Be Here Now Network

In this episode, Joseph Goldstein leads a powerful practice around cultivating equanimity and talks about why it’s important not to confuse equanimity with its near enemy, indifference.

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“Equanimity is the mind state of impartially, not indifference. So it’s like space which contains everything impartially. And one way of coming to this space of impartiality is understanding that things, in this world, are happening lawfully. They’re not happening by accident. And so the equanimity phrase, and the development of equanimity, is closely tied in with wisdom.” – Joseph Goldstein

In this episode:

Joseph talks about the concept of equanimity, explaining why it’s important not to confuse equanimity with its near enemy, indifference

Joseph explores the wisdom aspect of equanimity

Joseph leads a powerful equanimity practice focused around offering phrases to a neutral person, a benefactor, a good friend, and a difficult person

“All beings are the heirs of their own karma. Our happiness or unhappiness depends on our actions, not upon our wishes.”

This dharma talk from December 7, 2004, was originally published on Dharma Seed.

Author, musician, and astrologist, Ahad Cobb dissects his new memoir, Riding the Spirit Bus, with Raghu Markus.

“The very fact of living in cooperative community on the earth together is itself a gift to many people in our culture.” – Ahad Cobb

This time on mindrolling, Raghu Markus and Ahad Cobb discuss:

Ahad Cobb's background with Ram Dass

Maharaj-ji's grace

Writing Riding the Spirit Bus

The Lama Foundation and becoming grounded

Communal living

Walking in the forest as meditation

About Ahad Cobb:

Ahad is the author, editor, and publisher of six books, including Image Nation and Early Lama Foundation. A musician and leader of Dances of Universal Peace, he has also served as a continuing member, officer, and trustee of the Lama Foundation. He studies and teaches Jyotish (Vedic astrology). He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Check out Ahad's new memoir about spiritual awakening and Ram Dass, Riding the Spirit Bus at www.ahadcobb.com

This week, Jack joins Michael Krasny for a conversation diving into mindfulness, loneliness, compassion, gratitude, suffering, meditation, and the Dharma.

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

"With mindfulness you learn to live in the present. If you walk down the street and you're spending all your time thinking about that conversation you had and the tasks you have to do, you miss the people walking by, you miss the clouds after that rainstorm, the colors of the sunset—the lavender, red, and orange that's reflected in the windows and puddles—you miss your life. Mindfulness becomes liberating in that way." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack and Michael discuss:

- Ram Dass and the idea of "being here now" in regards to suffering, depression, and suicidal thoughts

- Overcoming loneliness, isolation, and grief by reaching out and connecting with others

- Wrapping ourselves in the infinitely compassionate cloak of of Quan Yin or Mother Mary

- How compassion and mindfulness practices regulate our body away from the 'fight, flight, freeze' response

- Vipassana meditation, the mindful loving witness, and bringing it back into the world

- Planting seeds with your conscious effort and peaceful heart, but not being attached to the outcome

- How mindfulness liberates us to be fully present for the beautiful nuances of our lives

- The difference between pain (inevitable) and suffering (optional)

- The various meanings of the word "Dharma," and it's relation to truth

- Making friends with our inner-critic and judging mind

- Consciousness, gratitude, and the Great Mystery

"We have the capacity to hold our sorrows and our measure of suffering with compassion rather than judgment, rather than fear, almost as if you could wrap yourself with the cloak of Quan Yin—the Goddess of Infinite Compassion—or Mother Mary, so that you know that you're not alone, and that we've done this." – Jack Kornfield

Joseph Goldstein explores the Buddha’s concept of the Five Iddhis, which are the five elements of the teachings we need to bring to completion in order to truly awaken our hearts and minds.

“This Iddhi of psychic power is inferior to the Iddhi of understanding. When the Buddha was asked what the true miracle was, he said the real miracle is the awakening of people’s minds, it’s not the flying through the air or the diving in the earth, it’s the awakening of the mind, the awakening of the heart.” – Joseph Goldstein

In this episode, Joseph shares his insight into:

The Sanskrit term, Iddhi, which refers to the particular power of something, bringing to completion a particular situation

The difference between psychic Iddhis and Iddhis of understanding and insight

The Buddha’s concept of the Five Iddhis, which are five elements of the teachings we need to fulfill to truly awaken our hearts and minds: fulfillment of special knowledge of the Dhamma; coming to a full understanding of the truth of suffering; bringing to completion the abandoning of the causes of suffering; the fulfillment of coming to the end of suffering; and the development of the path of practice

The Buddha’s concept of the four Iddhipadas, which are characteristics that are the road to success in our practice: zeal, effort, love of the Dhamma, and inquiry.

This dharma talk from October 9, 1989, was originally published on Dharma Seed.

Teacher, translator, and Rumi Scholar, Kabir Helminski, gets together with Raghu to discuss Sufi mysticism and his new book, The Mysterion.

"In Sufism, sincerity would be understood to be something like doing whatever you do for the sake of God; not for anyone's approval, not for attention, not for pleasure." – Kabir Helminski

In this episode of Mindrolling, Raghu Markus and Kabir Helminski chat about:

Kabir's encounter with Ram Dass

The tradition of Rumi

Sufism and sincerity

The sense of self in the Sufi tradition

Presence as a single field of awareness

Relief from judgment and the power of laughter

About Kabir Helminski:

Kabir has been translating Rumi and writing about spirituality for more than forty years. He is a respected teacher, a Shaikh of the Mevlevi Order, which traces back to Rumi. Kabir Helminski is co-director, with his wife, Camille Helminski, of the Threshold Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge and practice of Sufism. He is the author of Living Presence and the translator of four volumes of Rumi’s poetry, including Love Is a Stranger and Rumi: Daylight. His most recent book, The Mysterion: Rumi and the Secret of Becoming Fully Human, can be purchased at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/717906/the-mysterion-by-kabir-helminski/

Making friends with death, David Silver and Raghu Markus explore Tibetan Traditions and the wisdom of death and dying.

"'Mindfulness is the path to the deathless, headlessness is the path to death. The mindful do not die, but the headless are as if dead already.' If you are not mindful through the flow of your earthly life, that will bring death and its fury." – David Silver quoting/commenting on the Dhammapada

In this episode, David Silver joins Raghu Markus to explore:

Death and dying in the Tibetan tradition

Individual success within the collective

Viewing death as an adventure

The ego as a servant instead of a master

Surrendering the bubble of separation

"Certainly a cause of sickness is the way we guard ourselves and the way we act in the world from this separated place. That's why you do not need to be old to get any benefit from some of the incredible wisdom of the Tibetan culture." – Raghu Markus

About David Silver:

David Silver is the former co-host of the Mindrolling podcast. He is a filmmaker and director, most recently coming out with Brilliant Disguise. Brilliant Disguise tells the unique story of a group of inspired Western spiritual seekers from the 60s, who in meeting the great American teacher, Ram Dass, followed him to India to meet his Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, familiarly known as Maharaji. Two days before he left his body, Maharaji instructed K.C. Tewari to take care of the Westerners, which he did resolutely until the day he died in 1997. K.C. Tewari—in the guise of a headmaster of a boys school in the foothills of the Himalayas—was secretly a High Yogi, frequently able to go into altered states of trance, known as Samadhi, at any moment.

Watch Brilliant Disguise at www.ramdass.org/brilliantdisguise

Joseph Goldstein talks about how the tides of conceiving continually condition our lives and explores the ways we can directly experience the reality of Nibanna, the unconditioned.

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

“Do we buy in? Do we buy into the content? Do we get lost in this mind-created world of ‘future,’ or can we see it as being as light as a momentary thought, a momentary image? Just like a sound arises. But it takes a great deal of vigilance because these thoughts, these tides of conceiving, are tremendously seductive. You know, we’ve been doing this for years, and perhaps lifetimes. But awareness is very powerful, we can actually free ourselves from this prison.” – Joseph Goldstein

In this episode, Joseph talks about:

- How the tides of conceiving continuously arise in our mind and condition our experience

- The different concepts that we solidify and make real, including our bodies, time, and the mental construct of the self

- Why the concept of the self is so deeply held and why we’re so attached to it

- The four realities that can be experienced directly, including that of Nibbana, which is also known as the unconditioned

- The wide range of expressions of the experience of the unconditioned that is available in different Buddhist traditions

This dharma talk from December 5, 1995, was originally published on Dharma Seed.

Jack returns for an illuminating Dharma Talk exploring the deep human longing for the wedding of body and spirit.

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

"The invitation of spiritual life, of awareness or mindfulness—we could call it a sacred attention—is not to hurry up, fix, or make this human realm perfect or better. Nor is it to ignore it, but rather to awaken to what is each day as we meet it in our bodies, in our hearts, in our minds, in our family, in our community on this earth – to see it how it is, and to illuminate it with the heart, to illuminate it with our understanding and compassion, to find the basket of spirit that is here, and let that spirit shine in this human realm." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack dives into:

- An old African wisdom story of a shepherd, his cattle, a dark forest, a lover, and a magic basket

- Life, death, void, silence, and opening to the great mystery

- Perception, consciousness, and Buddha's wisdom that mind is the principle element of creation

- Listening, truth, timelessness, and The One Who Knows

- The balance and connection between spirit and form

- Rumi and the deep human longing to wed body and spirit

- Buddha and the teachings of compassion

- Breath, wholeness, and the eternal present

- Moving past the fear body by breaking through the myth of seperation

This Dharma Talk from Spirit Rock Meditation Center on 09/11/2000 was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

This week, Krishna Das helps us notice the gradual, positive changes that come from maintaining practices like chanting.

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

"Live your life. Go after the things you want. Hopefully, that will include some spiritual practice which will ripen you to become the love that lives within you." – Krishna Das

In this episode, Krishna Das leads us in devotion and discusses:

Connecting to an individualized practice

Changing fate through chanting

The Guru within and allowing grief

Devotion through service

The Kundalini of an Open Heart

Integrating the self, identity, and belonging; mindfulness researcher, Dr. Dan Siegel, joins Raghu Markus to explore his new book, IntraConnected.

"From a mathematical point of view, the modern construction of a separate solo self is actually a violation of a complex system's ability to adapt and learn." – Dr. Dan Siegel

In this episode Raghu Markus and Dr. Dan Siegel ponder:

The integration of self, identity, and belonging

Radical Trauma and losing the sense of self

Science and contemplative wisdom

The Optimal Flow of Harmony

Death as a space of possibility

Being a part of a whole

About Dr. Dan Siegel:

Dr. Siegel is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization, which offers online learning and in-person seminars that focus on how the development of Mindsight in individuals, families, and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes. His psychotherapy practice includes children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. He serves as the Medical Director of the LifeSpan Learning Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Blue School in New York City, which has built its curriculum around Dr. Siegel’s Mindsight approach.

Keep up with Dr. Dan Siegel and purchase his books on www.drdansiegel.com