Be Here Now Network

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

Jack shares miracle stories and personal lessons from Dipa Ma – the luminous, compassionate and unshakeable spiritual master.

Want to learn how to follow the Buddha’s path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack’s new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield. The live version begins March 18! Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3T7Aafp

"You had a sense from this very sweet, mild-mannered old lady of a kind of unshakable inner strength, an incredible sense of stillness and strength in her being." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack lovingly reflects on:

- His times with the great yogi and spiritual master, Dipa Ma Barua

- Miracle stories and spiritual lessons of Dipa Ma

- How the suffering in Dipa Ma's life drew her to Buddhism and meditation

- Dipa Ma's siddhis (spiritual/psychic powers) and compassionate shining heart

- A life-changing story of Jack being blessed by Dipa Ma

- Her grandmotherly loving kindness

- Dipa Ma's favorite spiritual questions

"Dipa Ma's teaching was to always keep people in your heart, to give of your love to the people, and the earth and the world around." – Jack Kornfield

"Of all of the possibilities that one can do with the heart and mind, Dipa Ma was a great master of them." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 11/01/1989 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on DharmaSeed.

In this Q&A session, Ram Dass talks about transcending dualism, the significance of clairvoyance, how reincarnation is part of our dreams within dreams within dreams, and more.

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

Want to be part of the discussion about this episode of Here and Now? Join us for the SoulPod Meet-Up on March 26th at 3 pm EDT. Subscribe to the General Fellowship Group for more information.

This episode is also brought to you by Magic Mind, a matcha-based energy shot infused with nootropics and adaptogens designed to crush procrastination, brain fog, & fatigue. Use the code RAMDASS at checkout to get up to 50% off your subscription: Magic Mind

This week’s episode of Here and Now is taken from a Q&A session in 1987.

Ram Dass begins by answering questions about his Mala beads, his spiritual lineage, and psychedelics. He shares stories about giving his guru the “yogi medicine.”

Taking on a question about struggling with the polarities of positive and negative, light and dark, and good and evil, Ram Dass explores transcending dualism. He talks about how before he’d experienced transcendence, he had a lot of trouble with the idea of good and evil.

What’s the significance of clairvoyance? Ram Dass talks about the very rigid set of rules we base on what our senses tell us, and how he loves sharing stories of miracles because they push everybody’s buttons.

Ram Dass answers questions about cultivating the Witness, why there is so much blind suffering, and connections that span multiple lifetimes. He talks about how reincarnation is as real as anything on this plane of awareness because it’s all just dreams within dreams within dreams.

“Everybody doesn’t have a guru or a physical plane guide, many people have inner guides that they experience as their inner voice, which could be their inner voice or it could be another being helping them. There are many levels of this game. Each person gets their ‘karmuppance.’ They get just what they need, just when they need it.” – Ram Dass

Talking Kabir, breakups, LSD, & Ram Dass, Jack shares how we can unfurl from the suffering our expectations in order to live the mystery.

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

"Awareness has this quality of allowing change or openness to take place, because you're not trying to make it a certain way... you're observing it." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully explores:

- Kabir and waking up in this very life

- Grief, breakups, disappointment, and letting go

- How expectation creates suffering

- Meditation and "manufacturing the light"

- Expectations, battling reality, and opening to the mystery

- How the mind measures, but the heart loves

- What Ram Dass told Jack about dealing with the death of his father

- Moving past the content of mind, and truly experiencing life

- The essence of Buddha's practice of mindfulness

- Labeling/noting feelings as a way to release them

- Albert Hoffman and LSD

- Relationships and how to make commitment without expectation

Want to learn how to follow the Buddha’s path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack’s new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield. The live version begins March 18! Sign up here: https://bit.ly/3T7Aafp

"Now, what's interesting to discover in meditation, is as you pay attention inside, it's the mind which measures, the mind with thought. The heart doesn't measure, the heart doesn't have that capacity, actually." – Jack Kornfield

"This is an amazing thing—bodies, and life, and cars, and planets hanging in space, and big balls of fire that we name stars and no one knows where they come from...beetles, insects, and strange things. What is this? So we sit and make ourselves a little bit quiet in order to turn the heart and the mind together to face directly this reality, this changing reality of birth and death, of change of life." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 10/10/1988 at Insight Meditation Society was originally published on DharmaSeed.

Sarah Anderson joins Raghu to explore her new book, The Lost Art of Silence, and how we can reconnect to the beauty of quiet.

In this episode, Sarah and Raghu delve into:

- How crucial and nurturing silence can be

- Sarah’s childhood trauma

- Silence’s relationship to the inner journey

- Sarah’s investigation into the art of silence

- Silence as the link between so many religions and traditions

- The way that being quiet makes us a better listener

- Raghu’s story of meeting Ram Dass

- How nature can teach us about silence

- The fear caused from sensory deprivations

- Becoming aware of God through silent meditation

- Concerns for our youth and the loudness of technology

About Sarah Anderson:

Sarah Anderson founded the Travel Bookshop in London in 1979, the shop later featured in the film Notting Hill. She studied Chinese at the London University college of SOAS, and at Heythrop, where she earned an MA in the psychology of religion. She has taught travel writing at City University, writes regular travel pieces, reviews books, and gives talks worldwide. Also an artist, Sarah’s paintings have been exhibited throughout London. Sarah is the author of several books. Her most recent book, The Lost Art of Silence, celebrates the power in being quiet.

“Even in the cacophony of going into the woods, of the birds singing, animals speaking to each other, in that cacophony is a delightful silence. Because the real silence, to me, is that your mind stops turning out this avalanche of thoughts and stories.” – Raghu Markus

In this classic talk from 1987, Ram Dass explores working with suffering, keeping our hearts open, finding the intuitive heart space, and being responsive rather than reactive.

Want to be part of the discussion about this episode of Here and Now? Join us for the SoulPod Meet-Up on March 12 at 8 pm EST. Subscribe to the General Fellowship Group for more information: https://www.ramdass.org/fellowship/#soulpod

Going back to the basics, Jack explores how we can skillfully navigate our dynamic mood states by experiencing them as clouds of the mind.

Want to learn how to follow the Buddha’s path to freedom in the modern world? Sign up for Jack’s new online course Walking the Eightfold Path with Jack Kornfield beginning March 18! Register here: https://bit.ly/3T7Aafp

"Moods are actually kind of mysterious and quite impersonal. They're like the weather. It's been kind of cool this year, then we get our rainstorms, and the sun comes in between, and the wind comes and dies down, and we don't have any control over it whatsoever. It just comes. It's due to certain conditions." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack compassionately illuminates:

- Experiencing moods as clouds or weather—arising and passing naturally from impersonal sets of conditions

- The six flavors of experience in Buddhism

- Finding the middle ground between acting on feelings and suppressing them

- The "vipassana romance" and understanding the "siren call" of desire

- Diffusing desire with humor, mindfulness, and noting

- Moving past attachment and aversion by leaning into them

- Techniques for overcoming doubt

- Letting go and becoming more happy and more live

"The optimist wakes up and says, 'Good morning, God!' And the pessimist wakes up and says, 'Good God! Morning...' It's the same experience, but the mood somehow changes it." – Jack Kornfield

"One sits and practices, and let's these experiences come and fill us. We bow to them, name them, soften in the heart and say, 'Okay, show me your stuff, give me the whole thing.' And you know what happens after a while? If you make this spaciousness in the heart and that still point, at some point it ends. Because everything does. You say, 'Wow that was a big storm of desire, wasn't it?' And there you are, and there's this sense of freedom that comes that that's not who we are most fundamentally." – Jack Kornfield

The Dharma Talk from 4/1/1988 at was originally published on DharmaSeed.

Philosopher, author, and activist Peter Singer joins Raghu to chat about his new book, The Buddhist and the Ethicist.

Pick up your copy of Peter Singer’s book HERE

This week on Mindrolling, Peter and Raghu have a comprehensive conversation on:

Singer’s coming of age in the 60’s

The background of Venerable Shih Chao-Hwei

The ethical outlook of utilitarianism

Examining the consequences of our actions

The problems that come with not thinking about the future

The Bodhisattva tradition

Bhakti Yoga and merging with the supreme being

Having compassion for those that suffer, human and non-human

Looking at theories of human nature and basic goodness

Karma’s compatibility with utilitarianism

The ways that we leave traces in the world

About Peter Singer:

Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher and Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He also is also an author, and is best known for his writings about poverty and liberating animals. He wrote the book Animal Liberation, in which he argues for vegetarianism and co-founded the Australian Federation of Animal Societies, now Animals Australia, the country’s largest and most effective animal organization. Most recently, he published a book of eye-opening dialogues with Venerable Shih Chao-Hwei, a Taiwanese Buddhist monastic and social activist. Learn more about Peter Singer on his website.

“Compassion is one way of looking at how we ought to be thinking about all sentient beings. We ought to be thinking about them with concern for their well-being. When you use the term compassion, at least to westerners, that suggests a feeling, an emotion, something like we might say empathy that we have with them. That’s something that utilitarians would want to encourage because we need to think about what its like for other beings in the various possible states of the world that could result from our doing a variety of things.” – Peter Singer

In a conversation on the healing power of ketamine, David Romanelli and Madison Margolin discuss re-wiring the brain and overcoming trauma.

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 Set and Setting, Madison and David dive talk about:

David’s journey with yoga

The healing power of psychedelic therapy

David’s work with Daytrip, a spa-like ketamine experience

Birdsong psychedelic retreat center

Re-wiring the brain through psychedelics

David’s connection to the Grateful Dead

Working with psychedelics to treat Trauma, PTSD, and suicidal ideation

Ketamine versus other psychedelics

Reframing our somatic experiences and how we carry emotions

The ways that kids are already psychedelic and keeping the magic alive

Reconnecting to our sense of belief

About David Romanelli:

David Romanelli is a leading health and wellness innovator. He has pioneered the art of fusing ancient Eastern practices with modern sensibilities. His unique wellness projects such as Yoga + Chocolate and Yoga for Foodies have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine, the New York Times, Newsweek, and O, the Oprah Magazine. His first book, Yeah Dave’s Guide to Livin’ the Moment, reached #1 on Amazon’s Self-Help List. David offers many guided meditations and recently began working with Birdsong, a psychedelic healing center. Discover more about David’s offerings at yeahdave.com.

“I realized the way my brain was wired needed to be reset, because I was already prone to worry, and anxiety, and nervousness. I realized that I needed to change that, I needed a new perspective. The psychedelic therapy really showed me that you can unplug, and plug back in. ‘Control, Alt, Delete’ if you will and come to life in a way that doesn’t require you to worry, where it’s not your default setting.” – David Romanelli

Explaining the ways our minds can be seduced, Joseph Goldstein teaches us how to let go into non-clinging.

This 2007 talk was originally published on Dharmaseed.

In this episode, Joseph Goldstein teaches listeners about:

Letting go into the wisdom mind of non-clinging

Awakening to the nature of the mind

Working with the hindrances of mind

Noticing how the mind can be seduced

Skeptical doubt and being frozen in indecision

The ways that doubt can masquerade itself as wisdom

Telling ourselves that it is okay not to know

Resting in experience rather than being caught in thought loops

Investigating our aversions and their hold on the mind

Seeing everything with perfect wisdom

Transforming our attitudes about our aversions

Being inclusive to our difficult experiences

“Struggle is a great feedback because it signifies non-acceptance of something. Because if we were accepting, we wouldn’t be struggling. Whenever we’re in that sense of striving, of struggle, of tension, take that as a feedback, not as a problem. That’s telling us something. That’s saying something is going on in the body, in the mind, in the emotions, in the thoughts, in our external experience, something is going on that we’re not open to, that we’re trying to exclude, and that’s why we’re struggling.” – Joseph Goldstein