Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond.
Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD October 24, 2020
Hello. Namaste everybody. How are you doing?
Let’s take a minute to just calm down and deepen and expand into this heart space that we all share. Everything exists within this vast space, this presence. This is Being, not the verb, but the noun, “Being,” and when we chant, when we repeat the name, we are turning towards this presence. So, here is where we are, and why we do practice is to recognize where we truly are, which is in our own true Being. It’s a vast, vast presence, inside of which we all live. Everything is within this presence. This presence is eternal and spontaneously present, this moment, always. And it’s only our thoughts, our emotions, our attachments and aversions that block our access to who we truly are.
So, it all comes back to remembering. At first, we remember to remember to look, and eventually we actually remember this presence. We re-recognize, we re-cognize this presence. It’s like coming home after being away for a long time. When you first get home, after being away, you fall down on the bed or into a chair and everything let’s go, and you’re just happy to be home. You forget where you’ve been. You don’t think about where you’re going. You just relax into yourself.
When we do practice, it is not important to be evaluating how we’re doing. We’re simply planting seeds, so to speak. We don’t stand over them to watch and see if they’ve grown yet. We plant the seeds, and then we plant another seed, and another, and then we go about our day, and those seeds grow. That action of coming home again, again, and again, keeps working on us through the day, and the magnetism, or the gravity, of our true nature becomes more and more real to us.
All the names that we chant are the names of this place that we live, in which we live, our own true nature. All the different names, all the different traditions, all the different lineages, all the different practices, they’ve only been brought to this world to bring us home. So, whatever you’re attracted to in terms of practice, follow that. See where it takes you. Listen to your heart. If you don’t trust yourself, what will you do? Even if you listen to advice from someone, a teacher, a yogi, a saint, whatever, you’re listening, you’re evaluating, and you’re seeing if you relate to that in your own being. So, if you don’t trust your own feelings, you’ll never be able to trust anything or anyone.
It’s not something that’s easy to live in for us at first, but because it is true, because our hearts do know, it’s inevitable that, as we practice, as we live, as we learn, as our hearts are purified of our attachments and aversions, this is where we move into our own self, our true self, which is the self of all, which is the great self of all, this fast presence.
Q: HI there, KD. First of all, I want to thank you very much for the email that you sent me. You probably get hundreds of them, so you might not remember.
You did. Yeah, it helped soften a very unquiet mind since I left the hospital from, septicemia is what I had, but what you said in the email about Ram Dass and how he felt through those first, I think you said two years, might not have been, that he just lost all sense of everything, I lost all sense of everything during that time, and that feeling of being lost was, well, it hit me like a train. I thought, wow, I’m a pretty spiritual person, I thought, “Yeah, you know, I can, you know, taken in by ambulance, you know, they give you gas now and you think you’re fine,” but in fact that wasn’t the case at all, and what I’m trying to say is, I’m not asking you a question. I’m putting forward my appreciation for your help in that communication that you gave me over the internet. It was, the suffering was worse when I left the hospital, because I thought I’ll never get back to this again. I’ll navigate back into the meditation, chanting practice, but your email, it gave me hope, and I appreciate so much for what you did because, you know, I was in a kind of a brain fog, and I’ve written something down here because I still have brain fog.
Well, that’s why we don’t hold on to things, you know? That’s why we practice letting go, whatever it is we’re thinking or imagining or feeling when we do our practice, right? We don’t want to get caught in holding on to like, a pleasant, little peaceful spot and pushing away negativity. What we’re training in, is letting go. So, the next time a big dark cloud comes into your life, number one, you remember, “Oh, this is a dark cloud. Didn’t this happen? Yeah. this happened like three months ago. I remember that. And then it was gone. Now it’s back. I guess it’ll go again.”
Number two. This is all thought. All the things, even when you say, “I know it’ll happen again.”
Really? You don’t know that. You don’t know that, but you’re polluting this moment with that negative, let’s forget the word “negative,” with that feeling of fear that it’s going to happen again. “Will I be ready?”
This is not, these are real feelings, and we can’t kill them. We can’t push them away, but we can be with them in a different way than usual, because we know we can be aware. “Okay. I’m really stuck in this shit now. Okay. I’m still stuck. It’s been 32 seconds and I’m still stuck. How long is this going to go on?” et cetera, et cetera.
Right? And then something will happen, and it’ll dissipate. This is life, you know? And no matter what we’re feeling, we’re here. So, that’s why practice is so important for us, remembering to come back to the mantra, to the breath, to the Name, this develops inner strength and courage, also, because we see that we can let go. We get the strength to let go. Nothing can grab us and never let go. We can let go. That’s the option we have.
It’s not pushing away, though. You understand that? It’s not saying, “I don’t want this. Get away, get away.”
Because it gets stuck to your hands then. So, it’s not about pushing away. It’s about recognizing we’re stuck again. “Hello? How are you? You got me, bastard. I can’t believe you came back. Well, enjoy eating me alive because it won’t last.”
And then you just naturally, because of the practice you’ve done, you actually pay less attention to it. You see, it’s only when we’re caught by something, that it grabs our attention, that we respond. If we’re not paying attention, it’s like maybe you’re watching a movie on television, and there’s trucks going by the street outside. You don’t hear them while you’re watching the movie. They’re there. They’re going by, they’re roaring through the street, motorcycles, everything, but you’re not aware of it because your attention is on the film, the movie. Right? So, as you get stronger in practice, you’re able to keep your attention on the name, on the mantra, on the breath, on being here, and those clouds that come, they just pass through and they don’t grab you the same way, because you are not allowing your attention to be sucked up by them. But this only comes through practice. Practice, practice, practice. If you want to learn to play an instrument, practice, practice, practice. Like the guy in New York city who gets into a cab walking down the street and he’s looking for Carnegie Hall, and he says to this guy he meets on the street, “Hey, can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?”
And the guy goes, “Practice, practice, practice.”
So that’s the way it is. Keep saying that to yourself. “Practice, practice, practice.”
And whenever you remember that, and you’re able to sit down for two minutes, not three minutes, just two minutes and settle, allow yourself to settle like a leaf falling from a tree, gradually, lightly touches the ground. Just try it. 20 times a day, just sit down, whenever you remember, sit down and just let everything go, just for a minute. It’s a really big thing and that will change your whole life. Let everything go, all the bullshit you tell yourself about yourself, all the stories, all the fantasies, all the imaginations, all the wants, and the don’t wants, just sit down and let it go, again and again and again, for just a minute. Don’t try. Let go. Release. Breathe. Just feel the breath. So, give it a shot. See what happens.
I’ll do that. And again, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.
I just noticed on some of your videos that you posted, that your right pinky finger is slightly bent. Mine is that way, too, and I was just curious, it’s a silly question.
First, let me ask you, how did that happen to you?
How did that happen to me? My brother stepped on it with an ice skate when I was quite young.
I had much more fun doing it.
Yeah. I had been… on a Friday night, this is back in 1966, I was on the basketball team at my college, and on Friday night I took a thousand micrograms of Sandoz acid, and by Sunday morning, like about 36 hours later or more, I guess I started to come down and I was lying in bed and I heard this banging on the door downstairs, and I just thought it was part of the trip, so I didn’t pay attention, but it didn’t stop. It kept banging, banging. So I, I felt like, you know how a dirigible floats through the air, you know, it kinda doesn’t really… I kind of floated downstairs and I opened the door, and there’s the coach of the basketball team. We had a game that afternoon in Queens, and I hadn’t shown up to get the team bus at the gymnasium. So, they came to pick me up and I was like, “Oh, okay?”
So, I threw some clothes on and the coach walked me out to the bus. He had his arm around me. I mean, he could tell I was out there. They just thought I was crazy. Nobody really knew about acid those days. It was just at the early part of it. So, he sat me next to him on the team bus on the way to the game, had his arm around me, and so at some point in the game, I was playing, you know, everybody was running around fast and yelling, screaming. I was just doing ballet, and at one point, I saw the ball coming towards me and I put my hand out like this, and it hit my finger and it knocked the finger all the way back like that, and I just looked at it, and I banged it back in place, and I finished the game, and they would’ve had to rebreak it to fix it, so I just said “Hell with it. It’s okay.”
And that’s how I got my pinkie.
Well, that’s a much better story than mine. Well, my my question was related to playing the harmonium though, because I started playing the harmonium in March, and I was just wondering, have you ever, has it ever interfered with the chords?
No, because I have pretty big hands and I, you can you see how they’re like straight across, so I can hold down the different notes and play the melody with other notes. It hasn’t really affected, of course I’m not a concert harmonium player. I can play like three chords and, you know, I mean, you know, it’s not like… I couldn’t really play the piano as a real, you know, in a really professional way. So.
Well, thank you for telling the story. I was just curious.
You’re welcome. Yeah. Okay. Take care.
Q: This is a little difficult to kind of put into words, but, you know, I’ve been practicing with meditation and you know, I kinda got into this with Buddhist meditation about four to five years ago, and then, you know, kind of broke into the Hindu stuff a few years ago, by reading, you know, the, the Gita, the Upanishads, and then that led me to Ram Dass. Spirituality is one of those things that I’ve always kind of halfway loved and then halfway struggled with, you know, it’s very hard sometimes for me to tell if, if what I’m getting into is BS or not. You know, I grew up typical American kid, you know, just went to regular church and then woke up one day and it was like, how can it, you know, this stuff, this does it make sense? And I was a pretty bitter atheist about it for many years, and it was really the Eastern spirituality that brought me out of that. But anyways, long story short, you know, I read all of these stories of you guys talking about Maharajji, and just all of the amazing stuff that happened around him and all of the stuff he could do. You actually, you guys sent out that free book, Divine Reality, and you know, when I’m at work in between doing things, I’ll read a little section of it, and it just blows my mind, and this may sound silly because I know you guys are like, on record for the past 30, 40 years talking about him, but just sitting here.
Yeah, 50. Sitting here, face to face with you, just to hear it out of your mouth. I mean, that stuff…
Every word is completely true. And even the, everything in those books, everything in those books simply describes one of his toes, you know? There’s no, his being is so Beyond the Beyond, beyond any way of talking about it and conceptualizing about it. It’s, you know, the miracles and the stories of how many people he saved and helped and healed and all that stuff, this is the tiniest tip of the iceberg. You can’t even imagine. No one can imagine, because our imaginations are so limited to our own mental concepts, and he’s just beyond inconceivable. Just no bottom, no end to it. There’s no way to ever know him completely. And any little bit that we know about him is his actual, by his own grace, allowing us to see a little bit of what we might be able to digest to some, that’s all. He’s beyond the beyond.
Yeah. And in my last part of this too, do you think it’s possible for people who never met him and were never born in that timeframe to have any kind of relationship with that? Or is that something we should even, you know?
Don’t you feel them when you read about him?
Yeah. Yeah. It cracks me up because I’ve pulled this little picture of an old man out at work and I’m looking at it and people are probably like, “What the hell is he doing?” They don’t understand. You’re trying to feel God’s presence.
I’ll tell you a story. I had a friend named Jean who was a Chinese medical practitioner. She never met Maharajji, but she used to come and sing with me sometimes. She was a good friend, and she got real sick, and it turned out she had, she actually went into the hospital for a kidney transplant, I think, or something like that, and she put Maharajji’s picture on the table next to the bed and, you know, with the clock and a couple of other things, and then after the surgery, she was in a coma for three days, and when she came out of the coma, the nurse says to her, “Oh, I’m so happy you woke up. What a shame your grandfather’s not here to see this.”
And she said, “What do you mean my grandfather?
And she points to the picture of Maharajji, and she said, “Isn’t that your grandfather? He sat next to you next to the bed and the chair almost all day, every day, until this morning.”
Oh my God. That’s awesome.
No, not only had Jean not ever met him, but the nurse didn’t know shit from shinola about Maharajji, who he was. So, and you already feel a relationship with him. Why don’t you trust that? That would be a good thing.
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. God bless you, man. You guys, you guys do a lot of good for people, so thank you.
Q: The first 15 days of this month, I spoke to you on the last call, and Girishji, Nareshji, and your beautiful sister Champa, and they are crazy people for you. They are so emotional for you. I felt more welcome than even at my own place. I don’t feel that much respect, and I felt that much respect just by taking your name, that Krishna Das has asked me to say hello to you. And he said, “No, come to a place, have tea with us,” and he introduced me to everyone. He showed me your room, Maharajji’s room, and all your stories, whatever you do with them. And his daughter is getting married on the 20th of November.
I’ll write them. I have his email. I have his WhatsApp, I think, and I can I’ll just drop him a note. He invited me, I think it was supposed to be last year. Either that, or it was another daughter. He’s got so many of them. I don’t know, so many kids that I have no idea what’ going on. They’re such good people. Their father was my friend. Champa’s husband was my friend. Bhairav was his name. And he was really great devotee of Maharajji. And after Maharajji left the body, that next, Maharajji left the body in September, that next February, Bhairav asked Siddhi Ma, he said he wanted to go to Jageshwar, which is further up in the Hills. It’s a famous, very sacred site for Shiva. He went there to go there to do Shiva Puja on Shivaratri, and Siddhi Ma said, “No, don’t go. Stay in Kainchi and do your puja here.”
But he went and he stepped on a rusty nail and he died of tetanus. That was just in the February right after. So, I’ve been, he was my friend, and they had a, Girish and Naresh have an older brother, had an older brother who was such a joy. He was one of the most beautiful beings I’ve ever met, you know? And he died, also, in probably the late 70s or early 80s. You know, they don’t go to doctors and stuff. They just, he had problems with his stomach, and he just died.
So, wonderful people though, and Champa, she’s incredible. She’s raised that whole family by herself. She took care of them. They had nothing. They had nothing. They were dirt poor, and she kept the family together. You know, it was amazing, and now, you know, at one point they asked Siddhi Ma if they could make a little lemonade stand right next to the entrance, you know, and Ma said, okay, so they did, and from that, they made money, and then they opened that restaurant, and then this and that, and they rebuilt the house. So, all through Maharajji’s blessings they’ve accomplished so much, and it was all her. Champa. Absolutely. And PS, she was the most beautiful woman in the Kumoan Hills. I mean, I fantasized about her my whole life in those days. I’d be sitting in the havan in Devi Puja and she would come and I kept looking over and know I was so devoted… to her, you know.
But, wonderful, wonderful people, and I always go to eat at their house when I’m there and they’re just good, good people. Good people.
I don’t have a question today.
But if you would like, will you share any of your most favorite stories of Siddhi Ma? Any one of them? Any memory that’s always with you? Jao?
Yeah, give somebody else some time. Jao.
Q: Hello. Hello again from Tanzania. Again.
So last time we talked about the finding guru in India, and about finding that my experience, I didn’t find one specific person, but I learned and grew a lot through different, lots of people, and my question is, first, why do people change their names when they find a guru? Because of course I would love to change my name, to have an Indian name. And why do they change? And I can understand the first names. All right, Krishna. But what about the last name? Why is it Krishna Das?
“Das” means “servant.” And my lineage, our lineage, is the lineage of Hanuman, who is Ram Das, the servant of Ram. So, Maharajji, first of all, it’s not really, Westerners do anything they want, but it’s not traditional that you change your own name. What happens is the guru will give you a spiritual name. In some cases in India, even Indian people get a different name, but not that often because they already, everything’s God there. “Durga Insurance Company,” “Krishna Travel Company,” “Sri Ram Gas Station.” Everything is Ram there, and so they don’t usually get their name changed unless they become sannyasis where they take an initiation and they’re given a new name, a spiritual name, a name of who they’re going to become. Jeff from Long Island is going to become the servant of Krishna when he finally figures out what’s going on. So, it’s a name given by your guru usually, but like everything else, nothing is cut and dry. Some people give themselves names and you know, that’s nice. It’s a nice aspiration. But it’s a little different when your Guru gives you a name, because he sees you, he sees all your karmas. He sees who you are, and he gives you a name that is in line with your karmic situation.
And what was the first thing you asked? You had something before that?
Yes, because I thought that only by meeting a guru in person that you could change your name, but not really.
Well, traditionally that’s, that’s accurate. That’s the way it should be. But like, these days, everybody thinks that they’re God anyway, so they do whatever the fuck they want. But the problem is they only think they’re God. If they knew they were, God, that would be different. So, but it’s not, a name is just the name, after all. And who you are has no name. Your true Being is beyond names and forms and any kind of thoughts, so a spiritual name is like an aspiration, but it doesn’t really, it’s not who you are. You’re beyond that. So, I don’t think, you don’t need to be changing the outside. It’s just another, that would be like changing your clothes, you know? And there’s no reason to do that. Your clothes are just fine, you know, you don’t need to. That’s just a superficial thing basically, but people get very attached to it and are very identified with it. And so that can be good. That can be problematic, also.
So, find out who you are and then you will know your true name, which is good, right?
Right. I think it sounds like it reflects a little bit, the path you’re supposed to follow. Like, it has a great responsibility with it. It’s like a reminder.
It could be, but you don’t know your path because you don’t know who you are. So why name yourself this if you’re really that? I mean, not that it’s going to matter really, because you did it, and anything we do with selfish motivation is, you know, just more selfishness, self-centeredness, egoistic action. So, it’s okay. You won’t, it’s not like you’re going to, you know, suffer for that, but it’s no, it’s not necessarily of any use to you.
Yeah, no, I meant more “like, in our case, like, we’re naming. Then, yes. I don’t think it makes sense if you’re changing your name by yourself, you wake up and “I’m going to do this.”
Yeah. Well, for instance, so Ram Dass had bought this Volkswagen van from some other westerners, and we drove it all around India, and then at one point, Maharajji said to Ram Dass, “Ram Dass, you’re a Saint. You can’t touch money and you shouldn’t drive the van, give him the keys.”
So, Maharajji, he took the keys and gave them to me. And from that point on, my name, for about six months, was “Driver.”
That’s what he called me. “Driver. Driver, go get the car. Driver, do this. Driver, go do that.”
So, one day he called me into his room, and he looks at me and he says, “Arjun. Nay. Krishna. Nay. Krishna Das.”
And I said, “Krishna Das? What is this Krishna stuff? I’m a Hanuman guy. I’m a Ram guy.”
Maharajji laughed. He said, “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” He said, “Hanumanji served Krishna, too.”
All right. And it’s funny. I found this story much later in the Mahabharata. You know what that is? The Mahabharata?
So, there’s a story. So, before the big war is about to start….No, no, no, after the war is over, Krishna has been acting as Arjuna’s charioteer. He’s been driving his chariot. You know, when they fought in chariots with horses and, you know? So Krishna was acting as the charioteer, and so, every day after the battles were over, Krishna would get down from the chariot, and he would offer his hand to Arjuna and help him down off the chariot. So, after the war was over, they drove the chariot to this place, and Krishna said, “Today is different. Today, you get off the chariot first and run as far and as fast away as you can.”
So, Arjuna gets down and he runs away. Krishna steps off the chariot, and when Krishna stepped off the chariot, there was a flag on the chariot, I believe it was a white flag with an outline of a red monkey on the flag. When Krishna stepped off the chariot, the monkey flew out of the flag and up, disappeared into the sky, and the chariot exploded in a thousand pieces, and Krishna said to Arjuna, “Didn’t you ever wonder why all through the war, you never had to get a new chariot? Whereas the chariots of all the other warriors were destroyed. They had to replace them.
He said, “Hanuman absorbed all the missiles, all the weapons thrown at your chariot, all through the war. He absorbed it in himself so you didn’t have that.”
That’s a nice story. Yeah.
Q: Hi Krishna Das. Hi, everybody.
Actually, I was excited that that guy asked the question about Siddhi Ma, because I didn’t have to ask it. I was just, I had been curious about her, and just, you and just the way it all weaves together, and I don’t know. It’s fun to hear you talk about different people, and I was curious about you know, maybe, at this moment, what would you be able to share with us about her? You know, if she was right now?
If she was right here right now, I’d be down on my face, on the ground, holding her feet.
What do you think she would… I don’t know. I mean…
I don’t know. It’s very hard for me to talk about Ma, because she didn’t want publicity. She didn’t want to be talked about, she didn’t want any fame. She didn’t want people coming unnecessarily out of curiosity. She didn’t want a big scene around her. It was big enough already. I mean, people came from everywhere to be with her and see her, and she carried on Maharajji’s tradition and people would come and stay in the temple and spend time with her over all the years, and one of the things Maharajji had said to her is that, before he died, he just one day happened to say, you know, “When a Saint dies, his ashram becomes his body.”
So, she treated the temple, Kainchi, and Bhumiadhar, and Hanumanghar, were the three temples in that area. She treated those temples as if they were Maharajji’s body. They were kept spotless. It was very difficult. It’s a lot of work to keep the puja going and keep it done in the right way and keep the place clean. You can eat off of the floor anywhere in the temple. I mean, it was so spotless, and she treated it as Maharajji’s body. She was completely immersed in Maharajji.
I remember we were going to go to Badrinath, which is a very long trip into the mountains, and to the highest, the bottom of the valley is 10,000 feet, but the peaks around the valley are 15, 16,000 feet high, and so it’s a very dangerous trip because the roads are bad and there’s thousand foot drops like one foot away from the off the road, you know, and there’s landslides and everything, avalanches, and so we were going, and so she said, “Okay, when you go, make sure you sing Hanuman Chalisa all the… Oh, never mind. You’re covered.”
So, I could just see Maharajji going, “Aap. They’re covered. Leave them alone. Don’t tell them to do things like that.”
I mean, you could feel that. She just, she was talking and said, “Now you remember, do Hanuman… Okay. Never mind.” like that.
So she was incredible. And I don’t know if you’ve heard this Saint, Ananda Mayi Ma, who left the body, I think, in the 80s. She was a great, great Saint in India, a woman saint, and very, had tens of thousands of devotees everywhere. She was a very, very great, high being, and she and Maharajji knew each other very well. And at one point, when Siddhi Ma was, her husband was still alive and she was married, when she was younger, first married, in those days in India, married women didn’t come out in public by themselves. They stayed home, you know, so, Ananda Mayi Ma used to come to KK’s house and come upstairs and visit with KK’s family, and then go up to the kitchen, climb up onto the roof and walk across the roof, because two buildings down, they’re all connected, two houses down was Siddhi Ma’s husband’s house. And so, she would walk across the roof and come down into the kitchen and hang out with Siddhi Ma all day, and then she would leave the same way, because she wasn’t, she couldn’t go into the house directly.
So, Ma was just… In some way, she hid herself even more than Maharajji hid himself. People just, she didn’t want any attention. She didn’t claim any responsibility…. People would come and say “Ma, help me.”
She said, “Just pray to Maharajji.”
You know, she was completely immersed in him all the time. And yeah, and she was so kind to us, to the Westerners, really. She knew we were crazy, and she never judged us. She never told us to be this or that. You know, she really just let us be our stupid selves and you know, now I’m paying for it. I would have liked it. But the problem is she knew that we weren’t capable of changing. So, she never tried to change that. You know, she was really amazing, just so wonderful to be with her. And, and yeah, whenever I had a real problem, I would talk to her about it, and she was just extraordinary. She didn’t necessarily give you answers with words, but everything would change, you know, little by little.
She saved my life twice. Completely. Totally. Absolutely. Literally saved my life, twice, over the years. Once in ’84, ’83 maybe, and again in 1995. Totally, absolutely changed my life. Wouldn’t have made it if she hadn’t been around. I had sunk and I wasn’t getting back. So, because of her and, being in a body, it’s what I needed that, you know. Otherwise, I just would have destroyed myself.
There’s some stories about her. One of the devotees of Maharajji wrote a book, Raboo Joshi is his name and it’s called, “My Father and I Are One,” I think there’s a bunch of stories, you know, she didn’t want to be talked about, and she didn’t want to be written about, but one of these old devotees of Maharajji who was also very close with Ma wrote a bunch of stuff about her and, you know, She just threw her hands up like, “What can I do? I told him not to do it. He did it. What am I going to do?”
That’s about as much of a reaction she got. So, there’s a bunch of really cool stories about her in that book.
Cool. Well, it sure. It’s just nice. Thank you for sharing, and I mean, it is all that, the presence of her and him and everything and her answer, it sounds like it was just, “Sing to him and keep doing the Chalisa. Oh, you’re doing it anyway.”
No, no, it wasn’t that “you’re doing in any way.” It’s that “you’re covered. I got you covered. Don’t worry about it. They don’t have to do anything like that. I’ve got them covered. What’s wrong with you? Go away.” You know, “Go. Go to Bhadrinath,”you know, so that was the feeling, you know, Ma used to tell us, you know, sometimes she would say, “Okay, do this,” but then Maharajji would say, “Come on, I’ve got that covered.”
And also, in India, for a woman, certain behaviors are not really accepted easily. So, because she was a woman and chose to act that way, in accordance with the social customs, she never put herself out forward. Like the temple has, there’s a temple trust, which is a bunch of these devotees. They’re all, I think, all men, except for Jaya, who was Siddhi Ma’s very close disciple. They kind of ran the temple, made the rules, et cetera. And Ma, of course, was the final word, but she never interfered publicly with that. She let them do their thing, basically, and acted like she was just another woman who didn’t have any say, but everybody knew that was just not really the case. She was the bottom line. If they did something that wasn’t really appropriate, she would let them know. But she chose to hide herself inside the social customs, where a women is, in India, pretty much suppressed in many ways. So, even though she was as great a saint that ever walked the earth, she acted like she was, you know, another devotee of Maharajji. So, she hid herself that way. So, there you go.
Q: Hello. How are you doing, Krishna Das?
Pretty good. How are you?
Good. I’m fine. Thank you. Actually, I wanted to share an experience with you that happened to me like, maybe like about a month ago and know your point of view on it. So, I usually, while I’m driving, I usually chant Hanuman Chalisa along with your chant that, I put it on the stereo, and this one afternoon I was chanting along with you while driving, and when the verse, “Tumhare bhajana Raama ko paawai, janama janama ke dukkha bisaraawai,” when that verse came and I was singing along with you, I just burst out crying like a heartbroken child. And I didn’t have any reason to cry. I didn’t know why I was crying. In the beginning, I tried to stop it, but later I said, “I’ll just cry,” and I cried for like 10, 15 minutes after that. I don’t know why I was crying though.
I think you do. It may not be a conceptual understanding, but I think you know what you were feeling, and there’s no reason to even evaluate it in any way, other than to be with that feeling. You don’t have to understand it with your mind. That didn’t come from your mind.
Yeah. Yeah. It kind of felt like it was like a heartbroken cry, but I kind of felt relief after that.
Yeah. Many things happen when through practices. Then, when you turn towards that, that place, what do you call it? God, or Ram or Hanuman or the Self, many things happen, and a lot of energy that might be blocked, or painful energy can be released, and tears can wash the mirror of the heart, also.
I would, if I were you, I would not spend any time thinking about it, but I would sit with that feeling, the essence of the feeling you had. The tears might’ve been part of a response of feeling connected to something that you didn’t, you’re not aware of in your rational mind, because you know what the words mean of that verse, you know, but through singing, you’re remembering you, one gets Ram, and “Janama janama ke dukkha bisaraawai,” the suffering of many thousands of lifetimes are removed. So, part of your experience was touching a place in you that you’re not aware of most of the time, that we’re not aware of, not just you, most of us. And that’s exactly the way practice works. It’s not conceptual, it’s not rational. It’s way beyond that, and that’s a good experience, and a deep experience is definitely an opening, and when we open, we release lots of stuff. Some of it’s sadness. Sometimes it’s joy. We don’t know exactly what it is. Whenever I feel that love and that presence, I cry. That’s the first thing I do. That’s what happens. What else can you do when that part of you touches that beauty and the love that is here, available for us all the time, because it lives within us. What else can we do except cry? There’s no other option, really, and they’re not tears of sadness, and it’s not tears of happiness necessarily, either. It’s tears of this connecting with something so deep and so real and so ancient within us.
Thank you. And I have one more question. So, in Hanuman Chalisa there’s a verse where it says like, “It’s a good if you repeat Hanuman Chalisa like seven times.”
A hundred times. Yeah. A hundred times. If it was seven times, everybody would fucking enlightened. It’s a hundred times, and you do it 108 times, is what we were told. There are people saying everything. They say “sat” means seven times, and that is not accurate as far as my understanding. Everybody I met in the old days, Maharajji’s people, Maharajji’s devotees, they all said “108 times.” That’s practice. That’s tapasya. That creates a charge in you. Seven times you can do, like, while you’re on the toilet. You can do it in commercials between the shows on television. It’s nothing.
No, it’s not nothing. It’s good. Every repetition of every word in the Chalisa is good, but there is a specific practice. It’s a tapasya, it’s a hard practice of doing, of asking for a boon. You ask for what you want, and then you have a puja, you get some fruit, a picture of Hanuman or Maharajji or whoever you worship or love, and then you do the Hanuman Chalisa 108 times, and then you’ll get that boon. It might not walk in your door the next minute, but you asked for it. You will get it if it’s the best thing for you, because it’s like it says, and I mean, if you asked for a million dollars, and Maharajji knows that you’re going to spend that on cocaine and kill yourself, He’s not going to give it to you. Right?
So, you ask for the boon and then you do 108 times, and then that’s it. You’ve done it. You’ve done it. You’ve requested blessings and then you’ve created the energy around that request, and you will get that boon in one way or another, if it’s the best thing for you when it’s right for you to have it.
Not everything can happen right away. You know, I mean, we’re used to instant gratification. We turn on our computers and we can find anything we want on the internet, et cetera, et cetera. But if you ask for real devotion, you’re not ready for that. It would fry you alive. It’d burn every circuit out of your body. So, if you ask for that, you will get it and he will have, he will find a way to prepare you for that, because that’s what you want. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen right away. The boon I asked for is still ripening and I can feel it happening in its own time.
One time, Maharajji, every once in a while, would just, out of the blue, he’d turn to somebody and go, “What do you want?” Like that, right?
And I’d seen him do it with people. So, I had my answer ready. I kept it with me in my mind. If he ever said that to me, I know what I’m going to say. So, one day we’re sitting around and he looks at me and He goes, “What do you want?”
And I said, “Prema Bhakti,” which is me ecstatic devotion, you know? Blissful, crazy, mad, insane devotional love.
And he went, “Oh,” he said, “Not right now, later, later.”
So, that’s the way it is. But asking is a big thing, because not only that, you, it crystallizes something in you, too, because if you want something and then you spend a certain amount of energy manifesting that desire, that increases that, you know, that gives energy to that, and it gives it direction and strength and power. So, it’s all, it’s a good practice, and it’s up to you to ask what’s important enough for you or not. You can ask for a new car, but… Or ask for somebody to, you know, trim that beard when you’re not looking. That that would be good. So, but you know, it’s up to us to figure out what. I always, I took it very seriously and I just thought I should ask for what I really want, even if I can’t even imagine how that could ever happen for me. That’s kind of the way I approached it, but I know other people who asked for, you know, other things. It’s okay. You have to be you, whatever you feel is important for you.
So, you know, at first, the first time I did it, I think it took me like 13 hours to do the 108 Chalisa, because I had just kind of learned it and I was reading it. You know, I didn’t really know it by heart. Now I can do it in a little over four hours, or less if I really rush. But the idea is to do it with some attention and some devotion and some, not mechanical.
One time when I was staying in Kainchi, sometime in, maybe it was in the ‘90’s, Siddhi Ma went away for the day and so I decided to, it was Tuesday, so I decided to do 108 Chalisas. So, I did the 108 Chalisas and I was standing in the courtyard later when she came back into the temple, and she walked into the courtyard and she looked at me and She said, “When you do the Hanuman Chalisa, you should not do it mechanically.”
And then she went in the room and yeah, I had done them totally mechanically, as fast as I could with basically no feeling at all, but, you know, what are you going to do? So, she knew it. So, she just said that to me.
So yeah, 100 times. And I saw that some woman astrologer who goes to the Hanuman… Where are you talking from?
I’m in Baltimore, Maryland.
Well, that’s near India. Yeah. Okay. So, there was some temple just outside of Delhi. Maharajji has a temple in Mehrauli, and there was some woman who went there and spoke to the guy there, who I knew very well. He died recently. And he told her that she could do seven. Seven times would get her what she wants, but that’s not the way it really came down from Maharajji’s time. It was more. I was going to write to her on YouTube, but I didn’t. I actually minded my own business. It’s stupid and not my business.
Q: Hi KD. Namaste. Ram Ram. So, I am from that place near, my mom’s place is Ayodhya, so where exactly this Ramacharitamanasa and Hanuman Chalisa was written, and our native language is that kind of Avadhi, a dialact of Sanskrit. So, I was reading this, I think it was kind of, the very first spiritual practices with which I got since my childhood. I remember the Hanuman Chalisa. I was reading it. I know some meaning also, had some understanding, but I started listening to your talks and now I almost have completed all of your podcast and almost all of your interviews. I started chanting Hanuman Chalisa again. I started. I stopped initially. I learned it, then I stopped because I started doing yoga. When you start doing a lot of yoga, then you go to big, big books, and then you think “Hanuman Chalisa might be not at all my thing,” because I think then ego arises. But then at some certain point of time, I think because of the grace of Maharajji, I got some understanding. Then one day you were explaining something, it hit me, because then that day I realized, or not realized, I think I got, I experienced what is the meaning, the meaning of the first line of the Hanuman Chalisa, that is the “Shree Guru charana saroja raja…” and that day, it was a realization, this is the most important line of the Hanuman Chalisa. The day you get, I think that’s the whole, the universal whole Hanuman Chalisa will be revealed to you. So, I think it was a really great realization. Since childhood I was reading, but that day when you were explaining, suddenly it like, it came here. That day, I went “Oh my God.” That experience was really amazing. And thanks. I think it’s, it’s his grace. I heard that podcast and I got it clear.
Yeah. There was a great Saint who said that the charanamrit from the feet of the Guru is pure consciousness, pure being, and so remember it says, “to clean the mirror of my heart, I take the dust, the pollen-like dust from the Lotus feet. The lotus pollen to clean the mirror of my heart.”
Why do we clean the mirror of our heart? And what happens when we clean the mirror of our heart? What’s reflected? The pure reflection. No longer the dust, the dirt, the distortion, the colors, the shapes that are distorted because of the dirt on the mirror. When the mirror is clean, what is it? It reflects purely the truth, our true nature, which is the blessings of the guru, and ultimately not different, you know, because the guru’s work is not over until we recognize the oneness, the unity of it all.
So, you’re right. That’s the most important line because, without devotion, we’ll never get anything, and “devotion” can mean many different things. You can be very devoted to many different types of things. You know? You can be committed or sincere about many different things, but in the spiritual practice, without that sense of commitment and devotion, and without that sense of recognizing the grace, you know, it becomes mechanical. So, that’s why we talk about devotion, because devotion gives us that concentration. It gives us that awareness. It gives us like, what do they call it? Like a radar beam. It shows us where to go, where to look, where to turn, where to bow, where to open, where to surrender, but on the other hand, we can’t manipulate that. We don’t create that devotion or that love, which is why Maharajji always said, “Do these practices, whether you feel love or not, whether you’re tired, whether you’re angry, whether you’re this, whether you’re that,” because if you don’t do, then what?
So, even if we’re not feeling, you know, spiritually high, you know, we have to still do the practice, because it ripens us in a way that is beyond our understanding. So, we have to take that on as an expert’s teaching about how, for how it all works. You notice I didn’t use the word “faith” on purpose, because we misunderstand faith. We think “faith” means making ourselves believe something. No. Why would we do that? Let’s deal with reality, right? “I don’t have any love. I don’t have any devotion. I don’t give a shit about anything. My heart’s closed. I can’t feel anything. But I’m going to do this anyway, goddamn it.”
You know, and you do it because we have to plant the seeds, and little by little, the real thing manifests from within. By itself. Like, our friend before said he had been singing this over and over, and finally one day he sang and he went, “Oh…” It’s like that. It comes from within when you’re ready, but we can ripen and we can help to ripen ourselves by turning towards that place, through the practices that we do.
Yeah. Whatever he felt, I also feel many times, and sometimes, some different lines, sometime a different line. My God.
Yeah. It’s like the curtain is parted and we see something. Yeah. We don’t part the curtain. We don’t do that. We just buy the ticket to the show, and we’re sitting in the audience, and then it’s him who opens the curtain when the show starts, and he’ll close it again, just like Banke Bihari in Vrindavan, you know. You go and then the curtains close, and they go “Ahhhh!” and then it closes again.
Nice to meet you again. Take good care. Thank you.
Q: Namaste. We’re in Montana.
We got to see you when you came to Bozeman.
Oh, right. Yeah, that was fun. I loved it there.
That was awesome. Thank you. So, I just, there wasn’t questions a while ago, but I guess there are, but mine is pretty short, I think. But in the spirit of Navaratri, did Maharajji ever, do you recall him him ever talking about Kali Ma?
No. He didn’t talk a lot about stuff, but one funny thing He said about Kali was that, they asked him why he built, you know, he built a new temple to Durga. Yeah. And the form of Durga that is represented in the temple is Vaishnavi Devi. The Shakti of Vishnu. Whereas Kali is one of the aspects of, the Shakti of Shiva, I think. At least it’s more on that side. And in India, Kali is worshipped many times with sacrifices, goats, animals, stuff like that. So, when somebody said, why he bought, why he built the temple to Vaishnavi Devi? Vindhya Vasini Durga Devi? He said, “If I built the Kali temple, these miserable villagers would be dragging their goats in and slaughtering them in the courtyard.”
So, he didn’t want that. So, that that’s one thing. But other than that, you know, whenever we said, like one time somebody quoted Ramakrishna to Maharajji. Maharajji went, “I don’t follow Ramakrishna. I follow Christ.”
Didn’t Ramakrishna believe he was an incarnation of Kali?
I don’t know what he believed. He was worshiped as a realized being who, he achieved the grace of Kali and he, and that was who he worshiped. Bhavatarini, the form of Kali that means “taking me across the ocean of existence.” That form of Kali. And he worshiped her and had visions and all kinds of extraordinary experiences, you know, and he worshiped the form and the formless. First he achieved “siddhi,” or perfection inthe worship of the form, and then he did another type of sadhana which was beyond concepts and forms. So, they considered him to be a type of incarnation, also, in many ways. Definitely.
Q: Hi. I am so I’m so grateful to you. Why? Because I am so lucky that you are an ardent devotee of Baba, Baba Hanuman. So, I’m very happy that I’m speaking to you, and I was listening to you, I think about two weeks back. I came to your bhajans and everything in YouTube. I saw everything in YouTube and I was amazed. I was really amazed with your devotion, because I’m also a devotee just like you, bhakti path, and also jnana and also karma. Very difficult life…
Yeah. Very difficult life… Yeah. So, I wanted liberation.
Really? From what? To what?
From life. From mind. From prison of mind. And no rebirth.
No, no no. I’m terrorized.
That’s not going to happen.
No, but I’m terrorized. Yeah. I’m not going to come here again.
Why not? It’s the fear you have now that’s terrorizing you. It’s not the fear of the future. It’s now.
No, into the prison of mind, I don’t want to come.
Then leave it, you know, but if you don’t leave it now, it’ll still be there later. Now is the time to leave it. Not later
Leave the prison of the mind.
Yeah. And so that I just wanted to thank you. You know what happened? I was watching your Chai and Chat, and in one Chai and Chat, I was very pained, actually, two days ago I was traumatized and in the, inside the mind something was going on very disturbing. So, then I saw your Chai and Chat, and in that one, you’re telling some people that you are the most important person who needs compassion. You are the first person who needs compassion, and that word worked like magic in me. I don’t know, but this Baba Hanuman, it worked, it really worked. And then suddenly I was able to see what was happening to me, what was going into my mind again, again, repeated stories. So, I’m torturing myself. So, I need compassion. You know? Then I started watching my mind. Okay. That means, I am torturing myself… I am repeating some stories, some very bad things that happened to me. All those things are repeated again, again, again in the mind, and I’m suffering. Who is suffering? Otherwise, nobody outside is suffering. Only I am suffering. So then suddenly all these days, it was there, but I got this light two days back with your words, with your words.
Very good. Thank you. It was actually, I was actually quoting Buddha. Buddha said, “If you search the whole world, you can never find anyone more deserving of compassion and love than yourself.”
My God. That word, after so many years of suffering, with your word two days back, then I heard you. So, I’m very thankful to you. And most of all, I’m very lucky. I feel very lucky because you are direct devotee of Baba Hanuman. And so I feel very, very happy, you know, because I see that he has sent you to me. That’s his blessing. So I just wanted to offer gratitude to you, and lovely stories and whatever you say again and again… it is always new. Whatever you say is always new.
That’s good because I only know three or four things. So, I say them over and over again.
But it’s so beautiful. Like, you know, the epics, you’ll see how many times you hear it. It looks very new. Your thoughts are like epics. So that means that is the power in you, not as an individual, but it’s God’s power. So, I’m very happy I could talk to you. I also, I wanted to offer thanks to you, the two days back, whatever happened to me, it is continuing to slow down my mind. I slowed down my mind. Now I know that I’m torturing myself. So, I’m going to let go of everything and all, from all sickness… My aim is not to come back here and do this world again in another body like . Like Adi Shankara said…
Can I just say one thing? Let me say one thing. Forget about your aims not to come back. Make your aim to be here as best you can fully. Okay? Right here where you are now. That should be your aim. And then if there is a later, where will you be? Here. So, don’t worry about the future. It’s not the future that’s eating you up right now. Those are just thoughts. Right? Those are just thoughts. So, it’s now you want to be here. So that’s very good. Very happy to hear you have that blessing from Maharajji.
I’m very happy with your words. I think whatever you have said just now, it will go also for me. I will stop thinking about the future. I should come out of mind torture. Then maybe everything will be clear.
Just be here. Repeat the name. And when you notice you’re thinking about those things, come back to the name. Don’t try to kill the thoughts. You can’t stop the thoughts, but the less attention you pay, they float away. So just keep coming back to the name. Okay? You have to repeat the name. That’s the deal. You have to do that. And you can do it all day, no matter what, no matter what you’re doing.
All day I am doing it. And 24-7 for the past 20 years, I’ve been doing something or the other connected to God. But then I think I have to experience certain things, experience, so that is why it dragged so long, but I think I’m nearing home.
Home is where you are. Good.
No, I will not let myself with the mind. I’m not going round and round with the mind. I stopped… and I forgive myself for everything, even if the mind goes somewhere when I’m chanting… I’ll come back, come back. For my first time I’m knowing, what is loving yourself. Loving myself is what I didn’t know. It was very frustrating. All the saints and sages were saying, “Love yourself, love yourself.” And I didn’t know what was loving myself, but now two days back, from your words, I came to know what is loving myself.
Okay, thank you very much. All right. Ram Ram.
Q: Hello. I think my question is about, how do you, how do you deal with shame? And maybe, if it’s related, how do you cultivate humility?
Shame, shame, shame, shame. Shame is a great way of beating ourselves up. Isn’t it? Everybody’s done things that they’re really not proud of, to say the least. Everybody. We’re all humans. We’re all in the same boat. You know, everybody’s been selfish, been nasty, been stupid, been hurtful, been angry, vicious, and many times in spite of ourselves, we’ve done things that have hurt people and, and we’ve been hurt, and there’s also shame in that too, that we’ve been victimized by other people’s anger and selfishness and viciousness. So, you know, it’s life. Everybody’s in the same boat. We all share a very narrow bandwidth, and in that bandwidth, it’s just full of these things; shame, guilt, fear, anger, selfishness. All that stuff is in there, and that’s part of being human. The other part of being human is training ourselves to let go of that stuff.
Now, letting go is not pushing away, and letting go doesn’t necessarily mean understanding where the feelings come from. The letting go part is right here, right now, releasing the thought and the feeling, or noticing feeling. Like you might be, you might notice that you’re, you’ve got this mind thing going around all about shame, let’s say. Right? So, noticing it is different than being totally in it already. That doesn’t mean it goes away right away. So, I think we need, as Westerners with rational minds, so active, and emotions, so charged, I think we need a combination of things, of weapons, so to speak, to deal with our, the stuff that’s torturing us, you know? But the bottom line, I feel, in order to, the real strength to overcome the oppressiveness of those negative emotions comes from practicing letting go. Now, just because you’re practicing letting go, doesn’t mean that, in those moments, you’re going to be able to let go. That’s probably not going to happen at that moment, but you’re planting seeds of not being totally stuck in that feeling. Right? So, you have this feeling you’re dealing with, whatever it is. Let’s say it’s shame with fear, also, self-loathing, all these heavy clouds that engulf us sometimes. We can be in the cloud, we can be feeling the cloud, but we can also, in that moment, we can also be doing our mantra or watching our breath and being aware that we’re in the cloud, and that’s different than being asleep in the cloud. It doesn’t mean the cloud is going to disperse and the sun’s going to come out right away and that we’ll never have another cloud like that again, and it’ll always be a beautiful sunny day. No. But it’s very hard for us to realize what a big thing it is to really just notice the intensity of the feeling. Okay? That’s a big thing. That’s a really big thing. It’s almost like when you’re eating. Are you a vegan?
No, but maybe I should be.
No, no. You don’t have to be. I’m just going to tell you, which type of ice cream…if you’re eating like a real fantastic, like banana split fudge sundae, right? And it’s so good. You’re just like throwing it in your mouth and then it’s gone. You don’t even remember what happened. But if you eat it and you notice you’re eating, you taste it better. So, it’s the same thing when you’re in that cloud of darkness, even though you’re feeling it and it hurts, you’re not trying to get rid of it. You’re not running from it. You’re not afraid of it. You’re with it. You notice it’s got you again. It’s back. “Fuck. I never thought it would come back. Here it is. I’m screwed. It’ll always be like this.”
But it’s not always like that. Is it?
No, it’s not. And I’m wondering if, what I’m, if I’m really feeling, you know, feelings of embarrassment or shame, or if I’m feeling something about it, rather than the thing itself?
The bottom line is we have to do some practice, and it’s from the practice that we’re cultivating a kind of inner strength that, or let’s even say, an inner gravity, that pulls us out of those feelings. It’s not like we have to do it. It’s like, you know, for instance, you might be feeling really, really obsessing about something very painful, right? And then you walk out of the house and the sun is shining and you see somebody waves to you, you know, and where did it go? Okay, then it comes back when you’re not busy with something else, and then something else happens and it disappears again.
It’s like I said earlier, you’re watching television, right? And then, and you’re not aware of the cars in the street and the trucks and the motorcycles. And then you turn the TV off. Where was it when you were watching TV? So, it’s not that you understand the cars and motorcycles. It’s just that you are not, your attention is not caught by them. So, as we do practice, little by little, just like a minute, a thousand times a day, 10 times a day, whenever you think of it and you’re in the right place, just sit down and release everything. It’ll last maybe two seconds before everything comes back.
Thank you. Yeah. And is it okay to multitask? Do you have to be still every time you practice?
No, not at all. But if you’re doing two or three different things at the same time, you’re certainly not able to be as aware, totally aware of each thing as much as you would, if you’re doing one thing at a time. So,
it’s okay. Every repetition of the name will bring fruit, every single repetition, whether you do it with full devotion, whether you do it like w you know, just like barely paying attention, you’re still planting a seed.
How that seed is planted also has something to do with the results, right. Or the way that seed grows. So, yeah, multitask, if that’s where you’re at, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to judge the practice, just bring it into whatever you’re doing. I don’t exactly know what you mean by multitask. Some people watch TV while they work.
Some people drive and sing chants while they’re driving. That’s multitasking. And, but at your, the idea is to keep a part of you turn towards that. The practice, for instance, in India, they always use the the example of a woman who’s gone to get water at the well with a big clay jug, right? She fills up the jug, puts it on her head and she and her friends start walking back to the village and they’re talking and laughing and joking and yelling to the kids not to get lost and everything, but they’re always paying just enough attention that they don’t drop the joke.
So that’s multitasking. So whatever you do, just do. I think it would be a great little practice that whenever you remember during the day and don’t use it to beat yourself up with, but whenever you happen to have a gap in the day and you go, oh, sit down for a minute, really 60 seconds and just let everything go and feel your body, feel your breath, feel what being there feels like.
And then the thoughts will start taking your way. And then you’re gone again. So good go do, but start to get comfortable or get acquainted with what the feeling feels like when you just let go of everything you won’t be able to because you, maybe I have a minute or, I mean really two seconds of absolute, like, and then the thoughts will come back.
That’s okay. Get used to what that feels like, and that will. That feeling and that that action of letting go will continue to work inside of you all day long. So even when you’re really lost in thought or getting eaten up by some negative feeling, don’t that, that will come back sooner than later, where you, where you find yourself not quite as lost as you were, and then you start to feel more comfortable seeing the content of your shame or your fear or your guilt or your anger, and you become more less identified with it so that you can start to actually understand that rationally a little bit.
You can see who did what to whom and why, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then you can start to detangle disentangle yourself a little bit more, but that, that’s what I mean by like a multi faceted kind of work. But I think the real strength to let go ultimately comes from the practice that we do.
Not that thinking about it in therapy and counseling, it can be very useful really. And they don’t necessarily look like they’re working on the same from the same angle, but they really are. So whatever you need to do, want to do to work on your stuff, you really should do, because nobody’s going to do it for you, right.
So you have to do it. So have courage move forward and go, you know, really get into it and, and free yourself from this from whatever’s holding you back from being you and the way you want. You don’t have to be like, we don’t have to be at the mercy of this stuff. Always. We do. That’s what the spiritual path is about.
Allowing us to really manifest our true self, which really is loving compassion and joy. So I’d like some of that when you get it, when you’re giving me a little bit, send me some,
all right. You take care.
Now musty Krishna DAS G actually I keep it brief. And actually so the thing is that I first heard anything by you back in 2011, I’m based in India. And back in 2011, I first heard, and actually it was not a child by you. It was this musical piece done by this gentleman called NC Yogi.
And you were featuring in that song called rock on Hanuman. And that’s how I came across you. And since then you know, initially I followed you just for the music and and you know, during the good times I have experienced exits X to see through your music. And during the difficult times, it’s actually helped me move on.
And like many people here I’m really grateful to you. And you know, like, I realized that, you know me saying this is also in a way I’m just fulfilling my ego because at every second, thousands of people must be grateful to you. And I, and I don’t really have to say it, but I don’t know. It just I’m indulging my ego when I say it.
So I’ll come directly to my question, sir. You know, so just, just as there is interest, you know, in the west regarding Eastern philosophy, I’ve also, I’ve, I’ve tried to, you know, like read a little bit about whatever I could come across about Western philosophy. And one of the many things that I’ve come across in this.
It’s something called new age, religion, and one of the onsets in that of law of attraction where, you know, you desire something you think about it positively, or as if it’s fulfilled and it will come to you. But in, in my personal experience, what I feel is that once you have a desire and if it’s not fulfilled, that will invariably lead to dejection.
And and in your chats in also the, you know, online, Satsung what I, what I’ve gathered is the same concept and, and a way to overcome desire is through chanting through this practice and bringing your mind back to the present moment. But I feel that sometimes, you know, when you let go of the desire, are you innovate, turning away that experience, which, you know, law of attraction in some way guarantees, and you’re just giving up because, because you’re scared of the dejection, or do you think that, you know, there’s another way of looking at it.
We should just concentrate on the practice and you know, all of these things will just fall on their own we’re human beings in human body desires are hungers that we have. We need certain things in order to live. We need to breathe. We have a desire to breathe. It’s a function that we need that happens naturally.
We have a desire for food. We need to eat. We have a desire for sex. It’s natural to the human body. We have desires for all kinds of things. If you’re a renunciate, if you’ve taken vows of Borama Charlia and vows of types of forsaking, certain types of engagements with some Saraj you you can follow those, those programs.
However, being in the world of. I think one needs to you know, Maharaji never criticized me or anybody else for having desire. When one of the things that happened is in this group of Westerners around him, there was a lot of energy. There were women and men, you know, and different couples would kind of get together.
You know, in my heart, you would look at them and say, oh, your friends, that’s good. Your friends, the difference. That’s good. And then a couple of days later, he said, oh, you’re good friends. Ah, okay, good friends. Then a couple of days later, he said, you’re married. Go to America. He, he didn’t judge them for getting it on.
There was no judgment, you know, these great saints. How did they get there? They’ve done everything in millions of lifetimes. They’ve already done all this shit and they’re through with it. They haven’t pushed it away. They’d just seen through it. We have fear of our desires because it’s not only fear of what you call dejection or the suffering that comes when you don’t get what you want.
But we have fear of being lost in the desire. We just have fear of opening. We have all kinds of fears. It’s up to each one of us to figure out what works for us. I can’t tell you what to do. I can’t even tell myself what to do, but my heart just sent me back to America because he said I had attachment there and I didn’t know what he was talking about.
50 years later, I’d see my life and everything that’s happened to me is what he was talking about. Everything, all this was in there, like just like a tiny little seed has a huge tree. The little seeds in us have this huge potentials for, for all this stuff. You can’t avoid that stuff. If you try to crush it and you suffer, and if you get too busy with it, you suffer.
So it’s a way of, you just have to try to figure out what works for you, how, how to get through the day in the best way you can. Mr. Tiwari, my Indian father, who was my greatest friend in the world, he was, his parents died when he was young. He was raised by an aunt who died again, when died, when he was also. And then he was raised by some other relatives and he vowed never to marry. He never to get involved with that level of Samsara.
And he was doing fierce practices. I mean, tying himself up and breathing exercises and fasting and poojas, I mean, it would have killed a normal human being, but he was not, and Maharaji made him get married. And he said to me, one day he said, you know, I didn’t go into samadhi for the first time until after I was married.
So you have to be you man, whatever it is. And if you’re afraid of that, then you have to figure out what that is. What is that fear? Is it real or is it just a way that you’re hurting yourself and in your holding yourself back. Okay. So in your opinion, do you think it’s all right to to be chanting with expectation of a boon or or with some desire in mind?
Or do you think that chanting should be kept separate from, you know, what we are looking for? Otherwise in, on, on a model plane, chanting is a ripening practice. It will allow whatever’s within you to come forth. If you need to have those desires fulfilled, they will come to you. If they’re not going to be helpful to you, let’s hope they don’t come to you.
You do what you can, you can’t pretend you’re in it. You don’t, you just do repeat the name the best you can just give it as much attention as you can. If you thinking about, oh God, let me find, you know, even in the article, a story, which is the first prayer done in, in the. David Pooja, Durga Puja. The last line is all God has given me a life like you, who will take me across the ocean of birth and death.
That’s what it says. All goddess. Give me a wife like you, you know, so that’s not a bad prayer, but still you’re asking for something. You do what you can, if that’s what you want. Fine.
The secret is of course, that would ever you want, it’s not going to be what you think it is when you get what you really think you want is your, your image that you’re seeing at you’re putting on somebody. So you see the most beautiful woman in the world. You want her, you bet. And finally she agrees to be with you.
And then you see, you know, she can’t cook, you know, and she’s, she’s, she. You know, she doesn’t want this and she wants that and she’s hard to be with she’s selfish. Then you find the other stuff that, and that’s what she thinks about you too. She thinks you’re like gone on earth. And then he said, you don’t, you know, you know, you piss all over the floor, you know, can’t even piss on the toilet.
She has to clean it up. You know, all, you do expect her to do all the work in the house. She’s like, what is this? What did I get into? This is what life is. So that’s why we tried to have a little humility in terms of the things we want, because it’s never what you think it’s going to be, but you have to be prepared to deal with it.
If you’re going to, if you’re going to get into it, then you have to deal with it. It’s not pick and choose after that. If you make a commitment to something, you have to deal with it, the best you can, whatever that means to you, nobody knows what that is. You have to do the best you can with it. It’s we can’t be free of desire.
And even. Our desire ultimately is to be really happy, but we have bad aim. We think it’s going to come from the outside. You can’t, that’s just the way we’ve been brought up. There’s no way you can just say I won’t do that. That’s bullshit. There’s no way you can not do it. So you try to have some to go easy on yourself about everything and do the best you can and recognize that we’re all in this world.
We’re all in some sorrow. Let’s just do the best we can and try to be kind to others and ourselves and live in the best way we can, whatever happens. However it manifests. It doesn’t matter. Whatever is in there is going to come out one way or the other. If you avoid things, if you push them away, you’re putting yourself under so much pressure.
It’s going to come around and hit you on the back of the head in another direction. So you have to be honest with yourself about what you want. Well, you don’t have to be, but you know, you could be if you want to. Yeah. Thank you. I know how you feel.
Don’t invite me to the wedding. I won’t come.
Oh, the question is you were talking earlier about how the group chooses a name for you based on the fact that they know your karmas and they know they know what’s best and they maybe it’s, I can’t say what the group does or how or why, but that was an idea I had. Okay. So I guess my question is, what do you make of the fact that Maharaji said you’re a drunk.
And you’ve gotten a little fight with him and about, and you did not accept that name, that your, your actual brew was giving me. That’s a good question. I never really thought about it. He is Honeyman and so being the humble disciple, the vote, the that I am very humble. Of course, you know, I said, I can’t be that you’re that I can’t be that you can’t, you can’t do that.
I won’t accept it anymore. You said again, your budget on buddy. And I said, no, I’m not. You know, and besides that budget on Bali was celebrate and you just told me you wanted me to get married. So where’s that at? And then I said to him, you know, budget and buddy was the eternal celibate. He never married.
He never got it on. And my Hardy laughed. Like it was the funniest thing he had ever heard in his life. It’s like he knew something that we didn’t know. And he just said, okay, wise guy, you’re, Jonaka, you’ll have low Yogi. You knew what God and Bogue union with pleasure. So, all the pleasures and all the joys.
I never thought of that because it was just play, you know, I just saw it as play. He did continue to call me, but drank quite a bit, had me wear all red and like hunter Mon. And all I can say is maybe someday, maybe he was telling me what, who I was going to be in 400 million lifetimes for now, maybe.
Yeah. Right. Thank you. You’re welcome. Hello. More I think what others have, and I’ll keep this brief. I know we’re over, but what others have expressed just, I wanted to express my gratitude. I came to know you and your voice through yoga practice in the late nineties. And I feel like, you know, had I not felt that love early in my twenties, I just, I hate to think about what my life would have been like without sort of having that foundation.
So just hugely appreciative and, and it set forth sort of a, you know, a chain of events going to Apollo meeting Nina Sharon Salzberg, loving kindness, just my whole life started with you in a, in a yoga class 20 plus years ago. So thank you.
Not mistake. Okay. And I always come to these thinking, I don’t have any questions and then you answer them and then people ask questions. I didn’t even know that I had, so thank you to everyone who asked such thoughtful questions and and yeah. So thank you really grateful. Thank you. Greetings to everyone.
Thanks for all the questions and things like the last speaker. I also got answers to questions. I didn’t even know I had my question today. I think I’ve already heard the answer to which is practice, practice, practice. But for Nevada three, I set a a goal for myself that I wanted to learn my Durga and Sri our gala starts from.
And what I’ve been doing is I spend a couple of minutes looking at the meaning of the words, and then I chant along with your CDs and. I’m having a hard time learning it by heart because as I’m chanting, I kind of get lost in the chant. And the next thing I know, it’s, you know, it’s over and I go back and do it again.
And then I walk away after a half an hour of practice and five minutes later, I’m like, wait, how did that go again? So I was wondering when you were first learning the chance do you have any hints for, what’s a good way to learn by heart? Yeah. You don’t have to learn by heart. You know why you’re doing that to yourself?
Wouldn’t you rather feel it than learn it. So you have something, a lot of people don’t have. I would enjoy that and not beat yourself up for not having what you think you want.
It’ll come or not just keep doing what you’re doing. Thank you. Yeah. It’s it’s frustrating. Cause I can hear a song once and play it back, but w w lyrics and words are much more difficult for me to memorize. Yeah, well, it’s not required to memorize. Where does it say you have to memorize it nowhere.
You’re just sending a goal for yourself. That’s actually taking you out of the moment. What’s the sense of memorizing in your rational mind when you don’t feel it go right to the feeling? That’s why I don’t, I don’t know much about all these, all the deities. I can’t tell you what this deity represents, how these two figures worship what this duty means, which what she, or he looked like, because I don’t, I, I never, I, I sing and I feel that’s all I care to do in this life.
I don’t know what else there is to do for me. This is it. I’ve seen that I feel, and I don’t worry about it. Some things, sometimes some of these long prayers, I, when I just wrote them out, I basically had them already half memorized. It just happened as if I had known it already. But that it’s not that I tried to learn it.
I didn’t, it took me years to, to, to really know the hunter munch, Alisa, without reading it. So what, no. So fail me, kick me out of high school. I don’t care. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Thank you. Thank you. You’re welcome. So I’m hoping this will come out clear and I’m I’m, I’m an essential worker of, so I’m, I’m pretty exhausted. Cause I’ve, I’ve worked like 14, 16 hours a day with COVID trauma medical. Anyways, a lot of people, a lot of suffering. I’ve been, someone took me. I took refuge with did you remember Jay?
I don’t know if you know who that is. He asked me to take refuge with him. So. So, yeah, so I have this great karma. This is part of my question. Sort of that I, for some reason, I’ve been around the dialogue, many llamas, the youngest Western person to be asked to take refuge. My dad was a film producer and he was, went to India, brought him back with some other people, Richard Gere and other people.
And he was in New York. And my dad, I was raised by my grandfather rabbi. And so he, my dad left me in the living room and Jim said, why is she in the living room? Why, why did you leave? And he said, oh, she’s Jewish. You know, she’s her, grandfather’s already training her in ancient Hebrew for her bat mitzvah.
Like. It’s a, it’s a lineage like yours. And he said, oh, Jewish, Jewish, huh? I like to meet her. Could you please bring her in? And then meanwhile, this, this is, so my dad went from being like a big Hollywood producer. You were the driver, he was the cook. They said, you’re the, and he said, you’re the cook. I want to meet your daughter, but please bring her in.
So he brought me in, so I hear you’re you’re Jewish. I said, yes, I’m Jewish. I speak Hebrew. I, I chant in Hebrew and he said, oh, do you like it? I said, I love it. I love it. And he said, and your grandfather’s a rabbi. I said, yes, he’s a mystic rabbi. We go back there to 13th century, mystic rabbis and wonderful, wonderful.
And he said, would you. Would you and I realized, cause I’ve been listening to you thinking, oh, I first time someone brought me to hear you in LA is, I don’t know who this guy is. What is, it’s not yoga? What is it? And then I just heard you. And I thought, I just was like, wow, I felt an instant connection. And I was in the middle of doing my ninja practice, which, you know, doesn’t take three weeks.
It takes three years. Right, right. At least in a cave. And, and I was in my maybe twenties, thirties, but my question was, so I I’ve been taking two of your classes and there is no conflict. I went back to my grandpa is anyways. Did you remember? I ended up saying, I would like to give you a blessing. Is that, would you like that?
And I said, oh yes. My grandfather gives me blessings every Friday night. I like blessings say blessed and then said, I’d like to give you a name. Would you like to have a Tibetan name? You have a Tibetan name. And I said, well, I already have a Jewish name. You know, I’m Hannah and he said, okay, but you’re also control.
So Soma your wise woman of three lakes, that rise woman jewels of three lakes, which is the crown. And I was thinking, but I’m six years old. I’m not a wise woman. And he said, I said, I’m Jewish. And he said, I know your father told me, your father told me, but it’s, this is important. Would you like to learn a simple mantra?
And I said, okay. But I chant in Hebrew. Do you want me to teach you a simple chanten Hebrew jeweler taught me all my knee pad, me hung. And then I said, oh, I can do that. And then he said, you know, it goes with them. I can, that’s all you have to do for your age. Just Omani pad, my hung. And then he taught me a hundred and you know, some other mantras.
And I picked, I picked up languages very quickly. So I saw I got them. And then he said, would you like to know how to do. A full prostration. I saw, I don’t know what that is, but sure. So he taught me and he said, when you go home, if you, if you want to say this mantra and he gave me paycheck, his original, his paycheck from his, which I think I have lost.
But anyways I came home and I said, grandpa, I went to Shabbat and I said, grandpa. So I took refuge. I, my guests, I’m a Buddhist and I’m Jewish because I have this red string. This is like my fifth and I have a Tibetan name. And is it okay? Cause he said it’s okay. And he said, oh yes, it’s totally okay. No conflict because he was also enlightened.
He said, beautiful. But if you took vows, which I did. You now are taking, you’ve taken Jewish fouls and you’ve taken two button vows and there’s no conflict, but you ha did he teach you a mantra? I said, yes. He said, you must say it every day. Wow. And he said, you say, you sh you know, you say your Hebrew prayers and you say your mantra and he said, anything else?
He taught you, you do it every day. The same way you must do both now, because you’ve, you know, at 12, you’re going to do your bat mitzvah. You’ve you’re seven and you’ve taken six, seven. You’ve taken these fast. So you have to do it. That’s amazing. It’s amazing. Well, they were both, they were both enlightened beings.
So it was there’s. No problem. Anyways, my question is, I was curious about when you came into Tibetan Buddhism, and, and just if you took any vows, if you do any practice or what your relationship is to Buddhism, because practicing. My Hebrew prayers. I’m not practicing it just when I sing in Hebrew and ancient Hebrew, it, I feel incredible.
And I go into Orthodox temples and they’re like, who is this girl? And I just, I just know the Torah because my grandfather taught it to me. Wow. The Torah just comes out of me. And it’s, I feel a deep connection. Now, since with you, since I’ve met you and these, I feel a little awkward with like some of the words, like Krishna I’m like , but then I also know, like there’s something deep, there’s a deep spiritual, there’s a connection here.
So I wanted to hear anyways that’s or one day I was sitting with my Raji and he reached in, pulled out. One of my notebooks, where I had written all these prayers and you know, all the Dharma quotes and stuff that was collected. And he leaves these through the book and he stops at this one page and says, what’s this?
And I looked and I went, oh shit, it was the song, the song of Mahamudra. And I said, it’s Buddhist like this, you know, we’re just, there always have translate. So I couldn’t be, there was anything guy there. So he translated, I had written in English trying to Maharaj did a few verses my articles tick, you know?
Correct. Beautiful. And then it kept going through my book and came across a little picture of himself. He possess it. Who’s that? I said, it’s you it’s good night Buddha. Yeah. So some years later, Dr. Larry brilliant. Who was have you read this book? Sometimes. Brilliant, fantastic book. It’s the story of the eradication of smallpox in India.
Maharaji did that. So it’s a great story. So anyhow, so Larry was, they had just inoculated all of India, all the Butan, all the Siki. And they were now going back through all the village, just to check for to check for any cases that arose in the last year. And there were no cases. And they were in, I think, a C Keem at the 16th karma as temple and were with his holiness.
And so come up, I asked him what their spiritual thing is, you know, what did they do? And we never knew what to say because Maharaji never, there was nothing to join. There was no, you know, it was just like, you know, so also he took out a little picture of my garage and he gives it to the karma and the karma it looks at and says, oh, you said bodhisattva, bodhisattva, bodhisattva.
He said, the teachings of all bodhisattvas are the same. Even if they appeared, even if they appear different, then he pointed to. It’s two, those statues on the altar of the . He said my, I said this,
so, and then a couple of days later, he said to Larry and Gary Jones wife, is it, would you like to take refuge? And they said, sure. So, S approval was arranged upon the roof of the temple. And then just before the ceremony was going to start, Larry got nervous. And he said to the climb up, you said your holiness, do I have to give up my guru to take refuge with you?
And I said, no. He said, I’m going to give you refuge in your guru the same way I give refuge in the Buddha. I’m going to give you refuge in your, in your forget what he said the same way I give refuge in the Dharma. I’m going to give you refuge in your set song. And you’re the same way I give refuge in the Sangha.
You said that. So, you know, yeah. And so many of us who were with my, her idea had taken teaching. My, one of my dearest friends on a porno was one of the German purchase disciples here in America. And she was with my Harajuku for, you know, with us in India. She died from as complications of asthma sitting on her pillow.
No, well, you know, she was, and she was, you know, so, these guys they’re hanging out together, you know, there’s, the differences are only in our heads. They have no problem with these things, you know? Yeah. You know, according to our many births, we’ve been involved in different lineages over time and they manifest in the world in different ways. There’s an Maharaji, there was a salami Orla who was a disciple of who lived one hour from here. Yeah. Yeah. I met him too at Lama nor Lewis and Wappingers falls.
Lama NOLA was with my project for two years, you know? And he said he was the greatest, he was the greatest city in the Himalayas. So there’s never been a difference for me. It’s never been a problem. Everything just reinforces all the other things, you know? But just so that’s so wonderful. You have those blessings?
I think incredible. It’s just like he, Rick and he was from a previous birth. He was six years old. He said,
Yeah. Yeah. It felt very natural. And I, he gave me this huge or someone gave me said, oh, suddenly they’re like, oh, okay. You know, give her everything, give her, you know, give her a model, give her, I had paycheck. They gave me a huge poster of him. So I put it up on my wall and my mother said, I don’t think this is okay.
We have to check with grandpa with your grandpa. You know, you come from a long line, but my grandpa was like, and actually I’m just too good to and up was my neighbor. And my dear friend, I know him. I met him many years ago, who lives upstairs is wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful. Yeah.
I just found a book that I, my grandfather said, if, if you’re gonna, you know, you need to know the whole history of who the Buddha was, where he came from, what his lineage was, which lineage refuges. And I said, ah, that’s named Mapa and he looked it up and he said, oh, that’s one of the hardest ones you’re going to have to do a lot of work.
That’s great. That’s wonderful. Wonderful. So happy. Beautiful. Thank you. You made my day. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.
Oh, did you read, there’s a great book on the Baal Shem Tov. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it by Buxbaum. No, I don’t know that. And of course I knew that the Bush center this, yeah, no, it’s called the light and fire of the Baal Shem Tov. Okay. Wonderful. Nice to meet you. Wonder so much. Get good care. You too.
Beautiful. Thank you everybody. Thank you for helping me out by allowing me to see what comes out of my mouth.
The post Call and Response Special Edition Conversations with KD October 24 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.
