Tami Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Duncan Trussell. Duncan is a writer, producer, and stand-up comedian. His TV credits include Mad TV, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Funny or Die Presents: Drunk History.
As a stand-up comedian, Duncan regularly performs at premier comedy venues around the country. He has an interest in modern Buddhism and is also a cancer survivor. Duncan Trussell is also a regular guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, and he hosts his own podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour—in which Duncan and a guest explore a diverse range of topics, including art, society, politics, and religion.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Duncan and I spoke about how Duncan brings mindfulness into his life and works with what Pema Chödrön calls “the pause.” We also talked about his personal experiences both with cancer and with debilitating depression, and how these experiences changed him. Finally, we talked about Duncan’s experience of the Earth as a living being, and how he understands the quote from Alan Watts that, “The apple tree produces apples and the Earth produces humans.”
Here’s my conversation with the very openhearted, wise, and funny Duncan Trussell:
Duncan, I heard about you through some friends at the Love Serve Remember Foundation who host a podcast called Mind Rolling. My friends at the Love Serve Remember Foundation said, “You got to get Duncan Trussell on your podcast, Insights at the Edge!”
So, here we are. You host a podcast, of course—The Duncan Trussell Family Hour—and it’s like podcast-interbreeding is happening.
Duncan Trussell: Yay!
TS: Yay!
DT: Nature loves that.
TS: I know! We’re creating—
DT: Or maybe not.
TS: Well, I guess it depends. It depends. Podcast intercourse.
DT: Yes.
TS: Now, what I notice even in starting this way is that our conversation will be disastrous if I try to be funny. And I’d like to start by talking about that. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that whenever I try to be funny, it’s terrible and disastrous. And yet, a lot of people actually report to me that they experience me as funny. But it’s only if I never try.
Here you are—you’re a stand-up comic. I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about that.
DT: I think any time you try to be anything, it’s disastrous. You know? It seems like it’s always pretty much if you want to do something great, then don’t try.
That is actually backed up neurologically. I heard they did these—somehow, they were charting the neural activity of professional basketball players versus people just learning to play. The professional basketball players were using far less of their brains than the people who were just learning to play.
So, that almost points to the idea that that movement that happens when you learn to do something—where it goes from effort-filled to effortless. So I say: don’t try to do anything. That’s what I’m trying to do these days.
TS: I love it. Now, Duncan, I hear that you’re very interested in Buddhism. I’d be curious—would you say that you are a Buddhist? You’re a practicing Buddhist? How would you describe it?
DT: One thing I love about Buddhism is it seems like you don’t necessarily have to claim yourself as a Buddhist. I like that idea of—I don’t remember which essay or who said it, but it was this idea of the difference between faith—as in faith in some deity—and the practice of Buddhism. They said that the Four Jewels—the Four Noble Truths—these must be “picked up,” is the word that was used. You don’t just think, “Oh, yes. That must be the truth, because a lot of smart people say it is.”
For example, “Life is suffering.” You contemplate it, and that’s part of the practice—this contemplation of these ideas that are so simple, but the more you think about it, the more they start opening you up.
So, if that makes you a Buddhist—the contemplation of those ideas—then I would say, “Sure, I’m a Buddhist.” But when people ask if I’m Buddhist, I don’t classify myself under any religion. But I do love Buddhism. My girlfriend calls herself a “Satanic Buddhist,” which I think is a pretty awesome . . . or something.
TS: What makes her Satanic?
DT: I don’t think she’s Satanic at all. I think she just likes the way it sounds.
TS: Right, right. OK.
Now, I’m curious—what would you say are the ideas within Buddhism that you’ve encountered that you really enjoy contemplating? What is it that’s drawn you in?
DT: Yes. I think that—that’s a great question. Let me just think about that.
TS: Don’t try!
DT: [Laughs.] So, I spend a lot of time thinking about mindfulness, which is probably what you’re not supposed to do. But I do really love playing around with not being stuck or not getting trapped by the hooks, which are the many, many thoughts that come zinging through the mind at any given moment.
So, I do enjoy—and I find it quite useful—to see how much I can let that river of thought flow through me without reacting to it. That I have found to be incredibly useful in my life. Even when you end up reacting to whatever specific thing is popping into your head, you can always go back to that practice of mindfulness.
That’s one thing I love. The other thing I love is what Pema Chödrön calls “the pause”—that moment before you react or before you decide to do anything like check your email or whatever. If you just wait a few seconds and then do it, that really does throw a nice brick into the pattern of existence that anyone has gotten stuck in. Just doing that one little thing creates this amazing shift.
You know, my friend was quoting Tony Robbins—and I don’t have any problem with that. He was saying that if you take two ships moving in one direction and one ship gets just a tiny, little bit going in the other direction, the two ships will end up on the other side of the world over time. So, those little things like the pause that Chödrön talks about—if you’ve always been reacting to your life [and] you start practicing that—or mindfulness, or these subtle things in Buddhism—then [over time] you find yourself in a completely different life than you might have been if you’re somebody who’s always reacting to your thought-forms or the external universe in an instantaneous way.
TS: It’s interesting that you brought up the pause, because one of the things that I’m curious about is the sense of timing in stand-up comedy and how potentially the practice of mindfulness meditation, learning to pause, [and] working with space in that way—with that sense of opening up—how that might affect your timing as a performer.
DT: You know, with stand-up, the idea of timing and that kind of stuff is superseded by the imperative of being authentic. Buddhism, meditation practice, mindfulness practice [are] a great way to become more authentic. I think that sometimes audiences can read that on a person.
Whenever I’m around somebody who’s been practicing a bunch—and that certainly isn’t me. But when I get around somebody like—like whenever I’ve gotten to meet somebody who’s spent a lot of time at this practice, like Kornfield. When I got to meet Jack Kornfield or Ram Dass. There’s something so entrancing about them in everything they do. They don’t really need to be talking. They just sort of—something about them is so interesting.
I think that that would serve a performer really well. A comedian or a spiritual teacher—anybody.
So, the timing thing feels more like an instinctual aspect of stand-up comedy. I don’t know how much meditation will help with timing. There is a great performer—when you talk about this, it pops into mind right away, this performer—Tig Notaro. Look her up. Yes. She is great, man.
What she does is she will just completely be in the moment of whatever’s happening. She has the jokes, but they’re the strangest jokes. But really, what she’s doing is—somehow, by really being connected to the now—it brings out this incredible absurdity. I’ve never seen anything like it. You should check her out. She reminds me of what you’re saying.
TS: OK. What’s interesting to me is—as you’re talking about being authentic [as] being the number one principle, if you will, of being effective as a stand-up comic—normally, a lot of times when I see comedians, I don’t feel they’re being authentic at all. I feel like they’re giving me their shtick. Granted, I’m not a fan of those kinds of comedians, but it’s interesting to me that you would say that that’s the number one principle in your view.
DT: For me.
TS: Yes, for you.
DT: For me. And there’s so many different styles of comedy out there—from old-school Catskills vaudeville style comedy. There’s a whole tree of comedic styles that vary in the same way that there’s various styles of paintings—from paintings of olives diving into martinis [and] those paintings that retired people buy when they’re drunk at the beach, to Van Gogh. The difference between those two is so extreme.
In stand-up comedy, it’s the same way. Really, if you’re drunk and retired and feel like buying one of the most horrifying, bland, embarrassing paintings—well, I think it’s that way, but they might think it’s beautiful. In the same way with stand-up comedy, you’ve got people like Louis CK—who, if you compare his style of comedy to the kind of frenetic, brilliant but very improv-y acting style of Robin Williams, you’re looking at two completely different things.
So, I think comedy is a very subjective thing. For me, the only way that I feel good when I’ve performed is if I feel like I’ve really connected to the audience as I am in that moment.
TS: What’s really interesting to me is I could go so far as to say that I think one of the outcomes of a deep spiritual life is the ability to be oneself, to be authentic, to not be embarrassed about who you are and how you feel in any given moment. So that’s just interesting, because what it brings me to is this topic I really want to talk with you about—which is, if you feel there are deep commonalities between the path of the artist for you—an artistic path—and the spiritual path. What [might be] some of those common themes?
DT: I know that the more I get out of my way when it comes to stand-up comedy or podcasting or performing or creating, the better everything becomes. So, it feels like the less my ego is involved in the thing and the more I become a kind of conduit—so that when I’m done performing, it feels like I haven’t really been on stage.
There’s the ego part of me that gets really nervous before I go onstage, or feels gloomy about having to on stage sometimes, or feels excited about having to go onstage. Then there’s the part of me that’s onstage when things are going well. And when things are going well, that’s not me. I don’t know what that is. But it feels like I’m not there.
So, then when I’m offstage—when I’m done performing—there’s been almost a time warp and it’s very difficult to explain that feeling. But I’ve had that feeling when I’m writing. With the best podcasts, suddenly two hours have passed and it feels like a second.
So, I think that those are all examples of transcending the ego mechanisms, popping out of the time-space continuum for a moment, and hopefully becoming some kind of transmitter of the whole as well as you can. I think that that is something that makes any act a work of art, whether it’s mowing your lawn or playing the violin in a symphony.
For some artists, I think some people like to look at things as a kind of hierarchy. People come up to me and say, “I just don’t know how you could have the courage to get onstage.” And I don’t! I would say that I get onstage, I guess. But it’s not me up there anyway, if things are going well. There’s something to be said for that. I don’t know if that’s Buddhism or what that is, necessarily. But I love it.
And it is a little scary to lose yourself in something. I think that’s why a lot of people resist writing and resist art and procrastinate doing things they love. It’s because, if you’re really doing something you love, you vanish for a little bit.
TS: Do you have vanishing techniques or ways to help yourself get out of your way? Are there things you do?
DT: Well, yes—there’s a lot of things that you can do for that. There’s a ton of things you can do, from LSD to jogging. There’s lots of ways to get into those moments. Meditation, of course. Mantra chanting. I’m a fan of all methods that get you to that point.
Dying! That’s a method. That’s in there too.
TS: Dangerous one to practice.
DT:[Laughs.] Yes, that’s the kind of meditation you only do once. Well, I guess it depends on your religion.
I think that there’s lots of ways to do it. And I think mindfulness is a great inroad into that, because it does create an initial bifurcation between the self and the perceived—between the atman and the paramatman, as they say. Between the little eye and the big eye, the watcher and the watched.
I think Chögyam Trungpa—if you read Meditation and Action, he kind of starts chipping away even at that, saying that here you have duality again, between these two. Now you have this notion of the observer and the observed, but that creates a split universe. He’s always pushing you even out of that into some other place.
But as an interim method for someone who hasn’t quite gotten out of the self, I love that mindfulness is a way to sort of pop out of the little eye into the big eye. The few times in my life I’ve had it—where I’ve experienced a kind of incredible, expansive, non-being-ness. It’s the most beautiful feeling of all time. But then I always pop back into this meat body that I happen to be stuck in right now.
TS: You mention something interesting to me: that before you perform, sometimes you feel gloomy or terrified or something like that. That’s something that I’m familiar with in times that I’ve had to go onstage, sometimes. I have that experience, and I’ve been trying to find different ways to work with it because it seems like a whole lot of suffering unnecessarily. Because then, once I’m onstage, I relax. What have you discovered, Duncan? Can you help me?
DT: Yes. Booze!
[Both laugh.]
DT: Or, if you don’t want to do that, try thinking of that great verse in the Bhagavad Gita—I think it’s in the second chapter: “You have a right to your action. You do not have a right to the fruits of your action.”
So, that means—of course—that if you’re nervous about being onstage, then it means that your mind is probably focusing on the outcome instead of the moment. Focusing on the outcome when you go onstage will reduce your effortlessness. If I’m going up and I’m like, “Oh man, I want to kill tonight. I’m going to be so funny,” that already is an indication to me that my mind isn’t in the right place.
It’s like surfing on waves you wish existed versus waves that actually exist. Obviously, you have to surf on the waves that actually exist if you want to get back to the shore and have a nice ride. In that same way, when you step on stage, you’re stepping into a moment in time that will never happen again and has never happened before. If you can step on that stage with no trying to shape it with some intended outcome, then you’ll maybe reduce that anxiety a little bit.
But a performer explained to me that anxiety is actually—you should look at that feeling as your energy building up that you’re about to disperse in your performance. Instead of thinking that this nervousness is the unnatural response, or indicates that I haven’t prepared enough, or that things are going to go bad—as you’re being mindful and watching this, you will see that really what you’re watching is a kind of growing energy that’s building up inside of you. That feeling that we call nervousness may in fact just be the precursor to this discharge that’s going to happen when you do whatever performance that you’re about to do.
So, that way you can recognize it as an ally instead of an enemy or a harbinger of doom.
TS: That’s very helpful. Thank you!
DT: Sure!
TS: Now, Duncan, I’m curious about your response to this question. I had the chance to interview the musician k.d. lang. In that, she talked about her experience of meeting a teacher—Lama Gyatso, who became her Buddhist teacher—and how the first thing he said to her was, “The most important thing, k.d., is your motivation when you’re singing. What’s your motivation?”
That’s my question to you. What’s your motivation?
DT: For stand-up?
TS: When you’re performing, yes. Even when you’re doing your podcast and stuff. What’s your motivation?
DT: Oh, goodness. God, I’m terrified of having a motivation for it. Not to disrespect what her teacher said—
TS: No, no, no. That’s OK. Yes, yes. I’m just asking you, so I’m using that as a jumping-off point.
DT: That’s a very personal relationship between a teacher and student. I don’t want to have that, because I’m afraid of that. I don’t want to have a reason because I think the moment you start having a reason why—and your mind will produce [them]. I have “reasons” all the time. Like, “Ah, I can’t wait to talk whoever the guest happens to be, because I’m really curious about . . .”
For example, I had this great guest on—Jason Louv, who has been a practitioner of chaos magick. It was like, “Whoa, cool! This is going to be awesome to talk about magick and spells!” So, that’ll get me excited for that interview, and it’ll change for other interviews.
Then I can think [that] OK, maybe what I like is the feeling of revelation. Maybe that’s what I enjoy—those moments with a guest where they give me a new outlook in the universe that I hadn’t considered yet. And my universe expands. So, I could say, “Oh, it’s education,” or it’s personal growth, or it’s recording the moments of revelation that hopefully will then transmit through the Internet, around the planet, to everyone who’s listening and maybe make their lives a little better too. And maybe they’ll make other people’s lives better.
Then I could make that bigger, into thinking that, “Oh, this is part of the Singularity!” We’re all getting sucked into a technological Singularity. This kind of technology was completely inaccessible to humans only a very, very short time ago. And now, we have the power to reach the entire planet. If I can get really smart people to shoot that energy into me and into the rest of the universe through this insane technology, then I get to become part of the world that’s making a better, more beautiful place.
But then my mind will think, “What are you, you lofty asshole? Who do you think you are, Gandhi? You play video games and smoke weed all the time! Shut up!” And then I’ll agree with that, being like, “Yes, absolutely.” If I start doing podcasts with the intention of helping the world, everything will fall apart—because that is so pretentious and high-falutin’.
So, we all have to go back to that moment of, “Wow, this is really fun.” If I keep it there, everything’s great. But the moment I apply some, “Here’s why I’m doing it!” boy, things will get weird quick.
TS: It’s very interesting to me, because I think I’ve been very motivation-focused. As I’m listening to you, I’m thinking, “Wow, that’s wildly different.” Even taking away that as a reference point—even the motivation to be of service or be helpful or uplift people or whatever. Something like that. You’re just erasing all of it.
DT: I prefer to erase it all just because if I get too caught up in that stuff—you know, Chögyam Trungpa talks about [this,] and I’ve always wondered about this. The second temptation when Mara appears to the Buddha is Mara [presenting] Siddhartha Gautama with his daughters. I always wondered about that. It was always really curious to me. What does that mean?
I thought it always meant, “Oh, the lord of death is trying to trick Buddha into getting married, having kids, and living that kind of life as though that were bad.” That always seemed weird to me, because Buddhism is not a monastic religion (even though it does have aspects of that). So, what does that mean?
And then Chögyam Trungpa says that the daughters of Mara represent the part of the mind that—when you start waking up—begins to say to you, “Oh, look at you. You’re getting enlightened. Oh, aren’t you wonderful?” That’s just another trap. It’s just another trick of the ego to get you stuck a little bit more. If the premise behind my understanding of this stuff is to get out of the way and things will get better, then that means you have to let go of even the motivation for why you’re doing stuff, if you can.
TS: OK. Switching gears for a moment, one of the things that I learned when I was doing a little bit of research for this conversation was that on Wikipedia, it says that you actually were diagnosed with testicular cancer and that, fortunately, the cancer was successfully treated. This was a couple of years ago.
DT: That’s right!
TS: I’m curious to know a little bit about just what that whole experience was like for you.
DT: Oh, it sucked! Actually, when we were talking about mindfulness, I was just at the—every four to six months . . . I can’t remember. It’s every certain amount of months, I have to get a CAT scan.
So, with testicular cancer, it is a very treatable—it’s maybe the most treatable [and] curable form of cancer. After you have one of your testicles snipped off by one of the kind doctors, there’s a 10—well, it’s lower than 10, but it’s more like 7 percent chance of it recurring. But because of that chance, every six months or so, you’ve got to go get a CAT scan. Have you ever gotten a CAT scan?
TS: No, I never have.
DT: So, it’s really intense. You go in and they inject you with this stuff called . . . oh God, what’s it called? They inject you with this weird stuff and they make you drink this weird stuff. It’s called “contrast.” Basically, it allows the CAT scan to see what’s going on inside your body and to see if perhaps the cancer has spread, has come back, is recurrent.
In between getting a CAT scan—there’s this awful time period in between getting the CAT scan and when the doctors tell you if you’re OK. That’s where mindfulness is very useful, because you sit and you watch your mind just go nuts when you’re waiting for the doctor. Just go nuts. Your mind will just vomit every terrible scenario that it possibly can. Within a millisecond, you’re planning your funeral. You’re already dead.
It doesn’t matter that there’s a 10 percent chance—a very small chance, an 8 percent chance. Your mind does not care about statistics. Your mind will only go rushing in the direction of whatever emotional energy you’ve become the most addicted to—which in my case is apparently fear. It’ll just go rushing in these directions, and that’s where mindfulness comes in very handy.
So, that’s where I am now with it. Everything’s fine. The results [from the CAT scan] are great. I found that out today.
But, in the macro, getting cancer of any type—and I also lost my mother to cancer—you get insider info. You get a little backstage pass into the inner workings of things, and you end up realizing that cancer is a teacher unlike any other teacher. It really does have this paradoxical effect of simultaneously threatening your life while giving you life that you never had. That’s a weird thing that it does, but it really does do that.
The whole process of going through that—and of watching my mom go through that—has really connected me to the world. I think it made me alive. I mean, I was alive before physically, but I don’t think I really appreciated life as much as I do now.
So, I know that’s a very clichéd thing. It’s the subject of a lot of country songs and cheeseball movies, but it’s true. It really is a strange gift.
TS: I’m going to go even more cheeseball, if that’s OK—because I’m being authentic and I’m kind of a serious person often. And kind of cheesy too—warm, cheesy.
DT: Me too.
TS: But I’m wondering if your experience with cancer has opened your heart in some way—changed your level of heart-centeredness in any way.
DT: Absolutely! Yes. It sure has. It’s great. It really has. I mean, it really has.
It’s so weird: as a comedian, you go on these auditions or you get these possibilities of work. Some of them involve pranking people or maybe being deceptive, and it’s like I can’t even do that now. I used to be able to do that stuff, and I used to be able to—not that I’m not mean. I do have outbursts and can be a real dick sometimes, but it’s nothing like what I used to be like.
TS: I’m not sure I believe you, Duncan. That’s the first thing you’ve said that—I’m sure you have outbursts. That I believe. But the dick part. I’m not sure I believe it.
DT: [Laughs.] You should have seen me a couple of days ago!
But I think that what happened is that right after my mom died, Raghu Markus—who introduced us—has this very strange ability to call me at exactly the right time. I was in a really dark place. I was mourning. I remember just laying in bed, not moving and sort of feeling completely dejected and empty. He called, and it was really intense. He was like, “Just come to the spring retreat.”
And I was thinking about doing it, but I was so depressed—in this state of just being frozen. I wasn’t really going to do anything. I was just going to lay there for a few weeks, probably.
He was like, “Just come. Stop thinking about it. Just come. Come to the retreat. Come to the retreat. Come to the retreat.” I was like, “All right. Fine.” You know when you’re depressed and you can barely move and it feels like your body’s filled with liquid metal? I dragged myself to my computer, got a plane ticket, went there, and then he took me to Ram Dass’s house. I got to be around him for a little bit, and I think that—the cancer, those teachings, and that energy that comes from that satsang—that’s what finally did it. It’s the combo.
TS: It’s interesting that you mentioned not being able to maybe do some of the “mean pranks” that you might have done several years ago, because that was one of my questions for you. As a sensitive person—I feel sensitive—I notice that when comedy has too much meanness in it, I feel like it’s—a simple way to put it would be, “It’s kind of bringing me down.” It shuts me down a bit. It makes me feel bad. That’s not the kind of inputs I want.
DT: Right. Me either.
TS: I’m curious: for you, as a performer who’s maybe asked to be in all different kinds of situations, if there’s some kind of debasement in a mean way toward others—or something like that. It’s hard to embody the Buddha dharma, if you will, and act that at the same time—I would imagine.
DT: Well, this is the thing, though: comedy transcends ethics. Art transcends morality. A skillful comedian—as long as he’s expressing what’s truly inside of him or her—as long as it’s coming out purely, I think everything goes.
But! This is something that Ram Dass talks about—“phony holy.” [This] is people who like to pretend that they’ve really—you’ll run into them every once and a while. Where it feels like they’re judging you when you get around them. If you’ve been around people like teachers that I’m sure you’ve been around—
TS: Sure.
DT: If you’ve been around any kind of teacher, you know what that feels like. In Buddhism, especially, you read about how there is a priority deal: keep truth above consistency.
I can’t remember where I read this, but [there is] something about Gandhi was doing some salt march. They were doing a protest march, and he decided not to do it for some reason. They’re like, “We told everybody that we were going to do this.” He was like, “I can’t do it because it doesn’t seem right anymore.” He’s the one who said that: “Truth is more important than consistency.”
So anyway, that’s the long, rambling way of saying that methods sometimes can seem mean when they’re not. There’s the Buddhist story of the kids in the burning house. The father is standing outside, and he knows that the quickest way to get them out of the house is to tell them, “I’ve got presents for you out here! Presents! Tons of presents!” And the kids come running out of the house. I guess they’re too ridiculously dumb to smell the smoke. They come running out of the house and they’re upset that there’s no presents, but they didn’t burn to death.
In the moment, that methodology could be considered mean, minus the fire. In the same way, for a comedian or an artist or whatever, I think that as long as you’re being authentic—if you happen to be a mean person or you’re in a mean phase of your life—that’s where you’re at. I don’t think it feels that great for you. It might work for the audience, but it’s not going to work for you.
But in the same way, if you’re an artist or a performer who’s got caught up in being negative and dark—even though inside you just feel that your heart is opening up and you’re feeling empathy and compassion all of the time—annoying—then you got to have the courage to stick to that and not pretend that you’re mean. In other words, if there’s “phony holy,” then there’s also “phony unholy”—which is people pretending to be these monsters when in fact they’re sweet little balls of honey just wanting love and wanting to give love. There’s a lot of them out there.
TS: “Sweet little balls of honey.” I like it.
DT: Yes, I shouldn’t have said “balls” right after we were talking about testicular cancer, but . . .
TS: Yes, I was wondering how much mileage you got out of your testes being removed.
DT: [Laughs.] I did it for a little bit just because I talked it on the podcast. It would have seemed weird, because I went on tour a few months after it happened—when I was OK again [and] didn’t have to perform again. So, I did talk about it. But I don’t talk about it anymore, because I just don’t see the point. It doesn’t feel funny enough and it’s just not anywhere that I want to focus my mind when I’m onstage.
TS: Now, you mentioned this period of depression after your mom’s death. We’ve been working on a project here at Sounds True called Darkness Before Dawn: Redefining the Journey through Depression, where we received a bunch of essays—and also I interviewed several different spiritual teachers, writers, and healers—about their experiences of depression and putting it in a different framework for people. [It tries] to understand it potentially as something that is part of many people’s spiritual journey, and depression actually as a teacher—not necessarily as this terrible thing that we should just medicate ourselves out of ever feeling. Not that there isn’t a role for medication.
But I’m curious to know: in your experience as an artist and spiritual journeyer, how [would] you frame depression?
DT: Yes, OK. I think it’s a natural part of the cycle of growth. It’s just like nervousness or any other feeling. Now, I do think there’s a neurological component. I’ve seen images of brain scans of people who have depression, and for people who have overwhelming depression, I think anything goes to get out of that state, because that’s no state to be in. That’s like when you see those poor mice who are stuck on the gum traps and they can’t get off. It’s just like, “Forget it, man. You need help, and you got to ask for help.”
With depression, you have to do the same thing that you do when your car is stuck in the mud. Any little bit that you can do to start moving towards a place of traction, do it. Even if it just means doing half the dishes one day when you haven’t done them in a week, these tiny little movements forward can get you out of it. Like any other disastrous thing that can happen to a person, it is all part of the growing process. But it’s not something that—it’s a dangerous thing. I think it’s dangerous.
It’s dangerous, and it’s one of those things where when you find yourself laying on the mattress, unable to move, completely disable, staying inside all the time, relationships floundering—all that stuff—you got to fight for your life.
I think it’s one of those things where it’s like—so many other things we don’t have to worry about when we get sick. Thank God, because I would just be dead meat from a cold. Our immune system will fight the cold. This war is always raging inside of us as our white blood cells do this beautiful battle against all the various things that infect us. And we don’t have to think about it! We can sit and drink beer, smoke vape-pens, and watch crappy movies while our body is engaged in this intense war to keep us alive.
But with depression, we have to become the immune system. We have to rally the troops. That means you have to call your friends right away and be like, “Hey, I can’t move. I’m so depressed. Please help.” You have to ask people for help, and then you have to help yourself by doing real basic stuff like hydrating, exercising.
So yes, I think it’s part of the process—but it’s not a place to dwell. It’s not a place you want to stay at. If you can do anything to start moving against that, you should do that. It’s such a terrible thing. It really is. It’s just such a terrible disease.
Also, the other thing is that if you get a disease, what’s so weird is generally everyone will come [to] you. You announce it, and everyone will just tweet, “I need some soup.” And probably, depending on your Twitter followers, someone will be like, “I’ll bring you some soup.” But for some reason, tweeting, “I’m so depressed. Will someone please help me?” That feels so awful to a depressed person. You’ll admit that you have a fever, diarrhea—whatever it is, you’ll admit that. That’s conversation at the Sizzler. Especially at Sizzler, if you have diarrhea.
But depression? That’s the first thing it does. You try to hide it from people. And the moment you tell people, “I am awfully depressed,” then you’ll get help from the universe.
Sorry. I didn’t mean to get all—
TS: No, that’s fine. I want to hear what you have to say. I’m curious to know: having come through such a period in your life, do you feel that it changed you in some way? Or if you could say that depression was a teacher besides, “Get out of the mud and ask your friends for help, or ask anyone for help, really. Reach out. Get help.” How did the experience of depression change you, if it did?
DT: Well, it’s something that I stay on guard [for] now. I know what I act like when I’m depressed.
So, that’s one way it changed me. I try to be very clean now. I try to keep a very clean house and do my dishes and make the bed if I remember. Just do stuff that I know I don’t do when I’m depressed.
If I start seeing these warning signs popping up, then I’ll just fix the externals. And also I’ll start exercising.
I’m sorry. I don’t really have a very romantic answer to that. I’ve had my mom die and had radiation therapy and one of my balls chopped off—but man, those things are like getting a kiss on the neck by an angel compared to depression. It’s so bad! I just try to do everything I can to keep myself out of that place.
TS: Yes, I think your answer was quite practical, and I really appreciated it. Just quite pragmatic. Thank you.
I’m curious, because I think Robin Williams’ death affected a lot of us. It affected me really deeply. I think it affected the culture—you could say the fabric of our world. I’m wondering how it affected you, if it did, and in what way.
DT: Again, that’s an extreme example of what it will do to you. As someone who has been depressed, it only emphasized the importance of—as much as possible—of doing everything in my power to avoid that mind-state.
I think that the brain scans of people that you see—maybe that comes after a series of events and decisions that lead to that. Not to say that it’s your fault if you’re depressed—and I don’t think it is. That’s like saying that it’s your fault that you’re alive. Who knows why it happened?
I know who have clinical, horrible bouts of depression who are on antidepressants and are productive, happy, and have great families, who have overcome it. They say the same thing, which is that you’ve got to be in charge of yourself. In the same way you’ve got to drink enough water or you’ll be dehydrated, if you’re angry, you got to tell people that you’re angry. If you’re feeling any kind of anxiety or fear that’s overwhelming, just ask for help.
So, it just reminded me of the importance of that. It also made me more aware of when my friends are expressing those kinds of jokes about being depressed, then I’ll be more empathetic than I have in the past.
TS: OK, Duncan, I want to dig a little deeper into one part of our conversation if that’s OK.
DT: Sure.
TS: You seem game. Which is: you’ve talked a couple different ways about being authentic. Not trying as a performer; being true to what’s in you; and if you’re true to what’s in you, then it’s the kind of performance that you at least would like to watch—maybe, most likely.
DT: Yes.
TS: At the same time, we talked about not—for you—linking to a definitive motivation. You’re not going to hang your hat on a particular motivation in your life. You’re open.
So, what that brings up for me is: is it possible that there’s times when you could be being authentic but it could actually be damaging? Like, “I feel authentically like punching you,” or, “I feel authentically like . . .” whatever. And it’s like, “Great. I’m glad that Duncan’s being so authentic, but because he’s not hanging his hat on any kind of motivation, he can really create damage. How does he make sense of that?”
DT: Yes, right. There’s a mystifying verse in the Bhagavad Gita [where] it says, “Even the vilest of criminals, if their mind is absorbed in me, they will cross over the ocean of nations as easily as someone stepping over a puddle.” That’s Bhakti yoga, and the Bhagavad Gita is set on a battlefield where Arjuna is about to be compelled to be authentically his true self—which is a kshatriya, a warrior who is about to kill a bunch of people.
So, this is a question that is very perplexing because the idea is that if we are our authentic selves and our authentic selves want to be violent, then is it OK to commit acts of violence?
I don’t have an answer for that. I don’t know. Fortunately, my authentic self seems to be more interested in taking naps than hurting anybody.
[Both laugh.]
DT: But I don’t know. I’m going to just say I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t know.
OK: A meteor slams into planet Earth. For example, the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. When you read in the science textbooks, you never see them say that the meteor hated dinosaurs or that was an angry meteor. The meteor is part of nature. So, nature is considered to be outside of ethics. But the moment the universe becomes a human, it becomes subject to these ideas of, “Here’s the right way to be and here’s the wrong way to be.” That’s a really fascinating thing.
Then we’re always beating ourselves up for being terrible people, when we are just no different from the ocean or from the wind. We’re just a form of energy—a kind of harmonized sequence of DNA that is producing cells and a skeleton to hang those cells on. Somewhere along that construction, there becomes this thing where it’s like, “Here’s what’s right and here’s what’s wrong. Here’s the way you’re supposed to act; here’s the way you’re not supposed to act.”
For example, recently there’s that scandal where that football player punched his fiancée in an elevator. Knocked her out. You could say, “He’s being his authentic self, Duncan.” Is he forgiven for that? Is that OK for him to do that?
Well, I don’t know. But I will say that everyone who is ostracizing him, kicking him—because I don’t know if you saw the line of people turning in his jersey—and the reaction he’s getting from the rest of the universe. I think the rest of the universe is being its authentic self too—and is dealing with the situation in a lot of different ways which hopefully will teach him a grand lesson about what happens if you allow your violent impulses to subvert what I would hope are impulses that lay beneath the violence. Which is, love and compassion.
So, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a cop-out to say [that] human beings are a gobstopper, and on the outside of the gobstopper is a dark layer of anger and reaction that involves unnecessary violence or aggression. Then, as you go deeper and deeper in, you find that the authentic self—no matter what way you try to cut it—has at its core a nice, thick layer of love. Maybe the more that you work on yourself, practice, and connect to Krishna or God or the universal consciousness or the truth, your first authentic reaction doesn’t involve punching—it involves healing or loving.
It’s just a cop-out! I don’t know. That’s a question for the Dalai Lama.
TS: Talking about this sense of love and compassion being underneath—at the core—of who we are, this brings me to a final thing that I want to talk to you about, Duncan. Which is: I heard in the Mind Rolling podcast that we mentioned earlier you [talking] about the Earth being alive and your sense that there is actually a healing energy—this love, compassion—coming from the Earth. So, tell me more about that.
DT: I feel like the Earth is alive! If you look on YouTube, there’s the sound of one of the energy layers around the Earth. It’s amazing. The Earth makes a sound. You can listen to it. It’s in the magnetosphere or something. And it sounds like birds! It sounds like birds or whale song. It’s this sad, mournful, beautiful chirping sound.
Then, of course, the International Space Station—they just found plankton on it. On the International Space Station! They theorize that the plankton got there because it rose up from the oceans. That means that the Earth is this kind of maternal force that is blowing life into space. Ultimate optimism, by the way—to spread life into the great, gassy void of the universe.
But that’s what she’s doing, and she’s singing while she’s doing it. She’s also sort of giving unconditional love to all the beings that are moving around her. You get to eat her. It’s really interesting! If you look at the thing from space, it looks alive. It’s this big, blue-green beautiful thing.
It seems to be alive. I’m alive, and I came out of the Earth. I consider myself a part of the Earth. So, if I’m alive, then the Earth must be alive. The sum total of all sentience, consciousness, life, all heartbeats, cellular processes, and all interactions would be the personality of the Earth. [Right now,] it seems to be waking up to itself in the form of the Internet and all the various connective technologies that are creating a kind of rudimentary neurology.
You can read more about this if you look up the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his idea of the Omega Point. He predicted the Internet before there was even a fax machine!
Yes—check that stuff out. I do think the Earth is alive, and I think that the Earth—like any other creature—is evolving and is gaining some consciousness.
TS: Now, you said, “I came out of the Earth.” I think most people think that they came out of their parents and that the human species—did that come out of the Earth? Humans?
DT: Sure! I mean, yes. Whatever I’m made of—well, now it’s different. But when you’re a baby, when the fetus is developing, what is that? What’s fueling the development? It’s whatever your mom’s eating and drinking. Your mother’s body is transforming that into fundamental units of energy that are being used to allow the genetic code in the DNA of the fetus to print out a baby. And all the things that your mother ate came from the Earth.
So, you’re made of the Earth. I love the idea that some freaks have, that DNA is some kind of interstellar thing that came in on a comet or something. I don’t know about any of that. But I would say—in the same way that I would say that if I have a cheese that came from a block of cheese that has been shaped in some different [way], I would still say that the cheese came from the block of cheese. And the block of cheese I came out of was a planet.
This is the Alan Watts idea where he said, “In the same way an apple tree apples, the Earth peoples.” It makes people. That’s what it does. It pops out people.
TS: OK, Duncan—I got one final question for you. This program’s called Insights at the Edge, and I’m always curious to know what someone’s “edge” is in their life. What I mean by that is: what’s the thing inside of you that you’re growing into, working with, grappling with, wrestling with? What’s your sort of growth edge, if you will?
DT: I’m afraid to die. I’m glad you asked me that, because as I mentioned, I got these CAT scan results today—which are fine. But I had been putting that off for months, and I was not supposed to do that. I was doing that out of fear—because I was afraid. That’s all. I was afraid of the outcome, because I’m afraid to die.
My brain managed to fool me into thinking that the CAT scan was the thing that was going to give me the cancer. It’s ridiculous! But I was feeding into that, and I allowed the fear to conquer me. Then what ended up happening was—for a few months—I got to live in a kind of secret state of terrible anxiety because I didn’t want to tell anybody that I was putting this off. Anyone who loves me in their right mind would say, “What are you doing? Go get that done! You’re being ridiculous.” Which was exactly what my brother said when I finally confessed to him what I was doing.
Now, I have this incredible burden lifted off of me. I feel so good. So good. And so relieved.
So, yes. That’s my edge. I’ve got to do less of the—I guess you can’t say that word on this show.
TS: You can say whatever.
DT: I got to be less of a pussy! Again, all those things that we’re most afraid of—that’s the teacher. That’s a very funny thing when you’re someone who likes to think they’re on a spiritual path—that, actually, if you’re putting off things that you’re afraid of, you’re running in the opposite direction of the arms of your teacher. If you don’t have a guru—which I don’t have necessarily, or a living one anyway—that’s what you get in this incarnation. CAT scans!
Guru CAT Scan. What a sweetie.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Duncan Trussell. He’s the host of The Duncan Trussell Family Hour, and you can find out more about his work at duncantrussell.com.
Duncan, thank you so much! Thanks for being so frickin’ real.
DT: No, thank you! You had a great interview! That was a hoot.
TS: You are not a pussy, just for the record. No way. No way. You’re very bold, very courageous, and you say it the way you feel it. You really report truthfully on your experience. So, thank you.
DT: Thank you so much. It’s really been wonderful chatting with you. Let me know when it goes up, and I’ll tweet it and everything.
TS: Cool! SoundsTrue.com. Many voices, one journey. Thanks for listening.
DT: Hare Krishna!
