The ZDoggMD Show

Tobias Ricardo spent 15 years as a Hindu monk and had pretty much every spiritual experience on the menu: kundalini fireworks, blissed-out “I am” states, retreats, the works. The real freedom turned out to be seeing that all of it was happening to and for a “me” who was never actually there. If you’ve had glimpses that never seem to stick, and you keep thinking you just need one more retreat, mayb...

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 🥳 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I got an email this morning with the subject: "I died and you helped. Thanks." 😳 Here's the resulting YouTube LIVE discussion! Topics covered: Reading an email from a longtime viewer describing two years of awakening, contraction, and finally the realization there was never anyone on the journey Why the end of seeking is surprising precisely because it's so ordinary, not some mystical attainment...

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-duali...

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 😭😅 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more ab...

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...

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/ad...

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 pra...

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 a...

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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"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. Learn more about your ad ch...

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 th...

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoic...

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 lyin...

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 le...

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: The Dr. Oz April Fools Prank — A Fond Memory BTS Documentary: Schmos, Celebrities, and the Cosmic Joke "Everything Seems Fine and Yet" — What's Been Comin...

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. College admissions process and Nina's New York school visits Waking up at 3am — absorbing stress and...

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 Al...

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...

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 R...

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...

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...

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....