David Marchese

And people talk about these concepts that are rooted in religious and spiritual practices.

And sometimes I wonder if...

People maybe mistakenly think that they can decouple the spiritual practices or like the true religious root of these things and just sort of use them in almost like a fast food kind of way.

Like it's a shortcut.

Yeah.

I'm very interested in people's turning points in their lives.

So I'd like to ask you about what I think was your big turning point, which is, you know, you were a young man in London.

I believe you were going to business school.

At the time?

And you ended up kind of on a whim going to a lecture by a monk whose name was, was it Garanga Das?

Garanga Das, yes.

And you were swept away, had this epiphany that he was saying something that you needed to hear.

Can you tell me about what you heard in that moment that was so powerful to you that you thought, well, that it actually became kind of a life-changing moment?

I want to ask you something related to that, which is, you know, it's to do with kind of your arc.

And, you know, I think one of the things that's particularly unusual about your arc is that it kind of looks from the outside like it's an inversion of reality.

like a typical monk's journey, where I think, you know, usually the typical version of that is somebody decides to embrace monastic life and then embraces a kind of asceticism or a renunciation of material things, wealth, whatever it may be.

In some ways, it seems like you decided to pursue monastic life and then have moved towards monasticism

I think you're probably doing pretty well for yourself financially.

You hang out with glamorous people.

You're a successful entrepreneur.