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

Jan 11, 2026 • 1h 32min
Taking the Exquisite Risk (with Simon Brown)
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 of the Dearest People I Turn To"
4:00 The Mind Creates the Abyss, The Heart Crosses It
5:00 The Relational Intimacy That's More Than Its Parts
7:00 Hell Is Other People vs. Recognition of Non-Separation
10:00 Opening the Clown Chakra (Becoming Baba Z-Dogg)
12:00 Why Ram Dass Makes You Cry Instantly
16:00 Alan Watts AI Warnings
18:00 Ram Dass's Journey from Harvard to Surrender
20:00 "He Can See All of Me and Still Loves Me"
23:00 Ram Dass's Decades of Practice (Not Just Surrender)
25:00 "Everything's Already Awake" - Why This Message Can Make People Sick
28:00 Unbearable Compassion and Meeting People Where They Are
33:00 Delusion as Seeing Incorrectly What's Actually Here
35:00 The Problem with One-and-Done Awakening
38:00 "You're Going to Die. Everyone You Know Will Die"
41:00 Ram Dass Holding Hands of Strangers as They Die
44:00 Only Sensible Response Is Compassion
47:00 Turn Towards the Unconditioned/Deathless
52:00 Society's Duality and Taking Sides
57:00 The Pure Freedom Beyond Conditions
1:00:00 Play, Spontaneity, and Shame
1:03:40 The Goldfish Bowl Story - How Play Gets Beaten Out
1:07:00 "This Really Hurt and I Love You"
1:09:00 The Trance of Unworthiness We All Inherit
1:13:34 K-Pop Demon Hunters as Liberation Teaching
1:16:00 Barbie Movie and Repressed Emotion
1:18:00 Perfect Days - Liberation Through Cleaning Toilets
1:21:00 "It's a Wonderful Life" and the Universal Heart
1:24:00 What's Gone That You Don't Notice
1:27:00 Taking the Exquisite Risk of Vulnerability
1:28:40 "Pee Here Now" - The Non-Dual Amusement Park Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jan 8, 2026 • 1h 13min
You Really Can't Do This Wrong
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 Perfection of Unfolding)
23:10 - Mind as Fabrication Machine: How Insights Recondition
29:50 - Spiritual Bypass: Go Ahead and Try It
36:47 - The Well of Grief: Drowning to Find Gold Coins
41:00 - Complex PTSD and Mismatched Jigsaw Mind
47:07 - Despair and Depression as a Stop Along the Way
53:23 - Extrasensory Powers, Dreams, and Karma
1:00:10 - Dreams Show You Have No Control
1:04:28 - The Paradox of Effort: Effortless vs. Mindfulness Practice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 27, 2025 • 38min
The Kingdom of Heaven is Spread Upon the Earth (Christmas Eve Live)
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 determinism is neither/both/doesn't ultimately matter when you're here now.
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:
00:00 - Introduction: Christmas Eve Live
00:36 - What We're Celebrating: Heart-Based Amazement
01:31 - Love: Human Conception vs. Pervasive Fabric of Reality
03:05 - Working Holidays as a Hospital Doctor
05:44 - Sitting in the Unknown Without Expectation
11:24 - How Do You Stay in the Unknown?
14:16 - Being Itchy: From Deconstruction to Just Allowing
17:04 - Societal Constructs: Taking Sincerely, Not Seriously
19:04 - Religions Pointing at the Same Thing
22:43 - Jesus: Unconditional Love and Kingdom of Heaven
25:49 - Resurrecting Jesus by Adyashanti
27:18 - My Grandfather in India: From Atheist to "God is Real"
29:43 - Free Will, Determinism, or Neither and Both
32:28 - Kingdom of Heaven Spread Upon the Earth
35:07 - Closing: Stay in the Presence
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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


