Jackie Dobrinska and Bruce Damer chat about insight into ourselves and outsight into the world in this recording from the Ram Dass Explorers Club.

The Ram Dass Explorers Club is a free virtual group wherein members delve into pivotal movements within the psychedelic renaissance while paying homage to the enduring legacy of Ram Dass. Join HERE to embark on explorations of expanded consciousness, guided by the themes of awe, transcendence, union, and beyond.

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In this episode, host Jackie Dobrinska speaks with Bruce Damer about:

• Ram Dass’ work and how he continues to inspire others
• How Bruce came to know Ram Dass
• The way that Ram Dass hits on the center of things
• Albert Einstein and thought experiments
• Entering flows of connection and time
• The etymology of psychedelics
• How we create our own realities
• Coming into embodied wisdom and the serpent of the internet
• Ram Dass as a beacon to the reality we need
• Navigating psychedelics and having adequate preparation
• Knowing that we are always held by love

About Dr. Bruce Damer:

Dr. Bruce Damer is a scientist, psychonaut, and humanitarian. Dr. Damer is Chief Scientist at BIOTA Institute, UC Santa Cruz. He is an astrobiologist working on the science of life’s origins, spacecraft design, psychedelics and genius. Dr. Bruce has spent his life pursuing two great questions: how did life on Earth begin, and how can we give that life (and ourselves) a sustainable pathway into the cosmos? A decade of scientific research with his collaborator Prof. David Deamer at the UC Santa Cruz Department of Biomolecular Engineering resulted in the Hot Spring Hypothesis for an Origin of Life published in the journal Astrobiology in 2019. Dr. Damer also has a long career working with NASA on mission simulation and design and recently co-developed a spacecraft to utilize resources from asteroids. You can keep up with Dr. Bruce Damer on Twitter.

About Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director with the privilege of marrying two decades of mystical studies with 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an interspiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves. 

Learn more about Jackie’s work at asimplevibrantlife.com.

“We can create our realities. We’ll determine whether we are constricted or opened at every moment by our choices of what we produce for our fellow humans.” – Bruce Damer

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Moving through the senses, JoAnna Hardy guides listeners in a meditation to acquire stillness of the mind.

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In this episode, JoAnna Hardy guides us through:

• The benefits of having clarity and a still mind
• The breath-body central focus
• Gaining self-trust
• Paying attention to the sounds and sights around us without assigning meaning
• Working the muscle of awareness
• Reengaging with the breath when the mind gets busy

This recording is from the Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center: Mindfulness for Educators.

About JoAnna Hardy: 

JoAnna Hardy is an insight meditation (Vipassanā) practitioner and teacher; she is on faculty at the University of Southern California, a meditation trainer at Apple Fitness+, a founding member of the Meditation Coalition, a teacher’s council member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, a visiting retreat teacher at Insight Meditation Society, and a collaborator on many online meditation Apps and programs. Her greatest passion is to teach meditation in communities that are dedicated to seeing the truth of how racism, gender inequality and oppression go hand in hand with the compassionate action teachings in Buddhism and related perspectives to social and racial justice. 

“It’s important that we start that way, with this breath-body central focus, to really collect, gather, and sustain the capacity of our mind to be more still. From that stillness, this really beautiful self-trust comes. We can trust ourselves more because we are not at the whimsy of that chaotic mind.” – JoAnna Hardy

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Distinguishing commentary from direct experience, Gil Fronsdal helps us break free from the conventions and comparisons that the mind makes.

Today's episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Gil Fronsdal speaks to listeners about:

• Paying homage to those who have purified their hearts
• Direct experience versus attempting to describe things
• The way that comparison arises
• Self-image and appreciating our own suchness
• Resting in the part of ourselves that is not an idea or a concept
• The conditioning that can happen from society
• Wisdom from sitting with physical pain
• Living in the present moment instead of the stories we tell ourselves
• Letting things be as they are
• Seeing God in our simple, direct experiences
• Coming back to the breath and practicing all throughout the day

This 1998 talk was originally published on Dharmaseed

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

“Most of us know the wonderful smell of a rose, but if you could try to describe in words what that fragrance is, you’d have a hard time I think. The actual sense, the direct experience of smell, is something we can all experience; seeing this flower as it is. In Buddhism, there is a lot of emphasis on seeing things as they are.” – Gil Fronsdal

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Nina Rao interviews Nani Ma about her deep devotion to serving her guru and her service work with Ganga Prem Hospice.

If you are interested in donating to Ganga Prem Hospice, you can do so through a donation to End of Life Care International with a memo specifying you would like it to go to Ganga Prem.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

This time on the Be Here Now Network Guest Podcast, Nani Ma shares with us:

• Her religious upbringing into Christianity
• Being pulled to India from a young age
• Seeking liberation from suffering and pain
• The story of meeting her guru, Babaji
• The beauty and power of the Ganges river
• Her daily routine and how she meditates
• How to deal with difficulties by watching our breath
• Reaching one-pointedness through chanting single-worded mantras
• Moving through the physical death of a guru
• Forming cancer clinics in India and Ganga Prem Hospice

About Nani Ma:

Nani Ma is from the United Kingdom and sought spiritual enlightenment at a very young age. One day, she realized that serving the multitude and helping the needy is also an aspect of spiritual practice. So, she started taking care of the terminally ill cancer patients in the hospital, guiding the people who are suffering from pain and death to embark on a new journey. Together with Dr. A. K. Dewan, she established the Ganga Prem Hospice. Ganga Prem Hospice is a spiritually-orientated, non-profit hospice for terminally ill cancer patients. The Hospice has been constructed at the foot of the Himalayas on the bank of the river Ganga.

Krishna Das is offering two benefit kirtan concerts in Rishikesh October 2024 - details on KrishnaDas.com/Events

“When we watch our breath, it slows down. The breath and the mind are connected. Either the breath slows down and the mind slows down, or the mind catches hold of one thing, which is the name, and the name has its power by itself. The name has its own power.” – Nani Ma

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Guiding listeners through the seven factors of enlightenment, Trudy Goodman shows us the play of awakening in daily life.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

In this episode, Trudy Goodman holds a talk on:

• Loosening our grip on self-involvement
• Living lovingly and joyfully in our daily lives
• The seven factors of enlightenment
• The things that torment us and connect us
• How nature offers metta to us
• Remaining poised amidst little catastrophes
• Equanimity and being balanced
• Trusting in the unfolding of reality

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats and workshops worldwide.

This 2011 talk was recorded at Spirit Rock Meditation center and originally published on Dharmaseed

“Being a Buddhist or practicing these Buddhist teachings is to live lovingly and joyfully without getting so caught or identified with the suffering self. And not just out in some fantasy mountain cave that we might imagine ourselves in or on meditation retreat at luxurious Spirit Rock or in the monastery, but in the midst of whatever we’re doing.” – Trudy Goodman

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Taking us on a pilgrimage through Buddhist teachings, Gil Fronsdal describes meeting the dharma in ourselves.

This recording from Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on Dharmaseed.org

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal teaches on:

• Meeting the dharma in ourselves through direct experiences
• Going into the world with a phenomenal capacity for non-harming
• Looking at what really motivates and drives us
• The story of the Kalama Sutta
• Recognizing what brings welfare vs. what brings harm
• Breath as a form of assurance and how our easeful, relaxed breath can be our teacher
• Hindrances and what keeps us removed from ourselves
• Coming home to our selves, our bodies, our sensations
• Allowing the flow of experience to move through us
• Releasing all of the things we hold onto

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

“It is so simple and so basically human, the capacity to recognize that we’re suffering or that we’re happy. In relationship to grand religious philosophies and ideas, it can seem maybe inconsequential to base one’s religious life on being able to recognize where is harm and where is welfare. But that relates at the heart to what the Buddha was pointing at. It points to something that we are able to experience and see and know for ourselves directly.” – Gil Fronsdal

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In a dharma talk on relative and ultimate reality, JoAnna Hardy discusses how to hold the complexity of life.

This lecture was recorded at the Insight Meditation Retreat for 18–32 Year Olds and originally published by Dharmaseed.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

In this episode, JoAnna Hardy offers a talk on:

• How and why we keep returning to our suffering
• Dominant paradigms and what is out of our control
• The way that the Buddhist experience introduces us to ultimate reality
• Relative reality and what is happening on the ground
• How we are all invited to be free via the Four Noble Truths
• The ways we struggle with trying to control other people
• Anatta, identity, and the way we hold onto our self-hood
• How we show up in the world through our speech, actions, and thoughts
• The Eightfold Path as the things we can control
• Paying attention to who we spend our time with

About JoAnna Hardy: 

JoAnna Hardy is an insight meditation (Vipassanā) practitioner and teacher; she is on faculty at the University of Southern California, a meditation trainer at Apple Fitness+, a founding member of the Meditation Coalition, a teacher’s council member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, a visiting retreat teacher at Insight Meditation Society, and a collaborator on many online meditation Apps and programs. Her greatest passion is to teach meditation in communities that are dedicated to seeing the truth of how racism, gender inequality and oppression go hand in hand with the compassionate action teachings in Buddhism and related perspectives to social and racial justice. 

“I’ve really worked on this practice of looking at a person; I’m not only looking at them. I’m looking at probably thousands of people who stand behind them, who have created them, who have created their way of thinking, their way of being. Every teacher, every friend, every person they come into contact with creates this being that is in front of us.” – JoAnna Hardy

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In this recording from the Ram Dass Fellowship, Jamie Catto describes surrendering to the power of Yin in our daily lives.

To learn more and sign up for the Ram Dass Fellowship, visit RamDass.org/Fellowship. To support this free offering, please consider leaving a donation at RamDass.org/Donate.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Jamie and Jackie explore:

• The difference between Yin and Yang
• Surrendering to the flow of Yin
• The benefits of yin parenting
• Listening receptively in love making
• Dancing as an example of Yin
• Curiosity as a quality of Yin
• The power of Yin in allaying our overworking imaginations
• Our culture’s avoidance of negative emotions
• The emotional plumbing system of the body
• Forging paths through the forest of worry and anxiety
• Embodying peace for the world
• A guided mindfulness meditation from Jamie
• Practicing loving awareness and self-love

About Jamie Catto:

Jamie’s mission is to make self-reflection hip enough to save us from ourselves. Jamie Catto is the director of the 2019 film Becoming Nobody, the quintessential portal to Ram Dass’ life and teachings (BecomingNobody.com). He is an author and musician running transformational workshops and events to reclaim all the treasure we edited away into the shadows and facilitate everyone daring to be more real, more fallible, more tender, more intimate. His mission is to create a world full of ‘walking permission slips’ where we all lighten up and enjoy the unpredictable human path together with humor, playfulness, and a healthy dose of irreverence. Jamie’s workshops and 1-1s provide a refreshing approach to inner work with the right dose of playfulness and depth. Keep up with Jamie on his website or on Instagram.

“So much of the treasure, creativity, lovemaking, parenting, laughing, dancing, the flow of the life is to be experienced when we allow ourselves to be moved and practice the qualities of Yin, which are curiosity, surrender, welcomeness, listening, spaciousness, all of those kinds of things where we let life live us and we become in the flow of the greater river of life.” – Jamie Catto

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Exploring mental constructs, Gil Fronsdal describes how we construct the relationships to our experiences.

This recording from the Insight Meditation Center was originally published on Dharmaseed.org

On this episode of the BHNN Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal talks about these topics:

• A four line Buddhist chant in Pali
• The impermanence of all constructed things
• Mindfulness and the practice of noticing
• Exploring one’s relationship to the present moment
• Moving our attention with a deliberate calmness
• Meditation instruction as the antidote to relating negatively
• Our attitudes and how they affect our experiences
• Non-reactive awareness in order to avoid new constructions
• Identity and the stories we tell about ourselves
• Allowing “I am” to stand by itself

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

“To quiet these constructions is happiness. To be able to question these things, and slowly perhaps, maybe even imperceptibly, to allow these constructs to calm down, relax, not buy into them as much. Maybe not buy into them as much because we notice them.” – Gil Fronsdal

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Trudy Goodman explains how we can practice compassionate presence in all moments, even those that are uncomfortable.

This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Trudy Goodman delves into:

• How we often overlook the simple practices that will make us spiritually contented
• Meditating while doing ordinary things
• Retreats and being in the present
• Buddhist cosmology as representation of our own awakened qualities
• Offering compassion to ourselves and to others
• Tolerating the raw experience of being alive
• Getting caught in the ideal of being a spiritual person
• Naming and recognizing negative experiences like hate, lust, etc.
• Treating the content of each moment as a chance for presence and awakening
• Forgiving ourselves when our heart runs wild

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats and workshops worldwide.

Learn more about Trudy’s offerings at trudygoodman.com

“It’s this loving, caring attentiveness that gives us the courage to come so close to experience, even experiences we most wish we could turn away from.” – Trudy Goodman

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