The Dharma of Ethan Nichtern

[Music] We always need to establish that there's some cultural story that we hold that can connect with our spiritual and our existential principles. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. [Music] Welcome to synchronicity. I hope you enjoy the show. I'm starting to, I think I'm going to do a new theme song intro. Not really, but just felt like doing that. Welcome to synchronicity. My guest this week is Ethan Nickturn. Awesome person extraordinaire. Also a Shastri in the Shambhala lineage of Tibetan Buddhism Founded by Cho Gyum Trungpa.

Hopefully you know what those words are, I just said. But if not, go look it up, Cho Gyum Trungpa. Very awesome. You don't know what I'm saying? It sounds weird. C-H-O-G-Y-A-M, Cho Gyum. Trungpa, T-R-U-N-G-P-A. One of those names that's pretty much impossible to understand what the person is saying if you don't already know how it's spelled. Okay, moving on, Ethan Nickturn is awesome. I was introduced to him by Ellie Erin, who hosts a wonderful podcast on MindPod Network. Go check it out, the Ellie Erin Hour. Really, what a lovely person is. She also gifted me, after the last event we did in the city, back in September, was it?

I think so. Ethan's book, The Dharma of the Princess Bride, which is fantastic. And go check it out. It's referenced a few times in this episode. And I've been a fan of Ethan's for some time. His dad, David Nickturn, was just on the podcast, not just on. He was like a really early guest. Anyway, he was on, and he's fucking cool. If you haven't heard that episode, go check it out. If you haven't heard it, you know how cool he is. You probably don't, because he's even cooler than just that episode would let on. Anyway, his son is equally as cool, and you'll hear that in this episode. Ethan is a teacher, as I mentioned in the Shambhala tradition, which was founded by Jogem Trungpa.

He actively teaches in New York City at the Shambhala Center. And beyond being a teacher, what I really discovered in this episode is he is a normal, cool person. And those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Being a teacher or someone who speaks about wisdom or concepts that maybe we don't talk about in our everyday lives a lot of the time, there can be this misconception that they are raised as some elevated status. And one of the things that emerged at the end of this conversation is this whole, how do we fit in this guru teacher? When a teacher or a guru has misconduct, misconduct, misconduct, abuses or sexual or otherwise physical, how do we grok that?

Where does that fit into our cosmology of being good people and trying to adhere to a spiritual tradition? We also talk about, you know, separating our spiritual lives from our regular lives, whatever the fuck that means, but we've all done it. Obviously, we've separated or, you know, created a little silo for how we are in this situation. And this doesn't have to be for spirituality. This could be just how we are when we go to this place, how we are when we go to that place, how we are with these people. You're not as much as a lot of us would like to believe we're always the same. We probably act differently depending on the context of our situation.

Anyway, this episode is really cool. Ethan, you will hear again, as I mentioned, is just like every thing he mentioned resonated on a very substantial level. I'm also recording this right after our conversation, so it's fresh in my mind, which is kind of a nice thing to do. I might do in the future if I have the time. But really, it was just a pleasure speaking with him. I hope to have him on again soon. You'll also, of course, hear about in the beginning of the episode cryptocurrency. I've been obsessed with it. In case you haven't been able to tell from the past two episodes, as I mentioned at the end of last episode, Michael Phillip and Jennifer Soudini and I are embarking on a new project called Crypto Seer.

We're launching it. It's already kind of technically launched. You can find it if you try hard enough. But we're really turning this into something because there's something at play here that I've referenced a couple of times, but it seems as though consciousness is now being, having this really interesting interplay between technology and money, and it's just, it's really fucking cool. Anyway, so that's going on, but one of the downsides of it, I've been obsessed with it to the point where I'm actually catching myself for minutes at a time, not paying attention to EY. He's doing something and wants to show me something and I'm looking at my computer.

Not cool, Daddy. You can't do that. So there's clearly an element of it that's obsessive maybe to my detriment. There's also an element of how do we balance kind of striking while the iron is hot. Maybe this really is a revolutionary thing that's taking place and maybe the three minutes that I'm not paying attention to EY can be justified if those buy us many minutes in the future without having to worry about finances, right? It's an interesting thing to try to figure out. Ethan has some really good insights on how to kind of balance this idea of wealth and generosity and kind of self-interest, and it's a really valuable and good take on what probably people like me need to hear.

Probably what everyone needs to hear, just to be clear. Anyway, I feel and notice I have rambled on too much about this particular subject. So I am going to get to the episode very soon. I just want to say a quick thank you to everyone who supports the show on patreon, patreon.com/synchronicity. You get all the music if you pledge at a certain level. I won't say what that level is. You can go check it out. There's gifts to represent each level. But you can do that. It's a really great way to help the show. Also, if you want, I have Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum addresses posted on synchronicity.

If you want to donate, if you've invested in the past few weeks and made some shackles, feel free to send them to me. I am not above taking donations. Also, one of the things I want to mention with cryptocurrency in general, one of the things that initially let me to get them back in 2013, is the altruistic ability they potentially have. I've been turning a lot of my friends, and you guys are my friends too, under cryptocurrency. People who have bought in the past two weeks any of the basic ones, Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum have made money. You guys know what I'm talking about. It's not that this is always going to make money, but I like the feeling of being able to tell someone to do, not tell someone to do, and suggest they do something and being a mindful of the risk.

But when they make money and they're happy, that's a good feeling. Also, if I strike it rich, when I strike it rich, who knows what's going to happen? But if I do, I would gladly redistribute the wealth in cryptocurrency. Who wouldn't? I think there are a lot of people like me who already have done that. So, I think that's a cool thing to kind of bake into this. It's not just about us being individually wealthy, or just our families being wealthy. I consider a lot of people in my family who weren't born into my genetic lineage, so keep that in mind. Anyway, let's get to the episode. Geez, can I not talk about cryptocurrency for five minutes?

I don't know, we'll see. Hopefully in the coming months. Without further ado, here is Shostri Ethan Nickjarn. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. Yeah, I've been meaning to reach out and speak to you for a while. Your dad is one of my favorite people. He told me a really cool story when he came on before of you meeting Stevie Wonder before, I believe, was it songs in the key of life? Like you got an early listening sash of that? Yes, so my dad is one of my favorite people too. He's one of a lot of people's favorite people, so a lot of places I go. He jokes that he goes places and says he's only known as Ethan Nickturn's father, but I go a lot of places and I'm known as cool David Nickturn's son.

And in terms of his music career and his friends and things like that, and the people he's worked with, he's way cooler than I'll ever be. So there is a photo of me as a baby, I think slightly older than my daughter now, maybe a little less than one, sitting on Stevie Wonder's lap in a recording studio and Stevie Wonder supposedly gave me a harmonica that I had throughout childhood that I don't know where it is right now. But yeah, so my dad got me able to sit on Stevie Wonder's lap once, which is not something that a lot of Buddhist kids can say. Or any kid, I'm a huge Stevie Wonder fan and I just find that to be particularly awesome.

And I remember asking your dad, it was like, you know, sometimes you find out the people you idolize aren't that great. You know, personally he was like, no, he was like the nicest, most genuine person I've ever met. I'm like, I'm really happy to hear that. So there's a lot of things going on right now. And I know you're well versed in not only the Buddhist realm, but also politics, the political world, pop culture world, all of these things kind of circling around that are at the forefront of a lot of people's minds. One of the things that's really been at the forefront of my mind, it had been politics up until about a month ago.

I've been a Bitcoin holder for a number of years since 2013, but now cryptocurrency in general is exploding. And I'm bringing this up for a couple of reasons and I love your perspective on it, even if you don't know that much about it, because what I've noticed and a lot of my mindful friends or people who like to pay attention to their minds is that it dominates people's consciousness. It becomes an obsession and it's this idea of money being not easy to make, but having an opportunity to make a decent amount of money or wealth to pay off debt or to accumulate money to essentially give people financial freedom.

But I'm trying to figure out noticing my own mind and seeing other people, where's the balance in something like that? I'm striving for liberation in a financial sense, and I'm sure there's an allegory here for enlightenment, but I don't want it to get to the point where this is just dominating my life all of the time at the expense of my well-being. So I'm curious, are you familiar with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency? I mean, I'm familiar with alternative currencies in general. I do have to say that I haven't really investigated Bitcoin as much as I would like, and so I wonder if you could give just maybe for your listeners too and for me, like just a definition of what is the dilemma.

You mentioned obsession, definitely, that you get to be caught up in it, but is there also, I mean, obviously, from a Buddhist standpoint and from a mindfulness standpoint, the relationship between greed and generosity, balancing self and other is a big point as well. Yes. So you know, I mean, can you say a little bit more about it? I will be very specific about it. So I originally bought Bitcoin in 2013 because I like the idea of a decentralized currency that was unplugged from financial institutions and governments, and I just don't trust them, like a lot of people. And I don't like the idea of middlemen, so that's why I invested.

It was just kind of a speculative fun ad. What's emerged in the past year, six months, especially month, month and a half, is people are now seeing exponential rises in these currencies. I bought Bitcoin when it was $100 at $17,000 now. So all of a sudden, there is this class of people and continuing emerging class of people who are suddenly relatively wealthy or debt-free if they pull it out. And this is an amazing thing, and another reason I really liked Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is a lot of those people were progressive thinkers. They were getting these currencies for the same reasons that I were.

Not because I want to be a billionaire and just stunt on people and buy Lambo's, but because I like the idea of being unshackled from something that puts an enormous amount of pressure on people's minds and lives. I felt it myself, almost everyone has, regardless of where you are in the economic spectrum. So I'm trying to balance this idea of accumulating enough funds to give myself that freedom, but not literally, I'm day trading now. When my son goes to sleep, I take care of him every day, I'm literally plugged into the matrix. I call it the crypto vortex, and it feels obsessive. It feels borderline, I don't want to say unhealthy, but it does.

But I also know the hard facts are I'm making a decent amount of money. I'm getting to the goals of being able to pay off things that I really didn't think I was going to be able to pay off for decades. So it's this balancing act of how do I manage that idea of financial freedom with not making that my whole life? Because I'm not really a money person. I like the idea of just not having to focus on money. The irony is I have to focus on it so much right now. Right, right. So it sounds to me, Noah, like there are kind of two issues that really do relate to the way I look at the issues for mindful people in the modern world that kind of collapse or collide into Bitcoin.

So one is the issue of sort of what does it mean to accumulate wealth? What does it mean to be generous? How does the system work in terms of rewarding or compensating for efforts versus severe inequalities of what we face? Like monstrous inequalities of what we're looking at right now. Like insane inequalities we're looking at right now, which go beyond any classic Buddhist notion of wealth and generosity. Like the world we live in now is literally a world where there's a few people who could say that they've constructed a train set that everyone else lives in when you look at the massive billionaires.

And sometimes people say things like billionaires and millionaires. That is not the same group of people. Billion is a thousand million. So it would be like saying those two tall guys over there and one of them is six feet tall and the other one is more than a mile high. That's what millionaire and billionaire is like. So sort of what is wealth accumulation, what is a Buddhist approach to capitalism and again sort of greed versus generosity, self versus interdependence. That's a big question. The other seems to be, I don't face it through Bitcoin. I face it and work with a lot of people through just having an online interface to mediate your life.

Some people get it through Facebook or people tell me they're addicted to Twitter or it's very generational right now. Not to over generalize but I do feel like right now in the Trump era, a lot of the middle age folks I talk to say that they are addicted to cable. Oh my God, it's so weird. It's classic. And that's the one thing Donald Trump is actually good at in his life is becoming a spectacle and forcing you to watch what he wants you to watch. And that sort of addictive quality, that group of people, my generation late generation ex people who are late 30s, early 40s, I think Facebook and Twitter are pretty big addictions.

I've talked to some friends who are teenagers or have teenage children. Snapchat is their addiction. So you're bringing up this day trading Bitcoin addiction and there's sort of a plugged into a mediated experience through which we, you know, all of the brain functions of dopamine and serotonin, et cetera, and cortisol get very amplified in that space in terms of what people like about us. You know, I've gotten a lot recently from reading Judson Brewer's book, The Craving Mind. He's a Buddhist inspired researcher and doctor who's really sort of analyzed some class and Buddhist teachings in relationship.

Judson Brewer, and the book's called The Craving Mind. You know, they've done research that they can even tell how much time you spend on Facebook by how activated certain regions of the brain are, you know, so in terms of receiving likes and comments and so forth. So, you know, I think those are the two issues that seem to be colliding in what you're describing and what little I know of Bitcoin is sort of like where is the self or is other in a situation where we've really, we've really, there's a lot of talk about caring about others, but in terms of how our system works, there's this real narcissistic, like consume, take in as much as you can, fearfully.

And, you know, again, at its upper reaches, which is not what you're talking about. It goes far and above and beyond what any human discussing personal wealth, which I totally believe in, by the way. Ever mentioned, you know, it just goes into this realm where literally people are no longer pursuing happiness through their wealth. They're pursuing the control of other people's lives, you know, which is when you get into like the Koch brothers or these certain billionaires, that's what it buys them is the ability to influence power, you know, which is not really what wealth, if you talk about, you know, classic economics, which I did study a little bit in college, they were all talking about the personal pursuit of happiness, you know, and so the notion of wealth to pursue power over other people is kind of a new sort of capitalism on steroids approach or greed on steroids from a Buddhist perspective.

So I think it's these two types of addiction that the wired into connection with others to see what's going to happen next, and then linking that with financial well-being you know, and the fear is associated with that, am I going to have enough that what we in Buddhist terms might call the hungry ghost mentality or if you get good at it, what we in Buddhist terms might call the jealous God realm, which is something my dad wrote really well about in his book, Awakening from the Daydream, you know, so I think Buddhism has a lot to say to this when it's, especially when it's linked into political issues and Western psychological research, which are two things I'm obviously quite interested in on a casual level.

Yeah, I mean, that's, I love how you broke it down and I love how you brought in the samsark realms there because that's something I wanted to speak about too, and I totally agree, and it is this balancing of generosity and kind of self-interest, and what's weird is is my motivations, and this is not unique to me, but with a lot of these things, like I've been putting all of my friends on to cryptocurrency, onboarding them over the past few weeks, and they've all made a good amount of money from it, there is this kind of baked in generosity principle that if all of a sudden, if you're a millionaire, if I'm a millionaire, and all of our friends are millionaires, and we know, not everyone, but a lot of us know that money isn't going to buy us happiness.

It's not going to be the thing that solves all of our problems. The reason I like this idea or this opportunity potentially is that I want to have money so I can start focusing on my real issues. I think so many people have this superficial, and it's not superficial, it's a real issue of bills, of expenses, of medical health insurance. God, think of this country, I'm going through a nightmare right now with the health insurance. It really is a problem for a lot of people, but if we just eliminated that, if all of a sudden there was a universal basic income or everyone just had enough to not freak out all the time, not to mention what this would do to our cultural landscape and all the prison industrial, all of these things that are linked together, but if that started to happen, then maybe we could focus on some of those other things that pops up in the some-sarc realms, right?

The jealousy, the envy, the anger, the sadness, the rage, the craving, and it's not like we don't have that opportunity now, but it just feels acutely true that money issues really affect how we spend our time and energy, and when you don't have money and you need it, it's hard to think about anything else. It's almost like being hungry, you know, like you pretend you're not, but you are, and it is kind of like a basic need in our culture, not in reality. So, okay, let me ask you this though, because you brought up the some-sarc realms, and I don't want to forget this. I know that the realms are typically, at least in Western culture presented as psychological states, which is absolutely true.

We can move through any one of those. As your dad, I mean, one of my favorite books, I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy. It was just incredible awakening from the daydream. But what is your take on them being actual kind of metaphysical realms as well? Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a great question. So, if you look at some of the early Buddhist writers who've written, you know, compellingly on the realms, obviously my dad's book is more recent, but his teacher, Chogim Trungperimche, talked about them and did talk about them as psychological states, then you have somebody like Mark Epstein, who combined them with his psychodynamic and Freudian way of thinking in a very sort of psychological, in other words, that all six realms are just kind of states that we move through in our human experience.

So without proposing any metaphysics of like, you could be reborn as a hungry ghost in a desert and you have this certain type of body that cannot be satiated, et cetera. You know, so obviously that's more available within our human lives. That's a much more available way of looking at things for most of us. Some of us, we really like thinking about other realms and, you know, it's all, I mean, Star Wars, the new Star Wars is coming out soon. So we love magic, you know, but we also love science, you know. And so I think that the way to understand this is actually to understand the Buddhist philosophical system that a lot of Buddhist schools, especially in Japan, China, and Tibet are based on, called the Yogachara or Mind Only philosophy, which is basically this philosophy, as a basic principle says, that perceiver and perceived always arise together.

So this notion of being able to distinguish or separate the internal world of our mind and our mind's projections from the external world is an illusion, basically, that the mind is always co-creating its environment, you know. So that from Buddhist standpoint, a realm, like let's say the realm, the human realm called America, is sort of the combined and sort of overlaid projections of the 320 million people who live here. Some who have much more powerful projectors, like the billion. And so that now is now you start to say, like, well, wait, so is America a real place, you know, or is it just a projection of consciousness?

So this is the question from a mind only perspective, you would say, well, it's both, you know, because the subject and object perceiver and perceived arise interdependently. So actually, Chogim Trunka, even though he was very interested in Western psychology, even though he talked about these things from the perspective of what the mind is doing, he was actually once asked, you know, if these realms, the god realm, the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, the animal realm, which obviously we can see as a real place. He was asked if these are real realms. And his answer, which I thought was brilliant, was, well, there is real as you or I.

Fucking love him. And that gets to this mind only. Like, is your experience right now of this realm that you're living in? Is it real or is it a projection of consciousness, you know, sort of both? And that I'm glad to hear that Chogim said that because that's kind of been my intuitive. I mean, I do, I've had experiences, you know, some aided and embedded one, one brought on by LSD for three months that I've spoken on this podcast for a long time was basically, you know, kind of perceiving that co-emergence of perceiver and projection, which was a very interesting state to be in for an extended period of time, and it actually carried over into my dreaming state every night.

So I do kind of hold this idea that, are we real? Is this real? And I do believe that we're not nearly as tangible and solid as entities and bodies as we like to believe we are, or we need to beat a function in this world. So I like to hear that, yeah, I mean, they're about as real as you and I, and I think that's valid. I don't know how practically helpful that is for people, and I don't want to give the impression that we should be thinking and worrying constantly about being reborn in some torturous place, but if it puts the focus on us trying to be better people and trying to, you know, actualize ideals that we believe in, then that's a good thing.

So it can't hurt to look at it like that. I'm glad to hear that. Well, it also empowers us just to view like that you could actually, by being more mindful, by learning how to have more insight, by trying to be more compassionate to yourself and others, right? It gives you the sense that that could actually shift the manifestation of the external world. Maybe not much. Oh, it does, though, right? Right. Well, and that's what so many people are going through right now, is this feeling that they're watching, like, some theater unfold online, that they are powerless to affect, and that's actually part of its power, I think, to go back to the current occupant of the White House.

What I think he's actually really good at is actually projecting this media sphere, because he's a reality TV star, of making you think that you are now living in his world and you are powerless to affect anything, and so that all you can do is enable his world, or you can resist his world, but you're still responding, so you're still playing into it, and so the idea that you could actually shift, you know, you could actually disempower a projection through what you were putting out into the world is a very empowering idea in terms of the way karmic seeds and the mind as a projector work. Now, that's not saying that you can create your entire reality, as I said in my book, like, it's more than just an idea or a storyline that tells me I can't dunk a basketball, you know?

Exactly. But it might be an idea or a storyline that tells me I shouldn't even try to play basketball, you know, and so if I can empower myself to the point of saying let's just show up and see what happens, then the external reality could start to shift, you know, based on what my mind and body training. You bring up, and I definitely want to get to your book because there's a lot of awesome stuff in there, and our good mutual friend, Ellie, Erin, gifted it to me, and what a sweetheart for that. I've really been enjoying it, but you mentioned something that I think is really important, and it's this idea of our inner state, the connection between our inner state and external reality and how we can actually manifest certain things, not in just the idea of I look at a glass of water and pick it up and drink it, I've changed external reality, but by changing our internal states, that actually has a profound impact not only on our local sphere of consciousness and what we put out, but collectively, if we all start working on ourselves or listening to ourselves or seeing what's going on, that has a really big ripple effect, and it doesn't have to be this kind of top-down Trumpian pay attention to me, I'm at the top, your world is now my world, we can kind of start to take responsibility for our own lives, and another kind of interesting thing that seems to be happening right now is the distance between broad manifestation, like actual significant changes in the world from the point of the origin of that intention, the gap seems to be shortening, it seems like our world is kind of shifting more into a dream, a visibly dream-like state, not that it hasn't been like this, but that more and more people are kind of recognizing like, hmm, this is weird, I also view cryptocurrency as a direct representation of that, it's technology has allowed kind of this prism, it's the prism of the light of consciousness to flow through and project out various intentions, whether that's the desire to be rich or powerful or important, or just to be free, whatever it is, we now have these distances shortened, whereas before, you know, you maybe have to work 40-50 years or get lucky and hit the jackpot, now that's different, but you know, I just bring that up because it really does seem like that has been a shift that has been kind of ramping up this idea of manifestation being quicker, good and bad, I don't want to make it seem like it's just some utopian thing, and it just seems like it's happening faster and faster.

Okay, let's talk about your book, man, so the Dharma of the Princess Bride, I, like many people my age, grew up watching that movie, loving it, and also fully recognizing as you point out in the beginning of your book, it's different, it's not just this kind of run-of-the-mill fairy tale kids movie, it's really got a level of depth to it that sticks with you after you watch it, so I'm curious, I know you're a big fan of it, but when did you get like the seed to write this book? So, the seed to write this book was actually my first publisher, Wisdom Publications, which also published my dad's book, which published my book One City, they had just published a book called the Dharma of Star Wars, which is sort of like, you know, it's not as personal as my book, it's more like sort of if the Jedi code were interpreted as Buddhist teaching, what would that look like?

And so I said, if I ever do that, I'm going to do that with the Princess Bride. And then, you know, I wrote more and I wrote a book for F.S.G. that was more an overview of Buddhist teaching from the Shambhala perspective called the Road Home, and then I was thinking about like what I wanted to do next, and I knew if I was going to write more nonfiction, I wanted to write about relationships. But I wanted to do it in a creative way because I wanted to do it in a way that allowed there not to have to be a relationship expert in the room, like to share some ideas and teachings from Buddhist philosophy and from my study of Buddhism, but to be more personal about it and just share kind of what has worked because that's the main premise of the book other than, you know, loving pop culture via the Princess Bride as a modern practitioner is that there's no such thing as a relationship expert.

And yet mindfulness and Buddhist teachings can really help us show up to our interpersonal relationships in a way that's more humble, more compassionate, and kind of more confident at the same time. So I wanted to find a way to write about relationships that kind of acknowledged or took the pedagogy away from having to show up like I'm the expert in relationships. Yeah, I get it, man. I get it. I mean, because I don't think that person exists, you know. And what I say in the book is, you know, and I'm not saying there aren't great relationship therapists. That's not what I'm saying, relationship expert. The reason that that's actually an oxymoron is that a relationship is at least two people.

And expert is always referring to one lone person. So you literally have an oxymoron in the term. So, you know, I also saw that there was an anniversary of the movie coming up in the fall of 2017 was the 30th anniversary of the film's release. And so it turned into like going back to saying like, what was my life actually like in 1987, 1988. There were so many personal experiences that happened. You know, I saw this movie because my father's childhood best friend, still one of his very best friends, Christopher Guest, the great mockumentary director and actor, played the bad guy in it, which was hilarious.

So yes, my dad introduced me both to Stevie Wonder and Christopher Guest. No, yeah, you got a charm like my friend, obviously. Good karma sees. Well, as you said, my father is one of the coolest folks around. And totally goofy too, like totally not cool at the same time. But anyway, so I went back and, you know, this was the year my Buddhist parents went through a really difficult divorce. This was the year I was struggling in school. This was the year my grandfather committed suicide with his wife, my step-grandmother. So, which, you know, it's all about a grandfather reading this year postmodern fairy tale to his grandson.

So just saw that there was so much that happened that informed a kind of like, you know, a struggling moment in a kid's life around working with relationships and family and so forth. So all of that felt like a really good ground, fertile ground for, you know, sort of looking at a movie that looked at sort of three, sorry, a book that looked at three elements. One is 30 years studying Buddhism, 30 years trying to learn about relationships and 30 years of loving pop culture via the Princess Bride. And, you know, I don't argue that the Princess Bride is a Buddhist movie, although I did get to interview two of the stars of the movie.

Christopher Guest, you know, one of his best friends is a Buddhist teacher. So that's interesting. I got to also interview Mandy Patankin, Inigo Montoya, who identifies now as a Jubu fascinating. Yeah, yeah. And is a meditator. So that was really interesting. And I think there's just a lot of memes and moments and structures to the plot that could also be appreciated from a Buddhist perspective, you know. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, I've gotten, since the book has been out for three months, gotten a lot of really awesome feedback. I wasn't sure if that sort of combination was going to work. You know, I've gotten a few people saying I totally distorted the Buddhist teachings and et cetera, you know, which, you know, is going to, as I say, in the, in the book, there might be some thoughts that anger purists, you know, but, but purists by definition are easy to anger. So, so that's happened a little bit.

And, but I think it was kind of the book I wanted to write, a Buddhist book, a book about modern relationships and a book that really celebrates pop culture because those are three things that have always been really important to me. Well, this is something I love and I'm glad you left it on the pop culture there because I think what happens for a lot of people, I would like to say less these days, but I don't know that's true. I have no idea. A lot of people get into a spiritual practice, whether it's Buddhism or whatever it is, and things can get very serious that can become their life. And then they kind of set up these two worlds, right, this world of their spiritual life where they go with their spiritual friends and they do their spiritual stuff.

And then this other world of the gravity and pop culture and, you know, things that are not sports or whatever it is. And this creates a schism for a lot of people. It's like you're two different people, and not to mention we're many different people throughout the course of the day, but you're really solidifying these concepts of people. And the more people I see who kind of merge their passions and their interests in the world and in their inner worlds, I just like to see that because I don't ever view these things mutually exclusive. I mean, I pride myself on being a Miami Dolphins fan and a spiritual aspirant, right?

I think being a Miami Dolphins fan is my spiritual path in many ways because it is torturous, this suffering personified. But I just, I really do admire that you're able to bring in your existence as a human, a man living in, you know, America growing up through the 80s and 90s and merging that with this deeper kind, not I don't want to say deeper, but this level of depth that that really does extend far outside of the realm of our cultural kind of time and place. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. You know, I also think that that separation, the seriousness and also the sense of kind of sort of split personality that we develop.

In terms of trying to live one life in our secular world and then hold another set of spiritual beliefs, you know, I think it's, I think it's torn apart. Many of the religious traditions in the United States, you know, this notion that you can't just use your spirituality to be a decent person who also contemplates reality deeply, but also, you know, cares about culture and cares about politics and cares about society. So I think it's really important to acknowledge that my tradition, the Shambhala tradition, which is a very westernized form of Tibetan Buddhism, but the view of the tradition that was established by its founder is that the separation between our spiritual and our worldly or secular lives is a false separation. And so it's not a monastic tradition, although it does have some monastic practitioners. It's not even a yogic tradition about like disappearing from the world. It's, it's what's called a warrior tradition, which warrior really means brave or fearless one who who tries to bring spiritual principles into life in the world, which means interpersonal relationships, which means the economy. You know, I mean, the number of conversations I've had with spiritual people who just would not integrate even the discussion of, you know, economics versus, you know, with spirituality and a lot of times actually meant that they were, they were split off on it. So they were doing things in their secular lives that were problematic, but, but as long as they were sort of upholding this economic purity within their spiritual communities, you know, they felt like, okay, about it, you know, and, and so this integrated approach, this attempt to integrate, you know, is really important. And in this particular instance, what, what's the integration that's attempted here in a very playful way in a way that I felt good about because I think it needs to be playful and insightful is to integrate our inherited cultural narratives with our spiritual narrative. So I tried to use both my personal stories and Princess Bride as sort of cultural narratives that could influence my spiritual path because, you know, we all, we all have that. You know, there's, there's, if you study any ancient spiritual master, there's a, there's a cultural narrative, there's a set of structured relationships, you know, and, and this deconstructed and some common fairy tale, I think is a really interesting, darmic approach to the sort of set cultural narratives that we have, which is why I thought using the Princess Bride would be both fun and insightful.

You know, I was thinking about this a lot because, like this guy Robert Wright, who's a, who's a great gentleman and really smart writer wrote a book that was just a, and is still a major bestseller called Why Buddhism is True, where he takes an evolutionary scientist's approach to analyzing, you know, and scientific and are in terms of our nervous system, Buddhist principles, and I love that it's not called like mindful living scientifically called Why Buddhism is True, because I do believe Buddhism is primarily a psychology science and ethics system. And, but he starts his book talking about the matrix for, you know, 10 pages, right? Because he's, he, we always need to establish that there's some cultural story that we hold that can connect with our spiritual and our existential principles. And so, and that's why I think the Dharma Star Wars was an interesting attempt to, you know, I would, I would love at some point to, to, I probably shouldn't have written the family section of my book, totally switching narratives and talking about the royal tenon domes, another one of my favorite movies, which is all about a dysfunctional but loving family, right? So that could have a lot of Buddhist implications, even if they don't meditate. So, you know, we have these, these narratives and the integration of our spiritual and worldly lives is what my tradition is all about.

Now, there's so much pressure, politically, personally, religiously in the Western world, in terms of how you define a spiritual nonprofit organization, there's certain types of pressure. There's so much pressure not to fully integrate, to say like that my spiritual values are over here, and my scientific or worldly values are over here, but it really creates people who have a real hard time being authentic, because we can't integrate our worldly selves with our deepest selves. And so, I really think it's important to at least attempt the integration, you know, and if a few people say, these are fake Buddhist teachings because you used a pop culture movie, whatever.

Yeah, whatever is the exact correct answer to that. There are many books they can read. Yeah, I mean, that's, it's totally true. And, you know, this idea of having to be a certain way, or what you're doing if you're separating your wives is you're teaching yourself a habit. And it's a nasty habit of this is you need to separate these separate things. It's the non integrative principle. And I love that you point out like the narratives, right? This is the power of myth, Joseph Campbell not these mythologies run so deep that when we see them play it out. I forget which movie it was Moana. I was watching Moana with my son, which is a great movie and actually led to me getting into Hamilton, which is my favorite thing of all time now, because Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the songs.

But anyway, I'm watching this and I'm finding myself incredibly moved at certain parts for no real reason, right? And I'm recognizing as I'm getting moved when the grandmothers in the water moving your hands and talking about this unseen world. And oh my God, this is a deep mythological principle that I'm recognizing and it's evoking this response. And this is what culture, you know, I have cultures of weird, I have a weird kind of view on culture. There's the famous Terence McKenna quote that culture is the cudgel that we use to beat down people's minds. But culture is also something that we can connect with other people about.

I love introducing people to something I enjoy and pop culture and love finding out about things, whether it's music, film, art, whatever. So we do have this balancing act of recognizing there are aspects of our culture, the narratives that exist now that aren't productive, but that we can find these deeper kind of mythological narrative structures that really do get to the reality and truth of the situation. And I mean, from what I know about Cho Jim Trump, but that's what he was about. He was about getting to the naked reality because that gives us the opportunity to actually like understand what the fuck we want to do and what is going on.

Yeah, I love this man. The book is great too. I really, I want to make sure that you know that I'm sure you have some intuitive sense, but, you know, I think it is as much as it's a needed thing to kind of integrate, you know, cultural aspects into this stuff. It's not easy, really. I don't see a lot of people being very successful at it, despite a lot of attempts, because sometimes it feels kind of like a super imposition or trying to push things together, but when it's coming from a personal experience and just a passion, you know, it definitely works. And thank you so much. I mean, yeah, it was good to write. It was, you know, it's, I talk about the sort of need for transparency, especially as a teacher, both a teacher and practitioner, and just to see how much teachers are projected on to, you know, so one of the things that felt a little risky, the whole middle section of the book, you know, which starts with the chapter, called There Is No Butter Cup is about my own sort of the Dharma of romance and my own struggles, you know, leading to a really wonderful and beautiful relationship with my wife and sort of, you know, maybe coming out of being a child, a divorce, or coming out of being a Buddhist kid where there's a sense of like, you know, the teachings are paramount rather than, you know, relationship that really struggled with kind of being a romantic and also, you know, shared a little bit about like objectifying and idealizing in my case women, you know, and how that process went down and that seems like such an important conversation right now for for men, for especially heterosexual cisgendered white men, like myself, to make ourselves available to, you know, to really let people whose voices haven't been heard share like, you know, the ways that they felt oppressed or subverted or mistreated or, you know, in a harsher case abused and, you know, obviously it seems like it's a tricky conversation because our media and certain elements in our society are trying to manipulate a lot of genuine conversations, but I'm really happy it's happening and, you know, I'm happy that I was able to talk about my own relationship struggles because I think the other option is students saying, especially if they're looking at a more monastic teacher or teacher of a different ethnic, you know, or cultural background, they just map these sort of projections of perfection, like you must always love your family, you know, if you have a romantic partner, they must just appreciate everything about you, and just to acknowledge that obviously when you get closer to a lot of teachers, that's simply not true, there've been, you know, some major scandals in the British world. Yeah, and so, to just say, like, look, this is something I've struggled with, I've done my best here, the insights I've developed, you know, and I'm wanting to continue to humble myself to the process, feels like the direction a lot of us who are teachers need to go in rather than allowing people to project perfection on to us for the mutual confusion of then the teacher does the teacher doesn't have to be transparent about their own process, and the student also doesn't have to be transparent about their own process because they just say, sort of, if I can bathe in this perfection that I've subjected on to my teacher, I don't have to look at my own uncomfortable pain, you know, and if the teacher is willing to remove the projection of perfection from themselves, but still maintain a sense of respect and like I can help guide you through a process and through these practices, then the student can actually feel less embarrassed and ashamed about, like, oh, I'm a work in progress too, you know, and I think shame about our own sense of like not being who we already want to be is clearly the number one thing that stops people from spiritual, especially more psychological spiritual journeys like meditation and Buddhism, and I think that starts with the teacher giving people permission to be themselves by the teacher demonstrating how they are being authentic in their own process.

I mean, you could not have brought up a better subject than that, and I know it gets confusing for a lot of people when we see teachers from other countries and other places who do are steeped in wisdom and to bring up sokyo Rinpoche, you know, who was a really, really wrote one of my favorite books I've ever read, the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, it's just a wonderful kind of exposition on the Tibetan philosophy of death and life and it's amazing. Yeah, he's immersed in a very serious sexual misconduct scandal, and I'm not just sexual misconduct beating students in a non sexual manner and other all kinds of other incredibly abusive behavior that is not okay under any circumstances and immediately seeing kind of the fallout from when these scandals hit that people typically do what they do in politics, they hit the two camps, they say this is not okay, everything he's ever done is bullshit, and then the other people saying, "No, it doesn't matter, it's still really important what he did," and I'm probably somewhere in the middle, I absolutely don't think someone should ever do that in any situation, but to kind of delegitimize maybe his real wisdom in other areas also doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense, and I think that we're seeing a lot of these things happen.

What's interesting to me, I'm sure you caught this too, is that these Buddhist sexual misconduct scandals happen just a little bit before the Weinstein's stuff, just before the Hollywood things. It was kind of a precursor to what is emerging as a cultural narrative, that the ideas of how we act as men, and this is another thing I'm so happy you brought up to you because I bring up a lot, like, I'm a white straight man who grew up in a middle-class family. I'm pretty much an elite of the world, right? I have almost impunity to do almost anything I want. It's incumbent on people like us to bring up these issues and speak about them and let other people who have experienced the things we're speaking about speak about them because if we don't do it, it's going to be so much harder for people to get this shit out there, and I think this idea of being authentic and owning your own faults and issues to allow people to share their own, that creates the ground on which to actually work on those things, man.

I think it's tremendous that you brought that up. It's so important, so, so important. Yeah, it is, and again, this is such a rich topic, and it would be nice to have somebody who's not a straight white man in the conversation too, so I hope you keep having this conversation with your other guests. I'm trying to do a lot of listening and, you know, when requested to, or when it's in my, you know, the ways that I'm able to express myself on platforms to share my views of the matter, but trying to do a lot of listening. You know, I think, so what I'll say, so obviously this middle path between when somebody has misconduct, not eliminating everything that they're doing, you know, but also saying like they still have some work to do, you know, I think that's incredibly important.

The Sogyo Rinpoche thing is specifically important because I also think a lot of the people are, I mean, this is, again, in my humble opinion. Everything that comes next is Ethan Nickturn speaking from my experience of the Guru-student relationship. So I am not a Guru. My title Shastri, you know, is a senior teacher title in the Shumbala tradition. I can help people along paths with tantric Buddhism. I work with a lot of personal students in what's more like a spiritual mentorship relationship, which is not a binding lifelong devotional relationship. So that's, that's the important thing here is that one of the things that was so interesting about Sogyo Rinpoche and problematic is that he is a Guru, right? So my Guru is Sakyang Meepam Rinpoche, who's a very different manifestation from Sogyo Rinpoche. And to be honest, a very different just type of person from his father, you know, and I'm not sure that I would take on Shogyo Rinpoche as my Guru.

Yeah, that's a crazy one. But he is, Shogyo, I will say this, because Dan Harris asked me about this on his 10% Happier podcast. I will say that Chogyo Rinpoche does always show up like one of the Jedi in the forest at the end of the river and the Jedi. His energy and his power and his teachings are very powerful to me. But so the Guru relationship is, and this is really important to understand because it's also kind of misnomerred in the yoga arena too. So sometimes you have a situation where somebody who's just teaching body practices also is referred to as a Guru and it's highly problematic.

It's the level of training and accountability to be the Guru, not to be the student of a Guru, but to be the Guru. The level of accountability is incredibly high. And so the Guru relationship is basically what you're saying is, "I'm going to notice I'm at a certain point along the path and I've done enough work and I've done enough training that I realize that I need to commit. And I need to commit because I need to be able to work with a connection to a being who represents awakening and represents my connection to awakening in a way that where I don't just like go into my fight or flight limbic system response every time there's an irritation.

You know, there are a lot of irritations, you know, I found out that gladiator was one of Sakhine Meepamir Mshay's favorite movies. That was irritating, you know, and you go into your, I mean, whatever, it's fine. It's a schlocky movie. But so if I'm going to end my relationship with my Guru over that, whereas you might actually say if it's a politician or you're going to a lecture and somebody says something you don't like like that, you might be like, "Screw this person. I'm not listening to anything else they have to say." So you establish a bond beneath all of those minor irritations, and that gives you a space to work in a more blessed and committed way.

So you have to enter that relationship knowingly on both sides. And so what isn't required for the Guru relationship. So what is required is to really commit to a lifelong process to trust that the Guru is not going to do things to hurt you and to be willing to work with your irritations and stay in the space of that relationship. It's not necessarily the closest relationship. I mean, I see the Sakhine a few times a year. He's been my Guru for 16 years. It's been an amazing, amazing relationship, but not always because it's close. It's been amazing because it's trustworthy and I'm committed to it. So I keep doing it. I keep showing up and coming back around. And that seems to be his real commitment to his students in that arena as well.

What it doesn't require is this notion of like, if I do perceive that the Guru is human, or if I perceive that he's done something confused, or maybe he still has a little bit of work to do, that I have to shut up about that, that it's just my misperception. The Guru is really right and I'm the one who's confused about everything. That just doesn't because then you don't trust your own mind. And if the whole relationship is about developing trust in your own mind, you should also trust that there's some wisdom in your own reactions. And so when people go into that explanation of somebody who's clearly kind of confused about the empowerment, and then say like, well, you're not allowed to question the Guru at all because once you enter that relationship, you're just basically saying that any confusion is on the student side.

I just don't think that's human in any way, you know, so it's what it is is a devotional commitment and a trust to keep coming around and working things through. So it would be really interesting to see if it were possible for so your Rinpoche to say, can we work this out and can you still see me representing the wisdom mind enough to keep going in our relationship? But it might be that he's not able to humble himself to say like, oh, this is actually a two-way accountability and I realized I did some things that were confusing and caused harm. And any leader of any type needs to be willing to say, you know, sometimes I don't know what to say.

That's one of the things I really love about Sakang Meepamamshay is he holds a very high seat in Shambhala. He sometimes teaches from a throne to betting style. It can be very off-putting to the sort of occupy Wall Street friends with the horizontal hierarchy friends. But he's also really willing to humble himself to say like, I'm just trying to figure this out too. I mean, he has quite a lot of intelligence and wisdom, but also humility. And I don't feel like if somebody was like, hey, I didn't get why you did that or that part harmed me that he would be like, that's your problem, you know. And some of the defenses of Sogyo Rinpoche took a like, that's your problem approach. And I find that really problematic as both a student and a holder of the Buddhist teaching myself.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Honestly, I'm so happy that we touched on this. I want to wrap up because I want to be mindful of your time. I just want to say also, this has been incredibly awesome. I really, really have enjoyed it. But I end with- Thank you. Yeah, dude. Of course. Anytime. I'd love to do it again. So I end with three quick questions and then one kind of medium one. So they may seem silly, but they're not. Like lightning round. Three lightning round and then one kind of just open format. Okay. Okay. Prepare yourself. What is your favorite color? Red. What is your favorite number? Eight. What's your favorite animal? Dolphin.

Mine too. Awesome. I couldn't. Okay. So what's a tip that you've picked up in your life, a practical tip that you could share with people listening that you think might help? Of any type of tip. Literally. It could be the most mundane to the most sacred. Oh, here's one and it comes from the Shambhala teachings that if you make your bed every morning, you can actually be more inspired to help other people. I'm not a bedmaker, so I'm going to get better shot. Well, you could also make your son do it, right? He's metal. I'm trying to tease him short. I'm giving him dusters and like little things to go around that I'm going to be such a happy guy when my son is actually doing things for me. That's going to be amazing.

We're not there yet. What's your daughter's name, by the way? Her name is Isabella and we gave her the middle name Atlas, which we were also thinking of as a boy's first name because I think her generation is going to have to compassionally hold up the world. With sanity a little bit more. So Izzy Atlas is what she goes by amongst her homies. I like that a lot. It's fun being a dad, right? Oh, man. It's awesome. It's really hard to describe. I mean, I'm getting a little over five months in, but it's so mundane on the one hand. Like so, so mundane, just like learn how to change diapers better and likes to be held this way and, you know, how many half ounces did you feed her, et cetera.

And it's also so like look into this person's eyes and see the mystical origins of the universe and disbelieve everything about scientific materialism as a really pathetic excuse for science and explaining the universe. So I've never had an experience that was simultaneously so mundane and so mystical at the same time. Most of my experiences are kind of in this mid-range where it's like pretty practical and maybe a little spiritual, you know. So to have something that is intensely mundane and intensely mystical at the same time has been very expansive to my consciousness. It's such a great way to put it. I never exactly thought about it like that, but that is exactly what it is. Ethan, thank you so much for coming on ahead of last.

Thank you so much, Nolan. Thanks for educating me a little bit about Bitcoin and, you know, I worked for some non-profit, non-for-profit. So if you ever make it really rich, we can talk. Yeah. And also, seriously, if you ever have any questions on getting started or interested in it, I say this not lightly. I open line of communication. I've been helping a lot of my friends get started and, you know, I think it's worthwhile endeavor for a lot of people. Awesome. Cool, man. Thank you. Alright, bye-bye. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Thank you for listening past the music. I hope you enjoyed that episode. I certainly did. I really liked it.

I haven't re-listened to it yet because I just recorded it, but I guarantee by the time you hear this, I'll re-listen to it and I bet I enjoyed it just as much as second time, if not more. Anyway, big thank you to Patrick Nemchik for supporting this show on Patreon. Gets an episode out every week at the producer level credit. Thank you for listening. If you like synchronicity, there's all the things you can do. Subscribe, community on Facebook, email list, blah, blah, blah, all of that stuff. But maybe just tell someone you care about that they might want to check it out only if you think that would enhance their life. If not, don't do it.

You want to send someone some weird shit where this guy is talking about weed and cryptocurrency all the time and spiritual practices, that's not that fun. If they don't want it. So anyway, I just want to say thank you for listening. I really appreciate it. I'm beginning to see that I will have more time in the coming months. I've been, you know, adjusting, as you know, to Eli and taking care of him every day. If you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, I'm a one and a half year old son. Eli, late of my life, beautiful little boy. But I'm consuming little boy. He's going to have a little more time coming up in the future months.

So I can get back to getting these out regularly. If I'm correct, this is probably coming out a day later than it used to or should rather. Anyway, I'm rambling again at the end here. Just excited about the episode. Excited you're listening. Thanks so much and I'll see you next week.