In this episode, Michael, Bishnu, Blake and Sehen join Sanju to ask Professor Doug Powers rapid-fire questions! Questions range from psychological and phenomenological to trivia, politics, sports and more!
Transcript
Doug: Can I sing a for you…Ah, I can get no satisfaction…though I’m driving here and I’m driving down, trying to make something go. Hey, baby, come back the same day. Hey, I can’t get no satisfaction. (Laughs)
[Bell]
Sanju: This is the fourth and a special episode of the DRBU Podcast. I’m Sanju and for this episode, we had rapid fire questions with Professor Doug powers. Mr. Powers is the professor we all love. He has unique ways of making wisdom fun and relevant. Find out more about Doug Powers and Drbu.edu. For this episode in the studio were Michael, Vishnu, Blake, Sehen and me. We hope you enjoyed the episode as much as we did!
Sanju: How would you introduce yourself in 30 seconds?
Doug: It’s really interesting that you guys want to hear anything from me because basically, I don’t do anything. There’s nothing I could really say of any use to you. But since you’ve invited me here, I can try to ruin your life in some kind of way… to wreck what you believe in a way that will make you really sad when you realize you’re full of it, you know, full of s***. So, ah, I’m a person that probably you should not listen to if you want to continue down the path of your current lifestyle and life experience and mythologies.
[Bell]
Blake: How do I get free?
Doug : Stop thinking, stop, emoting, don’t attach to anything. Don’t pay any attention to what’s arising and try to do nothing really well. Try to be totally unproductive and don’t worry about it and try to not do anything that anybody actually wants you to do.
[Bell]
Sehen: What keeps you at DRBU?
Doug: You guys! you guys are all these all these cool people here and it’s something to do you know otherwise you know you just slowly but surely drift away into some kind of empty space and disappear. So, hanging out with you guys. You’re not yet any empty space so I can hang out with your false thinking which is really fun.
[Bell]
Sanju : What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
Doug: I usually take a quick shower, and then I sit and meditate for about an hour or so. And it kind of depends. Usually, I try to sit at least an hour. And then I empty out to start a new day and I try to start every day totally new and fresh as a completely new person. And then I just sort of like deal with it as it arises. And I try not to carry anything from one day to another in terms of like my identity or who I am or whatever… and that way I can stay always fresh and new young and kind of you know 17..
[Bell]
Blake: What makes you angry?
Doug: I don’t think I get angry. I think I have a problem with injustice. And I have a problem with the total ridiculous absurd myths that everybody thinks is going on… like a free market … kind of like really hilarious myths that most people are ruining their lives by. I’m a little sad that they actually believe any of that s***. But you know, other than the sadness of that, I get a little upset when I see direct injustice, and then we’re not collectively moving towards something more just rather than continuing all these myths.
[Bell]
Sanju: Do you have a favorite movie, Doug?
Doug: A favorite movie, ahh? I like old German movies like Herzog. I like Herzog and the old German movies in the 70s and some of the French movies in the 70s. Then his spectacular movies that are big screen type things that cinematography of them is really beautiful. And you know, I like great cinematography. So…
[Bell]
Michael: if you hadn’t met Master Hua, what would you be?
Doug: Dead…. about 30 years ago… drugs and sex.. [laughs] drugs and sex and rock and roll I’d be dead.
[Bell]
Michael: Who created God?
Doug: You obviously did because you’re asking the question. Where else could it exist other than the person who asked the question? So, I don’t know why you did that just now but good luck on that.
[Bell]
Sehen: What do you think of Kanye West?
Doug: A little bit ambiguous about that man. He seems to be trying to make a point in a kind of funny way… about trying to be counter everything. I don’t know if he’s being a joke. Or ironic or doubly ironic or what he’s trying to do, but it’s not going over very well. So, I think his day in the sun is limited.
[Bell]
Sanju: When was the last time you cried?
Doug: [Crying sound/laughs] Just now…you made me cry by thinking about it, I was just overcome with emotion. So, I’m very sensitive. I’m very romantic. My main music I listened to these days is Brazilian women, you know, singing very romantic Brazilian, you know, kind of samba I really like Samba right now. I mean I go to different things… I listened to Lana Del Ray…
Sehen: Alright, time out..
[Bell]
Blake: Do you play any instruments?
Doug: I’m completely useless in terms of music. I’m fairly good at listening to it. But as soon as I go to try to make it, nothing happens… you know, again I’m as unproductive at that as most things..
[Bell]
Sehen: If you could say one sentence and be silent for the rest of your life after that, what would you say?
Doug: [Silence]… I had a hell of a good time!! [Laughs]
[Bell]
Sanju: How do you have so much energy?
Doug: Ah, a combination of things… I think the meditation is really important. I had you know quite a while ago I stopped drinking and taking so much drugs and doing some much sex and stuff… so you know when you lessen the outflows, and you have more energy. If you’re going to go out with all those outflows. I’m aware of things but at my own pace and I don’t do a lot of outflows. And yet I’m very aware and involved aesthetically in the society and culture and economics. The key is to not outflow so much in it, be aware of it don’t outflows. Then you have quite a bit of energy…I think you’d find you’d have a lot of energy.
[Bell]
Blake: Maybe on a related note, what is happiness?
Doug: Happiness is not having to do anything that anybody wants you to do, and getting other people to do what you want to do.
[Bell]
Sehen: What is power?
Doug: Power and freedom are completely interrelated. You have as much power as your freedom. So, the first aspect of freedom and power is not neediness. The more needy you are the less power you have. The more expectations you have that connects you to the capital of the culture, the more powerless you’re at because then you have to play the game for that capital… so the more you can be completely contented within yourself, doing nothing, the more freedom and the more power you have.
[Bell]
Sanju: How would you describe Chan to someone knows nothing about Buddhism?
Doug: [It is] developing a sense of dis-interested observer of what’s going on and then being aware of that disinterested observer. So, it’s an awareness of an awareness. And it starts from a disinterested observer but then [it’s about] becoming an observant of the disinterested observer.
[Bell]
Sehen: What Bodhisattva do like the most?
Doug: Well, I’ve been hanging out with Guan Yin quite a bit so I had to be pretty loyal to her and you know, we have a thing … Guan Yin and I… so I feel like you know to be true to your true Bodhisattva. You know, I mean, I’ve done 50 Guan Yin sessions and yeah, I think we have a pretty good thing, and I think Guan Yin actually looks after things pretty well has given me a pretty good run.
[Bell]
Sanju: What do you think is the most pressing issue in the world today?
Doug: Well, I think that’s fairly obvious. Everybody has to just cut down about 50% on what they’re doing, consuming, and you know, so that everyone can breathe, and the earth can breathe…But the problem is it that would require the people with the most to give up the most. So, you’d have to have…the people who have the most give up 90% And then the lowest 50% have to basically give up nothing because they have nothing to give up. So, the most pressing problem is the top 30% of consumers have to give up 90% of their consumption.
[Bell]
Bishnu : If you had to destroy everything in the world, except one, what would it be?
Doug: You! [Laughs]… you’re asking the question and the only place that could come from is your actual experience as the only place…and that you’re probably a total narcissist. So, one thing that you wouldn’t want to destroy is you, right? Because then you wouldn’t know what’s going on anyway, right one way or another?
[Bell]
Bishnu: Can you sing the song for me?
Doug: Can I sing a for you?…Ah, I can get no satisfaction…though I’m driving here and I’m driving down, trying to make something go. Hey, baby, come back the same day. Hey, I can’t get no satisfaction. (Laughs)
Sanju: Very Buddhist!
[Bell]
Michael: What sports do you like and why?
Doug: What I watch religiously is the Tour de France. I watch every day of it. But I love France and I would live in France if I wasn’t living here and so I need to see France in the back country and see guys riding bicycles at the same time. So, I’ve watched every day I mean, I tape, I don’t watch anything live, but I tape it and then watch it when I can. Soccer I like soccer. I was watching soccer you know 40 years ago, and I like the World Cup right now. It’s cool.
[Bell]
Sehen: Tell us a joke!
Doug: Everything is a joke, so I can’t really you know… every, everything you say is a joke. So, it’s hard to come up with a joke that isn’t even doubly a joke. Because, actually every time basically we use language it’s a joke, right?
[Bell]
Michael: Are you a cat person or dog person?
Doug: Oh 100% cat. I’m a cat guy! I’ve had cats actually most of the time. Right now, I have two beautiful cats. The last cat died. I don’t quite know how it died but I found it and it was very sad.
Sanju: Why do you not like dogs?
Doug: They’re needy…cats will take care of themselves, cats are perfect personality, they sleep all day. I mean, what can you do better than not be needy, and do your own thing and sleep all the time? I mean, I just watched the cat I try to follow them! If they’re sleeping 16 hours and I’m trying to do nothing and 16 hours. I’m just trying to find, you know, the life of a cat.
[Bell]
Sanju: Who’s your favorite philosopher?
Doug: Well, that’s really difficult. I mean, I think the person that was most affected by early was Heidegger’s ‘Being in Time’! Like at about 19 or 20 years, I mean, I read ‘Being in Time’ and I think I probably every time I re-read ‘Being a Time’ I realize I think exactly like that. So Western philosophy. I mean, there’s a lot of other philosophers that I like equally well, Foucault and many other philosophers I like as well. But as far as affecting my basic way of thinking I would have to probably say Heidegger’s ‘Being in Time’, yeah.
[Bell]
Blake: What is one useless talent that you have?
Doug: I have so many, it will take us you know, hours. I mainly, as I say, I’ve mainly tried to do nothing. And then, I try to do nothing in a way that nobody can see I’m doing nothing. Because then the trick is to always look like you’re doing something when you’re not actually doing anything.
[Bell]
Bishnu: If you didn’t have to be here, where would you be?
Doug: I don’t have to be here. I think I have a pretty good right now balance of a different place pretty much every day. So, you know, like I’m in no place for longer than a couple of days. I don’t know what it would be like to be in one place for longer than a couple of days. I don’t know you guys I guess have experienced that. But I have to get all my stuff together every couple of days. Put it all together. Clean the bathrooms and the kitchens everywhere. And then go and then I have to do the whole thing again three more days that I clean all the bathrooms and kitchen and I take off and throw everything in the car.
[Bell]
Sehen: What’s your favorite word?
Doug: I can’t use the word here.
Sanju: What about the least favorite word?
Doug: The least favorite word? Work. [Laughs]
[Bell]
Michael: What would Buddhism in America look like in 100 years?
Doug: Everybody will be sitting for four hours a day in the fourth dhyāna every single day. You know, all guns are gone. You know, you know, lust is gone. You know everything is fair and equal on and equanimity. There’s justice and everyone sees everyone as equally you know, incredible & compassionate.
[Bell]
Michael: What’s your favorite Shakespeare play?
Doug: For the story I like Lear, probably, but also, I spent a lot of time with Hamlet. And… to be and not to be that is the question whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. To die – to sleep, no more; and by sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to: Okay, enough. [Laughs]
[Bell]
Sanju: Do you know how to cook?
Doug: I actually just found out the difference between a pan and a pot. I saw they had different shapes and what I can do is if something’s frozen if there’s like a frozen veggie thing in the freezer, I can get it out and I can put it in a pan rather than a pot.
Bishnu: How do you personally relate to the idea of death?
Doug: Bring it on! You know, I mean it will happen, you know, so I’m okay with it. I just hope, that it would be nice to just keel over… but, so if today right now we can do it and keel over, that’d be cool. I actually have nothing more to do. I don’t have anything I need to do. So, I’m completely content with existence at this moment. So, if I was to kick off right now, I’d be okay, completely okay. And there’s nothing left to do. Okay, so… but there is also… that’s only the personality and there will be the continuum, and it would have been probably better if I cultivated little bit more to bring some elements of what I learned here into the future, which I’m not sure that I have the capacity to do. I have to see you won’t know that until you’re there. Right, so!
[Bell]
Sanju: Have you met anyone who changed your life forever?
Doug: Yeah, one person! So, that was that master Hua guy! So, you know, I had a lot of good great professors and a lot of great people and so forth that I’ve been hanging out with, but that that [Master Hua] was the most different person that had the most greatest effect, probably on changing the direction of my sense of looking at something that was completely different than in the flow of the habituation of what I was kind of already moving in.
[Bell]
Sanju: Following up to that, do you have a favorite memory with Master Hua?
Doug: Well, I was just sitting in the Buddha Hall just now before I came here. And so, I remember bringing Master Hua up to look at the city before we bought it. And I was playing basketball in the Buddha Hall. You know, I had a basketball in the back of my car, So I was playing basketball. So he said – “Oh, this is going to be a Buddha Hall!” And I said , ‘Oh cool!’ So I kept shooting free throws. So, I remember a lot of memories on a very personal kind of basic level of being with him. I was actually trying to experience what he was experiencing as he actually saw what this was and it was going to manifest something here, when I was just like playing basketball, in the gym, you know? So, the gap between where I was coming from and where he was seeing what was going on was fairly large. But I was interested in trying to get a sense of that what I’m still experiencing from that experience, and I’ve only gotten 10% of it, and I’m still missing 90% of it.
[Bell]
Bishnu: If you could only preserve one Sūtra, what would it be?
Doug: Well, of course, that varies from moment to moment on what you’re working on. I mean, obviously Shurangama is extremely helpful and useful. The underlying meaning is extremely helpful and useful as a sūtra. I like the Avatamsaka and other sūtras, but I think if I had to choose one that gets deep enough and quick enough and goes to the heart of the matter, probably the Shurangama, yeah.
[Bell]
Blake: What’s your favorite place in CTTB?
Doug: I do like the Buddha Hall. I spent a lot of time in that Buddha Hall, doing a lot of sessions and meditations and stuff. But I’m pretty much okay anywhere. I used to live up here when there was only three or four of us living here. I used to live in different rooms hidden away different places. Like over TM there was the corner where there had little room in the place where the screamers were before. There’s a lot of little nooks and crannies around here that you can find it are nice. What I really like is I like to try and find places that are really still and really quiet. You know?
[Bell]
Blake: What’s your favorite color?
Doug: Probably I like black, but it’s not really a color. So, I mean color, probably blue. A non-color, black, you know?
[Bell]
Bishnu: If there is anything you would do differently in your life, what would you want to do?
Doug: No. There’s nothing I would do differently.
[Bell]
Sehen: If you could say one thing to the whole world right now, what would it be?
Doug: If you have any, you know, compassion for the future and anybody other than yourself, just cut down 10 or 20% of what you’re using and get a little more at peace with yourself in doing less. And do that out of compassion for a future generation and yourself. And also for hanging out in a world that you might enjoy hanging out with.
[Bell]
Blake: Would you have specific things you would say to the different generations in America [like] Boomers, Gen Z, millennials?
Doug: Yeah, I mean, boomers are an interesting group. But you guys are, you know, kind of, to some degree wasting your blessings because you have pretty good conditions, but what are you using them for? I’m not sure that you really understand how to use those conditions in a way you could actually cultivate with them. I feel that the next generation is working their butt off, and they thought they can do everything… they could have kids, have a house, have a job, have a career and everything and, how’s that going? Well, you’re getting a little worn out, and I feel for you, but I really appreciate your hard work, you know. Millennials, I think your time of having a lack of expectations and being able to be young forever is running out a little bit.
[Bell]
Sanju: What’s the coolest thing that you’ve ever done?
Doug: Well, the trouble with cool is that it’s constantly changing. So, to actually be cool, you always had to be in the context of the next cool which is always changing. So, it’s a hard thing to answer, Cool. I think in general, probably, the coolest thing, I haven’t done as much, but I used to do, is just head out into the world and kind of trip in the world, from country to country to country to country, and just kind of hang out in India or Srilanka, or just sort of feel my present existence constantly changing and hang out in a new environment all the time for like months at a time.
[Bell]
Blake: What’s the scariest thing you’ve done?
Doug: Well, one of the scariest things I remember… I was climbing out in Sierra by myself for two months to see what the wilderness was, and I was climbing up a mountain and I was laying up and I was kind of tired. So I sat down and I laid up against a rock with a backpack on and my legs up, you know, and I was laying there and I kind of was dozing and I looked up and there was a massive eight foot timber rattler, that it come up between my legs and that was flickering their tail, their tongue about two inches from my crotch. So, I was looking down at it and it was looking at me and we just looked at each other for a very long time.
[Bell]
Bishnu: When was the last time you killed an insect?
Doug: I probably hit a mosquito up there at the Buddha Root farm in the summertime because we were like masked with mosquitoes. If you’ve seen pictures, we had like the whole regalia on! Has anyone seen the pictures of it up there? We were masked, and I probably hit one of those mosquitoes, for sure. Maybe by accident and maybe not by accident, I don’t know. [laughs]
[Bell]
Sanju: Do you believe in astrology?
Doug: It’s is structure of a kind of causality and it actually has validity in his own sense. I’m not interested in it in any personal way because so what? You know, the question is, in the present moment, what are you doing with the information and the concept you’re operating in? And how existentially you were in the present. In astrology, you could feed information into that. But I don’t really care that much about the structures of whatever analysis of causation are going on there.
[Bell]
Bishnu: How can you make someone understand about cultivation in 30 seconds?
Doug: How are things going?
Blake: [tries to clarify question] How do you…
Doug: No, no, I’m answering [laughs]– how are things going? Is everything going really well? Are you completely contented in every way? And in every moment? You’re totally, joyfully, happily contented. And if they say yes, I am! I say, hang in there and keep doing what you’re doing. Please don’t do anything else. Primary issue about bringing Buddhism to somebody is having a common description of reality that we can agree through first. And if we can kind of come to a common description of reality, then we can have a conversation. If we don’t, there’s reason for having a conversation because I’m not trying to talk to anybody into anything, I don’t care.
[Bell]
Blake: When was the last time you broke a precept?
Doug: I think I’ve spent a lot of time right at the edge of precepts. Like the farthest edge that you can actually get. Now I haven’t been there for a while, like I would say 10/15 years I have not been… but, when I was being a millennial, I think I was probably mostly at close to the edge and you’d have to debate which side of the edge I was at.
[Bell]
Michael: What’s one advice you’d like to give someone who’s trying to figure their life out?
Doug: The most important thing you could possibly have is have a sense of humor about yourself. And you need to take yourself seriously as far as your eating is concerned. And living in some apartment and those kinds of things. And everything else you shouldn’t take very seriously because you’re just making it up and probably messing it up. So, then you just need a sense of humor.
Sehen: What does having sex mean?
Doug: Well, it means having sex, you know, you don’t know what it is? So it starts as you look across the table and you go oh, that looks interesting. And then you, touch the hand and then you get a little closer. And then it lights up something and then there’s an energy and then people want to rub against, you know, it’s something that kind of emerges over time and to something. I know you guys, millennials, they see it as almost any kind of thing that has kind of sexual energy to it. But I realized that the definition of sex has changed over time, to go from something that was very identifiable, fairly beyond the pale of you guys have mostly been thinking about, and now what sex would be, which was a lot less full blown something.
[Bell]
Sanju: Have you ever fallen in love?
Doug: Ahhh….fallen In love! I don’t know that I’ve fallen in love or not. I think I’ve been in something like love, but I’m not sure what I have been in and what I think is like love is exactly the same as what other people might have [when they have] fallen in love with. Because this thing when people do fall in love in a way that they like, it takes them like, you know, weeks years to recover from whatever, I’m not sure about that. But I have done, I think I’ve been in a lot of what love is from a different vantage point. I do think, to think from a cultivating view, whatever you’re doing about it that you stay intact in your awareness in it and I think you’ll do a better job of what actually is love by being intact and not lost. And I think if you’re lost in something, there’s nobody there to love anybody from.
[Bell]
Sanju: Nahelia asked this question. How does it feel to be the only hippie in DRBU?
Doug: I don’t claim to be the only hippie I just claimed to be a very happy hippie in my days, you know? And I’m probably still like, you know, 50% hippie.
[Bell]
Sehen: Is there one thing that being happy hippie “a self-proclaimed happy-hippie” taught you?
Doug: Yeah. To make the criteria of everything you’re doing absolute freedom, as the only marker that you ultimately use. So, if you’re looking at karma, you know, it has to actually be not something that you’re creating a theory about, but it actually has to cause suffering, and or happiness as the result. Now, you may not be able to see it in the long term because you may not have wisdom, but the goal has to still be an actual contented, happy, euphoric, sort of energetic like, erotic sort of like constant existence, right? And to do anything other than that seems like a waste of time.
[Bell]
Blake: If you could roast each of us in 10 seconds each, what would you say?
Doug: I don’t know if I can roast you guys. I take who you are way too seriously to mess with. You know, I know you all think you’re just sort of like kind of getting started in something on something. But actually, you guys are pretty far along. And so, I really appreciate each of you guys in a way that, what I know of you so far is worth a lot. And I wouldn’t really feel like roasting you, you know. I kind of take you guys too profoundly to roast. In all of my ironic elements, I don’t think I ever, ever make that irony personal. It’s always a larger scale of irony and is never directed at belittling or like, whatever the person or the individual, you know.
[Bell]
Blake: Would you ever write a story, and if you did, what would it be about?
Doug: Yeah, I mean, it would be worth writing some if I had time. I just never have time because I’m always too busy with what the next moment of existence is. But if I had, if I was, you know, like stuck somewhere and I couldn’t do anything, and I would and I might actually do write something. And I would write about an actual novel that displayed the activities of people in their internal processes of observation and, and symbolic reference and erotic exchange at a level that was a lot deeper level of what was going on in their process of mentality in the process of it.
[Bell]
Sanju: Do you have any plans for winter break? What are you doing?
Doug: Yeah, I try to walk every day; I tried to go to the gym every day; I tried to get my six pack back. I tried to get a little buff. I tried to sit about two or three hours every day. So, the day is about taking a walk on your city for a few hours, reading something new and different. I’ve got a bunch of things stacked up there to read, go to the gym workout every day, kind of hang out on the beach every day and do nothing. And so basically, I have pretty much nothing planned. But it’s a nothing that’s an actual nothing. I will have to go get a Christmas. I mean, there’s some things I’m going to have to do because you know that. But I can actually do those things these days pretty, you know, nonchalantly so I’m looking forward to all of that. I completely have ignored my body for all these years, and I’m still getting away with it. And I’m not sure you can do that for ever. So, I think maybe I need to like kind of take a little care and maybe do something. Because just driving around, hanging around you know, blah blah blah is you know, eating… I’m not a big eater but I still like you know,
Sanju: potato chips?
Doug: Anything around potato or Potato chips and potatoes and fries, oh my god you know!
[Bell]
Sanju: Anything that you want to say to our listeners from DRBU?
Doug: You know, I just really, really hope that everyone gets an opportunity during the three or four or five weeks that you can use it to be totally outside of this trip. So, hopefully you can take the stuff you’ve been doing here that you haven’t had time and reflection and just hang out and do nothing really well. And just sort of reflect on your own internal process and see what’s happening. Have I made it? Do I see something a little clearer? Am I a little more at peace in some kind of way? What kind of new questions am I asking? Now if you guys go through a real opportunity of reflection.
[Bell]