Sharon Salzberg's Real Life Series with Duncan Trussell – Metta Hour Podcast Ep. 216

spirituality is having some relationship with your heart or you know the heart chakra or some sense of it doesn't mean you're always floating around in there you know in some radiant state of ecstatic emptiness or something like that but it means that you know you've had some glimpse of that maybe and you know that that's a possibility that you don't always have to be up in your head so I think spirituality might be an awareness of the relationship between your head and your heart [Music] hello and welcome to the Mata Hour podcast with Sharon salzberg I'm Lily Cushman and I produce this podcast and we're returning today with another episode of the real life series for episode 216 of the meta hour we're bringing you a conversation with the hilarious The Talented Duncan Trussell if you don't know Duncan's work he's a stand-up comedian an actor he has a wildly popular podcast the Duncan Trussell Family Hour and he is also the co-creator of a animated series on Netflix called the midnight gospel which he co-created with Pendleton Ward in 2020 and that show is kind of based around recordings from his podcast and it features some people that you definitely know like true to Good Men David Nick turn and the venerable ramdas and Duncan is someone that I would call a devotee of ramdas also that's how he first connected to Sharon as being part of the open your heart in Paradise Retreats in Maui that were centered around ramdas and his teachings and still happen today even after his passing and so Duncan is a big part of that Community as well so we're delighted to have him here on the podcast he is just a hilarious person in general and I love hearing him engage with the Dharma because he's kind of an incredible skeptic and asks so many questions that I think most of us have but don't have the wherewithal to just bluntly ask so I'm not going to say too much about the conversation today because I'll let you just go on the journey together with Sharon and Duncan before we dive in a quick announcement in the coming month we'll be wrapping up the real life series we have recordings coming with Valerie Carr Joelle Leone the holistic life Foundation Mark Epstein and Daisy Hernandez and will be returning to the mental health series soon in a couple weeks as well so without further Ado here is Duncan Trussell and Sharon salzberg [Applause] welcome back to the summit I'm Sharon salzberg and I'm here with Duncan Trussell who is a comedian a podcaster a meditator a mensch I just called him a midge my match as well I'm so delighted to have Duncan with us today and before we get into conversation we'll just say Duncan is a stand-up comedian a podcaster a writer and an actor Duncan's created a show for Netflix called the midnight gospel he hosts his own podcast the Duncan Trussell Family Hour dtfh where he frequently invokes applicable Dharma teachings for both daily life and for exceptionally difficult circumstances Duncan also hosts a weekly meditation session and discussion of mindfulness practice for fans that subscribe to his work through patreon I didn't know that I'm going to subscribe you better not I'll get you an account I can't do this if I think you're watching Sharon and it's like just again I appreciate all those plugs but I try to remember every meditation if I start off not a meditation teacher and I always recommend you and I always tell people you Trudy Jam like there's real meditation teacher I'm a you know I'm a sporadic meditator so I try not to get too highfalutin with this stuff and and and confuse people um but we do have a wonderful group that just sits together every Monday fabulous I always have felt that the best guides are the people who've been through a lot because otherwise it's a little abstract right right you know so maybe you can tell us how you became interested in meditation and mindfulness well you know I think my first contact with it was my mom got this you know had books really like a lot of spiritual books because after the divorce he started like dating in a new age dudes and like they got her into this stuff I think she's always spiritual but the book was Raja yoga by Yogi Rama charaka now later much later I found out a guy's names like Stephen it's not ramacharacha he invented it he was this like British guy who wanted to write books on the occult and nobody's gonna buy a book on the occult by a dude named Steve Yogi Roma charaka you got my attention had a cool symbol on the front and so the book was actually you know not bad it was just the basics of yoga and meditation of course was mixed in there and you know I just felt a gravity towards it or something you know I don't know how to explain it and so I can remember the first time I meditated like sitting down by my mom's bed crossing my legs and I think I managed to stay still for like two minutes and I told my brother I didn't move for two minutes it was amazing and uh that and then ever since then I've been interested and my mom loved ramdas you know and so I we would go on these long trips and she would play around us when I was a teenager and I would pretend not to like him because my mom liked him you're not supposed to like the things your mom likes but I really would listen and um so yeah that was the beginning of it I guess you could say oh cool um one of the things you might have thought were meditation practice in the past but learned were not meditation once you started studying with David nichteren well that's a great question um and what I love about David is that and he's a perfect teacher for me because I'm so s so everywhere and I I'm very very attracted to like astral plain stuff and all of that stuff it's just fascinated by UFOs and aliens and he is teaches this wonderfully simple method of a sitting practice that is in the beginning was actually quite excruciating and um so if I'm going to use that as the basis for just a sort of basic meditation practice then I guess you could say that if you're not technically if you're not you know if you're not sitting in this and and being still and watching resting your attention in your breath and noting every time you think and returning the attention to the breath then but just based on that you you couldn't necessarily say that you're meditating you might be doing some kind of contemplation or something like that but I'm again I'm just saying like the breaststroke's the breaststroke you know maybe you're doing the backstroke or maybe you're floating on your back or doing some kind of free swim but from that perspective and that's what I like about it is that there is a structure that is for people like me really important and wonderful because otherwise I will convince myself I'm meditating when I'm watching Walking Dead and drinking whiskey or something what's it is and meditation too right um so yes I would say that that would be meditating and then everything after that would be post meditation well it's interesting that you say that because um in a lot of systems of meditation they talk about balance where where both at the same time deepening calm and tranquility and concentration and strengthening energy and interest and like aliveness and um people also have natural tendencies you know some people have a lot of energy some people don't have very much and right um you know I would also say that um I am the kind of person like when I am practicing I'm helped a lot by structure by simplicity Yeah by having a container not everyone feels that way but it really helps me uh in a lot of ways I don't have that much energy but I have a tendency to a distractedness you know just like yeah facing out going all over the place and stuff I love very simple repetitive structured practices yeah me too I mean I wouldn't say I love them but I I know that if not for that then I get I'm all over the place and so but I think some people are the opposite some people are the opposite they're hyper-structured their whole life is this structured thing and so getting out of that structure is the challenge for them it's just yeah yeah it's the opposite that's just not me yeah no absolutely I agree some people are uh they feel so trapped by structure and so free when they are open open exactly yeah what is spirituality to you do you have a these words are difficult you know because if you say spirituality a lot of people do think about the occult or you know yeah sexual projection or something like that but what do we call that realm of ordinary being you know yeah I mean I I think that the word has been so hyper commercialized these days and has been used to sell everything water I'm sure there's some kind of spiritual water out there it is so that over time when you hear that uh so many times it well it stops meaning anything at all and and some people will think that they'll say well I'm spiritual what they mean is I wanna I hope I'm a good person or something like that but if I had to sit right now and I think that that my definition of it is constantly changing but it pendulum sometimes like there's no such thing this is just another fairy tale we tell ourselves to imagine or something different when I'm being particularly cynical or dark but now I would say um spirituality is having some relationship with your heart or the you know the heart chakra or some sense of it doesn't mean you're always floating around in there you know in some Radiance data ecstatic emptiness or something like that but it means that you know you've had some glimpse of that maybe and you know that that's a possibility that you don't always have to be up in your head so I think spirituality might be an awareness of the relationship between your head and your heart when did you meet ramdas and how did you meet him so yeah that was I went through this terrible period in my life where I was very I was like horrifically depressed and really depressed um like you know the real deal or you're just you don't you can't return calls you can't talk to anybody you can't you're just done and um but in that state it was really rotten in that state I I don't know I just recalled something about how service helping is one way to get out of that and I was all foggy and I found a copy of beer now that I had and in the back is the love server member foundation and I've been doing podcasts so it's the only thing I I thought I could even they would be remotely interested in so I just sent an email saying I could teach you how to do podcasts or help with podcasts or something and then that's that's when I'm you know Ragu came to do my podcast I I already had a picture of Neiman Crowley Baba on my wall and he saw that I was like okay uh I think he that he liked that and then but I didn't really know much about maharaji like I did even now from there um we started a friendship and uh and then my mom died and I was just crushed and and again just the worst depression ever again and then just I was in bed I was paralyzed I just I was like so depressed not too much information here friends I don't know if you've ever been this level of I don't know folks out there have you ever been that state where you're in bed and you think you know I'll just wet the bed like I don't think I'm gonna get out of bed like that and so Ragu called me like somewhere in the midst of that and he's like just come to this retreat and like it's like he understood he's like listen get up go to the computer buy the plane ticket trust me just come to this thing it was like the sweetest thing ever ever it's like he just knew and so I did that went to this retreat immediately felt like just going like you're in Hawaii so you're immediately like okay maybe I might be able to survive this and then this was when they were doing it at a smaller place called I think Lumeria and it was mixed in with like trips to Hawaiian sacred sacred sites I mean I'm that I think you could say at that point I'm Peak cynical so which is a bunch of BS really you know because underneath it you're not like that but I mean Frozen and so I'm just like hyper judging everybody except ramdas but everybody else I'm just like oh look at these look at these old hippies what have I done oh my God but I still liked it and then Ragu at one point they were going to look at a volcano or something and he's like you're coming with me took me to ramdas's house I was suddenly in a pool with ramdas roshi Jonah Halifax roshi Joan is carrying ramdas around the pool they're laughing like children they're throwing a tennis ball to each other I'm paralyzed with like I mean I just can't understand how suddenly this is happening like because I really loved him you know just from college would be here now and I just my mom loved it and so it was just I couldn't understand it and so he you know again I don't you know they talk about Dharma transmission or something like this stuff so like I can remember he it's like he caught me looking out from that incredible View and he caught me in this moment of like remission of grief or something and he goes and that was like I think that was like that was wrapped up and that was everything like it will it gets better look you it it it gets better this is better and then he goes I want to talk to you in that fake kind of like I don't know he had this like cool ferocity to him and then like suddenly I'm in wrongdos's house and he like rolls up in the wheelchair and he goes uh he's like you know I was so like grieving he's like he pointed his head and he's like you're here he's like you need to get here and he got that big wrong dog smile and he goes we can help you do that and it was so cool I mean you know how it is when you're getting like I I don't want to call it formal darshan I mean there's a difference he did something else was happening here it's not just like hanging out with eating together or something this is something else and then Sharon he um we talked and I said I'm crying I cannot cry I'm crying and I'm like I wish my mom or she loved you and he got that he's like she is here and it was wild because it wasn't like someone like oh she's he it was like no she's here and I believed I still do believe it and then we had this wonderful little conversations I think changed my life it set me on a trajectory I guess you could say it was like suddenly whatever awful current I was stuck in my boat was now not in that current anymore and then uh yeah he goes this is the weirdest part but you know within that sort of Sacred Space you everything that happens you remember everything that happens means something and so at the end of it you got this big his cat jumped in his lap and he goes she sleeps on my chest at night now I'm telling my brother about this later and I'm like Jeff and then he's like yes cat he said sleeps on his chest at night and my brother long pause he goes you don't remember do you I'm like remember what he's like that's what Mom used to say don't you remember that that the cat slept on her chest at night oh a little like Miracle bomb you know like it was a time bomb like no like BS Clairvoyant like I'm speaking for your mom but just that sweet subtle little leak of like I don't know bad thing I know you're familiar with it you know I now I associate that with maharaji like there's a sense of humor in it there's a specific sense of graceful humor in it so yeah that's the story I'm sorry if I went on to it no no that's fabulous and I should say for anyone listening who doesn't know all the names uh ramdas Guru was named Crowley Baba and uh was often called maharajian so um when around us was uh fired from Harvard and then for uh administering psychedelics so with students and uh went to India and went from being Richard Alpert to ramdas under the tutelage of this Guru and uh when he came back he told many people apparently he wasn't supposed to tell anybody told many people you had his experience and there's a whole wave of people in my time who went off to India you know late very late 60s early 70s I went in 1970 uh began meditating in January of 1971 and Ron Russ's book he was there as a student also because his Guru maharaji had just had kind of playfully disappeared and uh so they were doing these meditation courses sort of waiting to find him again and remember these are days no internet no cell phones nothing like that you know so everything was sort of a miracle and uh Ram dresses first copy of be here now arrived and it was not a bound book it was a box and there was all this stuff in there like a chai recipe and you know hadn't had a chance at home or whatever yeah so he was really this tremendous Pioneer and I and the other thing I wanted to say was like shout out to Ragu and shout out to ramdas of course but uh you know Rago being the first person because so often we're taught to hide our pain or that there's something wrong with us if we're in pain and that of course leads us not only to have less compassion for ourselves but to have less compassion for others because we you know we don't want to see it or if we're near it we feel we have to fix it right and so people come with sort of a weird sense of responsibility which is not theirs uh and then they feel alienated as you know there's so much bounds up in the stigma and the rejection that is not even the original pain which is hard enough yeah to bear and so you know what we're looking for I think as human beings is not someone to fix us but someone to accompany us that would go through this journey We're Not So Alone yeah that's beautiful the whole fixing thing oh so it's but I get it I mean I do get it of course like you you have this sense of like this you have some intuition that maybe life doesn't have to be like this just maybe there's a way to not be like constantly like fluctuating between anger for others or anger at yourself or your past or you just have that sense that's a good thing I mean I think uh um in the bhagavad-gita I can't remember the exact verse but Krishna is saying here are the people who come to me and I think the first one he says is The Seekers after gold and I've always at first you read that I'm like what I thought this was supposed to be about no possessions no stuff but um I understand it now I understand it now because because what he said what happens is you think you want gold you think you want you have this idea of what you might be like if you were better you have this idea of what your relationships might be like if you were just finally you did it you started jogging ate the right food silly a musk and whatever the other stuff you think is gonna but then and so you you find your way to meeting people like you or ramdas and I think what ends up happening is your initial reasoning for whatever it was that you were doing that become you don't even that becomes less you forget about it you and then the whole gold thing even though I'm I'm never going to say no to gold in this Incarnation you realize who cares about how much gold you have if you're if you've tied a tourniquet between whatever the connection is between your ego identity and you know your ability to love doesn't matter if you're that's the dragon that's the archetype of the Dragon the thing just lonely and some dank cave sitting on gold guarding it for no reason well the gold is also the love right it's the love we can cultivate for ourselves even in the face of the ridiculous you know places we get to in the um really difficult places we get to and the gorgeous places that we get to that are also fleeting uh we can have a quality of love and love for one another because life is full of ups and downs for everybody we all want I think some sense of belonging and some sense of being whole and it's not that easy to come to you know we're told a lot of myths about where happiness is going to be found and we kind of go for it and you know endless accumulation or really brutal competition against one another and just put anyone else down you'll feel better about yourself and we just get lonelier and lonelier and you know so it's it's not easy but it's possible and that's the extraordinary thing is to break out of that and also I thought of of course love when you were speaking about uh both ramdas and Crowley Baba because um lots of lots of the stories around somebody like uh Maharaja and you probably Baba are what we would probably call uh paranormal or sure you know something like that you know where he um uh I mean I have friends who went there as just one example and he uh this couple um in the ashram booted everyone else out kept a couple there like for a weekend or something like that and then on Sunday night he said to the man of a couple um you should call home your family needs you so this is India with no cell phones no fax machines no computers if you wanted to call an international call like that you had to like go to a major city check into an international expensive hotel book a call a trunk call for like 24 hours hence you know go to like a little room and scream over the phone so he does all that and goes to the little room finally screams at his mother and says hello we should thank God the state department found you what like ooh you know there's so many stories like that but they're almost like um not quite irrelevant because they can make people think what is reality and that's kind of good but yeah you know it's like they're not the point the point is the love yeah you know with which he seemed to have encountered people and helped engender in them yeah you know and ramdas would be a great example yes yeah that uh you know this is sort of when I started meditating and got through the you know at one point I told David David I can't do this when I sit still it feels like I'm on fire and he goes Duncan just so you know it's not the that's in you it's not the meditation setting you on fire you're experiencing like all of the stuff you're you're finally like not distracting yourself he didn't use those words he just said to you not the meditation um but then something started happening which I would have these moments of feeling the way I assumed you only felt when you were a kid so all of a sudden I'm feeling these moments of like wait this is what I felt like when I was in summer camper this is what I felt like when I was walking with my mom at the beach or you know you you you you pair those experiences that the the quality of them with whatever was happening around you oh well I can only feel that way if I'm in a younger body with my mom or if I'm you know have some more freedom or if I don't know all this stuff I know now about the world or whatever and so that's I think when people are talking about love or emptiness or whatever the particular word is you want to give for that spaciousness thing it's that's one of the most delightful things is to realize yeah guess what you don't have to fly to Hawaii you don't need a time machine that there is this possibility that yeah actually that's what you are all the time and and there there's a way now the for people like me addicts you know then of course you're just like well I want to feel that now again and then that that's produces all kinds of all kinds of trouble when it comes to meditating because now you're grasping at some experience but David's you know he would he often talks about she'll give him Jump Around disown it like whatever that thing was before it's not right now so let go of that or you'll get stuck trying to go back in time to the last time you had some Peak meditation experience And So It Goes so in my book real life I wrote that not allowing ourselves to feel an emotion or fully inhabit our bodies might have been smart survival tools at some point but now like a discarded piece of equipment they may not be so functional anymore therefore encountering them we work to recognize them to forgive ourselves for what we're feeling to see more deeply Into the Heart of the feelings and to not identify with them as fundamentally essentially Who We Are so that sounds like that process right of sure facing even uh the most um sorrow filled or difficult kind of mind state and not trying to deny it yet not having it Define you either yes I mean but you know and it but it all makes sense doesn't it it all makes sense like we have in the because we live in uh time space you get away from things that seem like they're gonna hurt you if you are too close to a fire you back off a little bit it all makes sense like all of it I get why I burrowed up into my head and I get why I was proud of how I could numb myself down I get it because the assumption is don't go there like don't go there you really want to feel that you want to feel that it'll make it worse it'll catch you on fire in a bad way not some romantic poet I'm fire of Love way but but it's actually is the Romantic roomy poet way it's like that thing is a kind of fire that you that once you've experienced it enough you you realize that that's where the action is you want to emulate you want to you want it and and um yeah so I get it's counterintuitive the whole thing is counterintuitive if you're basing your idea of how to stay safe on the notion that we'll get away from things that hurt because it even doesn't even hurt that long and that's the other thing when you just get in there it's not like it's goes away it's not like it's it's not uncomfortable but it's certainly worse it's worse what do you want you know like those spooky stories where uh somebody has like a person like someone someone's calling them and saying I'm gonna get you I'm gonna get you and so they call the operator like they're like get the police they trace the call the call is coming from inside your house you know the thing that the thing is in your own house what are you going to do then take a nap you've got like a murderer in your house it's the way to deal with that is to face it you know like it's a tortured analogy but I just don't think ignoring whatever whatever it may be at least for me I am not six that has not been a successful strategy as far as I can tell I love the way you've just phrased that it's not been a successful strategy it's very Buddhist actually of you because you know there's not like a value judgment placed on saying having immense fear come up in one's mind except that if we get entangled in it and overcome by it we're gonna suffer and we're gonna likely cause suffering for others and so yeah that's not a direction we want to be cultivating and yet um to have like a ton of Shame about what we're feeling and thinking it's wrong or I've been meditating for 50 years God knows it should be gone by now she's been gone decades ago why is it still here is it still here you know it's not a successful strategy you're getting free of those things it just doesn't work and we've tried them many of us for a long time so it didn't work if it worked we would be in a Utopia yeah yeah it would just be it would we would be in Shambhala that was the thing that worked but yeah it's a you know again yeah that that stuff oh I've meditated this long you know I was just talking to the to the first uh a teacher I taught me Buddhism tejio Munich she's got a wonderful woman's meditation temple in Asheville called gray tree Temple and she is amazing and yeah I was telling her the shame uh the shame thing I'm like you know I feel like I did have some glimpse of emptiness like after many many years finally I think I caught a glimpse of it and then you know and it lasted this one but then I'm in some rotten fight with Aaron my wife and she's like so tell me again about that big experience you had I'm like oh you're right I said I'm a fraud no I'm a mess you're right on shame just like I'll never believe it again but then I was talking to her about that and she said you know actually I think you did have a glimpse of something and and when you have that sort of thing it sort of soaks into the rest of your life to the point where you don't really notice it as much as maybe that first time you noticed it doesn't mean it's so ridiculous to imagine that because you catch some glimpse of maybe a more expansive reality that there that will all fights will end with your partner no but I'll tell you the fights don't last as long and they there's not that edge to them after that it's like you you're fine again sooner there's not that sense of you know oh boy this can't believe they did that that I used to do for people who did things to me years ago I think that's maybe the what what happens and then but still in all you so it would be nice to be enlightened whatever that even is right we would like that um well you're known for speaking about your own experience from a very real place so uh whether it's your podcast or you know your other encounters with people your other expressions of yourself so is there something that helps you keep it real obviously your relationship is one of those things my wife keeps it right she's the best you know in our what ramdas married us and uh in our wedding vows whatever you want to call them I'm like please don't tell me you think a joke I say it's funny if it's not because it's like I'm a comedian I need to know I need at least someone who's gonna just be honest so yeah like anytime she sees me reform yeah I mean it wasn't your best and I it's not me there's love there because it's like I need I already know that but you know it's not like you don't aren't aware of that when you perform but so yes she helps keep it real for me for sure and the kids the kids help keep it real you know kids aren't gonna tiptoe around the truth but also you I one of my friends a long time ago told me like if you're telling the truth like from where you're at can somebody doesn't like you then it's like someone who doesn't like a cloud or something like it's the truth it's just where you're at it's real what else do you have other than that I mean if you don't really have anything else so um yeah I I think I'm just lucky because because part of my job is not is being as authentic as I can be and to be very authentic I am not authentic all the time there are things I won't say publicly and things I think sometimes and fleeting moments I have that I don't feel like sharing with the world but those are less than I mean I'm not afraid to talk about most things yeah there's a widespread belief in the west that art great art comes uh only from great suffering and clearly there's a way you know maybe even especially with comedy where there's a place of pain that is being metabolized in the process of of that making you know that creation but uh in the East it's also believed that great art can come from balance it comes from compassion comes from other places so I'm just wondering uh if you've encountered that and if that's maybe changed so for example I heard uh Alice Walker on a paddle once with Dalai Lama and he was at they were asked that question you know basically about art and suffering and um and she said that's how I was taught that that's sort of the world of poetry writing I grew up in and uh but I'll say the happier I get the better my poetry gets which I thought was a very interesting thing and I'll hear your response and I'll tell you what the Dalai Lama said well you know I think it's a very dangerous self-destructive and very tragic thing to think because you you have this creative impulse and then because you have read the romanticized biography of people who might be exaggerating a little bit and people who you're believing it's like you're believing the origin story of people and also you're assigning to people a kind of uh a singular sort of seed from which there are emerges and you're looking at people who are alcoholics who are drug addicts and who have who are have because of the nature of their work they're always around you know nightlife and stuff and at some point that uh having fun with people who came to see your show turns into alcoholism or drug abuse and all the stuff that Springs have had and you see that and you think oh if I want to be funny I better like become a an alcoholic or I better make awful decisions or I haven't made awful decisions in my life and therefore I don't have the right to say anything funny but you know I think the root of the thing is this it's the first Noble Truth of Buddhism there is suffering it doesn't matter if you have the greatest parents on Earth it doesn't matter you are in a body that is being aerosolized by time you're being eaten by the universe at least the form you're in right now so that's enough suffering to write some funny jokes if you're in a human body you are suffering probably now to think you need to extend that suffering to maintain a sense of humor no sadly no oh if only if only suffering wrote jokes out of 50 books of jokes Sharon sadly it seems to be related to work sadly it seems like you need to sit down and write jokes and get on stage a lot and bomb in front of people is the jokes you thought were funny didn't work and then if you keep doing that you write funny jokes regardless of whether or not your dad tied you to the bed and branded you with a poker from the fireplace or whatever you really just have to it's just like anything else you have to like have you have to work and have discipline it seems like that to me I'll let you know if I find out if there's another way but yeah I think that's great and uh the this is what the Dalai Lama said he said in the same panel uh first he looked a little bit sometimes he gets this very bemused look on his face like what are they talking about you know then he basically said people are always dragging me off to look at things like look at a building to comment on the architecture or look at a painting comment on its beauty or its extraordinary nature and and he said in uh Tibet we have a belief that the measure of a work of art of a creation is done by measuring what happened to the Creator in the process making it like did they get Kinder yeah do they get more enlightened yes do they get uh more connected yeah to the vulnerability of humankind whatever it is they said that's how we say something is beautiful that's cool or not it was like a whole other measure you know of Life ah he should become a religious leader or something right yeah yeah absolutely I mean you know I'll tell you it's like whenever I'm the most productive or whenever I'm inspired it's it's like it's definitely not coming when I'm super depressed when I'm depressed I don't want to answer I don't want to do anything I just want to like find a crawl under the porch I don't want to do anything but if you know but when things are harmonizing with my family and I feel good and I'm like uh in in those that's that's when I get more creative it's not the I don't I don't I can't imagine how being crushed by your misery then produces any kind of good anything but maybe for some people I think I just think it's like writing is very difficult performing is scary and we all want we all would love it if it if it didn't require what it requires it'd be it would be wonderful and so the fan you know I was a long time ago I heard someone singing a poem about their ex-boyfriend and saying like just because you drink like Bukowski doesn't mean you write like him and it's like I don't know that there's any real correlation between those two things most comedians I know are successful are like take they take really good care of themselves and they're like in therapy or they're you know actively trying to be healthy they're not snorting rails of cocaine off of strippers or anything though there might be a few out there to do that it's great uh because the last thing we need is to sort of romanticize suffering on top of everything else and and to feel and people say that to me in one form or another all the time like I'm afraid of losing my Edge I'm afraid of becoming kind of conventional you know and losing that inspiration losing that creative spark if I'm just conforming and this is a big confusion it's confusion it's it reminds me of The Chronicles of Narnia I'm gonna misquote it here there's some I think it's in the last book Aslan like meme curly bob has gone as this beard has gone off to do whatever Aslan does the Christ metaphor in those books and um one of the girls I think her name's Lucy I can't remember now says that one of the kids you know where is Aslan why isn't he here and the her friend says he's not a tame lion and I think that people get confused regarding this sort of thing because they imagine it to be some domesticated thing they begin to associate it with like calming down in a kind of prudish way no longer being wild when in fact generally I think the misery or or the people who are confined in their egos are far more restrained and far more compressed and far less likely to say some blasphemy than a person who's just purely in the moment and is not constantly thinking about the repercussions of what might come out of their mouth you know it would it would seem but and so what ends up springing out of the mouths of some of these people that I've met is sometimes what might seem irreverent but it's the most beautiful thing you've ever heard and it's funny and it but it's wild it's not control you're not controlling that it's perfect actually it's perfect in Mitzi the owner of The Comedy Store she would always just say it comes from love it comes from love there wasn't that comes from horror it was like love is the secret behind it all she would say that like she was not exactly what you would call like a woo-wooish hippie person she was not like that but she knew that because she's been around comedians for her whole life and she loved comedians so yeah love love is not tame I don't know where that crept in that love is some kind of sweet domesticated nice soft thing it just sometimes it is but my God if you've ever been around children you know if you've ever it's it's so wild and unpredictable and and so yeah no I don't think you lose your Edge at all it's very edgy life can be very edgy so as soon as this is over I want you to send me baby pictures okay whether they're in college or something like that get ready for the time they're already yeah they're already in college they're already in college yeah they're Geniuses much like their father they they are incredible though and I will you're about to get a tsunami okay great ready I need that that's good uh and uh one more question how is attending to others helped you get out of yourself oh my God this is this is you know I think it's really like in the same way it's dangerous to be like one of those psychedelic missionaries and think everybody needs to take acid or whatever it's like what are you talking about some people definitely do not need to take acid like people uh you know that fantasy any like anyone who's just like experienced psychedelics and has had a a catharsis or healing you start thinking oh if only fill in the blank oh if Vladimir Putin could just drink Ayahuasca everything would change and it's like you don't know that you don't know what's gonna happen if Vladimir Putin are you feeling the particular villain takes acid they might suddenly be like you know what why are we waiting to do the nuclear missile thing we all live forever anyway we don't need our bodies to exist let's just so similarly I think with people who are parents they could accidentally slip into some kind of missionary thing where you're like you need to have kids it's the most beautiful incredible thing that ever happened and and become like reproductive missionaries don't do that some people don't want to have kids and they shouldn't have kids they don't have kids what are you doing so I'm just prefacing what I'm about to say with nothing has been better for me because I am professionally selfish I like to gratify my senses I like to fixate on myself and you just can't do that when you've got kids I mean you could try and certainly there's a name for that it's called being a bad parent you you can't you have to be with them and you have to you fix them you're fixing breakfast now and you're tired and you've never been this time you're making them you're you sometimes even when I'm bringing them food opportunity to be a waiter and they love that can I bring you anything else sir sometimes the oldest like can you act like a waiter dad but you know I'll tell you all I know this last question might be running a time but not to get back into the miracle stories because I agree with with that concept that these can be sand traps but um one morning I'm fixing pancakes for the kids and my mom loved Enya so like I'm playing Enya and thinking about my mom and so I'm sitting at the table thinking about my mom and then like I thought to myself oh this is what my mom felt like when she was making pancakes for me because it felt just so so beautiful so perfect the kids you know watching your kids eat just like oh God it's the most beautiful thing and like it's just pure love and it's not for I there wasn't even enough pancakes for me I'm not eating pancakes I'm just but I'm just ah this is like what my this is how my mom loves me I bet and and then I realized this is my mom like this is all moms and then I realized I'm experiencing the experience of like all this is this is the mother I'm experiencing that and right at that moment and I don't know what he was thinking about four fours looks up at me and he goes You Found Me and it was the wildest thing just you found me and I so that's the answer to your question is in that service suddenly you you don't just ex you're no longer you if you you're everyone who ever loves something so much that they weren't thinking about themselves anymore and that's that's a that's what it's done for me I mean I'm not there all the time sometimes I don't want to make pancakes Sharon sometimes I want to sleep here's some yogurt kid and I'm going back to bed but every once in a while that happens and um uh and I think that's what it's all about it's beautiful so before we close our time together here would you like to lead us in a short practice are you oh of course absolutely I loved it okay short short though um let me start this short practice with what I say at the beginning we're all I try to remember to say leave all the meditation group not a meditation teacher I sporadically meditate I don't like it a lot of the times I don't want to do it a lot of the times and I'm confused about probably fundamental aspects of Buddhism even though I'm working with one of the incredible meditation teachers so please do not imitate anything that I'm about to put out there go to Sharon participate in one of her zooms inside L.A Spirit Rock Love Story remember dot org Dharma Moon if you're in Asheville I would highly recommend gray tree Temple there's so many great teachers out there but they're they're I just try to meditate and so that's the disclaimer so this is the way that that uh I meditate and David Nick turn taught that to me you as a student of children trumpa and this is basic I've been working with him for a long time now I'm pretty sure there's other levels of this in Tibetan Buddhism but it just as an indication of where I'm at with it he says to me we do this in real time in other words whatever the other things are maybe maybe not for me in this lifetime so this is how I meditate I'm sitting in a chair right now I like to sit on the floor I have a zafu cushion that's what it's called it's just a pillow but it's like a cool name for a pillow gets your butt up so that you can um your feet don't fall asleep when you meditate you can find them on Amazon you don't need it you can sit in a chair if you want to I just prefer the floor so um what what I do is uh I try to have a nice posture there's lots of books on this obviously it you can go it's a fractal you can go as deep into it the energy connection where the energy connects the chakras all is deep it's deep um but this is again very basic straight back I put my hands with my fingers just above my knees and the I try to bring to mind the um God what was who was the musician who was friends with Buddha Sharon whose Buddha's associate what's his name I could never sure sorry yeah one musician is portrayed mogulana he had Ananda Ananda I think it might have been Anonymous that this again my Buddhist friends out there please Don't Judge Me You better not your Buddhist the uh not too tight not too loose like a story I know there was an under I don't know his name but yeah he had there was a monk disciple who was like really uptight in his meditation and and the Buddha went to him so back when you were playing the loot what happens if you tie the string too tight what if it was too loose yeah that so I try to bring that to mine as far as posture goes because uh in the early days of meditating it's like it needs to hurt like you need to just be rigid and stiff and it's just better hurt if it's real no but I've also noticed that in my posture if I'm too loose I get sleepy so um and what's interesting about Tibetan Buddhism uh is that they just they say well if you're sleepy just fall asleep no big deal you don't have to like try to stay awake drift off congratulations you got a little nap in there it's great but then if you look at Zen people will invite their teachers to hit them on the back with bamboo to wake him up uh so if you have some bamboo around and someone willing to hate you with it I don't um so yeah uh hands just above the knees open eyes um I I a lot of people close their eyes on their meditate open eyes and this is called the resting gaze so you're sort of looking down and you're just taking everything in um there's a saying that I invented uh that you could think about which is be here now I'm thinking about writing a book with that title and then so you sit with a straight back hands above the knees and you I used to say you you place your attention on the breath but Sharon was generous enough to to join our uh the patreon group and she said actually the translation I think from Polly is what you said is rest your attention on the breath and that was such a wonderful adjustment which is why you need meditation teachers it's those little adjustments mean everything because if you placing your attention or focusing your attention on the breath it really doesn't convey the the sort of soft quality to this uh whereas resting your attention on the breath it it it's that's it that's for sure it so now and many others go into great detail about the out breath and the in-breath and the space in between the out breath and the in-breath highly recommend any book but I am YouTube videos by him I won't get into that but they don't they go into detail regarding the the the the breathing pattern itself um but for now just rest your attention in your breath and when you get lost in your thoughts but you definitely will or when you get lost in big feelings which could happen the idea is think don't run away from them you're not doing whack-a-mole here the one of the names of meditation and Tibetan Buddhism is gone which means becoming familiar with it so you're kind of just becoming familiar with yourself here this is not whatever war on yourself you're waging uh you can actually not do the war for just a second and just let yourself be as as your but when you find yourself lost in your thoughts or feeling big emotions allow yourself that experience but then think Ing and then return your attention to the breath thank you thank you everybody I got in line did you watch me get in line wasn't it cool it says thank goodness you said eyes open because I missed it oh my God was it amazing it was incredible wow that's awesome I'm gonna open a yoga studio thank you so much for sharing with us this is really great and it's been so nice to spend time with you and see you and watch your your very Enlightenment I was there then well I know you saw it it's there gosh maybe you could paint a scroll of what you saw maybe I could write a poem that'll be wonderful to learn more about Duncan you can visit dunkintrussell.com [Music] thank you [Music] hey folks thanks for listening if you'd like to learn more about Sharon's work her virtual offerings classes courses really all things Sharon you can visit her website at Sharon salzburg.com this has been the meta Hour podcast from the be here now Network may you be safe may you be happy may you be healthy and may you live with ease [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Be Here Now Network

Views: 7,324

Keywords: duncan trussell, DTFH, sharon salzberg, spirituality, bhnn, podcast, meditation, buddhism, dharma, dharma podcast, buddhism podcast, loving kindness, metta hour, meta hour, lovingkindness, metta, mental health, be here now, real life book, real life series

Id: EaqUwX3qtEY

Length: 62min 3sec (3723 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 27 2023