The ZDoggMD Show
Dr. Zubin Damania
Interviews and live rants on healthcare, depolarizing our divided society, and the non-dual nature of reality. Hosted by UCSF/Stanford-trained physician Dr. Zubin Damania (AKA ZDoggMD).
Episodes
Mentioned books
Dec 21, 2025 • 1h 6min
The Bottomless Well of Shadow, Being of Service, Stage Fright and More (LIVE)
From our Saturday night YouTube live conversation.
Video show archive, audio podcasts, music parodies, Supporter Tribe membership options, merch, social media, and email contact form: https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd
Support us with a 1-time donation and get a personal email response from me: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/zdoggmd
More about Dr. Z: https://zdoggmd.com/about-z/
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Dec 15, 2025 • 1h 50min
The Realest Fake Thing That Never Was (w/ Eshwar Segobind)
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 Fake Thing That Never Was
21:00 Trauma Response as the Self
28:00 Why Zubin Became ZDoggMD (Protection Mechanism)
30:14 "We're Already Dead - Now What?"
33:00 Devotion and True Prostration
39:00 The Cosmic Joke of Rebirth (Baby's First Cry)
42:00 Best Birth Buddies and Spiritual Gurus
45:00 Shadow Work Can't Be Avoided
49:00 The Child Calling You Home
56:00 Kathy Nails It: "Zubin is the Original Child"
1:00:00 Grocery Store Analogy and Payment Due
1:05:00 Buddhism and the Seeker's Problem
1:11:00 Everything Points Back to Love
1:17:00 Nihilism to Fullness Journey
1:23:00 The Projection Game
1:30:00 Depersonalization
1:36:00 2D Vision and Sensory Experiences
1:42:00 Two Nuts in a Sack (Closing) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 6, 2025 • 32min
The Spiritual Circus, YouTube Shorts, and Awakening's End (LIVE)
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 - "Asian Intelligence "and AI Discovery
01:23 - Discovering Vizard.ai for Clip Generation
02:04 - The Problem with Decontextualized Shorts
02:50 - Tich Nhat Hanh Quote and Dependent Origination
03:38 - Why These Shorts Make Me Sound Like an Asshole
04:24 - Feeding the Algorithm Beast
05:09 - Mental Masturbation and Going Live as Therapy
06:04 - Mountains Are Mountains: Why Stories Don't Matter
07:23 - The Spiritual Circus vs. The Regular Circus
08:43 - Psych Patients and Meaninglessness
09:49 - Suffering is Optional? Shut the Fuck Up
11:03 - Knowledge Acquisition and Adyashanti's Wall
12:03 - Psychedelics Discussion with Kids
12:52 - The Raft Metaphor and Spiritual Bypass
14:52 - Trust and Verify: Teachers Who Build Rafts
16:44 - DMT as Serious Business and Nothing
18:20 - How to Feel the Love Pouring from Awareness
20:33 - The Mystery of the Appearance
21:48 - Non-Dual Therapy: The Ultimate Paradox
24:30 - Somatic Experiencing and Bliss Sessions
25:22 - Radical Acceptance vs. Self-Love
27:04 - Watching Non-Duality Videos: "What's This Clown Saying?"
28:26 - The Orchestra Concert and Family Life
28:49 - Awakening: The Last Belief to Drop
29:41 - Closing: My Beloved, Peace Out, Only Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 15, 2025 • 1h 14min
Unworthiness and Worthiness are BOTH Bulls*** | Friday Night Zen, LIVE
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 Separate Self
30:14 The Primary Human Operating System: Unworthiness
35:31 What About Love?
41:03 On Medicine and Health 3.0
49:33 The Compulsion to Make Videos for No One
52:02 "After Awakening" - The Mind's Favorite Story
57:13 The 5-MeO-DMT Revelation: "It's Just This"
1:01:02 Privilege, Causation, and Different Gates
1:05:12 The Weather Pattern of Seeking
1:09:24 Music as Pure Emotion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 2, 2025 • 1h 8min
The Costume Most Of Us Will Never Take Off
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 Supporter Tribe here.
Video show archive, audio podcasts, music parodies, Supporter Tribe membership options, merch, social media, and email contact form: https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd
More about Dr. Z: https://zdoggmd.com/about-z/
Chapters and timecodes:
00:00 - Halloween Childhood Trauma
01:45 - The Human Costume: Living Behind the Mask
04:12 - When Identities Start to Unravel
07:18 - The Peace That Passes All Understanding
09:17 - Why Words Can't Capture "Reality"
10:52 - Shakespeare's Stage: All the World's a Play
13:43 - Belief in Thoughts as the Root of Suffering
16:48 - Beginnings and Endings Have No Middle
18:01 - Dread as a Self Knowing Texture
21:39 - Longchenpa: "One May Well Burst Out in Laughter"
23:05 - Catastrophic Thinking and Email Anxiety
25:29 - Can We Control Our Minds? The Illusion of Choice
28:28 - The Disappearance of Negative Self-Talk
31:00 - No Positive Self-Talk Either: Beyond Good and Bad
33:00 - Trauma, the Body Keeps the Score
35:27 - Kundalini Energy and Awakening Experiences
39:00 - Tai Chi in Flushing, Queens Botanical Gardens
42:00 - Yoga, Weight Loss, and Letting the Body Be
46:42 - We Are Everything: Control and Influence
48:10 - The Descriptive-Prescriptive Fallacy
52:04 - The Bahiya Sutta: "In the Seen, Merely the Seen"
57:16 - Thoughts Are Just Bird Songs
58:26 - Gratitude for Co-Creating This Space
01:00:12 - Two Types of Acceptance: Mind vs. Innate Reality
01:03:09 - Closing Thoughts and How To Support
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Sep 16, 2025 • 47min
Dad's Birthday, Belief's Prison, and the Love That Holds It All
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aug 28, 2025 • 56min
The Absolute Free Fall of THIS (Previously LIVE)
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.
Video show archive, audio podcasts, music parodies, Supporter Tribe membership options, merch, social media, and email contact form: https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd
Support us with a 1-time donation and get a personal email response from me: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/zdoggmd
More about Dr. Z: https://zdoggmd.com/about-z/
Topics and chapters:
00:00 - Introduction: What is Freefall?
01:47 - Pure Experience and Centerless Wonder
03:15 - Flow States and the Dropping of "Me"
04:50 - The Spirituality Story Problem
06:38 - Speaking from Silence
08:29 - The Illusion of Self and Awakening
10:03 - When the "Me" Starts to Crack
14:23 - The Impossibility of Words
16:05 - Direct Experience vs. Conceptual Knowledge
18:04 - Birds Birding, Trees Treeing
21:06 - Problems with "Aware Space" Concepts
24:42 - Criticizing Spiritual Teachers and Concepts
27:11 - The Perfection of What Is
28:25 - Questions About Existence and Determinism
30:14 - Aging and Letting Go
32:40 - The Jupiter Storm Metaphor
34:18 - The Great Defeat: Personal Story
39:04 - Free Will vs. Determinism Discussion
41:14 - Exhaustion as Your Best Friend
44:00 - Life Without "Me"
46:06 - The Spiritual Seeking Trap
49:33 - Rick and Morty References and Mr. MeSeeks
52:31 - Final Thoughts and Closing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jul 3, 2025 • 2h 45min
End-Stage Awakening: Braiding, Integration, & Release of the Threads (w/Dr. Pierce Salguero)
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.
Here's a deep dive into the Multidharma Threads model.
Pierce's books and more.
Pierce's newsletter to get notified when his full-length Threads book drops.
And here's a link to zoom meetups that discuss the Threads model. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jun 27, 2025 • 1h 44min
See Your Nature, And Be Free (w/Zen monk Kogen Czarnik)
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 support for issues such as trauma in spiritual settings, two fantastic books Kogen has translated/edited, and much more. Watch the video here.
Video show archive, audio podcasts, music parodies, Supporter Tribe membership options, merch, social media, and email contact form: https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd
Support us with a 1-time donation and get a personal email response from me: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/zdoggmd
More about Dr. Z: https://zdoggmd.com/about-z/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

May 29, 2025 • 3h 15min
The Emptiness, Unity, Energy, and Psyche Threads of Awakening (w/Dr. Pierce Salguero)
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 a deep dive into the Multidharma Threads model.
Pierce's books and more.
Pierce's newsletter to get notified when his full-length Threads book drops.
And here's a link to zoom meetups that discuss the Threads model.
Two resources Pierce mentioned for spiritual emergencies/crises:
Cheetah House
Spiritual Emergence Network
Video show archive, audio podcasts, music parodies, Supporter Tribe membership options, merch, social media, and email contact form: https://lnk.bio/zdoggmd
Support us with a 1-time donation and get a personal email response from me: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/zdoggmd
More about Dr. Z: https://zdoggmd.com/about-z/
Timecodes and Topics:
0:00 - Intro
0:05 - Recap of prior Threads discussion, psychiatric vs. spiritual crises
20:45 - The Emptiness Thread: Experiences, practices, pitfalls, integration & release
1:03:29 - The Unity Thread: Experiences, practices, integration & release
1:30:13 The non-dual endpoint of all the Threads
1:35:15 The Energy Thread: Experiences, practices, integration & release
2:09:36 - The Psyche Thread: Experiences, practices, pitfalls, integration & release
2:54:23 Integration and release of all the threads
3:04:46 Spiritual emergency or crisis vs. psychiatric & resources to help Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices


