From BTS documentaries to grieving your own college experience through your kid's eyes, life keeps surfacing exactly what needs to be seen. An April Fools live conversation that somehow landed on death, freedom, and the scrote-sichord 🤭

Topics:

• The Dr. Oz April Fools Prank — A Fond Memory
• BTS Documentary: Schmos, Celebrities, and the Cosmic Joke
• "Everything Seems Fine and Yet" — What's Been Coming Up
• Nina's College Stuff
• What I Actually Felt at 18 — Grieving the College Experience
• UC Berkeley: The Real Story
• Professor Fristrom and the Lab That Saved Me
• It's Never About Someone Else — It's Always About You
• Era Ending or Projection?
• The Party Degree I Never Got to Have
• Everything You Ever Learned Is Happening Now
• The 529 Account Question and the Opportunity Cost of College
• What If You Just Invested the Tuition Money Instead?
• Waking Up, Growing Up, Showing Up — Ken Wilber and the Story Models
• All Beliefs Are Provisional — Go Down the Rabbit Hole, Then Let Go
• The FIRE Movement and the Trap of Seeking Freedom
• Spiritual Bypassing: You Can't Actually Do It
• What's Your Biggest Fixation That's Left?
• The Trap of "Someday I'll Be Free"
• What Happens When You Die?
• Kids and the Double Arrow of Suffering
• Stage Models of Awakening — Useful Until They're Not
• How Long Do You Meditate? Zero. Everything Is a Meditation.
• A Medical School Musical Interlude
• ADHD, Psychiatric Labels, and Just Zubining
• Is Awakening Even Desirable?
• Awakening as Death Followed Immediately by Hilarity
• From the Outside It Looks Like Existential Crisis — And That's Exactly Right
• Is "We" Closer to Truth Than "I"?
• Religious Awakening vs. Non-Dual Awakening — Same Flavor, Different Tradition
• "How Is This Here the Same as This There?"

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This is just DUMB SIMPLE...so much so that the mind that always wants to know, always wants to make sense, simply won't believe it. From 3am despair during college admissions season to spontaneous tears on the leg press, life keeps showing up as exactly what it is. Original YouTube live video here.

• College admissions process and Nina's New York school visits
• Waking up at 3am — absorbing stress and feeling it fully
• Why meditation techniques eventually stop arising on their own
• Non-dumbality: reality as too simple and ordinary for any concept to touch
• The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path — why the Buddha gave instructions at all
• The "fake it till you make it" paradox of spiritual practice
• Crying at the gym and spontaneous emotional release
• Who or what is choosing what happens next?
• The tree of belief metaphor — falling through branches on the way down
• Nothing is hidden: object permanence as a functional lie
• Zen stink and the spiritual ego that thinks it woke up
• What awakening actually means (and why the story collapses)
• Angelo, gratitude, and why spiritual content no longer lands
• Ram Dass on other people's awakening being none of your business
• Gratitude roll call to those who "taught" me
• What's actually being transmitted in these live shows

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Nothing arrives. Nothing persists. And you were never behind. Monday Zen Live, original YouTube conversation here.

0:00 Welcome & The Imaginarium — Why the World Is a Story

1:38 Krishnamurti's "Filthy Word" and Taking the Story Sincerely

4:05 When the Whole Thing Just Drops

6:13 Absolute Freefall — This Is Pure Unadulterated Chaos

7:49 Nothing Ever Arrives Before It's Gone

9:18 Descartes Got It Almost Right — But Not Quite

11:43 Staring at a Blue Sky: The Instability of Appearance

13:02 Emptiness Isn't Magical

14:43 Is This Too Extreme a Negation?

16:05 Love Is Real — But Not How You Think

18:10 Awareness Isn't Fundamental — A Bone to Pick

20:05 Dogs Don't Live in the Imaginarium

22:06 You Don't Have to Believe Me — Let Go of Belief Entirely

23:24 Whatever Is Arising Right Now? That's It.

25:27 Why Unknowing Gets Rejected — By Society and the Ego

27:13 Always Exactly Where We Need to Be

27:38 The 5-MeO-DMT Realization: Nowhere to Go, Nothing to Seek

29:04 Perfect Days — A Film About Total Liberation

29:36 When the Dream Character Wakes Up (and Gets a Spiritual Ego)

34:33 Appearance Noticing Itself as Appearance

35:52 Isness, Thusness, Beingness — Words Pointing at Nothing

44:43 Why Zubin Blocked All Spiritual Content

47:38 How AI Pointed Back to the Unknowable

49:34 The Spiritual Entertainment Industrial Complex

52:06 Does Zubin Want More Followers?

54:22 Why He Stopped Practicing Medicine

1:04:08 Spiritual Apologism and the Self-Deception of Influence

1:03:00 Mark and Sharon at Chemo — What Live Is Really For

1:10:13 When You Cringe at Your Own Words (And When You Don't)

1:12:09 Wrap-Up & Peace Out

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Why every concept, belief, and story falls utterly short of what's actually HERE. From YouTube LIVE.

0:00 Welcome & The Imaginarium We Live In 0:48 No Thought or Belief Can Touch What Is 2:24 The 180° Inversion: Concepts Are the Abstraction 5:50 How the Separate Self Generates Suffering 13:02 Did the Past Actually Happen? 15:00 Who Designed the Dance? On Illusion and Creation 18:10 Is There Even a Witness? Appearance Without a Knower 21:03 Why Reality Is Boring (and That's the Point) 24:48 The Bahiya Sutta: Simply the Seen 26:10 Music, Tones, and What Sound Is Actually Showing You 28:05 Is There a Path to Awakening? 31:32 Is Enlightenment a Stable State? 33:58 Privilege, Poverty, and Who Gets to Wake Up 35:42 Dreams, Sleep, and the Continuity of Appearance 38:48 What If Someone Hates Life? 43:48 Am I a nihilist?? 45:37 Wrap-Up & Signing Off

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What happens when the seeking stops? We explore the paradox of the spiritual path, why role models don't make sense anymore, and how life just keeps life-ing — perfectly, with nobody doing it. A Monday live conversation on YouTube about nothing and everything. https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd for all the things.

0:00 Introduction: Post-Daylight Savings Monday 1:05 Why Time Changes Mess With Our Circadian Rhythms 4:28 Is There Meaning in Names? 5:24 Spirituality as Just Another Story 7:17 This Is Not a Popular Message 8:02 When Interest in TED Talks and Podcasts Dies 11:07 YouTube Is Actually Great (When You Stop Caring) 11:39 What Happens After Death? 13:14 You Can't Learn This — The Paradox of Seeking 17:03 Speaking to People Where They Are 19:25 Radical Honesty: There's Nothing to Do 21:01 There's No Continuity — Only Memory 23:05 Julia, the Rug Is Going to Be Pulled Out 24:04 How Do You Relate to Dream Characters? You Don't. 27:02 Presence Is Just Radical Acceptance 29:22 My Wife's Plant Obsession (House Tour Moment) 30:00 The Tragic Florida Prank Story 35:01 Humans Aren't Terrible or Good — Just This 36:17 Life Can Get Better (Paradoxically) 37:14 If People Had to Slaughter Their Own Animals 39:01 Revisiting the Past as Part of Realization 42:01 Dating Ads During the Live Stream? 43:00 Nothing Happens Outside What's Immediately Apparent 44:04 The Anus Meditation (Yes, Really) 45:00 Guilt About World Events 46:46 Does Seeking Energy Come Back? 50:02 Subjectification and the Fluxy State 51:04 Am I in the Epstein Files? 57:52 Better or Worse Than Seven Years Ago? 59:02 Getting Pulled Back Into the Story 1:00:22 Country Joe McDonald Has Passed 1:02:02 AMAs and the Dissolution of Questions 1:03:05 Should I Do a Daily Practice? 1:06:02 Why Would You Want to Be on a Podcast? 1:08:50 Would I Go on Joe Rogan? Nah. 1:10:50 Daniel Schmachtenberger 1:14:12 Closing: The Paradox of Talking to 100 People

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Another fun live conversation about the (un)reality of "me."

YouTube video is here.

All the links are here.

0:00 Introduction: The "Me" Will Never Be Enough 3:01 What Is the "Me"? The Illusion of the Separate Self 5:05 The Seeking Energy: Why We Never Feel Whole 7:24 Midlife Crisis and Spiritual Seeking as More of the Same 9:57 The Unsatisfaction Machine: Worthiness and Unworthiness 11:46 Hope and Hopelessness: The Self in Time 13:22 Pain vs. Suffering: What's the Difference? 15:08 The Spiritual Circus: Why Seeking Doesn't Work 17:03 Ego Extinction and Meditation: The Trap of Trying 19:26 The Paradox: Awakening Happened, Then the "Me" Claimed It 22:00 Surrender Is Impossible for the Self 23:00 Jim Newman and Radical Non-Duality 25:04 What Is Belief? The Self Trying to Know 27:05 Is Science Truth? Dreams Within Dreams 29:05 Real and Unreal: The Bear Chasing You 31:01 Nothing Is Wrong: Even Resistance Is This 33:05 It's Radically Simple 35:07 The Dream Logic Paradox: Why Teachers Say "Nothing to Do" 38:14 Your Journey Is Just an Appearance 39:48 There Is No Experience, Only Appearance 42:02 Questions That Stop Making Sense 44:09 This Is Not a Popular Message 45:58 What a Relief: When the "Me" Is Seen as Futile 48:36 Grief and Loss: The Emotional Process of Letting Go 51:06 Being Yourself: What Disney Actually Meant 53:01 Full Compassion Without Detachment 54:06 Negative Emotions: Felt Fully, Then Gone 57:00 Progressive Path vs. Radical Pathlessness 59:04 Awareness? I Can't Find It 1:01:31 Closing: The Ordinary and Extraordinary

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Spiritual "influencers" may just be the Final Bosses in the game of delusion 🤮

Watch the YouTube video here.

https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd for all the things. 00:00 - Introduction: Live Comments Make It Wondrous 01:46 - BAFTA Tourette's Incident and Nobody Wins 02:41 - Spiritual Influencers Are the Worst 06:14 - F**k all the gurus 09:05 - "Spirituality" isn't something I wanna talk about anymore 11:20 - The Deep Secret: Just What's Appearing 12:06 - Cipher in the Matrix: Wanting to Go Back In 15:01 - Coming All the Way Back to Sleep (Zero Fucks Given) 17:33 - The Seeking Stops Naturally (You Can't Make It Stop) 19:45 - Dentist Story: Not Witnessing, Just Everything Everything-ing 24:24 - Retreats, Poetry Rounds, and Narcissistic Bullshit 29:34 - Turning the Dharma Wheel: I Don't Know What That Means 32:04 - Buddhism's No-Self Gets Distorted Into Attainment 35:00 - Why Be Silent? It's Here in the Talking Too 37:13 - Ashley Selfie Moment: Breaking Retreat Rules 40:05 - Another's Experience Isn't Your Experience (Don't Replicate) 43:35 - Closing: Power Corrupts, Pure Luck of Conditioning

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Zero f***s given in this Facebook LIVE episode 🤭, we explore time, growth as illusion, spiritual mansplaining, why there isn't even consciousness, why nothing cannot stay nothing, the 10 Fetters Buddhist model from separate self to liberation, and more! Kevin Shanilec's interpretation and guide to the Fetters is here. Video archive, audio podcast, music, Supporter Tribe membership, email & more. Support us with a 1-time donation.
00:00 - Introduction: Zero Fucks Given, Social Security Disappointment 01:53 - Time as Flickering Light on a Timeless Screen 05:16 - How Is This Different Than a Dream? 08:00 - Fix the Fixer by Dissolving It 10:18 - Growth Is an Illusion: Nothing Takes Place 13:28 - Church Without the Priest: Feeling Christ Consciousness 16:32 - Spiritual Mansplaining to My Wife (Then She Woke Up) 24:37 - The Unborn: Everything Is Perfectly Managed 30:10 - Why Is Life Hard? (The Question Makes No Sense) 37:17 - Awareness Obsession: Then I Realized There Isn't Consciousness 43:25 - Nothing Cannot Stay Nothing (Why Appearance Exists) 48:13 - The 10 Fetters: Buddhist Model of Liberation 58:04 - How the Fetters Build Backwards from Delusion 1:06:12 - Total Wellness? The Question Falls Away 1:08:20 - Berkeley Meetup Plans, Jim Newman

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A beautifully spontaneous Monday Zen LIVE (YouTube video here) that I intended as members-only but accidentally went public—and the accident was perfect orchestration by nothing for no one 🤡

We dive deep into identifying as awareness, exploring why it's a beautiful trap that feels like spacious liberation but is still an experience that comes and goes (disappears under anesthesia), and how Nisargadatta used "rest as I Am" as universal solvent until awareness itself dissolved into the magic space of nothingness. Core teaching: nothing takes place, nothing becomes real—all kinds of stuff occurring but never arriving, never becoming solid.

I share a painful 3am dream where dream-self was fully mind-identified, seeking validation and connection, feeling "I will never be okay"—and how waking up allowed full feeling without secondary resistance, showing deep unworthiness conditioning still arising but now without stickiness.

We explore accommodating all views without ultimate belief (genocide, shootings, political polarization), trauma integration requiring full acceptance and love, and the 2026 heart opening that's matured into natural service without seeking return.

Practical experiments: energetic availability on hiking trails where open-hearted presence makes strangers spontaneously smile and greet you (reproducible N-of-1 trial), eye gazing as intimacy practice that breaks down defenses (harder with intimates where stakes are high), horses reading human micro-expressions better than we read each other, chronic illness healing or arising with awakening (body-mind changes, sensitivity increases), discovering Gospel of Thomas as Christian Zen ("kingdom of God spread upon earth yet men do not see it"), free will question collapsing into nonsense, what is your true nature inquiry ("just keep looking"), rich man/camel/needle as rich with concepts and beliefs, and pain practice at dentist using Bankei's "everything is perfectly managed in the unborn" to dissolve second arrow.

See all the things, become a member and more here!

00:00 - Introduction: Fear of a Black Hat and Snowed In America 03:35 - Responding to Reality vs. Created Environment 06:11 - Identifying as Awareness: The Beautiful Trap 10:46 - The Unborn: Nothing Takes Place, Nothing Becomes Real 15:07 - Guided Drop Into Pure Awakeness (Meditation) 18:06 - Dream of Mind Identification and Validation Seeking 24:37 - The Magic Space of Nothingness 30:10 - Genocide, Gaza, and Accommodating All Views 35:41 - Trauma Integration: Feeling It Fully to Release 42:12 - Heart Opening and Being of Service Without Return 48:00 - Energetic Availability: The Hiking Trail Experiment 57:23 - Eye Gazing: Breaking Down Defenses Through Intimacy 1:08:53 - Free Will Question Doesn't Make Sense 1:11:11 - What Is Your True Nature? Just Keep Looking 1:20:43 - Gospel of Thomas: Christian Zen and Kingdom of Heaven 1:25:09 - Pain Practice: Second Arrow and the Unborn

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What happens when the mind stops telling stories? We explore insomnia and radical acceptance, the trap of identifying as awareness, why "the world is waking up" is just another story, and my journey from Doc Vader to whatever the f**k this is 😂

All the things are here.

Topics and Timecodes:

0:00 - Going Live & Technical Difficulties 1:26 - When You Can't Say Anything Anymore 2:31 - Karma Yoga: Life as Sacred Practice 4:14 - Sleep, Insomnia & Radical Acceptance 7:02 - Sleep During Awakening: My Experience 8:38 - Waking Up at Night: Working with Panic & Repressed Emotion 10:24 - No Distinction Between Waking, Dreaming & Deep Sleep 11:43 - The Mind Creates Reality: Manifestation & Reconditioning 13:29 - Free Will, Determinism & Letting Go 13:53 - Dreams, Vivid Experiences & Higher Planes 15:00 - When Desire & Attachment Start to Fall Away 16:03 - Meaning Is Created: An Existentialist View 17:01 - Watching Thoughts: The Mirage of the Mind 19:02 - Who Thought This Thought? The House of Cards Collapses 21:04 - The "I Want to Wake Up" Trap 21:52 - Who Is Awareness Appearing To? 22:17 - Getting Stuck at "I Am Awareness" 23:04 - What Is the Unborn? 25:00 - Wide Angle Camera Fun (Tech Break) 26:04 - The Universe Is Unfolding As It Should 26:31 - Absolute vs. Relative: There's No Distinction 27:25 - From Doc Vader to This: My Journey Since 2019 30:35 - Burning It All Down: Deleting Twitter, Losing Followers, Finding Joy 31:05 - Gratitude for Spiritual Friends: Angelo, Simon, Ishwar 32:03 - When Suffering Arises After Awakening 33:31 - Resilience Is a Story: Working with Negativity 34:06 - Processing Emotions About Iran & the Ayatollah 36:07 - Letting Things Be Unsticky Even When You Care Fully 36:36 - Talking to Conservative Christian Parents About Buddhism 37:28 - All Paths Point to the Same Thing 40:25 - Jesus Was Enlightened 41:13 - Identifying as Awareness vs. Non-Duality: What's Beyond? 43:05 - Resurrecting Jesus by Adyashanti (Book Recommendation) 43:42 - Is the World Waking Up? (Spoiler: It's a Story) 46:05 - What's My Meditation Practice? It Changes Daily 47:03 - When Seeking Falls Away 48:00 - Don't Force-Feed Awakening: Many Called, Few Chosen 49:00 - Energy Grounding & Chakra Work 51:03 - The Brutal Side of Awakening 51:26 - Apple Watches & Fitness (Curveball Question) 52:32 - What Is "The Story" vs. Reality? 54:53 - Closing: This Beautiful Satsang

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A spontaneous conversation between two friends walking the path together. Why 'you're already awake' can be harmful, the impossibility of bypassing the hard painful work, K-Pop Demon Hunters as dharma transmission, and much more. Full video here. Simon Brown's YouTube channel is here and his free Substack is here. Here's our earlier podcast on trauma. And here's our prior talk on compassion. Video archive, audio podcast, music, Supporter Tribe membership, email & more.

Support us with a 1-time donation.

More about Zubin.

0:00 Introduction - Spiritual Friendship Across the Atlantic 2:22 "You're One of the Dearest People I Turn To" 4:00 The Mind Creates the Abyss, The Heart Crosses It 5:00 The Relational Intimacy That's More Than Its Parts 7:00 Hell Is Other People vs. Recognition of Non-Separation 10:00 Opening the Clown Chakra (Becoming Baba Z-Dogg) 12:00 Why Ram Dass Makes You Cry Instantly 16:00 Alan Watts AI Warnings 18:00 Ram Dass's Journey from Harvard to Surrender 20:00 "He Can See All of Me and Still Loves Me" 23:00 Ram Dass's Decades of Practice (Not Just Surrender) 25:00 "Everything's Already Awake" - Why This Message Can Make People Sick 28:00 Unbearable Compassion and Meeting People Where They Are 33:00 Delusion as Seeing Incorrectly What's Actually Here 35:00 The Problem with One-and-Done Awakening 38:00 "You're Going to Die. Everyone You Know Will Die" 41:00 Ram Dass Holding Hands of Strangers as They Die 44:00 Only Sensible Response Is Compassion 47:00 Turn Towards the Unconditioned/Deathless 52:00 Society's Duality and Taking Sides 57:00 The Pure Freedom Beyond Conditions 1:00:00 Play, Spontaneity, and Shame 1:03:40 The Goldfish Bowl Story - How Play Gets Beaten Out 1:07:00 "This Really Hurt and I Love You" 1:09:00 The Trance of Unworthiness We All Inherit 1:13:34 K-Pop Demon Hunters as Liberation Teaching 1:16:00 Barbie Movie and Repressed Emotion 1:18:00 Perfect Days - Liberation Through Cleaning Toilets 1:21:00 "It's a Wonderful Life" and the Universal Heart 1:24:00 What's Gone That You Don't Notice 1:27:00 Taking the Exquisite Risk of Vulnerability 1:28:40 "Pee Here Now" - The Non-Dual Amusement Park

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