The ZDoggMD Show

I sat down with Tim Cliss to talk about how nobody's home, how there's no prize at the end of the "spiritual" search, and how compassion works a lot better once there's no "you" left to get in its way. Also featured: psychedelics, ego death, and the surprisingly good news that hope is doomed 🥳

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I got an email this morning with the subject: "I died and you helped. Thanks." 😳

Here's the resulting YouTube LIVE discussion!

Topics covered:

The sense of self may die, but these termites eating my house are still VERY much alive 😉

My recent livestream on TikTok. Some of the topics touched on:

Beliefs as an endless, dissolving process.

The VPZD show as a dance of conditioning between hosts and audience.

Fighting for a cause as really fighting for identity.

Communicating needs with a partner.

Book recommendations for exploring non-duality.

A partner's neediness as a mirror for one's own conditioning.

Doctor as just another fallen-away ide...

A live YouTube conversation about dropping our oldest child off for college, ending with an overpriced bottle of hotel Jim Beam drunk out of plastic cups by a Homewood Suites firepit. Yeah, enlightenment ain't what the gurus have been selling us 😭😅

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Back from Japan to talk about being "alone together," why the "loneliness epidemic" is something engineered by the "me", and how bliss, grief, Fauci, and a three-dollar vintage shirt all fit into the same perfect unfolding.

Video show archive, audio podcasts, music parodies, Supporter Tribe membership options, merch, social media, and email contact form: ⁠https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd

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A live Q+A wandering through our Sunday zoom meeting with the awakening group, to Jesus Christ Superstar, to the death of "ZDoggMD" as an identity, through moral injury, openness as the prerequisite for everything, why spirituality is a beautiful farce, and what it's like when worry about the future just stops sticking. Health 4.0 son!

Contact me, watch all the videos, and join the Supporter Tribe for future zoom meetings here.

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I tell ya, there's something about these ephemeral TikTok live conversations that just gets this Zubin character all lit up 🔥 Here's a recording just for y'all who listen to the podcast (these live shows normally go POOF immediately after airing on TikTok).

As always, you can hit me up hello at zdoggmd.com, and check out all the things here.

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A two-hour conversation with a fellow "Z" that's for no one and goes exactly nowhere. Perfect! 😅

We talk about addiction as hole-filling, and the hole that can never be filled; the seeking energy and what it actually wants; the dying process of identity deconstructing in reverse order; why the sense of a separate self is not a thought but an embodied energetic misunderstanding; why there's no practice because the person can't get rid of itself; what's actually longed for (not what the mind thinks); hopelessness as freedom... the real kind; the...

No subject, no object, just phenomena arising. From my TikTok live on consciousness, hope, meaning, the freefall of no belief, and what it's like when the self-critical voice quietly stops showing up. Plus: row your boat.

Contact form, more videos, and membership options here. https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd

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One phone call with cardiologist and recovering alcoholic Rishi Menon and BOOM: we're instant Stepbrothers 😂 We dive into failing med school, 20 years of proving worthiness, recovery, suicidal ideation, burnout, the Enneagram as software, body changes after letting go, and why practice probably isn't causative but shows up anyway. Full video here.

⁠Click here for website, contact form, links to all the things, and more!

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There's really only two questions. Exploring the first can lead to a more comfy prison cell, and REALIZING the second shows there never was a prison cell at all. Both are ABSOLUTELY PERFECT.

Live conversation from the Z-Shed!

Click here for website, contact form, links to all the things, and more!

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"You" can never really trust this moment. And yet THIS, here, now, IS pure trust itself. A Friday Zen Live on the unconditional acceptance of what is, why the separate self can never surrender into this, the second arrow that never landed, and an old biker dude who took the longest dump in trail bathroom history 💩

⁠⁠Contact form, videos, links, and all the things here.

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What goes up must come down, and for the spiritual seeker, that pendulation is one of the most specific and painful flavors of suffering there is. This Friday Zen LIVE from YouTube explores why the ups and downs are the same no-thing, what natural compassion looks like when you never practiced or play-acted it, Douglas Harding's headless way, and much more.

⁠Contact form, videos, links, and all the things here.

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My baby is now at senior prom, I got a splitting headache, and somehow this is the perfect moment to talk about no-thing-ness. A Friday Zen YouTube live (4/24/26) on retreats, the seeking apparatus burning out, no-thingness appearing as everything, and why the mind is a real a-hole 🕳️

Contact form, videos, links, and all the things here.

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Nina chose Vassar — and that news kicks off a wide-ranging Monday Zen live that covers a lot of ground. We start with the "spiritual journey" in full: from burning out as a doctor, to a spontaneous awakening in Las Vegas, to years of meditation, retreats, shadow work, and psychedelics, all of it eventually collapsing into the simple recognition that it was always just this.

Along the way: why lying becomes nearly impossible when there's nothing left to protect, what every psychedelic from 5-MeO-DMT to Salvia Divinorum pointed at (spoiler: this), the honest question of whether awakening is li...

Just got back from spring break touring colleges with my oldest ZPupp (yeah, wasn't she just a frickin' BABY yesterday?). Rochester, Vassar, and NYU. This episode is the full debrief...the steel cut oats, the Hogwarts campus, the NYU dean who told an auditorium full of accepted students and families that it's depressing to be poor, and what all of it reveals about ambition, projection, and just letting life life itself since the script is already written, bruh. Full video, originally LIVE on YouTube, here.

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

Topics:

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

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

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

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

4:05 When the Whole Thing Just Drops

6:13 Absolute Freefall — This Is Pure Unadulterated Chaos

7:49 Nothing Ever Arrives Before It's Gone

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

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

13:02 Emptiness Isn't Magical

14:43 Is This Too Extreme a Negation?

16:05 Love Is Rea...

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

0:00 Welcome & The Imaginarium We Live In 0:48 No Thought or Belief Can Touch What Is 2:24 The 180° Inversion: Concepts Are the Abstraction 5:50 How the Separate Self Generates Suffering 13:02 Did the Past Actually Happen? 15:00 Who Designed the Dance? On Illusion and Creation 18:10 Is There Even a Witness? Appearance Without a Knower 21:03 Why Reality Is Boring (and That's the Point) 24:48 The Bahiya Sutta: Simply the Seen 26:10 Music, Tones, and What Sound Is Actually Showing You 28:05 Is There a Path to Awakening? 31:32 Is Enlightenment a Stable S...

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

0:00 Introduction: Post-Daylight Savings Monday 1:05 Why Time Changes Mess With Our Circadian Rhythms 4:28 Is There Meaning in Names? 5:24 Spirituality as Just Another Story 7:17 This Is Not a Popular Message 8:02 When Interest in TED Talks and Podcasts Dies 11:07 YouTube Is Actually Great (When You Stop Caring) 11:39 Wh...

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

YouTube video is here.

All the links are here.

0:00 Introduction: The "Me" Will Never Be Enough 3:01 What Is the "Me"? The Illusion of the Separate Self 5:05 The Seeking Energy: Why We Never Feel Whole 7:24 Midlife Crisis and Spiritual Seeking as More of the Same 9:57 The Unsatisfaction Machine: Worthiness and Unworthiness 11:46 Hope and Hopelessness: The Self in Time 13:22 Pain vs. Suffering: What's the Difference? 15:08 The Spiritual Circus: Why Seeking Doesn't Work 17:03 Ego Extinction and Meditation...

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

Watch the YouTube video here.

https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd for all the things. 00:00 - Introduction: Live Comments Make It Wondrous 01:46 - BAFTA Tourette's Incident and Nobody Wins 02:41 - Spiritual Influencers Are the Worst 06:14 - F**k all the gurus 09:05 - "Spirituality" isn't something I wanna talk about anymore 11:20 - The Deep Secret: Just What's Appearing 12:06 - Cipher in the Matrix: Wanting to Go Back In 15:01 - Coming All the Way Back to Sleep (Zero Fucks Given) 17:33 - The Seeking Stops Naturally (You...

Zero f***s given in this Facebook LIVE episode 🤭, we explore time, growth as illusion, spiritual mansplaining, why there isn't even consciousness, why nothing cannot stay nothing, the 10 Fetters Buddhist model from separate self to liberation, and more! Kevin Shanilec's interpretation and guide to the Fetters is here. Video archive, audio podcast, music, Supporter Tribe membership, email & more. Support us with a 1-time donation.
00:00 - Introduction: Zero Fucks Given, Social Security Disappointment 01:53 - Time as Flickering Light on a Timeless Screen 05:16 - How Is This Different Than a Dream? 08:00 - Fix the Fixer by Dissolving It 10:18 - Growth Is...

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

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

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

All the things are here.

Topics and Timecodes:

0:00 - Going Live & Technical Difficulties 1:26 - When You Can't Say Anything Anymore 2:31 - Karma Yoga: Life as Sacred Practice 4:14 - Sleep, Insomnia & Radical Acceptance 7:02 - Sleep During Awakening: My Experience 8:38 - Waking Up at Night: Working wit...

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

Support us with a 1-time donation.

More about Zubin.

0:00 Introduction - Spiritual Friendship Across the Atlantic 2:22 "You're One...

We healthcare people love accomplishment, competition, clear instructions, and maps—which can make the awakening process feel like straight TORTURE 😂

From YouTube LIVE.

00:00 - Introduction: The Comparing Mind in Healthcare 01:37 - Bringing Your Own Folding Chair to Kiss God's Ass 03:06 - The Millisecond of Clarity vs. Macro Seconds of Ego 04:12 - You Can't Do Any of This Wrong 05:27 - 3 Levels: Gross Reality, Witness Consciousness, Absolute 08:22 - 3 Schools: Ram Das Work, Dogen Zen, Neo-Advaita 13:10 - All Three Approaches Have Their Place 16:08 - Nisargadatta: "I Am That" and the Absolute 19:07 - You Cannot Fuck This Up (The Perfe...

An intimate Christmas Eve morning livestream exploring what we're really celebrating: heart-based amazement and love as the pervasive fabric of reality, not some Hallmark conception. We discuss sitting in the unknown without the constant churn of thought creating expectation, how an itch evolved from meditative deconstruction to just allowing what is, and why all religions—Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sufism—point at the same unsayable thing through different words. Includes reflections on Jesus's teachings about unconditional love and kingdom of heaven, Adyashanti's "Resurrecting Jesus," my grandfather's journey from atheism to experiencing God as absolute magic, and why free will versus dete...

From our Saturday night YouTube live conversation.

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Live conversation with Eshwar Segobind. We talk about why love skeptics become love advocates, the trauma response that becomes 'you,' why babies cry at birth (cosmic joke alert), and the nature of the clown chakra. Plus: there's a lot of duality in non-duality 😉

Our previous conversation is here.

https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd for all the things. 00:00 Opening - The Creator and Clown Chakras 02:05 "There's a Lot of Duality in Non-Duality" 04:10 The Love Skeptic's Journey 07:00 Emptying to Be Filled with Love 10:00 The Child and the Immune Response 14:00 Seeing Love Everywhere 17:00 The Realest Fak...

A spontaneous live conversation about discovering an AI tool that pulls clips from long videos—creating decontextualized shorts that make me sound like an asshole, which is exactly what the algorithm wants. We explore why Buddhist stories ultimately don't matter, how the spiritual circus is just the next level of illusion, the whole "suffering is optional" nonsense, the raft metaphor and spiritual bypass, non-dual therapy and somatic experiencing, DMT as serious business that's also nothing, and the massive relief when awakening itself—the last belief—finally drops.

00:00 - Introduction: Going Live on a Whim 00:39 - "Asi...

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, make dinner for your kids and have them complain about it 😉

From my Friday Night LIVE show on YouTube.

Here's a link to all the things.

00:00 Why Friday Night Zen Live? 01:13 The Adolescent Phase of Selfing/Not-Selfing 02:27 Alternating Between Self and Empty Radiance 05:04 Suffering and Core Unworthiness 10:03 Why Therapy's "Reframing" Misses the Point 14:00 Living in Story Land (Trump, Veganism, and Meaning) 17:20 Everything Driven by Unworthiness 22:21 Time Is a Story - This Has Always Been 26:04 Attachment to Outcomes and the Sep...

We spend our entire lives pretending to be something we think we really are—until one day the mask slips. In this live Facebook conversation we explore what happens when identity unravels, how negative self-talk might simply vanish, and how the body keeps the score even when the mind lets go. From Shakespeare's stage to the Bahiya Sutta, from catastrophic thinking to kundalini energy, we examine the deepest taboo in the human collective: that we might not be what we think we are. ALSO: f**k Halloween! 😭🎃

Video, blog post summary, and ways to join the...

On what would have been my father’s 86th birthday, I found myself reflecting not just on loss, but on the nature of belief itself—and how our attachments to ideas can become the very weapons that tear us apart.

Originally from a conversation I had on Facebook live. Watch the video and read a summary here.

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This episode of The ZDoggMD Show was recorded in front of a live studio audience...on Facebook. Which is always a little bit of magic 🪄

What happens when the appearance that seems to construct our sense of self, our sense of the one who EXPERIENCES experience...just stops? A (previously) live interactive exploration of what's left when YOU leave (listen to find out what the hell that means 😂).

Full video with a great AI summary of everything covered, click here.

When the threads of awakening drop and spirituality itself falls away, what's left? Peep our earlier introduction interview on the Multidharma Threads model ⁠here on YouTube⁠ or ⁠here on Apple Podcasts⁠. And a deeper dive into each thread here.

⁠⁠Dr. Pierce Salguero⁠⁠ has studied spirituality through decades of practice and scholarship, specializing in hathayoga, meditation, shamanic rituals, spirit healing, Thai medicine, and Buddhist philosophy. He is now a professor researching Asian history, religions, and healing traditions. His Multidharma framework distills the lessons from a lifetime of exploration of spirituality, providing a novel framework for modern seekers.<...

Kogen is a Zen priest in the Soto tradition, in the lineage of Tangen Harada Roshi. Find his books, retreats, and more here and follow him on YouTube here. In this conversation we talk about Kogen's Japanese Zen monastic background, the intersection of traditional monasticism and modern spiritual practices, the differences between early Chinese and later Japanese Zen, the format of the student-teacher relationship in Zen, monk life in a Japanese monastery, interpersonal dynamics among monks, the difference between spirituality and dogmatic religion, a deep pointing to non-separation as a relief for human suffering, the need for multimodal modern...

A deep dive into the core experiential threads that might arise during spiritual awakening, ultimately unique to each human. Peep our earlier introduction interview on the Multidharma Threads model here on YouTube or here on Apple Podcasts.

⁠Dr. Pierce Salguero⁠ has studied spirituality through decades of practice and scholarship, specializing in hathayoga, meditation, shamanic rituals, spirit healing, Thai medicine, and Buddhist philosophy. He is now a professor researching Asian history, religions, and healing traditions. His Multidharma framework distills the lessons from a lifetime of exploration of spirituality, providing a novel framework for modern seekers.

Here's the new Facebook "Awakening Stuff" channel.

Here's the unlisted YouTube video for this show.

Here's where you can join our Supporter Tribe to participate in Zoom meetings on this stuff.

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