjective realm aren't we it's it it comes down to I think and this is what I do find to be so delightful about it a personal connection that doesn't give two shits about whether or not the world believes you've had this experience that the articulation of the thing is always going to be secondary to the thing itself and that all you could do is probably confuse people by trying to report in on something like what you would call the experience of Jesus or the experience of the guru I don't know if there's any difference between the two the experience of a disembodied non-embodied perfected Consciousness that maybe isn't even here yet I mean sometimes people try to set this thing in time in the past then they they don't think maybe this is what we're all assembling into now maybe the entirety of all of the human reality and everything that's happening and all of the technology and all of the never-ending explosive bursts of discovery that happened for our species are leading us towards a point where we become some kind of super organism that's Linked UP via neural lace and at that point we merge into some other reality that's always been here or see something that has been invisible to us because of our disconnect from each other and from reality itself my point is I think the only way that anybody can really honestly answer that question is to say I don't have I don't know I don't have proof except to say I've experienced it's the most beautiful thing ever it's a delight and it's exciting for me personally but yeah the fact you haven't experienced it it might mean that I'm just crazy both things could be true at the same time but but I guess what I'm curious of like how and where well two-part question like how and where and when and why did you experience it like under what circumstances a and then B going back to Merton is his argument that somebody like me who has you know like a pretty committed contemplative practice but no faith in in the Supernatural per se and that I'm gonna suffer brutally because I can't put the loss of my parents or anybody else into some sort of transcendent bucket I haven't gotten that far in the book to get to Merton's view on hell and sinfulness yet so I'm sort of strapped in and waiting for the slap in the face I don't feel like he's a literalist in the usual sense of the word you know in Buddhism Realms we're in the human realm there are there is a hell realm in Buddhism Realm of the Gods Realm of the jealous Gods animal realm and so my teacher he talks about these things as being psychological States you know that yet maybe they exist you know once you you die perhaps you can become a God or you can you know go into like some vast icy I mean I'll tell you man the Buddha cells are a lot scarier than Christian else I would rather go to the Christian hell than some of the Buddha cells they are really really scary but the you if you look at it just from the idea that hell as a state right now versus hell is a place you go to when you die reincarnation is a thing that happens now not something you need to worry about when you die in fact As Above So Below you can from your own experience in one human lifetime I think extract all the stuff that probably will happen when you die I don't think it'll be much different than it is now and and so from that perspective hell becomes a psychological State and for me what that looks like is complete disconnect from the world around me I become so foreground and everything else is background absolute selfishness absolute preoccupation with one's own problems and the suffering awards that we've given ourselves and why we are suffering in a never-ending pursuit to find oh what in the world caused this suffering well it's because blah blah blah said that blah blah blah and that guy believed it and then the next thing you know blah blah did that to me can you believe that I did they did that to me me and so yeah that's how to me and I like the C.S Lewis quote about hell which is the gates of Heller walked from the inside and I think that this is the Buddhist this is where Buddhism kicks in suffering why why are we suffering or suffering because of attachment or suffering because we're attached to the me the little eye the me it's all me we've lost the the greater reality that works on a psychiatric level which is when you're looking into the world you're seeing your mind not in some mystical way you're literally seeing your mind you're seeing this perfect harmony between all of your neurons you're all of the neurotransmitters everything are working instantaneously to produce a spatial olfactory reality that's your mind the color green that's your mind everything that's your mind so from that perspective we are completely like one thing it's happening in your mind you know and so to me hell is when you forget that suddenly that's not your mind look at that person over there can you believe that look what they're doing is he really smoking next to my kid that [ __ ] this that's how that's hell [Laughter] so yeah and if if that exists here I don't see any reason why it wouldn't exist in some if there is something after this I don't see any reason why I wouldn't there wouldn't be the possibility of Hell wherever we go after this and if we don't go anywhere after this Praise Jesus Praise Jesus I'm sorry I'm rambling too much what did is it Socrates who was the one they made drink him lock I think it was Socrates but I don't know he said if this kills me and I fall into sleep like the deepest sleep of sleep or there's zero awareness that he didn't say zero awareness then you've given me the greatest Gift Anyone could give me I'm out baby I'm out end of suffering thank you but if there is something after this I'm gonna just keep doing what you gave me the hemlock for there so are you one nothing you've achieved nothing that's such a baller response I mean it really is yeah I'm curious like all of this this the beautiful stuff that you've learned and are able to articulate and I think based on what I've can gather from listening to your podcast and just listening to here integrate into your life to one degree or another how does it all help you or does it all help you with navigating Hollywood oh well yeah I think that navigating Hollywood for me is is been right now it's pretty easy because I'm in Austin I am on a show that is coming out I think in the fall called crapopolis but my experience in general I love being around people who don't believe the way I do I love some of my friends are not like atheist nihilists I love it I love getting in little arguments with them or big arguments with them or sensing that they think that I'm out of my mind or they might sense that I feel bad for them or whatever the wonderful conversations that emerge from that I think are really healthy and good so the general sort of cliche idea with Hollywood is you know people there are some of them might be adverse to Christianity or they might not want to hear about God or your belief in God or this or that and I I love I think that's great because it's not like I'm going around Bible thumping or anything and I go back and forth on it all the time some of my best friends are satanists you know so I don't I don't really have a problem navigating Hollywood at all it doesn't offend me that people I get it I totally get it why would you really believe any of this stuff I mean and you know earlier you asked me a question that I is like really important you're asking when did I experience Jesus for the first time or God for the first time or connect with Christianity and that was when I was in college taking a class in the New Testament and I went back to my dorm room I had some wonderful LSD I took LSD got a glass of wine because it's Christianity right when I got high I opened up to the Book of John which is one of the most bizarre chat books of the New Testament in the beginning was the word and the Word was made flesh and it was suddenly I just what popped into my acid soaked head was somebody wrote this that you know what I mean that regardless of the truth of what it was is pointing to the Consciousness that put this series of words together into sentences was altered this is not a normal Consciousness and that there was almost like a thumbprint that you could see within the way these the ideas were being articulated this person had been truly blasted that I mean again in college on acid all I could think was whatever happened to this person to get them to write like this to be like this must have been profound and then somewhere in there I felt it for the first time what I would call Christ Consciousness I felt the presence of Jesus or what those words were pointing towards and realized oh wow this is not what I thought it was this is so completely different from what I thought this was when I was a young Episcopalian altar boy yeah I mean I get what I'm thinking of as I listen to you speak is Father Gregory Boyle who's been on this show before and he's a priest who works with gang members in LA and he wrote a book called tattoos on the heart he's written in other books as well and he talks about the no matter whatness of God that his conception of God is not some you know Sistine Chapel long gray-haired white man it's way less anthropomorphized and way bigger than that and it is it's like what you said before somebody was irretrievably smitten with you no matter what you do a connection point between the limited human consciousness and the source of all things that is so wild that that could even exist that could be real what I love about it is it follows the exact experience I've had with any great romance I've had which is you know you meet somebody wherever at a party or something you think they're so beautiful if you're me you think there's no way I have a chance with that person there's no way and then you run into them again or some indication that they're thinking about you and but you think oh how could this even be possible and then all of a sudden you're on a date with him then all of a sudden you're in a romance and it's incredible it's like that it's what really okay so like the the intelligence of the universe could have some personal interest in my stupid tendril of bearded DNA no no and on top of that could could actually love me and that this is this is one of the possibilities in a human life is that you can reach out to it and it reaches out to you and you know Rumi all the all the great mystical poets that they're they they're clearly in a romance this is a this roomy's poems are so romantic in in the vaishnava bhakti yoga the stories of Krishna are passionate romantic and sensual and you know so this is one of the possibilities this is one of the possibilities I think in a human life is that you can you don't have to do it this isn't getting high you don't have to like you're not getting yourself high it's just weirdly there's some consent involved here clearly like if there is some possibility that there is a God and that God has some actual interest in all the little sentient pixels of its creation then boy want to talk about power imbalances you know like you want to talk about like dating younger people there needs to be consent and that consent looks like prayer that consent looks like hey okay if you're there I'm here and then that's where I think the sort of romance starts potentially it also does sound you mentioned getting high but I'm getting a sense from talking to you that psychedelics seem like something of a bridge to what might be called The Divine as well for you ah yeah absolutely don't you think so I mean sure it's if if anything it's uh gives you a little map I think the I love psychedelics that maybe one of the problems with psychedelics is they seem to have their own personality so the Psychedelic can sort of it it sometimes it might be a little difficult discerning the Divine from the Psychedelic maybe that's just stupid even want to do that but when I was in my acid phase I I loved the breathing walls the runes or glyphs or strange letters I would see all over everything the all of the fireworks that LSD has to offer but every once in a while I would not exist anymore and if there was a sense of merging into some totality and that you wouldn't know that it happened until you were going back into your own personal identity and you're like whoa what oh wow I'm here I'm human oh right I'm human so to Me Maybe what's happening with some of these psychedelics is it's scrambling your identity so much that you experience that kind of unified Bliss state that is possible via all these various paths and that's great because it gives you a sense that oh look this is a possibility this is a possibility it's just maybe the pitfalls of psychedelics is you could start thinking the only way to experience that is through the Psychedelic right right I have had bad experiences with psychedelics personally my inaugural panic attacks were smoking weed as a young teenager and so I never I've never been able to in one of my areas where I'm self-critical is that I I think I'm kind of too tightly wound coiled up in my own ego to let go into the unified experience similarly like I I've always had trouble dancing I think I'm me too just my head's up my own ass you know are you a never nude I never knew no I'm actually fine with that I'm a never nude and I don't like to dance so I am wound tightly too friend and I've taken a lot of acid and it did I feel so much better this thing where people take psychedelics and become nudists that did not happen to me I like clothes I like wearing clothes and so yeah I don't I I think you know you I mean don't be self-critical because uh I remember the first time I heard ramdas say something on the lines of you know you don't need psychedelics in fact some of these practices will give you that times a million and I just I the eye roll when I heard that just like give me a break there's no way so meditation is gonna take you to the place 500 micrograms of LSD takes you come on no one's buying that and but I think now what he meant was that the psychedelics they serve to give you a sense of what it is to go from a me to a we and that you don't need some chemical to achieve that but I think the chemical is nice in the sense that I mean you know Terence McKinney used to tell this story because as someone from the Psychedelic Community I think he felt I I just think he had a a justifiable suspicion when it came to spiritual people and so he would tell the story about this thing yeah you can meditate and experience this psychedelic state or whatever the story is I'll sum it up as quickly as they can essentially a guy goes off meditates in the woods forever comes back to his Guru and says to him Guru I've meditated for 20 years and now I can walk on water and this Guru said the ferry costs a nickel so you know that is there a difference really I mean it's just this is isn't this the big problems we get so caught up in the the vehicle you know it's like imagine like you're driving to the beach who cares how you get there if you get there on a camel if you get there in a Ferrari a horse the point was the beach you know and and to me any of these paths that lead one to that beach even if we're all experiencing different parts of the beach you know like the blacks sand beaches in Hawaii I don't like those they're beautiful but I like nice soft sand some people love those though so but I think it's all the same encounter with the ocean and and you know that's my feeling with it it's got to be the same place right don't you think it's kind of got to be the same place that makes complete sense to me but wait a minute just a point of clarification here are you saying you're not even ever nude in front of your wife oh no I I I'm nude in front of my wife but she she knows like my wife I if you know what if I was my wife I'd be happy being naked too I'm a four I'd be naked all the time if I was my wife I'm old I'm almost 50. I've got scoliosis one ball bald spot asymmetrical love handles weird patches of hair I won't go into more details friend but it is an Elisa over here okay but okay so here's another thing let me just go back to another string that I left hang in here back to Hollywood I get that you first of all I know you live in Austin so I'm not referring to Hollywood as a place but I'm talking about the entertainment business generally I also get that not everybody in Hollywood is going to freak out about your spiritual leamings what I'm getting at more is like you have been thriving for at least for my from where I said in an industry that is really hard and involves a lot of rejections ups and downs and who the hell knows no job security how do you manage your anxieties with in that system and does all of this contemplative history and practice that you've imbibed help you yeah sure I mean the I think the verse from the bhagavad-gita in regards to sort of getting getting along in the entertainment industry without going completely insane is you have a right to your action you do not have a right to the fruits of Your Action so to me this is it it's it's first of all if you the entertainment industry itself is a a you know a massive community of creatives generally people who love to make stuff so that's the first and most important way to not go nuts in that in this business is you really have to like to make things and that love of making things has to exceed the love of the very rare times that the thing you're making gets funding or goes further than your notebook or your laptop or your whatever it is and and so I love making things I love making stuff I love conversations like this and doing my podcast I love doing voice over work for crapopolis like I really love it it fills me with a lot of joy to do it and I spent so many years starving as a comedian like just literally start like no food like out of food and not literally starving but you know what I mean where you're like I've got to make this biscotti last for three more days you know is that starving no you have some of a jar of biscotti but you but it's not living high on the hog and so but I just all have always really loved making things and and I'm lucky because I am a stand-up people come to see me perform and that's her that's all that's there for me so I don't have to be completely dependent on getting parts I don't have to be completely dependent on selling the next show I do have an actual like job that isn't so dependent on timing well it has been on timing but literally like selling something at the right time to the right people or you know having a great audition or you know being at the right place at the right time to meet the right person so that gives me some security there it's I think it's very very difficult for people who you know are always having to jump from one job to the next a writing job acting job whatever it's maybe a little more terrifying than it is as a working comic coming up Duncan talks about karmic and some sourc patterns and enjoying your ego while you still have one and he talks about whether everybody is actually capable of love foreign [Music] to State the obvious we all have our personal preferences from podcasts to the food we eat to the TV shows we watch to the way we sleep and that is why a Sleep Number smart bed individualizes your sleep experience making high quality sleep effortless every night couples can choose their ideal firmness comfort and support on each side so it's perfect for both of you and Sleep Number smart beds automatically respond to your movements throughout the night adjusting to every move so you're both comfortable cannot over emphasize how important sleep is when it comes to doing life better we've done tons of episodes on sleep right here on this show sleep next level unlock your unique potential with a smart bed that can perform as well as you and now save 400 bucks on the new Sleep Number C4 smart bed plus special financing for a limited time only at Sleep Number stores or sleepnumber.com c-store for details [Music] you can host the best backyard barbecue when you find a professional on Angie to make your backyard the best around connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well inside to outside repairs to renovations get started on the Angie app or visit angie.com today you can do this when you Angie that let me ask about the overlap between comedy and contemplative practice I have this memory I think it's okay if I say who this was 15 years ago I was on a beach it was right when I was getting interested in Buddhism and I was reading a Buddhist book and a friend of mine who's a comedy writer quite a successful comedy writer and director his name is Jean stupinski he was he came up on the office and has gone on to do lots of other stuff and he was asking me about this book I was reading and he said I could never do this Buddhism stuff this meditation stuff because I need to stay judgmental that's the source of my comedy ah yeah I think it was a bit of a misunderstanding of Buddhism but I just you know I say that because I want your reaction and also to cure you talk a little bit more about how and whether you're interested in Buddhism and contemplation and religion plays into both your comedy and your creative process well I think this is like the great fear so you see them less but there's some comedians who've built their entire act around like being overweight you know like this is this is a whole genre at one point lots of jokes about their body size and this is really a very dangerous problem right because like they feel like if they lose the weight they're gonna lose their jokes or something like that they that's all they've got they've somehow forgotten no it's not you're telling it's your telling of the jokes it's funny not the jokes so much you'll be able to do this whatever your body shape happens to be or the same is true for maybe comedians these there's less of these now but you know the comedians only talk about booze or whatever it is if you've sort of planted your brand in some self-destructive activity this is not going this isn't sustainable is it like this is not going to work out for you very much so there is this I think superstitious idea that you better stay away from things that are going to make you happy or spiritually satisfied as an artist because you will have no more gasoline for your art car or something like that and this is just a misconception like you know the more you get into this stuff like God think of the word Enlightenment May maybe before you started getting into Buddhism you had some idea of what that was and the more you started studying it and practicing and contemplating it at least for me that word becomes really something that becomes less and less important and less and less answerable to what that even might be but some people think of Enlightenment as really a victory of the superego that you've become enlightened and now you are this perfect sanctimonious just annoying everything's great you're posting these Instagram memes that are so embarrassing with you sit the the memes of people meditating man they always freaked me out because it's like who's taking the picture the camera like the universe didn't take this picture you were meditating for a picture it's so so to me that seems like an aspiration to become like an app like something embarrassing but ramdas my friend ROM Dev if I've had on the podcast a few times said ramdas told him if an [ __ ] gets enlightened then they will be an enlightened [ __ ] and so I think that anyone in the world of Comedy or comedy writing fear not fear not if you were to achieve realization in this last lifetime if you were to become actualized in this lifetime good luck but if you do don't worry you will still be a complete judgmental prick you can still have that you can enjoy that that can stay a part of your personality it doesn't have to go anywhere you can do that you know it's just it becomes God it hurts to be judged mouth doesn't it when you think that's all there is is you're that person and you and the Judgment it's a very painful situation but if you can get a little space between your judging mind and the you that you really are then judgment becomes just like it's okay yeah I have a judging mind we all do horrible horrible but it's not all that I am and that doesn't have to be like the sum total of my identity I think exploring the Mind meditation having a different relationship to your racing ego is hilarious some of my best jokes not not that funny but to the extent that I've ever been funny I think a lot of it comes out of having enough self-awareness to see how [ __ ] nuts I am and then turn that into a joke I would also say that pulling out my head out of my ass and being less self-conscious makes me more available and a better ad Liber and more spontaneous so I actually think I'm way funnier now than I used to be not again I don't want to overstate my capacity for humor but to the extent that it exists it's better are you kidding you're funny are you kidding me you gotta get in a stand-up friend you should just get on stage and just start telling jokes oh my God all right look at John Cleese you could play like straight comedy that kind of Comedy is the most difficult and the funniest and I guarantee you could do it you could well regardless the I agree with you and it brings to mind a story I read okay I don't know if you upload this I'm gonna do something really I'm gonna take a vape at everybody I'm so sorry I don't do this don't do this please don't do this you said before we started rolling that this is like your most embarrassing habit it it it it is this is it's unforgivable even by the way he's not getting just listeners he's not getting high he's smoking nicotine salts not even nicotine I just found out of something called nicotine salts I don't even know what that is yeah I think that oh right the story comes to mind I know Alan Ginsburg is bitching to choke him Trump uh about his tour poetry reading schedule because choking trumpet was his teacher and um he's like how do you you know how do you do it like how do you do all these like lectures these Buddhist lectures not getting exhausted children Trump has said you don't like touring because you're sick of your poems and why don't you just write the poetry on stage don't you trust your mind and so this thing that you're talking about the spontaneity that becomes available to you when you are when you've shut down all of those neurotic apps or at least they're running they're not running as fast as they were before it's incredible it's incredible like you the more you practice being in the moment that how can that not serve whatever it is you do whether you're an artist lifeguard whatever it is like finding a way to really be here and trust that whatever happens here is good oh it's it's a dream and so to me I think yeah it's a it's It could only help it's not gonna hurt like finding a way to be in the moment is not going to hurt whatever your particular job or form of expressionist in the world has it hurt your ambition in this Cutthroat industry in which you find yourself no no it is not it doesn't hurt my ambition because I have a family to support so like now it's not about me at all anyway I I have to support almost three kids now one's coming and my wife and all the householder stuff that goes along with that so I I have to be ambitious I can't rest on my Laurels or anything like that because I'm the provider for my family so maybe if I didn't have a family I would be less productive I'm just saying I'm just doing this thing of comparing because I I feel like it hasn't reduced my ambition at all and I'm not sure that's a entirely a good thing because I do have the I am the provider in this family as well and so that is a huge motivator but I also think there's still plenty of ego in it oh yeah yeah I mean we have our ego here I am not enlightened I'm in my E I have my ego I get buttered all day long I get bothered and I was at the mothership Rogan's club and I was feeling proud because I'm gonna shoot my special soon Lance bangs Who I Really Love Is Gonna help me shoot it and I was feeling fancy because Lance bangs had come to like check out the club and a comic I was with Jamar neighbors he said it so perfectly without any ego behind it he's like yeah my comedy special is doing really great at cons right now that's how you say it right cons the big Film Festival can I don't even know how to say it I'm such a barbarian but like you know what I mean I'm all excited because like I'm gonna do my special ecity next to me and he said he he shows me I'm like I asked him he didn't show me just like to brag it's got those you know the feathers are around is special you know what I mean and like in that moment I was excited for him because I love him but Jamar neighbors if I uh you know I couldn't help but feel a twinge of like I want that I want to exp I want feathers around my special so yeah I'm not I think it's we have our egos it's okay I think that's the other thing enjoy your ego while you have it you have it what what happens when you don't anymore maybe enjoy you know like when grief when you're grieving and you get to that point of realizing oh no the grief is going away and then you start grieving the grief because you the grief is connecting you to the person that you lost and that's going away now so I think when if you are working with an ego right now it's fine it's like just like you said it's kind of funny it goes from being such a severe thing to there being a kind of like bittersweet humor to the situation of having this very demanding very self-important aspect to yourself you talked about grief when did your mom die and and are you in the stage of grieving your grief or still full-on grieving oh I you know 2013 I'm I'm no longer in the you know throes of like grief anymore but it does come back sometimes it does come back like the this is this the part of you that's interested in Psychology Psychiatry I'm sure you're aware of this I I was not but right around when my mom died now I didn't know this but all of a sudden I got weird man I got weird and I wasn't sleeping I was realizing that as I was about to fall asleep I wanted to start sobbing and so I was getting like nervous about like what's going on is this some impending nervous breakdown why do I feel so out of I was feeling really angry with everything my wife was like you just aren't acting like yourself what is going on with you I don't know that was a scary part because usually I could be like oh you know it's because I've been I haven't been getting enough sleep or I've been drinking too much or some some thing I'm not doing that I should be doing or something I'm doing that I shouldn't be doing and then just on a whim I because I'd forgotten intentionally when my mom died I looked it up and it was exactly that day like it I I had completely my mind had forgotten the date but my heart and my body remembered from the cues that you know spring is happening and this is when my mom died and that's a real thing with grief is you know it just shows you how powerful it is it comes out of the blue and you you might even not you might not even know it's grief you might not even you might just feel like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and not realize that you are your body remembers the loss so but I'm not in the depths of it anymore thank God that story also speaks to just the power of the mind and all the aspects that are of it that are live below what we're conscious of yeah yes it's so hard I mean if that's happening what are the other things that are still in there that we don't know about how many micro griefs do we have that our body remembers how much of what we call our ego and personality is just some strange Patchwork of Forgotten heartbreaks there's no way to know forgotten in this lifetime or handed down to you through your genes from your forebears I mean they're just you know this is what I think people are pointing at when they talk about Karma just like the the Sea of causes and conditions that have all tumbled us into this moment yes yeah and it's so complex when when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it the cause and effect situation is so complex and yeah it's I I love the Buddhist cosmology I love it I love the idea that the samsaric pattern that any person is in in their life the you know why does it why does it seem like I'm always in the same relationship why does this keep happening to me that that has been going on longer than this lifetime that in fact this has been going on for Millennia for you you just keep doing this Loop over and over again I think there's something in there that allows a person to be a little more compassionate with themselves yes towards yourself and toward others I've been in this running gun battle that I don't I won't go into details about but just in in my life and one of the things that my meditation teacher says to me occasionally and he kind of took this from Gregory Boyle uh he of the no matter whatness of God Joseph Goldstein who's not a Christian who's my meditation teacher often talks about love no matter what which by it doesn't he doesn't mean like whoever's bugging you like invite them over to dinner and give them a hug he means more like see that they're acting out their [ __ ] just the way you are you know they've got some patterns handed down to them from their forebears that they're acting out and as soon as you look at it through that perspective it's just kind of hard to stay mad isn't that interesting that moment that's another way you can see when they say suffering is caused by attachment because anytime I've done I've successfully achieved that deconstruction of someone that I'm pissed off at I realize like ah but I want to be mad like no no I don't wanna I want to I want them to be Darth Vader I don't want them to be just like me going through the same stuff that I'm going through because now where will I put my aggression huh what's the target of my aggression now who do I punch [Laughter] it's still interesting just because it kind of brings us full circle in some ways because I really can with time start to see Within Myself the capacity for no matter whatness vis-a-vis the myself and other people I guess I I can't yet see how to scale that from inside of me to the universe having it but maybe since I am a Quantum expression of the universe then that's the answer right there there you go I think that is the answer I mean I think that's it the that's it we we are the Universe I mean I literally I don't mean in some like selling nitrous oxide A Grateful Dead show away we're part of the universe you must be if you're not what are you you're amazing if you're not so we are part of the universe we must be and we are capable of love we are I know of love I know love and so if this is the case and I always refer to it as above sell below why would it stop with us and so yes I think you just start just like that well I am feeling love or as ramdas put it I'm in love not like I'm you are the nipple from which I extract love you know what I mean like that's the big mistake we all make is you meet someone and you get confused and think they're the love source for you a little love volcano that you can you can scoop love out of and eat it but he would say no I'm in love with you in the sense that we are all sharing an experience of love because that's what we're that's what it is I think in Buddhism they call it fundamental goodness that it's just perfect and beautiful underneath all of our stories and that yeah and if that's it fine if it's just a little flicker of something that human monkey descendants Called Love fine it existed it happened in the universe there is the capacity for love for surrender and for complete and absolute disregard for one's life in exchange for another's that's real that's quantifiable and if it if that's real then I don't see any reason why there couldn't be greater and greater and greater levels of that expanding out through the infinite universe that we're part of yes I I think it's inarguable that the Universe has created a capacity for love whether the universe is fundamentally loving that I don't know yeah yeah tell that to like a a planet that just got sucked into a black hole yeah great Universe our whole civilization just got devoured take another bong rip hippie wait till your son's supernovas and then talk about the loving universe oh man this has been so much fun I'm so grateful to you for making the time it's super fun are you kidding I'm so honored to be on your show you are such an incredible interviewer I can't believe I just got to experience being having you're so good thank you I am it was a delight and I really appreciate you having me on the show it means the world to me it's so nice chatting with you about Buddhism too can you before I like actually liberate you here can you just remind everybody of the name of your podcast and any other stuff that you've put out comedy specials books anything that you want people to know sure yeah I have a podcast called The Duncan Trussell Family art podcast and there's a show on Netflix called the midnight gospel which is an animated series based on my podcast that I made with Pendleton Ward who made Adventure Time so if you want an introduction to my podcast probably the midnight gospel is a great starting point on Netflix and I know you're very busy but and whenever we can schedule it months out I would love to have you on my show and do so the reverse interview anytime and ask you the exact same questions you asked me because I don't think I can do better than that you know what would be awesome is I ever have any plans for this but at some point I'm sure I'm sure the universe will bring me to Austin it'll be cool to see you in person sometime I will have my assistant give me my digits and I would love to go to dinner lunch breakfast whatever brunch whatever that would be really cool so great awesome all right my friend Duncan Trussell [Laughter] real quick do you realize podcasts or friendship interviews now that's what they are this is how I make friends now dad thank you very much thank you for the great interview thank you such a pleasure all right thanks man thank you bye thanks again to Duncan Trussell loved having him on he's awesome thank you to Youth for listening go give us a rating or a review that really helps thanks most of all to the folks who produce this show they work incredibly hard 10 happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman Justine Davey Lauren Smith and Tara Anderson DJ cashmere is our senior producer Marissa Schneiderman is our senior editor and Kimmy regler is our executive producer scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure of ultraviolet audio and we get our theme music from Nick thorburn of the band Islands we'll see you all on Wednesday for a brand new episode we're going to talk about addiction with somebody extremely interesting Carrie Wilkins she's got a very interesting take on addiction I'm interested to see what the response of this episode will be so we'll see you on Wednesday for that [Music] hey hey Prime members you can listen to 10 happier early and AD free on Amazon music download the Amazon music app today or you can listen early and AD free with wondery Plus in apple podcasts before you go do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at onedry.com survey we made USAA insurance for veterans like James when he found out how much USAA was helping members save he said it's time to switch we'll help you find the right coverage at the right price USAA which You're Made Of or made for restrictions apply I want you to picture Steve Jobs tinkering with a computer in his garage Walt Disney drawing cartoons for his high school newspaper every Big Moment starts with a big dream but what happens when that dream turns out to be an even bigger failure each week on wondery's new podcast the big flop hosts Misha Brown is joined by different comedians to Chronicle some of the biggest failures and blunders in pop culture history each episode will have you thinking why in the world did this get made from box office flops like cats the movie to Action Park New Jersey's inFamous theme park that had countless injuries many lawsuits and rides so wild it became known as class action park or quibby that short form video platform with an even shorter lifespan it's a story of a spectacular fail earlier with lots of surprises along the way enjoy the big flop on the Wonder app or wherever you get your podcasts you can listen to the big flop early and AD free on wondering plus get started with your free trial 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Channel: Ten Percent Happier

Views: 7,829

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Id: IbfxiX5xee8

Length: 80min 11sec (4811 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 18 2023