754: RamDev

Summary

---

Duncan Trussell Family Hour — Episode 754: RamDev

May 31, 2026

---

Episode Overview

In this profound and often humorous episode, Duncan Trussell welcomes RamDev (Dale Borglum) back to the DTFH to explore themes from RamDev’s new book, "How to Live So You Can Die Without Fear." Together, they dive deep into the Western sterilization of death, the nature of fear, subtlety of compassion, the power of embodied mindfulness, and the challenges and beauty of opening one's heart in difficult times. The conversation skillfully intertwines personal anecdotes, spiritual teachings, and direct, playful banter, all serving the episode’s central question: How can we live (and die) fearlessly, compassionately, and authentically?

---

Main Topics & Insights

Death, Fear & The Western Perspective

• The Cultural Denial of Death (A: 01:00, B: 02:57)
  • Western culture suppresses the fear of death, leading to a chronic, background anxiety that drains vitality and keeps us from being fully alive.
  • Quote — RamDev:

    “Pushing the fear away in order to not feel it takes so much energy. This letting go, this opening to it means ego death. And ego death is scary.” (03:30)

• Spiritual Practice and Death’s Intimacy (B: 02:50)
  • Referencing Trungpa Rinpoche:

    “Until you have an intimate connection with death, your spiritual practice will have the quality of you really being a dilettante.” (02:57)

Parenting, Anxiety & the River of Fear

• The Parental Anxiety Metaphor (A: 07:01)
  • Duncan shares worries about his children's safety, illustrating how fear for loved ones channels the deeper existential fear of loss.
• Subtle Selfishness in Caring (A: 10:57)

  • “You want them to be okay because you don’t want to feel bad for them... It's self-interest disguised as compassion.” (11:13)

What Is Compassion?

• Compassion vs. Empathy (B: 12:24, B: 21:26)
  • Compassion is a state of being, not just a feeling or an action. It’s intrinsic, not a performance:

    “Compassion is not an emotion. Compassion is a state of being.” (12:24)

  • Empathy: Feeling what others feel; Compassion: Keeping your heart open in the face of suffering; you can be empathetic but not compassionate, but compassion requires empathy.
• The Open, Connected Heart (B: 19:13)
  • A compassionate heart is connected to self, others, the earth, and the divine; it is spacious (non-clinging) and warm (caring).
• Empathy's Double-Edged Sword (A: 21:56)
  • Empathy can be used manipulatively, but compassion requires the willingness to be genuinely touched by suffering.

Embodied Mindfulness & Chakra Wisdom

• Grounding Before the Heart (B: 32:07, B: 35:22)
  • Many Westerners try to access the heart (compassion) without adequately grounding themselves in the lower chakras, which represent safety, guilt, and shame.
  • Groundedness in the body enables the strength required for heart vulnerability.
  • Quote — RamDev:

    “The belly supports the heart... inhabiting the belly with stability and strength, then allows you to bear the vulnerability of the open heart.” (34:53)

• The Subtlety of Chakra Energy (B: 41:18)
  • Techniques such as focusing on different parts of the chest (left for relational love, center for spacious presence) can cultivate varied heartfelt states.

The Near and Far Enemies of Compassion

• Tricky Mimics of Love and Compassion (B: 45:12, B: 48:13)
  • Far Enemy: The opposite quality (e.g., hatred for love, indifference for compassion).
  • Near Enemy: A subtle mimic (e.g., attachment masquerading as love, pity as false compassion).
  • True love and compassion arise without expectation, trade, or self-concern.

The Importance of Practice, Especially When It’s Hard

• Practicing Before Death Comes (A: 49:24)
  • The state you cultivate now is likely the state you’ll experience at death:

    “If you can’t do it now, how are you going to do it when you can barely breathe?” (53:30)

• Courage to Face the Heart (A: 29:39)
  • Opening the heart is daunting, especially when facing overwhelming collective trauma and personal pain.
  • Duncan underscores how easy it is to stay numb—to be a “clanker” (AI analogy)—and how real living begins when the heart is engaged.

Transforming Emotions Through Tantric Practice

• Anger as Energy for Awakening (B: 66:47)
  • Tantra sees difficult emotions not as obstacles, but as awakenings in disguise.

  • “The stronger the emotion, the greater the opportunity for awakening, that all emotions are awakened energy.” (66:47)

  • Don’t suppress anger; allow it, be with it mindfully, see its layers.
• The Tantric Three-Step (B: 75:31)
  1. Embodied Mindfulness: Drop story, feel what’s present in your body.
  2. Compassionate Relationship: Open the heart to the suffering in and around you.
  3. Tantric Understanding: Recognize the awakened energy in all experience—see everything (even suffering) as part of the divine unfolding.

The Paradoxical Joy of Sadness

• Sadness & Joy Together (B: 71:36)
  • In Tibetan Buddhism, compassion is a blend of sadness at suffering and a transcendent joy—contextualizing pain within the open heart.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Death and Living Fully:
  “Dying is going to be the product of how we’re living. How can we live right now without fear?” — RamDev (04:45)
• On Parenting and Self-Reflection:
  “Is it because I want his suffering to go away—or because it’s upsetting me so much?” — Duncan (11:12)
• On Authentic Compassion:
  “Compassion is our true nature. It’s who we are… it’s naturally arising.” — RamDev (14:44)
• On Opening the Heart:
  “This is not always a pleasant expedition at first. [...] This heart approach… requires a level of wild courage to do that.” — Duncan (29:39)
• On Meditation and Practice:
  “Consciousness does not care how long it takes or how much it hurts. Consciousness is everybody's moving in this direction of freedom.” — RamDev (60:03)
• On Dealing with Political and Social Anger:
  “Being angry at somebody is like taking poison, expecting the other person to die… there’s nobody in the other boat.” — RamDev (67:36)
• On The Real Revolution:
  “Thank you for joining me in this revolution of love.” — Ram Dass (recounted by Duncan) (50:43)

---

Key Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:00 | Introducing RamDev; Fear of Death in Western Culture | | 03:29 | Trungpa Rinpoche on the Importance of Facing Death | | 06:07 | Parenting, Anxiety, Real-life Parental Fears | | 11:13 | Subtleties of Selfishness When Caring for Others | | 12:24 | Compassion: State of Being, Not Just Feeling | | 19:13 | What Defines an Open, Compassionate Heart | | 21:26 | Empathy vs Compassion | | 32:07 | Chakra System, Embodied Mindfulness, and the Foundations of Compassion | | 41:18 | Subtle Energies and Practicing Heart-Opening Techniques | | 48:13 | Near vs Far Enemies of Love and Compassion | | 53:30 | The State You Practice Now Is the State You’ll Die In | | 66:47 | Tantric Buddhism: Transforming Anger and Other Strong Emotions | | 75:31 | Introduction to the “Tantric Three-Step” Practice | | 81:24 | Applying the “Three-Step” to Mantra Practice | | 84:33 | RamDev on Book Release Details and Resources |

---

Closing Thoughts & Resources

The episode closes with heartfelt gratitude from both Duncan and RamDev. RamDev encourages listeners to visit the Living Dying Project website, noting its richness in free resources on conscious dying and mindful living.

• Learn More & Free Resources: Living Dying Project
• Book: How to Live So You Can Die Without Fear — Available now or soon at major retailers.

---

Final Word from Duncan:
“If you're somebody freaked out about death, just know that this podcast is actually about life. That's what Ramdev teaches.” (86:15)

---

This summary captures the episode's spirit, depth, and practical wisdom, offering a window into fearless living (and dying) for long-time seekers and the newly curious alike.

Transcript

[A]

Greetings to you, my sweet friends. It's me, Duncan. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to record an intro for this amazing episode while I was at the studio, which is why you're seeing whatever image Josh has decided to put up on the screen. Hopefully it's a beautiful phoenix rising up from the ashes with beautiful breasts and long, flowing blonde hair and a glowing beak of light. Before we get into this incredible episode with Ram Dave, I have some dates to announce. I'm gonna be in Charlotte this weekend. Coming up, you can find me at the Comedy Zone. June 4th, June 5th, and June 6th. After that, I'm coming home to Asheville. June 7th, I'll be at the Orange Peel. And then you can find me in Nashville, Tennessee, at Zany's. I love that club. And I'm. I've got a big one coming up. June 27th, I'm gonna be in the Wilbur, Boston. I need you to get tickets in advance. That is a big, big theater, guys. Buy them up. Okay, let's get going with this incredible podcast. Ramdev has been on the DTFH before. You can find out everything you need to find out about him by going to the Living Dying Project. All the links are down below. Ramdev, welcome back to the dtfh. You've written this beautiful book that I have so many questions about, and so I'm sure a lot of people listening are absolutely terrified of dying. You've written this incredible book, how to Live so youo Can Die Without Fear. And from what I've read so far, it's just wonderful. I think.

[B]

You mean you haven't read the whole book yet.

[A]

Well, I got Chatgpt to do it for me, man.

[B]

I don't need to read.

[A]

But look, I just think that jumping right in to something I don't even think a lot of people want to hear about or talk about, which is death. And I don't think people want to acknowledge how secretly afraid they are of their demise. You know, I think most people have a kind of falsely cavalier attitude about it. They fooled themselves into thinking they're not really worried about it when it's just right there all the time, like some terrible river in a forest that's just babbling away right behind the tree line of your life. And so tell me about the problem that you are posing in this book, this sterilization of death in Western culture and what that leads to.

[B]

Got it. So I don't go around thinking about death all the time. In fact, I don't think about it a lot. And I remember I was out teaching workshops and somebody gave me an article about death, and I thought, why are they giving that to me? And then I remembered, oh, they think I'm the death guy and I'm interested in waking up. Trungpa Rinpoche said that until you have an intimate connection with death, your spiritual practice will have the quality of you really being a dilettante.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So until we really know, moment to moment, that we're going to die, then as long as we're pushing that fear away, pushing it down in there, we can do that semi successfully. But it really takes a big cost to really feel that river in the background is, in my experience, one of the deepest practices, one of the quickest ways to get to the core of what it is that's going on. So all fear is based on fear of death. And fear of death is exactly where you're not enlightened. Enlightenment is realizing that we are whole, we are one, that we go beyond suffering, because we realize that in some fundamental way, yes, there is pain being a human being, but we don't need to suffer because we aren't who we thought we were. We are pure consciousness in a certain sense, which in no way diminishes the fact that people are being blown up and people are being raped and people are starving to death. All that is happening, but this background anxiety, this background fear of death that we try to keep at a distance is really what keeps us from being fully alive. Pushing the fear away in order to not feel it takes so much energy. This letting go, this opening to it means ego death. And ego death is scary. So the title of the book, how to live so you can die without fear, it's basically how to live so you can live without fear. I mean, dying is going to be the product of how we're living. How can we live right now without fear? And very often, almost always when fear arises, people, including myself for the longest time, fixate automatically on the trigger of the fear. I'm afraid of that. I'm afraid of him. I'm afraid of what might happen, rather than what does it actually feel like in my body to be afraid. So, like, right now, maybe there's some slight anxiety that the technology of the podcast won't work out, or you've got to do something later today that might be challenging.

[A]

I'm kidding. How about the spread of Ebola in India? How about measles in India? How about hantavirus? How about World War Three? Think I'm worrying about the podcast right Now I got four kids, I don't want them to die of hemorrhagic fever.

[B]

Okay? So calming down a second and asking your body, what does it feel like to live in a world where you've got four young children and there are pandemics and there are wars and there are crazy politicians and there are all these things going on and that you, you cannot completely protect your children. You can do your best, but I know people who were very close to Maharaj, whose young children died of brain cancer. Yeah, right. I mean, it's not like you love God and you're completely protected. It's not like that at all.

[A]

Oh my God. For the non breeders out there, you just, it's the, like the other day my oldest came walking up to me and he's like, I have road rash. I'm like, what? We'd been riding bikes, he was at a playground. I was looking at the other kids. Opens his shirt, he's got this terrible. He just skid on Astroturf or something. He's being so tough about it. But just that alone, you're looking at this and immediately, as Sharon Salzberg calls it, the add ons come in like, oh, what if that gets infected? My God, what if that's. What do we do? Is he going to be all right? How is he being so stoic right now? Is he in shock? What's going to happen? And then every day I'm looking at it and it's like, God, is it infected? It's almost inexpressible feeling you get when you're worried about your children's health. And you realize, there it is, there's the river right there that you're talking about. There's, what can you do? Like, obviously, you keep them safe, you get them healthy food, you get them to the doctor. You could do all of those things, but you can't stop the road rash, man. It's going to happen. They're going to fall out of trees and fall off bikes and get sick and get into accidents. And you think, like, I don't know how in the, how I would even stay sane if something like what you just described happened to one of my children. I don't know how I would do that. I don't know how I'd be able to wake up again. And that is fear. That's pure fear. And it sucks.

[B]

Well, in my experience, kids are pretty psychic. They know what you're feeling. Yeah. And a lot of parenting is, I do this, I protect, I provide. But I think A bigger part of it is you're modeling the way to be a human being.

[A]

You mean I shouldn't have started crying when he. When he had road rash. I shouldn't have started crying and curled up in a ball and wailed in the playground like, I can't lose you, boy. I can't lose ya. Yeah, I know. You mean though they are psychic. This is why we give them fluoride. Calcify their pineal gland. Cut that shit out.

[B]

There you go. That'll do the trick. So, a story about my kid. He was maybe the age of your kid, and he and his mother and her parents and I were vacationing in Maui. The women were off shopping, and Grandpa, me and Declan, my son, are waiting in the corner of the shopping mall for them to get done. And he's running around and he falls down and he skins his knee. It was not like bleeding. It was not like a gaping wound, but he had a big abrasion. And he started crying and he came running over to me and I took a look at his knee. And somehow, intuitively, I don't know how I did this, I said to him, declan, it's not so bad. It's going to be okay. And he expected me to do probably what his mother would have done, which say, oh, oh, poor Declan. Let me hold you. Let me hold you. And he's being trained. Then the more he yells, the more comfort he gets.

[A]

Ah, yes.

[B]

And then people are conditioned that pain is a way to get comfort. Pain is a way to. Oh, my God, pain is a catastrophe. Please be nice to me.

[A]

Absolutely. You know, I did not do that. Like, I have taught him that many don't cry and that we don't express emotion. He knows that it's not healthy for a boy to show pain in this world of darkness. I say that to him every time I put him to bed.

[B]

Are you kidding me? Now that you.

[A]

Yeah, I'm kidding. But I will tell you, though, that you bring up in this book, and this is something I really would love to dive into with you, is how subtle selfishness appears and shows up. Not as, like, overt selfishness, but you're like, oh, are you okay? But really, you don't want to feel the worry and anxiety that you're feeling related to a person who's sick or dying or a kid with road rash. You're less concerned with that person's well being. If you want them to be okay, you want them to be okay because you don't want to feel bad for them. And, you know, it's this insidious, subtle bullshit that creeps in and parades around as compassion when it's not compassion at all. It's self interest disguised as compassion. And it can be so subtle. It can be so subtle. But when you realize, like, do. Do I want this per. Do I want the baby to stop crying because I don't want the baby to be upset? Or do I want the baby to stop crying because it's upsetting me? Do I want my father to not be suffering as he's dying because I want his suffering to go away? Or is it because it's upsetting me so much? I mean, the two aren't separate, by the way. They're mixed in together, but.

[B]

Right. It must be hard to be you, huh?

[A]

You should read the reports.

[B]

So compassion is not an emotion.

[A]

Ah.

[B]

Compassion is a state of being. And I think a misperception is that compassion is something I can shoot to the other person. The baby's crying. I'm feeling compassion for the baby. Compassion is. Compassion is. Could you define compassion?

[A]

You're asking me to define compassion?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Well, you know, my sense of compassion has changed over the years, so I could start with what you're describing, which I would call the basic bitch definition of compassion, which is a sense of enveloping another being in your radiant love. A kind of like a pushing out of some invisible matrix within which you're wrapping this person up and helping them in some way. It's like. Reminds me of Trampa Rinpoche talking about spilling a barrel of honey on top of somebody. You know, it's this syrupy bullshit. That's what I used to think it was, you know, now not so much. To me, compassion isn't. It's just what you're saying. It's not so much a feeling as this state of consciousness where I have expanded to some degree and can handle what's going on in a sort of authentic, spontaneous way that is it, where I'm not all wrapped up in my own bullshit or prognosticating horrors beyond horrors. Or, you know, that look that I think dying people have to learn to live with, which is like. People like. I don't know, it's like some version of the fake smile. You know what I mean? Some kind of like, your eyes are scared as hell, but you've got this plasticky, like, hello thing going on. You're not really there. It's being there. God, I don't know. Why'd you ask me?

[B]

Let me see if I can. Let Me see if I could summarize that. So compassion is exactly the same thing as love, loving, kindness, except in the context of suffering. It's keeping your heart open when there is suffering.

[A]

Yeah, that's it. That's what I was saying.

[B]

So that when you're feeling compassion for your child who's crying, that includes you and includes mom. Includes the whole thing. It's not like I'm beaming compassion to you now. It may start out like that as a practice, it may start out like I'm doing compassion. But in truth, compassion is our true nature. It's who we are. In fact, when the mind is completely awake in Buddhism, there are three qualities to the totally awake mind. One of them is great clarity, the knowing quality. The other is spaciousness. No clarity, clinging. But the third quality of the wake mind is naturally arising, compassionate activity. I've been around all these different supposedly enlightened teachers, and one of the things they all had in common was that they were all compassionate. They were driven by relating to the suffering of the people that had come to them. Yeah, right. Some of them were Christians, some were Buddhists, some were Hindu, some were shaman, whatever, but they had that quality of compassion.

[A]

Tell me about naturally arising. Not to cut you off, but before I forget to ask, tell me about what does naturally arising look like?

[B]

What it looks like is that you're not doing it. It's just who you are. That when you come in contact with suffering, compassion is the spontaneous.

[A]

This episode of the DTFH has been supported by Ethos. Look, I just got life insurance, and you just feel so much better. I know it's embarrassing that something like that will actually make you feel better, but it does. If I kick the bucket, I know that my family is going to be taken care of. And also, ever since I got life insurance, my wife has been much more open about me doing a variety of adventure sports, such as free climbing, parachuting. She's like, go out there, go scuba dive. Go spelunking. Go cave diving. Duncan. Doesn't that seem fun? Cave diving. So it's really opened things up in my own life. And it's really good. It's really good. But for my old ass, getting insurance meant I don't know how many liters of blood getting sucked out of my body. I was scanned, I was examined. It was like I was abducted by aliens. And somehow, somehow, after many, many, many tests, I got life insurance. This is where ethos is a real winner, because ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy 100% online, you don't have to have Nurse Ratchet coming over to your house and sucking blood out of you while your children are cackling around. You do it all. Online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes, and get same day coverage. There's no medical exam. You just answer a few simple health questions and you can get up to 3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $30 a month and you'll get your lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free', @ethos.com Duncan that's E T H O S.com Dunkin Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Thank you. Eth.

[B]

Unwavering response to suffering. So that when your son has this big road rash on his chest, if you feel compassion, it's. It's compassion for how he might be suffering it. Maybe it's compassion for him thinking that he has to be stoic. It might be compassion for the place in you that thinks maybe you're being selfish. That it's something that changes moment to moment to moment.

[A]

Yeah. Of fearlessness.

[B]

Where is it landing? So the open heart has certain defining qualities and one of them is it's a connected heart. Right? You're connected to yourself, you're connected to your son, you're connected to the earth, you're connected to God. Another is a spacious heart. There's no clinging. Right. And the other is a warm heart. So I mean, like right now as we're talking, can we be connected? Can we be connected to the people who are listening or are we up in our heads? What are we going to say next? How is this coming out? All that kind of bullshit, right? So compassion is really misunderstood and it is often felt. Compassion is about being nice. And right now, in fundamentalist Christianity, there is a bit of a war on empathy. There are books out there by famous people called the sin of empathy. Toxic empathy with notions that if I'm. That it's a zero sum game and if I'm empathy for you, I might not get enough for me.

[A]

Oh yeah, that sounds like horseshit.

[B]

Well, and it doesn't sound very Christian on top of it all, but at the same time, I mean, it's a

[A]

lot of work transforming Christianity into a pro war system. I mean, do you know how many. That's the kind of math you have to do to shift love, your neighbors, yourself into like, well, you gotta blow up kids sometimes. That is like going to take many chalkboards full of shit. Math to get there. And I think that's a lot of, you know, the separation of church and state is. It's there for a reason. It seems like a lot of fundamentalists of all religions have hitched their wagon to the state, which means that you've got to be pro war, which means you're going to have to go back in there and revise some stuff if you don't want to wake up screaming at night.

[B]

So let's look at the relationship between empathy and compassion.

[A]

Yeah. Okay.

[B]

Empathy is I'm able to feel what you're feeling. I'm empathetic toward you, or you're empathetic toward your son. And you can't have compassion without being empathetic. But you can be empathetic and not be compassionate.

[A]

Okay, sure.

[B]

So, like, you can. You can be empathetic and feel, here's what's going on with my son. That's too scary. So I'm going to tell him to be strong. I'm not going to feel what he's feeling. It's too much.

[A]

Right.

[B]

For me.

[A]

What you're describing is like a tool for any con artist. Like a good con artist is empathetic. Like a good con artist can empathize with a person's plight so that they can manipulate that person. I mean, it's the. You know, I could see how empathy, devoid of any other thing, could be used in all kinds of rotten ways.

[B]

But I guess the point here is that you can feel compassion only to the depth that you're willing to be touched empathetically by the suffering of yourself or of another person or group of people.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So that. So that it's maybe easier to feel what your son is feeling, but then you're attached to him and it's easy to get stuck in your mind. I'm supposed to protect him. I'm not a good dad because look what happened. And to keep the heart open and to be touched by. Maybe he wasn't even suffering that much. Just because he had a wound. Just because he had physical pain does not mean he was suffering. So maybe that's not the greatest example. Like that thing with Declan when he came running over to me and I said, declan, it doesn't look so bad. And he realized that it was just a scrape and he stopped crying, and he went back to playing immediately. But he kind of expected he was going to get the full treatment of, I've had a problem. I'm going to get a lot of comfort right now. Right, Right. So modeling As a parent or just as a human being, that I can feel your suffering, I can feel how upset you are and it's okay, I'm right here. The spacious of my heart is big enough to allow this to happen. And that doesn't mean if he is actually really bleeding, I'm going to really hold him, but that it's a natural arising compassionate response. It's not always being nice, it's being able to say no with an open heart. So as a parent, you realize that if you never can say no to your child, you're going to raise a monster.

[A]

Oh, for sure.

[B]

And it's easy to say yes with an open heart, it's easy to say no with a closed heart. But can you say no with an open heart? Because at times that's the compassionate thing to do. You have to set boundaries. That's the loving thing to do. Yeah, right. So Buddhists have this underlying notion that isn't really talked about a lot more so in Tibetan Buddhism than Theravada Buddhism, that we have a basic goodness, a basic wholeness. And that that's why mindfulness practice works. Because mindfulness practice says you don't have to fix things, all you've got to do is pay attention. And by paying attention you see how suffering is being created and you'll naturally start letting go of that. And what will be revealed is this radiant true nature. That is here's who you are and who everybody is, even though they don't know it most of the time, right? So that beginning to trust that quality in you that okay, I can be, I can have this embodied mindfulness, I can be the martial art of being Duncan or being Ramdev and open my heart to what it is that's going on here. And out of that will come the wisest, most effective, compassionate response. Who are the people, who are the people that really change societies during times of great social injustice or inequity? Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, who when you think about it all were people that had a deeply non violent, profoundly open hearted response to societal change. Maharaji said when Abraham Lincoln was president, he knew that Christ was president. And Gandhi, when he came to England and they gave him a tour of the spinning mills, the, the mills that were creating cloth and stuff. And they thought this is so great. Look what we have here in England. And they said, what do you think of Western civilization? He said, I think it would be a good idea.

[A]

And then he went and slept with 14 year old girls. You know what I Mean, doesn't that suck? It's like you're talking smack about Western civilization cuddling up with 12 year olds. Test your sight, your guru ability. I mean, look, we can't throw out the Gandhi with the bath water, I guess, but it does.

[B]

As far as I know, Gandhi was not having any inappropriate sex or touching or anything. He was just.

[A]

Hey, hello.

[B]

It is pretty creepy.

[A]

Hi, Gandhi. Oh, what? You wanted to sleep with my 12 year old daughter to test your celibacy? Okay, I'll send her right over.

[B]

I'm not here to defend him. I think we're going down the wrong alleyway.

[A]

And by the way, the alleyway that I want to go to here is.

[B]

But let's just complete the Gandhi thing. Putting aside that I'm not saying his whole life is impeccable, I'm not saying that. But he was able to change this profoundly inequitable colonialization of India by the British.

[A]

Incredible.

[B]

With a non violent movement. And maybe he was all screwed up in other ways. I hear no way to defend that other part of what you want to.

[A]

You can listen to my other. I have a whole podcast series attacking Gandhi available on itunes. But the. I want to. Though I agree with you and I hear what you're saying for sure. The things that create these huge positive ripples in the culture and in society do seem to radiate out from people who have achieved this open hearted attitude towards reality. And that's beautiful and great, but I want to talk about, to get granular here and talk about what I assume people listening have experienced anytime they've gotten out of their heads and had the guts to go spelunking down into the heart, which is. This is not always a pleasant expedition at first. And I don't mean in the sense that if you have become a mind person and I think the world that we're living in right now and all the examples of technology that we're seeing right now are all related to an imbalance between the heart and the mind. Everything is mind oriented. It's artificial intelligence. It's not artificial compassion, it's not artificial empathy. The focus is on production and expediting production. And all of that is up here in the head. So a tourniquet, a kind of cultural tourniquet has separated many of us from our hearts. And then you hear people like you or Ram Dass talking about this hard stuff and you're like, you know, maybe I'll see what I could do there. And then you start your practice and then you begin to encounter this undiscovered country. And this isn't rainbows and light vehicles and all this stuff. This is like a wild garden filled with deep, powerful, overwhelming feelings that could repel someone. Could repel someone. It could drive someone back up into their head or into a bottle or into benzos or into some kind of numbing thing. And that's what I want to talk about, is that this heart approach, this getting into your heart, I think it requires a level of wild courage to do that. I mean, the shit people have been through these days. God, I have friends from New York. When September 11th happened. Stink of the bodies, you know what I mean? Flip on the tv. It's just war, death. And your algorithm is like, look at this. Any of you listening or watching, think of, like, the last horrible thing the algorithm showed you. Now imagine looking at that, but from the lens of your heart or with empathy, when you're seeing someone getting beaten in the street or whatever. It really fucks up the game, man. It fucks up the game because in the world that we're in right now, we need good guy, bad guy. We need he good. He bad, bad guy got what he deserved. Good guy win. But when you start looking at it from the heart space, it isn't so much good guy, bad guy anymore. And it isn't so much enemy friend. It's just people. And you.

[B]

You.

[A]

If you let yourself feel that all the way, you're not going to enjoy TikTok anymore. I'll tell you that. You're going to make people. You're ruining TikTok for people, this tart bullshit. You know what I mean? Really? I mean, it. Like, people are numb. People. It's easier to be numb. It feels that way. So maybe you could talk a little bit about the. What feels like a force field around my heart.

[B]

Got it. So one of the things that I really emphasize in the book is that I've been teaching meditation for 50 years, and I have a very strong feeling there are a couple things that are out of balance that are underrepresented in the way that these Eastern practices are presented in the West. And the first one is about embodied mindfulness, that a lot of it's up in the head or even the head trying to be in the heart. The heart is the fourth chakra. What about the first three chakras? Okay, so the first three chakras are basically about getting grounded and getting centered. They're the antidotes to fear in the first chakra. First chakra is about. Okay, it's Safe to be physical, it's safe to be where I am. And this is learned during the second half of gestation to about one year old. And to the extent that you or anybody had trauma, neglect, illness, accident, abuse, on and on, feeding difficulty, whatever, toilet training stuff, to the extent you had that, you're probably not completely grounded. And particularly when something is challenging so that we get lost in fear. And that getting grounded, inhabiting the root chakra is the antidote to that. And then this little person is growing up, and from the ages, these are approximately six months to about two years old, learning to inhabit the second chakra, about moving into the world now. And the problem there is guilt about what you're doing. Your parents say you're making too much noise, you're peeing where you shouldn't be peeing, you're drawing on the wall instead of on the piece of paper. And the third chakra is then about shame, about who you actually are. Taking you up to about 4 years old. So that learning, centering and grounding practices allows you then to be the martial artist of being you. We haven't gotten to the heart yet. The heart is about being vulnerable. And you and me and probably everybody listening here is somebody who at times your heart has been so open, you've been weeping at the beauty of life, of the beauty of your child, or of nature, music, or whatever it is. And at other times, the heart closes up like a safe door and it's so shut that you don't even remember it's ever been opened before. Right. And it's very frustrating to be somebody or to be around somebody whose heart is opening and closing, opening and closing. That's why relationships are so hard, right? So, so that in some traditions that even come right out and say that the belly supports the heart, that the, the, this martial artist quality of being a warrior, of compassion, of being able to inhabit the belly with some stability and strength, then allows you to bear the vulnerability of the open heart.

[A]

Got it.

[B]

So that if you try to go right to the heart and say, I'm going to be compassionate, I'm going to be loving, it's not going to work very well. Mirabai Starr, who wrote the forward to my book, told me the story that when she was a teenager, she was living at Lama and Ramdas came to teach a workshop there. And he said, we're going to start at the heart chakra because the lower three chakras are too dangerous. Which was an opinion he radically changed later on. But that's a common Misperception that down there in the dark deep, there's all this complicated stuff. It's not as radiant and lovely and beautiful as the open heart or up above their tantra and wholeness and all those things. But because we haven't processed the fear, the guilt and the shame, we don't have a stable foundation for being in the heart. And then compassion for others and even compassion for ourselves becomes very, very difficult. I remember once I was at a Tibetan empowerment and the Lama said, okay, we're all going to open our hearts now to do this practice. So as a way of opening your heart, think about your mother. And they said, oh, wait a minute, this is America. I forgot. I forgot that in America, thinking about your mother doesn't necessarily open your heart.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Just turns where he comes from. You just think about your mother and boom, your heart springs open. So in a way that's wild.

[A]

Yeah, he's got to deal with these, like, weirdo Americans. I want to ask you a more technical question related to what you're talking about in the chakra system. The idea is the energy is always flowing through these all the time. Or is what they say that your chakras get blocked? In other words, is your heart inaccessible if you. I don't think that's what you're saying. Thank you, Amantara, for supporting this episode of the dtfh. Let's talk about a mushroom. I know how that sounds awesome, but you're thinking, yeah, well, mushrooms are illegal, man. I'm not going to break the law, but what if I told you about a specific mushroom that's been baked so deeply into human mythology that it's possible that our ancestors were trying to leave us a message and we just completely missed it for like a thousand years. It's called amanita and it's everywhere. Yard gnomes, Christmas everywhere, all around us. Mario. For God's sake, Mario. The mushrooms in Mario are actually incredibly powerful healing mushrooms. Most people's nervous systems are running on fumes. Anxious, underslept, overstimulated. The usual options, booze, benzos. They numb you out or you gotta pay that tax the next day. People want to calm down, not disappear. It's a real difference. Amanita works on the GABA systems, the brain's primary calm sleep regulator. It's legal everywhere. That's the best thing. It's legal everywhere in the U.S. federally, right now. No dependency, no hangover, no next day tax. I love them. They're amazing. Just amazing. I've done the airport test. What happens If I take these to the airport, it's fantastic. And if you travel a lot, you know how incredible that is. Talk about that in a different podcast. The Amanita market, it's shady right now. You can go to Chevron or, I don't know, some gas station and get some garbage. Amanita don't do that. I did that. It's not the same as the Amanita you're going to get from Amantara. They're the largest importer and supplier in the US. Third party tested, clean sourcing, education first and they've got over 60,000 happy customers. Christian, the founder, used Amanita personally to get off benzos and this is personal for them, not just a product. And I love Christian. We talk on the phone every once in a while. He's super cool right now. Go to amantara.com godtfh. The link's in the description down below. This is gonna take you to an exclusive first time Bundle use code DUNCAN11. It's gonna get you an additional 11% off the already discounted bundle price and start low friends dosage varies a lot. Person to person. Remember, you can always take more, you can never take less. Thanks, Avantara. When a child is growing up, is it like the chakras are coming online, so to speak? Like these things are. The energy is beginning to evolve through the system. It starts in the first three and then gets to the heart. Or are they all sort of fluctuating like flickering on and off all the time? And I don't know if that's too literal or looking at it from a systems theory approach.

[B]

I hardly ever say this, but I'm not sure that I know the answer to that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I'm not sure I. I mean to me that's kind of theoretical. I mean to me I'm sure there are a lot of people listening to this podcast that don't even think about chakras at all. I mean it's basically we're saying there's a way of being in yourself, in your energy body that that helps you to be more loving. And that yeah, over many, many centuries of people doing introspective contemplative practice, they found that focusing your energy, focusing your attention, focusing a mantra in the chest area leads to feelings of devotion, compassion, loving kindness. If you focus on the left side of the chest, like a hands width to the left. I don't know if you can see this.

[A]

I see it.

[B]

Yeah, focus up there. That's kind of relational love. That's I'm loving you. Grief, humanity, tenderness, tears. Whereas the center, the heart chakra itself, is more spacious. So over here, it's like opening love on the left and then the center, it's stabilizing, loving presence. And people can play with that. I've been. I'm bringing this up because, well, the right, that's where Ramana Maharshi says is the seat of the I, the I am non duality. And believe it or not, the physical heart is not on the left side of your chest. It's more on the left than the right. But there's parts of it on the right side of the chest.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And it's mostly in the center. And there's even the part of the heart on the right side that's the one that tells the heart to beat. I forget what the name of that is, anatomically. I read it just last night. Actually, I still don't remember it. So bringing your attention, or suppose you're somebody says a mantra. Saying the mantra in the center of the chest versus the left side of the chest ends up being a really different experience.

[A]

I've never heard that before. That's cool. So I feel like what you're saying is if you're having a problem going into your heart, feeling, experiencing what that is, it could be related to

[C]

not

[A]

being grounded or based or not having a strong foundation in the, like, in, in the Earth realm stuff, which is going to make it more of a precarious journey in there. And you know what's interesting, though, though my martial arts career ended, I think my fourth jiu jitsu class that I took many years ago. I've met a lot of you, like, high level, you know, UFC fighters, and what one quality they all have is always, it's fascinated me is because, you know, you're with these exceedingly dangerous humans. I mean, you've seen them pummeling people in a ring. Like, you know, that if they wanted to, they could put you to sleep, you wouldn't.

[B]

And I'll bet you're going to say. I'll bet you're going to say that they're, they're, they're kind and gentle.

[A]

Yeah, 100%. They're the most gentle, sweet, open people and they have this weird radiance. And it always, like, perplexed me because the closest I'd ever come to that was at, like, the Ram Dass retreats and meeting people who have a real solid practice or like devotees and stuff have that same kind of glow. But then you're meeting these like athletes who are identical, seemingly identical. It's always fascinated me. And I think you just answered, you just helped me solve that mystery there.

[B]

Because they're inhabiting the belly. They're beyond guilt and shame. So, I mean, I was talking to a client an hour before I was talking to you today, and we were doing a practice, and she said, I don't think I'm doing it right. I don't think I can do it right. Something like that. And we were talking and it was a heart practice. And I'm saying, okay, you're trying to do the heart practice, but what arises is shame. And can you then work right with the shame? So that whether you're a meditator or whether you're a martial artist, it means working with those places where you feel inadequate, where you feel ashamed of who you are, that you have some contempt. So if you turn contempt inward, it's shame. If you turn contempt outward, it's grandiosity. Not to mention any particular president of the United States in that particular sentence. Okay, so contempt. So let me read a quote by Pema Chodron about compassion. Compassion is more emotionally challenging than loving kindness because it involves the willingness to feel pain. It definitely requires the training of a warrior. When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and hold and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion, to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance. So here she's talking about meditative compassion in terms of relax, gently, soften without aversion, without tightening. Just what you were talking about before. Yeah, learning to lean into what's painful in the world rather than automatically unconsciously be pulling back from things we don't like and grasping at things we do like. Beginning to. Beginning to be mindful of the difference between preference and attachment. So in Buddhism, there are, for these wholesome qualities like love and compassion, far enemies and near enemies. Far enemy is the thing that's the opposite. Like the far enemy of love is hatred. Obvious as could be. Right? Far enemy of compassion is being indifferent. You're suffering, not my problem. I don't care about that at all. But the near enemies are so interesting because it's where we often get stuck and don't really even know we're stuck there. The near enemy of love. We could do a quiz here, but let's just cut to the chase. The near enemy of love is attachment. Think about falling in love with somebody. How much of it is pure love and how much of it is, I'll love you five if you love me five. But if you only love me four, I'm only going to love you three. And I'm loving you because I don't want to be alone and I want to have sex and I want my friends to think I'm somebody capable of being in a relationship and on and on and on. Whereas true love, like when you have a tiny baby, you love them if they're crying or not crying, and then they turn into teenagers, and if they're crying, you don't love them quite as much. So beginning to disentangle the love and the attachment in our relationships is tricky business. And it involves being centered and grounded to be able to. As long as you're being overwhelmed by fear, guilt and shame, it's gonna. That those qualities of attachment are gonna be kind of caught up in the mess of it all, if you will.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the nearer enemies. I love that description for. Talked about it before and how very subtle these things can be. Like, it gets so subtle and confusing. But, you know, Carl Jung talked about how the leader can be a projection of the nation's shadow. So when you're seeing the leader, you're looking at this shadowy thing that's inside the culture. So. And so if you have some kind of rotten psycho leader, is one. One way to, like, alchemize that into something good is to think about, okay, where is that in me? Like, what. What are the. What are those things that exist in me? Where. How am I like that? Which is why what you're talking about. I will never stop believing these technologies are the most revolutionary, truly revolutionary technologies in the world. I mean, assuming what Jung said is right, I don't know, it sounds good. But if that were true, if, like, the big players we see on the global stage are just being projected from the masses, then that would imply that if we all started this journey inward, the process of balancing and unentangling, getting into that heart space, then one might expect something to emerge into the world that was. That. That was a reflection of that. Which is why I love talking to people like you. I don't even know if you realize you're revolutionaries. I can remember, you know, the last thing Ram Dass said to me. He knew he was a revolutionary. You know, I was pushing his wheelchair up this hill, and he looked at me and he goes, thank you for joining me in this revolution of love. And it was so beautiful because he knew. He knew what he was up to. He knew what he was putting out. There was more than just, you know, how to feel good around your parents on the weekend. He knew what he was putting out there, which had its roots in the 60s counterculture movement and psychedelics. But I think he understood that this stuff has the potential to do way more than make you, like, connect with people around you or help dying people. Theoretically, this very thing could be a road out of the current zeitgeist into something we've never seen before. I've always thought that, but it's really hard. And I think it's important to note that you might be one of those people who thinks that you're going to have some kind of peaceful death or that you've heard meditation is the preparation for death, or good luck if you're not doing. I was just talking to someone last night about this very thing. They were saying. Very brilliant artists. They were saying that they want to die when they die. They want to die free of all burdens and free. They want to be unattached and let go. And I was saying, like, well, you've got to do it now because it's a lot to put on yourself, right, when you're dying, that suddenly you're going to let go of all your attachments. If you can't do it now, how are you going to do it when you barely breathe? So this is why what you're teaching is so important. Not just because it's part of what could lead to us not living in a Hellverse, but because it really inspires me to look at where I'm at right now and just know this is where I'm going to be when I'm dying. This mental state that I have right now, this is exactly what it's going to be like when I'm on my deathbed. This is exactly what it's going to be like when I'm letting go. Why would it get better? I'm going to be covered in shit and blood from hemorrhagic fever.

[B]

Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Well, I mean, when you. When you die, you might be in a car with some of your kids and your car's spinning out of control and your kids are screaming, thank you. When you die. When you die, you might be lying on the floor of Walgreens and some strangers breathing in your mouth, right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[B]

So there's no way of preparing other than this, preparing to be alive right now, right?

[A]

And how can you be Alive if you're numb. How can you be alive if your heart is closed off? That's not life. You're a robot. You're a drone. At that point, you know, you're just some. You know the term right now that people are using to talk about AI, have you heard the term clanker? No. It's the new anti AI movement, as all these emergent, almost like Blade Runner terms are coming out now, referring to any like, AI LLM system as a clanker. This is like an algorithm that is pretending to be human. But one must ask, am I a clanker too? If you. You know what I mean?

[B]

If the I do love you.

[A]

If you're not feeling. How can you accuse a computer of being a clanker when you also are essentially minus your heart, minus compassion, minus everything you're talking about. You're just an algorithm spitting out the next dumb thing. The opposite of, by the way, what you're talking about. This effortless arising of compassion. It's this effortless arising of bullshit. You know what I mean? It's the same thing, minus the compassion. How many of us are doing that? Not. Not me.

[B]

Yeah. I'm not sure how much effortless it is, though. I mean, it. Maybe eventually it's effortless, but. Right. Effort is a very interesting concept because it really changes as we go down the path. And in the beginning, there definitely is an I who's trying to do better, who puts myself down on the cushion or kneels down or does my tai chi or whatever it is. But eventually the effort is the effort of letting go, the effort of surrender, the effort of receiving.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And looking at the path of really a refining of effort to letting it be more and more subtle and more and more natural rather than. It's a fight. And in a way, if you look at martial arts, how can a tiny elderly martial arts master defeat a big hulking novice because he's or she's not doing it right? It's the chi of the universe that's flowing through. And we can do that when we're in the dojo. We can do that when we're not in the dojo, right? That I'm not doing it. That God is doing it through me. And that whole God's will and that whole Christian thing that I was force fed when I was a kid, the words are sometimes difficult to assimilate. I get that. But there is this quality of flow or surrender or ease that you feel in some people. And when you meet somebody who's really in that flow, it's pretty unmistakable and it's very, very attractive and it's very comforting. Really.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, having you, having been around it, having tricked so many people like you into giving me free therapy during these podcast sessions, but having seen it. Go ahead. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You go ahead.

[B]

I was just going to tell people the blurb you put on the back of my book.

[A]

Please do.

[B]

You said doing a podcast with ramdev is better than three months worth of therapy.

[A]

I meant it. I totally. I realized last night as I was thinking about our podcast today, that I was having the same feeling I get when I go to therapy. Like, it's like, oh boy, here we go. You're gonna, you know. Which I. And this is another thing though, by the way, which I do think it's confused, is maybe it's just me, maybe I'm projecting my confusion on everybody else, but I had a sense, you know, you get around people who have a practice, who are teachers, and it's going to be flowers and roses and nag champa and sweet and it isn't. It's difficult, but it's the best kind of difficult. You know, you're dealing with the truth and the, you know, everyone. Ram Dass obviously exuded this radiant, powerful, loving energy, but anyone who knew him knew there was an edge there and that it wasn't all just sweet, that it wasn't mean, but it was fully open and honest. And that can be really difficult for people to assimilate. I mean, this stuff is hard, man. Like, this isn't. I guess you just aren't gonna sell a lot of books, you know, saying that martial arts is hard. This is difficult stuff for a lot of people to really confront, to confront some of these things head on. The thing you're inviting us to do is it's quite a pull up. Much like when Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. What the fuck?

[B]

But doesn't everybody want to be happy? Everybody wants to suffer less. Everybody wants to suffer less.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There are tried and true ways to suffer less. Now, if you want to drink a lot because you're in a lot of pain, that temporarily works. If you want to binge watch Netflix for the next week, that works. But you know that it doesn't work permanently. It's only temporarily suppressing the stuff and probably making it a little bit harder down the road.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You gotta get to it so that there's no rust. Consciousness does not care how long it takes or how much it hurts. Consciousness is everybody's moving in this direction of freedom. Donald Trump is moving in that direction. Pete Hegseth Netanyahu we're all in that path of wanting to suffer less and we're at different stages. And maybe even somebody who looks like this horrible person is just taking on the role of moving society collectively forward in a way that needs to happen. Who knows? I mean, like maybe Judas and Ravana had an important part to play in, in the Bible and in the Ramayana, right?

[A]

No mud, no lotus, no Judas, no Jesus. I mean, that is the truth. Like if without Judas, it's no credit. Praise the Lord. We have a new sponsor for the show and I love them. Hollow Socks. Thank you for connecting with the DTFH and thank you for sending me the best socks on earth. I'm sure you have probably heard heard of hollow socks. If you haven't, you got to check it out. It's insane. Let's talk about regular socks or what I like to call the old way. When it's hot out, your feet turn into a sauna, your feet feel clammy, and when it's cold out, your feet are freezing. Regular socks basically guarantee your feet feel wrong no matter what the weather is. Socks. Why are they overlooked in the world of clothing? Does no one care about our precious feet that carry us around and directly connect us with the planet? Hollow socks. They do care because they make socks that are ultra soft. Baby alpaca fiber. It's thermoregulating, it's moisture managing. They're durable, they don't itch. And somehow, and this is truly a miracle for me, they're odorless. Alpaca fibers make bacterial growth difficult, reducing the root cause of most foot stank. These are the socks that I wear when I travel. These are the socks when I have to plod through an airport, all that anxiety juice oozing out of every inch of my body. These socks alchemize that juice. Whether you're looking for compression socks, everyday socks or socks for cold mornings, you can get their hunt socks or their trades socks for 12 to 14 hour days and boots. They've got every sock you could ever need. You'll never need another sock in your whole life. And for a limited time, Holo Socks is having a buy2get2 free sale. Head to HollowSocks.com today to check it out. That's HollowSocks.com for up to 50% off your order. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. You can support our show and tell them that DTFH Sent you get those socks. Get those beautiful hollow socks. But I'm not gonna, I'm not even gonna this. These guys are dicks. You know what? I'm done with it. These guys are dicks. I've tried, I've done. Ram Dawson has put them on the altar. But I just, that, like, I, I, I've been through that. And by the way, where I'm derailing what you're saying, which is quite beautiful. I just.

[B]

So I don't know.

[A]

I'm done. I'm like, by the way, it's like, okay, we could spend all our time like, trying to, like, let me help you. Was a sweetheart. I'm sure Jeffrey Dahmer was nice to his dog. But, like, you know what I mean? It's better, I think, to get granular. It's like, this is a granular approach, right? Like, who gives a fuck?

[B]

I think, I think, I think you're misunderstanding compassion.

[A]

I am clearly misunderstanding most things.

[B]

So let's go into this a little bit. So compassion for Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, who you ascribe the dick label to. And I would not disagree with you, but compassion is. Can you think about or be in the presence of those people or just think about them and your heart stays open, right? Or does your heart automatically close and you suffer because of your automatic relationship with those concepts? The concept of Donald Trump, the concept of Pete Hegseth, it just feels into me.

[A]

It feels like thinking about, like, it's not thinking.

[B]

It's not. It's not thinking. It's that. That's where you're making a mistake.

[A]

My heart doesn't close or, I mean, I'm being a little, like, performative when I'm calling them dicks. I mean, the whole don't give me, like, I'll go Unabomber on you right now. I'm not gonna do it. Like, my. I know where you're getting at here. But to me, it's like, forget about thinking about these oligarchs. To close my heart. Like, just like watching a commercial for the Humane Society, my heart will close. You know, like, I'm talking about just the day to day, right? Habit of closing down. And when I said three months of free therapy, it was because in the last podcast we did, you've just got to the core of a lot of, like, what I contend with, you know, which I think many people do contend with, which is like, your parents fucking die, and you're like, you know what I mean? You're pissed. And if not that's some other thing. So I'm sorry. I'm rambling here, but.

[B]

But what I'm saying, what I'm saying, Duncan. Sorry. I'm getting excited myself here. It's possible to have emotions, have strong emotions and not be lost in them, not become the emotion. Like in English, we say I am afraid. In Spanish, yo tengo miedo. I have fear. In Tibetan, fear is here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you think about Pete Hegseth. Anger arises. Nothing wrong with anger. And in fact, I told you before that there were two things I thought were really out of balance in Western spirituality. The other one, as well as it's not embodied enough, is we don't understand Tantra. And tantra says that the stronger the emotion, the greater the opportunity for awakening, that all. All emotions are awakened energy. They all have healing messages. Being angry at Pete Hegseth is not wrong. It's not bad. Being lost in the emotion, becoming the emotion, closing down because of the emotion.

[A]

You never dated him. Do you know what that was like, dating him in college? He hurt me.

[B]

Well, you can try to deflect here, because I understand why you might want to deflect here. And what we're saying is, is it possible then to feel a really difficult emotion? It's not a bad emotion. Anger is hot. It's sudden. It's hard to feel and not get lost in it. And there are these sayings in Buddhism, like, being angry at somebody, hating somebody is like taking poison, expecting the other person to die. Or there's this metaphor. There's a guy in a boat, and he's going across a wide river, and it's really foggy. He's in a small little rowboat, and he's halfway across the river, and another rowboat bumps into him in the fog and almost knocks him out of the boat. And he gets all mad, and he's yelling at the guy in the other boat. He's yelling at the guy. And the fog lifts, and there's nobody in the other boat.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's the metaphor. There's nobody in the other boat. Yeah, there's nobody there. This is your concepts about Pete Hegseth. Right. So that can you be angry? And we're right to be angry. People. People are starving to death. People are being blown up because of policies of this current administration. I get that. And anger can fuel activism. But when we're lost in the anger, it makes us a little crazy. We act in a way that isn't very skillful very often. How many times you've gotten Angry. And you've said or done something, like you're in traffic and somebody does something. Right. A friend of mine says that when you're driving, it's the only time in life where you've got your legs open a little bit and your arms open and you're going towards other people at a high rate of. Right. You're in this really vulnerable physical posture in relationship to the world. So what I'm saying is. I'm not saying anger is bad. I'm not saying get rid of the anger. But can you shake hands with the anger? Can you embrace the anger? Can you use the anger? That takes a lot of practice. It takes being grounded and centered. It takes opening your heart to the place where you get angry.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's not undickifying. Pete Hegseth. He's still a dick. Right. But your relationship with your anger about it has changed.

[A]

Right? Yeah, I know. Yeah, I got you. I really love this idea of a lot of the places where there are these big, powerful, rough emotions are just. It's just pockets of energy that are just right there for you. And I know what you mean. Like, it's. There is this, you know, when. When. When I have pulled off a regular meditation practice and you start becoming a little less gun shy about going into those places. You just start realizing how it's not like this monolithic emotion, how like anger. Actually, if you start hanging out inside there, you realize there's all these other emotions, that it's like a cluster of emotions, and some of them are blissful, strangely, like, mixed in. There is a lot of joy and good stuff. It's not all bad. But the main thing is, how can you know? You were talking about people wanting to be happy, which is true. But how the fuck do you expect to feel happiness if you've been practicing not feeling other stuff? Like, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If you're numbing down, you're numbing down. It doesn't matter. Maybe you are having moments of transient happiness, but guaranteed they're not going to be as powerful or real as they would be if you weren't cutting yourself off. Right.

[B]

So the Tibetans have this really profoundly beautiful notion of compassion, which is that it's a mixture of sadness and joy. So that you're. You're sad because there's suffering in the world. You're not happy that children are hungry. You're not happy. That makes you sad, but your heart is so open that there is a joyfulness that transcends happiness and sadness. That contextualizes the sadness.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that at one and the same time you can feel this. This joy and you're sad because the world's up. It is. I mean, it's like. I mean, or you could even say it's perfect, but it's fucked up and perfect at the same time. I mean, people are being raped, people are starving to death. There are mothers watching their children starve, and there's nothing they can do about it. Yeah, yeah, I read some statistic that I've forgotten already, but something like 40% of Americans have had to skip meals lately to save money.

[A]

Right?

[B]

I mean, that's. That. That's stunning. And we're spending all these billions of dollars on. On being. Having soldiers and sailors and people over there in the Middle east and. And people are hungry here. What's going on?

[A]

I mean, if. Listen, if you want to get pissed off. This is like. If you're a rage aholic, man, this is the golden age for you. You have so many excuses to be angry. Be angry. I mean, especially that shit is really going to piss you off because you feel like you can't do anything about it. But, you know, I mean, we disagree politically. I think Pete Hegseth is one of the great minds. He's like our Churchill. He's a strategic genius in his charisma. When have we seen charisma like that before? My God, he's like just a leader of leaders and esteemed journalist. His work on Fox is groundbreaking. But I don't want to get political. I think that every time I talk to you, I remember. So. Jesus. I do remember my heart, like every time. And am always, like, inspired to. Be honest with myself about places I'm numbing down and place like, whatever that thing is that I'm unwilling to confront there, you know, and that I need that all the time. So I feel like I'm going to have to start calling you every day, talking to you. You know, I've got to figure out a way to die before you do. I need you on the phone.

[B]

So. So all the stuff that's going on in the world, I think everybody, almost everybody is starting to numb out a bit. I mean, there's. There's such a flow of. I've got a homeopath, I've got a healer who's like this brilliant guy. And he said that all of his patients, everybody he knows is exhausted. Yeah, everybody's exhausted with what's going on in the world. It's overwhelming. And to me Dealing with this stuff without the Dharma, without compassion, without getting grounded and centered, without some tantric understanding. I don't know how people are doing, without getting profoundly exhausted. You're from Texas. There's a dance called the Country Two Step.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I have what I call the Tantric three Step.

[A]

What is it?

[B]

Okay. Which is the dance you can do anywhere, anytime. And the first step is, no matter what's going on, anger at Pete Hegseth, whatever it is. Embodied mindfulness. Let go of the narrative. What does it feel like in my body to be me right now? Can I inhabit the root? Can I inhabit the belly? Can I be the martial art of being me right now? Just what does it feel like? What are the sensations? Letting go of all of the concept temporarily, you can go back to the concepts. If you've got to write a shopping list or plan some kind of trip or something, you can use your mind. It's a great tool they have. But for this healing practice, temporarily, you let go of the concepts, the narrative of the story, and you have an intimate, naked, direct experience of what it feels like to be you. And you feel that intimately enough, and you begin to see how you are creating the suffering, the suffering. Cancer does not cause suffering. Divorce does not cause suffering. Resistance to cancer. Resistance to divorce causes suffering. As you begin to see that, then your heart begins to open. So the second step of the Tantric three step is you feel compassion for the suffering that you're feeling in you and around you. And as the heart becomes more and more spacious, this eye fixation that used to be right. If you look at the camera, it was right in your face all the time. Me, me, me. I, I, I. It's just one little point in the vast sky of heart, mind. And you begin to see then this tantric viewpoint that, yes, there is. There's anger and there's suffering and there's emotions and there's bodies and there's life and there's death. Death. It's all awakened energy, right? Maharaji says, I'm always with you. Don't worry. I'm. I'm always there. I've always got your back. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He says, love everybody. I mean, he. He didn't say love the Democrats, but be careful with the Republicans, everybody. So we do that with this tantric understanding, is that it's all awakened energy. And it doesn't mean that the embodied mindfulness in the beginning doesn't generate activism and compassionate activism and compassionate parenting and whatever our job is in the moment. But we're not lost in the story. We're right there. We're opening our heart to what's going on. And we're realizing that even this is part of the divine unfolding. And I get it, if it's your child that's suffering, it's hard to see that as. But it is what's going on in the moment. And one of the horrible notions in Buddhism is hopelessness. To cultivate hopelessness in the sense that this moment cannot be any different from the way it is because it is. It's happening. It's what it is. Right? You can hope that the next moment changes or down the road is going to be different. But accepting this moment, loving this moment, this is all we have, right?

[A]

What's the third step?

[B]

It's the Tantric understanding that this first step is embodied mindfulness. Second step is compassionate relationship. Third step is Tantric understanding. So first step is we're focusing.

[A]

I mix the third and the second third steps together. When you were telling distinguish.

[B]

So like, let's say it another way. First step is you're aware of the content. You're really focusing on the content. You're mindful of the content. Second step is your relationship with the content. Is it a loving, compassionate relationship? Third step is what is the nature of the content itself? The nature of the content itself is awakened as awakened energy. No matter what, the content is ugly, beautiful, scary, or, or, or. Suppose you're saying a mantra. You could say it from each of those three stages. From the first stage, invoking mindfulness. Invoking, you're invoking. Suppose you're saying the mantra Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram. From the first stage, you're saying Ram, please show up. I felt you in the past, or Ram Dass talked about it, or I read a book. Please show up. Please show up. And then the heart begins to open. And now you're in relationship with Ram. You're feeling love toward Ram. You're receiving love from Ram. Rama's outside. He's up there. He's way better than you. He's God. But you're not. But you're in this relationship. But then the Tantric saying of the mantra, listen to this. This always just blows my mind, even when I say it, because I know what I'm going to say. When you say the word Ram, you know that the word Ram is Ram, that it's complete manifestation of the being. The sound is no different from the complete deity, nor is it different from you who is saying it. So that me saying Ram and the sound Ram and God. Is the same thing. So every time I say, ram, I'm not saying, ram, please show up. I'm not even saying, oh, I love you so much and thank you for loving me. I'm saying, ram, ram. And it's creating the whole universe, right?

[A]

Yeah. That's cool, huh?

[C]

If you love wild conversations about the multiverse, you'll get why playoff hockey is next level. Every shift is intense, and you never know what's coming next. NHL on TNT has the best coverage, with stars like Paul Bissonnet bringing the laughs and Wayne Gretzky breaking down the action. The studio crew makes every game feel like an event, just like a great podcast episode. Don't miss the drama, the energy, and the personalities that make it all unforgettable. Watch the Stanley cup playoffs on TNT, TBS, TruTV, and HBO. Max. Lots of places can accidentally expose you to identity theft. Doctor's offices, online retailers, insurance companies. The list goes on. Thankfully, LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. LifeLock keeps an eye on your personal information, credit applications, finances, and more. And if they find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, they alert you right away, all through text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Even better, alerts are automatically activated the moment you become a Lifelock member. No extra work on your part. Get the alerts that could make all the difference. Don't wait. Join LifeLock now. Visit lifelock.com iheart and save up to 30% your first year. That's lifelock.com iheart for 30% off terms apply.

[A]

What's the third? How would you apply the mantra to the third part of this?

[B]

Well, what I'm saying is. Okay, so I'm saying first step is, please show up. Second step is I love you.

[A]

Hold on one second. Wait, so. Hold on one second. Okay, one second. Sorry, we lost, like, one minute of that. Hold on. I'm going to vanish and return in one second. Okay, good. Wonder what happened. Okay, we're back. We recorded that anyway, but keep going. Then we have to wrap it up.

[B]

Could I do an aside here that a lot of the time your picture is going completely fuzzy.

[A]

Oh, yeah, It'll look great. It'll look for you. I'm so sorry about that. But it'll look really good. Like, we just. It's the way Riverside works. It's sucks.

[B]

Okay,

[A]

so please continue.

[B]

I don't know where we left off here. So saying the mantra from the three levels first level is invoking, please show up. Second level is, you've shown up. I love you, you love me. Isn't this fantastic? Third level is the mantra itself is the complete manifestation of the deity.

[A]

Wow, that's so cool.

[B]

I say Ram and in the saying, the complete godhead is generated in that moment. And it's no separate from me who was saying it. It's one step before there's nobody doing anything. Non duality that it's all sacred.

[A]

This is so beautiful and thank you for coming on the show. I have to weirdly abruptly go because I have something in 20 minutes I have to go to, unfortunately.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But I am so grateful to you for being on the show. And I will plug the book at the beginning too. But everybody, could I say just briefly

[B]

in closing, go to the Living Dying Project website. We got a lot of free courses, groups, free stuff. The most complete site on the Internet about conscious dying. Livingdying.org thank you.

[A]

And how to live so you can die without Fear. The new book coming out. Where? Where can people get that?

[B]

Well, some people. So supposedly it's not being released till June 16, but it's printed. I've got authors, copies, and a bunch of my friends are saying they got it in the mail already. So depending on which warehouse, Amazon or Bookshop or Barnes and Noble, some of them are sending out the book, some aren't. But it's either out now or coming out really shortly.

[A]

Thank you so much for coming on the show. All the links you need to find ramdave will be down below in the comments. You are the best. Congrats on your book and thank you so much for your time.

[B]

Lots of love, dear Duncan. Bye bye.

[A]

If you're somebody freaked out about death, just know that this podcast is actually about life. That's what Ramdev teaches and he has a wonderful new book, how to Live so youo Can Die Without Fear. Come see me. I'm gonna be in Charlotte. I'm gonna be in Asheville. I'm gonna be in Nashville. And I am coming to the Wilbur in Boston. I hope to see y' all there. Have a wonderful week. Until next time, Hare Krishna.

[C]

Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway for you. Save Days are here now through June 23rd. Find hot deals throughout the store and earn times a point. Look for in store tags to earn on eligible items from Keebler, General Mills, Lactaid, Jack Links, Cheezeit and Gatorade. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings stack up those rewards to save even more. Enjoy Savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online for easy pickup or delivery, restrictions apply. See the website for full terms and conditions.

[A]

Hey everybody, lady luck here and we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now all summer long I'm going to be celebrating by playing on spinquest.com, which is an American owned social casino. It obviously features over 1000 slot games and live blackjack, live craps, live bubble craps. Head on over to spinquest.com get yourself a $30 coin pack for just 10 bucks.

[C]

Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious like new loans or changes to your financial accounts, we alert you right away, all through text, phone, email or the LifeLock app. Save up to 30% your first year. Visit lifelock.com iheart Terms apply.