Call and Response with Krishna Das

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.

“Obstacles are always there. They’re either obstacles or they’re opportunities. It’s up to you how you take it. And always, you have to ask yourself, is what I’m trying to do what I really want to be doing? That’s the main thing. It’s not what you do. It’s why you do what you do. That’s what important. I mean, we have to learn to really listen to ourselves about what we really need and really want in life, and how do we want to go through this life? How do we want to spend our time? What do we want to get? In what way? What’s the best thing I can do for myself and others that I meet?” -Krishna Das

Hi everybody. How are y’all doing?

If you’re here, you’re doing okay.

Q: Hi, Krishna Das.

KD: HI.

Great to be here. Yeah. So, I don’t have a question, but I felt like I just needed to show up in the space, or in my heart, or something. I’ve been getting, staying up till 12 to 2 on a Thursday for the satsang and it’s been amazing, and spending more time with horses, that was something that came up the last time I asked a question on Zoom. So, there’s, I’m sort of quiet, you know, so I just, I felt, I think it was important just to try and you know…

Yeah, you know you can watch the Zooms, the Thursday nights replays?

It’s not the same, because even like where I live, it’s not so private, but like, it’s fine, but I’m singing quietly. Everyone else is asleep and I’m there with the light off, and it’s just like, bliss. I can’t explain it. I just have two hours of, I just feel so happy ,and then not much sleep or anything, and a lot of hard work the next day, but just like no problems, which is kind of strange, actually.

Actually, that’s your true nature. No problems.

No problem. Yeah.

The problems are in our mind and the way we interact with everything, but our true nature is perfectly okay, always, and that’s where we really live. So, we’ve been, because of our stuff, we were locked out of our own house, you could say. We’re like, living on the lawn of our own house, and instead of a bathroom, we have a porta-potty and a bucket to take a bath in and, you know, and the bed’s out there on the lawn, and we don’t even know there’s a house there, and then if we did, we wouldn’t know where the key was.

Yeah. But I feel like I’m kind of, maybe I’m on the porch? And that, and then it’s like, “Oh, it’s so different.”

It’s sort of like, I could surrender a little more, but it’s a bit like, “Is this okay?” Like, am I allowed to feel this okay?

What do you think?

Yeah. I feel it. Yeah.

Well, you don’t need to be allowed, actually, but we do need to allow ourselves. That’s the thing.

Yeah.

And that’s okay. I mean, growing up in this modern world, none of us have been allowed to be ourselves. We become identified with all the programming that, put into us from every possible direction. So, we need to allow ourselves to be at ease with whatever is there, because that’s our true nature. It is at ease. It is okay. And it’s hard to recognize that because we’re, it’s like we’re in free fall, and we’re grasping, we’re trying to hold onto something that breaks off, and it breaks off, it doesn’t work, but if you just lay back into it, it’s perfectly okay.

For me, it comes down to Maharajji, because emotionally, I don’t feel okay myself, for most of the time. I don’t feel at ease with myself. I don’t feel at home in my own self, but when I remember him and who he is to me, and when I enter into his presence more deeply, then I just naturally relax, because my experience with him and my relationship with him is that he is everything that I want, I am trying to see in myself, you could say. That way. So, I have that. I have that.

People have asked me, “Do you ever lose faith?”

And I say, “Well, I have very little faith in myself, but I don’t lose faith in him.”

I understand. When you were in Dublin, I was at the kirtan, and I hugged you afterwards, and it was it was a game changer, like total, just like stepping into another world, but that’s my point of reference. So inside, it’s not great, but when I remember what that felt like, then it’s never sort of being on my own. It’s never on my own. There’s always a presence.

Yeah. That’s true. And that presence is really you, looking in the mirror and seeing yourself.

That’s far out. Oh, my God.

Because there’s dust on the mirror, most of the time we don’t get a clear look at our face.

No, I was like creosote, you know?

Yeah. That’s nothing. Good. A little Creosote is no problem. But creosote keeps the bugs away, you know that right?

That’s true yeah.

So there’s no more bugs, you can take the creosote off.

Okay. Very good.

Yeah. Good. Well, nice to see you.

Yeah. Nice to see you. Thank you.

Take good care, huh?

Q: Ram Ram, KD. KD, I just wanted to ask you your fondest memory of Siddha Ma?

Of Siddhi Ma? I’ll tell you a story, and it’s not a story about Ma. It’s a story about Maharajji that Ma told me. Actually, she had Jaya, her disciple, tell me.

It was in 1995 in the temple in Kainchi. I was a not doing very well, and I sent a message to Ma saying that I wanted to talk to her. So, a couple of days later they came to get me and she, Ma had come out and was sitting in the back of the temple, in the ashram part of the temple. Things were being prepared for the Bhandara, the June Bhandara, and so she said, “What is it?”

And I said, “Ma, you know…”

I don’t know if you know my whole story, but you know, Maharajji had called me to come back to India. He had sent me home and then he had somebody write to me telling me to come back, but I didn’t get there on time because of my own stupidity and Tamasic nature.

So, I said, “Ma, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from not coming back to see Maharajji.”

This is already 23 years later, 22 years later.

And I said, “I feel like there’s a knife in my heart, and I can’t take it out.”

So, she was quiet for a minute, and she said something to Jaya, and Jaya said, “Ma asked me to tell you this story…”

Everybody was in Rishikesh, at the temple in Rishikesh, and they had made plans to go to South India for the winter, and they had 40 reservations on a train from Delhi to Madras, to Chennai, and just before, a few hours before they were getting ready to leave, all the devotees, Jivanti Ma had another heart attack. She was having heart attacks regularly. Not major ones, but small ones. But she had a heart attack, and she could barely breathe, and then, “What should we do? If we cancel the reservations, we will never get more reservations in time,” and so they all decided to go. Of course, Jivanti Ma wanted to go also.

So, they helped her get into the car and she could barely breathe, and all the way, had to drive from Rishikesh to Delhi to catch the train. So, they drove all that way. For everybody that doesn’t know, it’s probably a minimum seven hours of driving and the roads are about as good as they were before the Roman empire.

So, they get to the old Delhi train station and JIvanti Ma can’t walk So, they carried her on a dandhi. Underneath the tracks there’s a tunnel that you can walk through that goes up to each of the tracks, and that’s only used for the luggage, the bearers and the police and stuff like that. They carried her underneath the tracks and up to the platform and into the train and into the compartment, and they helped her into her berth, the sleeping berth, and the train takes off.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, Siddhi Ma needs to use the bathroom. Now, for those of you that don’t know, on these, in these train cars there are bathrooms at either end of the car, and you walk down the hall to the end of the car, and then you make a turn which goes out to the door, out of the train, but then you make a quick right turn to the bathrooms. So, middle of the night, Siddha Ma needs to use the bathroom. So, Jaya walks with her.

First, they went to one side of the train, one bathroom, and it was really dirty. So, they turned around and they went, walked down the long walkway to the other side of the train car to use the other bathroom. When they turned the corner at the end of the hallway, they were facing the door outside the train, and there, huddled down at the foot of the door was a, she used the word “fakir,” which is a word, it essentially means like a Sufi or Muslim Saint. She did not say “Sadhu.” She said, a “fakir,” because he had a black blanket or black shawl around him, covering his head, and you couldn’t see his face. He was looking down. And when they turned the corner and came in front of this fakir, he, still looking down and his face covered, he goes like this, “Jai.”

“Jai” means “hail,” “victory,” or “respect.” Jai.

So, Siddha Ma goes like this, bows to him, and then she goes into the bathroom. So, then Jaya comes back and she says to the Baba, she said, “Baba, do you know this woman?”

And again, still covered, completely covered, He says, “She is the mother of the universe.”

And Jaya goes, “Whoa.”

But then Siddhi Ma comes out of the bathroom, and once again, she pranams to the Baba, and walks back with Jaya to the compartment. Now Jaya decides that Jivanti Ma has to see the Baba, has to meet the Baba. So, with great difficulty, because she can’t breathe. She’s had a heart attack. With great difficulty, they make their way down the hallway, and they come in front of the Baba and Jivanti Ma silently bows to the Baba, and still the Baba is not looking. He can’t see her. He’s covered. He reaches into his Jhola, his little backpack kind of thing, and he pulls out fresh, hot, pooris, and he breaks them in pieces and puts them like this, feeding Jivanti Ma, in her mouth like that.

Once again, you can’t see his face. He’s breaking the fresh, hot pooris and putting them in her mouth and she’s crying. Jaya’s crying.  So finally, Jaya takes, by the way, this was exactly the way that Maharajji used to feed Jivanti Ma. So, then they go back to the compartment and Jaya wants to come back to see the Baba. So, she gets there. As she gets there, the train is coming to a station, and by the time she gets to the end of the thing, the Baba has opened the train door and is standing facing the platform, and his back is to Jaya, and he took one step onto the platform and disappeared right in front of Jaya’s eyes.

So, Jaya finishes telling me this story and Siddhi Ma looked at me and said, “Krishna Das, no one can understand Maharajji’s Leela, Maharajji’s play, since He left the body.”

Then she sent me away. No one can understand Maharajji’s Leela since leaving the body.

One time we’d been sitting together, just me and her for quite a while in silence, and all of a sudden she looked up at me and she said, “Krishna Das, Maharajji can do anything for anyone at any time.”

I just don’t know if he can make a good cup of coffee. We’ll find out.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Boy, Siddhi Ma must be hanging out. This week people have been asking me about her, and you know, when she was with us physically, we were not prohibited, but we were definitely not encouraged to talk about her to other people. She didn’t want publicity. She didn’t want people coming. She didn’t send people away. I mean, she didn’t forbid people to come, but she, I really feel she hid herself better than Maharajji hid himself, and he hit himself from everybody, but she didn’t want… She never took anything personally. People would say, “Ma, my daughter’s sick. My son needs a job.”

She would only say, “Pray to Maharajji. What are you asking me for?”

Every once in a while she slipped and said, “Everything will be okay, don’t worry.”

But most of the time she just said, “Pray to Maharajji.”

Of course Maharajji said, “Pray to Hanuman.”

Hanuman says, “Pray to Ram.”

Q: Ram says, “Just do your shit and get outta here.”

Hello.

Q: We are really your die-hard friend. We love your old bhajans, Hanuman Chalisa, Devi Chant. One note, I have read your book, Chants of a Lifetime. I want to thank you for everything because you are with us in happy times and sad moments. If we listen to you, everything, we just get settled. We’re so, so happy to see you. This is the first time I am seeing you and I’m so happy.

Thank you. Wonderful to see you too.

And no journey starts without your Hanuman Chalisa.

Ah, very nice. Very nice. You said you liked the old bhajans. What about the new bhajans? You don’t like those?

Yeah. I like every bhajan, but my favorite is Devi Chant, Hanuman Chalisa and Rupam Dehi.  That touched my heart. I just truly feel that I can feel your devotions, everything. So, I’m so grateful to you. I just want to thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. So nice. Wonderful to meet you. Thank you. Good.   Be well.

Thank you.  All the best for your journey ahead.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Ram Ram. Be well.

Q: Hari Om. I don’t know what drew me towards you. I just came across your bhajan yesterday and something in me just told me that, you know I had to just see you. And since yesterday night, I and my wife, we listened to your Hanuman Chalisa and Om Namah Shivaya, and today, whole day I was just hearing it. There is something really magical in your voice. So, I just thought of being hear to say thank you and that’s about it.

Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much. Nice to meet you. Where are you in India? Which place?

I am from Bombay.

From Mumbai. I spent time down there. I spent time there. I sang in Mumbai a few times. Twice I sang, maybe a few years ago. I was there. I sang there. But next time we meet.

Sure. Definitely. Whenever you’re in India, we’ll definitely catch up.

Thank you. Nice to meet you. I didn’t know today was Krishna Das appreciation day. I would have been put on a new shirt or something.

Q: Hello, KD.  How are you? Well, I have a question. I don’t know if it’s a question or not, but I was dating an addict and he has a beautiful soul but he rejects the fact of being loved and tries to destroy the relationship constantly. So, I have to put a boundary to protect myself because it was very difficult, and leave him, but it’s so hard to accept the fact that some people can’t change and feel loved. You know? I don’t how to make a question out of that, but maybe you can help me. I don’t know. He sometimes hears you and he gets so emotional and when he hears the mantras, he cries and I don’t know, I think he really gets in touch with that, but I don’t know. It’s hard for me to put that boundary.

Well, being an expert on relationships that I am… Ha.  You know, ultimately you just have to let people be who they are. What else can you do? Right? But you also have to let yourself be who you are, which is, we don’t know how to do that. We can’t change other people. We can’t make people be who we want them to be. “Love” really means seeing people. Well, “love” means letting people be who they are, doing, making whatever offering you can make. But if they don’t take the offering, what can we do really? Our strength comes from making the offering, from wishing somebody well, from wanting somebody to be happy, to doing whatever we can do to be available to somebody, if and when they have hunger for what we’d like to give them. But on the other hand, what can we give anybody when we don’t know how to give ourselves? Right? You’re having a lot of emotions stirred up now. Work with those emotions. They’re not wrong. It’s not a question that these type of feelings are wrong, but where did they come from? What are they really about? Right?

Once I was very much in love with someone, and I was telling my Indian father, Mr. Tiwari, who was my greatest friend in the world and my teacher and a great Yogi, a family man. So, I was going on and on about this woman and he was listening. “Ah, very nice. Yes. Okay.”

And when I was finished he says, “My boy,” he said, “Relationships are business. Do your business. Enjoy. But love?” He said, “Love is what lasts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

Love is who we are. We don’t get it from somebody. But we identify affection, emotional love with real love, and they’re two different things. Love is who we are, and when we really touch that place inside of us, we see the love everywhere, and it’s not something that we feel we have to get from somewhere or someone, but relationships?  “Okay, I push this button for you. Okay. And you push this one? Okay. Yeah. It feels good. Thank you. And now I’ll push that button. Ok. Will you push it? Oh yeah. Okay, good. And then, I push this button for you?”

You say, “What do you mean you don’t want to push my button? You have to push this! What’s wrong with you?”

You can’t. What can we do? But it’s all good. Once you recognize that you’re really alive, that you’re here, what you want to do is clean your heart. You want to be able to sit more deeply in who you really are. Relationships will show you immediately. Well, not immediately. Give it a few days, right? They’ll show you, very quickly, where you’re at with what we really identify with and what we feel we need to get to feel good about ourselves, because we didn’t get it from our parents, because our parents didn’t have it. They may have cared for us and loved us in their way, but they did not love themselves. So where are we going to catch that from? You know?  Devotion or this kind of real love is a disease. You catch it from the people who have it. But who has it in this world? Very few people.

So, in the middle of the pain that you feel, right in the middle of this fire, expand yourself. Don’t crush yourself. Open up, be with the pain. You’ll learn so much from it. You’ll see so much from it. Unhappy circumstances and painful circumstances are our best teachers, because when things are going easily, we’re just totally asleep. We like to be asleep. It’s comfortable. You’ve got the covers on. It’s all so cozy. Maybe there’s somebody you’re holding on to, and you like that feeling. But as soon as that person, when he turns in bed, puts an elbow in your nose, then you wake up. “What is that?”

That’s when you’re really alive, believe it or not. So just keep breathing. That’s the best thing you can do. Just keep, no matter what you feel, keep breathing, and I guarantee you, within a few thousand breaths, it’ll be different, and it keeps changing. Everything keeps changing. And the more you embrace and accept and allow yourself to feel this pain, the more your heart starts to grow and get radiant, because the pain can’t destroy you. It just can’t. It can hurt, but it’s…  Say you get out of bed and step your toe on something, do you cut your toe off? No. So? This is the same thing. You can’t close yourself to these things.

When you make a deal with yourself… “Okay. All right, I’m going to, I’m going to live through this. I’m going to deal with it the best I can. I don’t fucking like it, but Goddamn it, I’m going to just be here no matter what happens.” You start to feel different. You come out of hiding. You come out of that black hole, and then you start to feel alive again, and you see, the next thing you see, if it’s so hard for you who are supposedly spiritual, to feel okay, your partner, who has no clue, how hard must it be for him? And what about all the other people in the street that we see? Who may look at us weird and not like us, and don’t like the way we dress or this or that? How hard is it for them to be real or to come out of there their hole? Right?

So, when we see how hard it is for us, what happens is we start to, despite our best efforts, we start to feel compassion for people, and we realize we’re all in the same boat, all of us. So, keep breathing, things will change.

Q: I’m calling from Dehradun, which is very close to Rishikesh.

I know Dehradun. So many times I’ve been there.

It’s beautiful. Do you like it?

Very nice. I used to go to Kankhal where Andandamayi has an ashram. Just outside of Dehradun, on the road to Rishikesh.

When did you visit last?

Before you were born.

I’m sure. I’m sure. Thank you for having me. I have been listening. So, I’m a yoga teacher and I practice and I teach in Dehradun, so I was running my own place for about two years, but then for about three years, then COVID happened this year and everything’s done online. So, I have been doing sessions online. So, the question I wanted to ask you was that I just, I think there is, I’m just going to ask it… After you continue feeling lost for quite some time, even though you practice and you meditate and you are trying to motivate other people into practicing or trying to lead a good life, but because of stuff that has happened in your own personal life it’s been some time that you have continued to not feel that grounded. You have not been able to figure out a way to come back and feel settled. How does one get back to that place? In a nutshell… So, for where I’m coming from is just from solely experiences. Let’s say in the past two years, the previous year has been very difficult because I called my wedding off and that was a nightmare, keeping a lot of Indian mindsets in mind and on for months and months. So, I think one thing that I pulled out of that was that it’s not usually the decision that takes a lot of strength. It’s pulling the decision through that takes more strength out of you. And I feel that it, the entire process just took something out of me, which I have been unable to bring back, and I try to hold on to faith and I try to practice more and everything, and while I talk in my yoga sessions and while people talk to me through COVID, because this year has been so difficult for everyone, so sometimes I feel that what comes out of my mouth while trying to motivate other people, I have sort of, I need to find my own place while I do that.

Yeah. First of all, your observations about me are not entirely accurate. First of all, I’m not trying to do anything for anybody. What can I do for anybody? What I can do is share my practice with anybody who wants to share my practice, which is to chant. That’s my main practice. So, all I want to do is make that offering to anyone who wants to sing, come sing. And when I’m singing, when I’m chanting, I’m not chanting to people. What people are you talking about? I’m chanting to God. I’m chanting to the soul. I’m chanting to my own soul. I’m chanting to my guru who lives within me as who I am. So, I’m not chanting to people or trying to make them have any kind of experience. That’s their problem. I’m sharing my practice, what I do for myself, with anyone who wants to share it. I am not responsible for your state of mind. You want to be depressed? Fine, Chant. Be depressed. Do you want to be happy? Fine. Chant. Be happy. That’s your life. Not mine. I’m sharing my practice with people because that is my practice, sharing it, actually.

My guru did not want me to stay home alone and chant. He wants me to chant with people. So, but that’s his business, not my business. People have dreams of him. They have nice experiences. That’s great. Wonderful. What do I have to do with it? Nothing. I’m just chanting to him, not to you, except that you’re a part of him.

So, you have this idea that you’re the doer that you’re doing all this, and you’re identified with that. And so, you’re identified with all the feelings that arise from those interactions.

“Well, I’m getting drained. I can’t maintain a good feeling here. I don’t even know if I’m helping anybody. And this is hard times.”

Thoughts. It’s nothing but thoughts. Come back to the name, come back to the breath. Let go. It’s not your job to run the universe. It’s somebody else’s job. Let them do it. You take care of yourself, that’s your job.

Why worry? It’s not your problem. Your problem is dealing with your own stuff. That’s enough. And how do you do that? Well, one can… You know, somebody once told me that what you do for other people is different than what you do for yourself. So, that’s true and it’s not true. It depends how you see it, but let’s put it… When you do your practice, you have to maintain your practice. Especially if you’re sharing that practice with other people.  You can’t be arrogant and think that whatever comes out of your mouth is good for everybody. You have to be constantly turning towards that place within, from where comes everything. Right? But thinking about it and then judging it and feeling good or feeling bad? Let go. This is all to be let go of. This is not your business. This is thoughts. Thoughts, emotions, feelings, thinking about the past, worrying about the future… You have to develop the ability to let go of all that stuff, because it does not matter what you think about anything. What matters is how you live in this moment.

So, when you do whatever practices you do for yourself, really be there. Don’t think about the past or the future. Be with yourself when you are practicing, when you are doing what you do for yourself. Feed yourself and you’re training yourself to let go and to dilute the glue that holds you to all these stories that you tell yourself about yourself, all lifelong.

“I’m this. I’m that. I’m this way. I did this. I didn’t do this. I’m doing this.”

So, just be yourself. Let yourself blossom and bloom and do practice. You have to do practice. You have to do spiritual practice, real spiritual practice, whatever that means. Now, asana practice, pranayama, those are good practices, but for the most part, the way most people do them, they tend to be just physical, and they can relax you a little bit, but you need to work… Listen to me, telling you what you need. One can work more directly with one’s mind and one’s feelings and learning how to let go, because all that stuff is what covers the jewel that lives in your heart as who you are, your soul. All those identifications, all those stories, that’s how we cover ourselves up. So, we need to let go of that. So, you sit down. You think you can count from a hundred to zero without thinking about other things? You can’t count from a hundred to 99 without thinking about something else. So, that’s the first thing, you know? Start to let your mind calm down. You have to do that. Nobody can do that for you. And that’s how you find what lives within us, our true nature, our soul, and then, when you go out into the world from that time of practice, you just try to be the best person you can be. That’s all. And you try to treat other people the way you want to be treated. That’s all you have to do. Nothing more than that. You don’t have to help anybody. You don’t have to try to teach anybody. You can share it, share techniques, but you do your practice where you calm your mind down and you try to connect with something deeper inside of you, and then you try to treat people the way you want to be treated. And that ain’t easy.

And it’s good to be a teacher. It’s good to share practices and techniques that can help people, but whether they do them or don’t do them, or whether it helps them or not is not up to you. Krishna says very clearly, over and over in the Gita, “You do what you do, but the fruit of your action is not your job.”

It’s not up to you, and if you’re worried about the fruit, if you’re worried about helping people, it cripples you. Your job is to do the best you can right now, this moment. Now this moment. Now this moment. Every moment. And what effect it has on other peoples, their life, is their karma, not yours. How you live in this life, this world right now, is your karma, is your situation. And that’s where you have and can find real strength to be true to yourself.

And, as you say in, in Indian culture, there’s a lot of stuff to deal with. As in every culture. That’s different, but you know, being a strong, independent woman in Indian culture is not an easy job, because traditionally, women’s place has not been empowered in India, just like the rest of the world. On the other hand, in India, they have the worship of the goddess, but then they’re nasty to their wives. So, what good is that? They go to the temple and worship a stone and then they come and yell at their wives. You know? But that’s the dichotomy of this world. That’s the craziness of this world.

You have created a very incredible thing for yourself so far, and just keep going. Get deeper. Get more real. Really empower yourself with love and compassion and that, for yourself and others. So speaketh at the Lord.

Thank you. Thank you. That really helps and thank you for everything that you put out for us. Thank you. Big love from me to you.

Q: Hello, Krishna Das. How are you? So, for me, my question today is, so I’ve been leaving my drums and I’ve been working on the harmonium and chanting, and I’m wondering, is there a particular drum machine that is something that I could use to have some beats going behind?

There’s two apps that I use for the, for iOS. One is called iTabla Pro. That’s the easiest one. The other one is a little bit complex. The rhythms are good, but not so easy. So, iTabla Pro is good, and they also have tanpura in that, and the bells, manjira. They have them in that. That’s a nice one. And you just have to go through and find the right, simple…. The two beats that you probably want to use, one is called Bhajani, and the other is Keherwa.

Okay.

So, experiment with those two. That’s probably the ones that will work for you.

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you so much.

And one more thing. Don’t quit your day job.

My day job is a music teacher.

Oh my God. Really? Where?

I teach special needs children music in a residential school. When I talked last time… I used to be a professional musician. I was on tour with Phoebe Snow back in the day. So, now I teach music.

Beautiful. Special needs children really like chanting, because it’s repetitive and musically is not very complex, and I have a friend who teaches a special Asana practice for special needs children, and she uses my chanting in her classes, and so she wrote to me once and  she said, “When I put your music on the kids just go right in. But when it speeds up, they get anxious.”

So, I said, “Oh, okay. I’ll make a CD that doesn’t speed up.”

So, my last CD, what was it called? Peace of my Heart. It doesn’t speed up. It just goes deeper and deeper. So, but they love chanting. Those kids really respond to that and it’s repetitive and it’s easy, and as long as you don’t say anything about it being part of any spiritual or religious kind of thing, you’ll be safe.

Right. That’s a big thing. The biggest challenge to my chanting is getting my musicianship out of the way, because it’s not about music.

Well, that’s what you say, but on the other hand, unless you’re doing it, you don’t get a chance to work with that part of you that keeps taking everything over, the big ego. So, when you chant, it makes it very obvious when you’re fucked up, and that’s good, because the rest of the day, you don’t see it.

That’s true.

It’s not that it’s not there. You just don’t see it. So, it’s good. Good work.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Q: Hi Krishna Das. You had mentioned that you spent some time with Anandamayi Ma. Can you tell me some experiences with her?

Well, first of all, let me, She had an ashram, has an ashram just down the road from Maharajji’s place. And so, when Maharajji would kick us out, we’d go see her at her place, and then we’d come back to the temple and Maharajji would say, “You went to see Ma? Did she feed you? No, I feed you.”

But they knew each other very well. My, my Indian father, Mr. Tiwari had been with Maharajji in Nainital the first time Mataji, Anandamayi, and Maharajji met this life. They just looked at each other and laughed.  You know, they laughed. She was so beautiful, just so immersed all the time. Anandamayi. Just immersed in Ananda.

Westerners weren’t really, we weren’t really invited closely into the scene, you know? But still we used to sit in the darshan and just watch her and it was so beautiful. Very beautiful.

Oh, that’s nice. So, I have a question. So, you know, sometimes you do things and there are so many obstacles. Does that mean that some Supreme Power Almighty is telling us not to do that, or it is just our bad karma that’s why we have so much struggle. So, we decide, like we have to move forward in that direction? Or should we take it as a red flag from the almighty?

Well, the easiest thing to do is ask your daughter what you should do. That’s the best thing I can advise you.

No, obstacles are always there. They’re either obstacles or they’re opportunities. It’s up to you how you take it. And always, you have to ask yourself, is what I’m trying to do what I really want to be doing? That’s the main thing. It’s not what you do. It’s why you do what you do. That’s what important. I mean, we have to learn to really listen to ourselves about what we really need and really want in life, and how do we want to go through this life? How do we want to spend our time? What do we want to get? In what way? You know, what’s the best thing I can do for myself and others that I meet? So, but basically the first thing is to find out what you want to do. And if you’re trying to do something that you don’t really want to do, then there are obstacles. But if you’re trying to do something that you really want to do and have to do, then those are opportunities to work through, and work with. And what are these obstacles and why? Not, why? Never ask why. Because nobody knows. Why ask a question no one can answer.  And besides your daughter knows everything. She won’t tell you though, that’s the thing.

But the more deeply you connect with your own heart, the more strength you get in your life and the clearer your intentions become about how you want to live, where you want to live, how you want to live, what you want to do with your life. Because most of us are just working, we’re just reacting still to everything that’s happened to us in our life. There were programs put into us as we grew up. We absorbed ways of seeing ourself from our parents, from our teachers, from our friends, from all our experiences in our interactions, and we’re still in reaction mode to all that. Either we want more of it or we want to push it away, but we still don’t know who we are, and apparently that’s what this life is about, trying to find out who we really are and who everybody else really is.

Ram Dass always talk about the difference between roles and souls, right? Everybody has a soul, but also everybody’s playing a role that is not necessarily in harmony with who they truly are. So, people can hurt us. People can turn away from us. People can create problems for us, and we might get angry with them, but that’s their role, and what happens, that’s our role fighting with their role, because we don’t know our hearts. If we really knew who we were, we would be able to see them in a different way, where they wouldn’t be obstacles aimed at us. It would be a situation arising, and you have a completely different relationship to it, a completely different way of seeing it, of feeling it. It’s not like you have to manipulate yourself into, or talk yourself into feeling a certain way. No. As you practice more, those deeper ways of seeing and reacting to things just happens naturally, but you must practice. I don’t know what else to tell you.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yes.

And if anything, it makes you a better person and it makes your relationships more fulfilling and your work more fulfilling and everything, because you’re not demanding that the outside world do what you tell it to do or be the way you want it to be. You’re able to be with it as it is because you don’t need it to be a certain way for you. There’s millions of people out there and everybody wants the outside world to do just what they wanted to do. How could that ever work? The outside world is the outside world, and our job is to clean our hearts, to slow ourselves down, to allow ourselves to be kinder to ourselves, not so harsh with ourselves, not so angry with our inability to be, to treat people well and treat ourselves well. It’s very difficult, especially now. I mean, this is an extraordinarily difficult time. Everybody’s heads are just totally compressed with the pressure and anxiety and fear and worrying about what’s going to happen. It’s really… and I would say more than half of what we feel as our own stuff, isn’t even our own stuff. It’s just the atmosphere we’re all living in. But that’s okay, because the intensity of the experience these days can turn us within, can force us to calm our asses down, excuse me, calm ourselves down, and learn to take care of ourselves. It’s not easy.

And if I ever drink this much coffee again, I’m just going to turn off the Chai and Chat.

Thank you so much.

Q: Hi, Krishna Das and everybody out there.

A repeat offender!

I’m a repeat offender, yes. As a repeat offender, one of the things that I’ve heard you say, I think in every Chai and Chat I’ve been to, the words, “the stories we tell ourselves,” is something that bring up each time, and I’m sort of struggling with what you mean by that. And I think in order to ask my question properly, I have to be very personal in letting you know what what’s been on my mind.

So, my whole life, going back to age five, I don’t remember before that, but I was aware of, from age five to seven, of being abused, sexually abused, by an older brother, and I was very alone in that. I knew it was not something I wanted to be happening, but I didn’t have anybody to turn to or help me. I figured it out myself over a period of two years, how to make it stop. But, my brother’s still in my life and my parents were, they didn’t help me, and they don’t, and I’ve talked to them about it in my adult life and they don’t… they hear me, they listen, they don’t get angry, but they don’t take, they don’t really acknowledge it in some way, or they don’t do anything with this information. Or, and it’s just, it’s all that’s present when I’m with my family, my parents, my brother, my other brother. It’s felt, it’s just like the most forward thing in my awareness when I’m with them, and so, the idea of like, “this is just a story I’m telling myself,” and why can’t I…

Don’t use the word, “just.”

Okay, whatever, but the idea that this is a story makes it, makes me wonder, is this like, what… how do I…?

It’s not like that.

It feels a little bit like, “Oh, I’m just kind of making something out of…”

There’s that word, “just,” again.  This is you judging yourself, and you know that victims of abuse tend to, there’s always a part of a victim’s thoughts about it and feelings about it, that somehow, they are guilty of something. And when you say “just,” it’s your way of putting yourself down, it’s the doubt about the situation manifesting in your head, you know? The doubt that you didn’t get your parents’ help and support, the doubt that, how could this happen and why this happened and all that stuff. These are all undigested pieces of pain in our eyes, our hearts. Really. And you’re not alone. There’s so many situations like this, and in so many of the situations, the parents can never face it. They just don’t have the tools. They don’t have the tools. They don’t. Their emotions just freeze and they, it’s almost, they can’t, it could manifest as coldness and as non-caring and all that, but I think underneath it, it’s really a question of that, they’re facing the abyss and they cannot, they have to back away from that abyss, because they could not deal with it.

I’ve told this story many times and I’ll tell it again. Many years ago, when George W. was president, I didn’t like him. He seemed to me to be a terrible guy, causing all these issues, the wars, everything, the puppet of big business and all this stuff. So, one time I was channel surfing and I passed through CNN, and as I was going through CNN, they were showing a live broadcast, it was live, of president Bush on his way to meet the wives of the first group of soldiers that were killed in Iraq. Okay? The very first. There were maybe 20, 25 women waiting in this classroom, in this public school, to meet with Bush, and the camera shows him walking down the hall, “Hey, Joe. Hi Frank. Yeah, that’s me. I’m the president. Here I go. I’m walking down the hall. Yep. That’s me. Here I go.”

So, I was just about to turn the channel and he walks into the room where the women were waiting for him, and he burst out crying like a baby, weeping uncontrollably. I couldn’t hate him anymore, because I recognized immediately, this human being has created so much suffering for so many people, and he will pay for that. He, himself, has created situations that are going to be arising for him in his karma, that he will suffer the fires of hell, and I didn’t want to feel compassion for that bastard, but I could not help myself. You see where I’m getting?

Well, actually the problem is I feel a lot of compassion for these people, so much so that there’s more secret keeping than I would wish for.

I’ll use a phrase then a very great Lama once used. Don’t take it personally. It’s called “Idiot Compassion.” Once again, it’s your own feelings that you must allow to arise and pass away, and yes, you can feel compassion for those people, but you’re not really feeling compassion for yourself, and that’s the scary, painful stuff. It’s the dark stuff, the shadows that push us around, and we don’t see them. We’re not prepared to look at them. And that’s exactly why I started chanting with people, because I walked from one room to the other in my apartment back in 1994, and immediately I knew that if I did not start chanting with people, I would never be able to deal with the shadows that were pushing me around. I couldn’t see the dark corners of my own heart that were hidden from me. So that forced me to start doing practice.

Well, if I could ask another question related to it. Tell the truth, right? Everyone tell the truth. So, it’s the “tell the truth” part, because that’s my truth, but I can’t tell it. And it feels, I guess that’s another part of the stuckness somehow, because telling it would explain to my brother’s children, why I’m so distant or, it feels like it continues to go down generations, and I want to be able to sort of tell the truth in some way, but I haven’t figured out how to do that.

That’s okay, because “tell the truth” is one part of the phrase. The other phrase was, “love everyone and tell the truth.” So, you’re also included in that “everyone,” and loving everyone in this case would have to mean owning the situation in a deep way, and “tell the truth” doesn’t mean, “tell people things they don’t need to know.” There’s no reason to hurt those kids with that truth at this time. At some later period, if something starts, if you see something in their lives that this would be helpful, sure, maybe, but “tell the truth” doesn’t mean, “hit people over the head with a hammer.”

Since we’ve gotten personal, have you ever been to any groups where people discuss this stuff among victims of abuse, without the abusers around, who talk about ways to deal with the pain that they’re carrying? You don’t have to answer that, but I’m just suggesting that would be a very useful thing to do, because satsang, sangha, which on the spiritual path means, “the people who are moving along the path together,” is very important. We learn so much from those fellow seekers. We learn how to carry ourselves. We learn what’s okay and what’s not okay. We learn how to be in a new way with our stuff. So, in your case, your sangha, or one of your sanghas, could easily be groups of people who are dealing with this. There’s so many people who have been abused in so many ways, and I think one could possibly get a lot out of that, new insights into hidden feelings we have about it. And if you’re looking for a practice to do, I don’t know that you are, but if you are, I would investigate Sharon Salzberg, if you don’t know who she is, because she teaches Loving Kindness Meditation, which is an extraordinarily powerful practice, even though it could seem a little rinky dinky at first, like, “May I be safe, May I be happy, May I have a good health.”

It is one of the most powerful meditation practices ever on every level, and it’s a way of getting right in there where we don’t like ourselves, where we can’t wish ourselves well, but it doesn’t feel like a battle. It’s not a battle. It’s so beautiful, the way they offer this practice. Usually when we think of meditation, we think, “Okay, I’m going to sit down and I’m going to fight with my thoughts and then I’m going to go watch TV.”

It’s not like that. It’s an extraordinary practice, and I think it would be wonderful for you to explore that possibility, and I know that she does give, even online, she’s giving courses on that, and classes, and definitely connect with her somehow. She’s the greatest.

You’re not alone. And the thing about the stories we tell ourselves, I didn’t mean it on the level that you seem to have heard it. What I mean is, the unconscious way that we see ourselves. We don’t even notice how often we criticize ourselves or how often we stop ourselves from doing something because, or how many, how often we do certain things because, and what we’re doing is, we’re acting out this shadow version of ourselves that we don’t see. We only see it, we only can see it in our daily life, if we’re really paying attention. Why I don’t like myself, why I can’t deal with this, why I want this, why I don’t want this… This is the result. Those shadows are pulling the strings and we’re dancing to their tune. So, until we light that up behind us, bring light there, awareness, consciousness, love, compassion, insight into those shadows, they’re going to keep pushing us around. That’s what I mean by the stories we tell ourselves, not like, not the way you interpreted it at that point.

You know, welcome to earth, girl. You know? It’s tough. This world has, believe it or not, it has equal possibilities. There’s equal opportunity for love and there’s equal opportunity for suffering. We have choices we have to make. Everything right now that’s happening in our lives is a result of our own past karmas. We don’t know what that means, but let’s just say that, whatever it is, we have to deal with it, because it’s here. That’s all. That’s what that means. And we have to find the best way we can to deal with it, for each of us. You find your way. I find my way. But if we don’t deal with it, it keeps on going on in our heads and in our lives. So, see what’s there with you. See what you’re carrying around with you. See what would be nice to leave on the side of the road as you walk, and then find the way to do that because you can.

You know, there’s no, I’m blurting at an extraordinary rate, but it’s not like there’s an easy answer, but one of the modes in the Loving-Kindness Meditation… Do you know anything about it at all?

A little bit.

So, there’s essentially four types of phrases that you repeat. One is, “May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy.” And, “May I live with ease.” Okay?

So, the first part of the practices where you offer those phrases to yourself.

“May I be safe. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I live with ease.”

Okay. So, after a couple of days of that, and you don’t feel a damn thing, they say, “Okay, offer those phrases to your benefactor, someone who’s in your life has always been on your side, always been there for you, never judged, always… et cetera,” and you start offering the phrases to that person and immediately you feel lighter. Then they say, “Okay, now come back to yourself.”

You crash. So, then they go back and forth a little bit, and then one of the modes is where you offer the phrase to your enemy. It’s called “The eEnemy,” but in our case, it means somebody who’s done us wrong or always wished us ill will, et cetera, and then you offer the phrase to that person and, you know, “May you be safe, you son of a bitch. May be happy.” So, and you can’t even, you can’t even do it. Finally, I, after like many years I got to the place, “May be safe, you bastard, so you leave me alone. May you be happy son of a bitch, so you don’t fuck with me.”

I mean, that was the best I could do, but getting to the place where you can allow yourself to wish yourself well, it’s a huge, huge, wonderful, I don’t want to say “accomplishment,” but it is, it’s a real accomplishment, because here we are in this world, and not even to, just look what’s going on everywhere. That pressure is right in our heads all the time right now, and it’s making everything worse, everything more intense. To allow ourselves to feel okay, as we are right now is, a really big thing, and it takes a lot of practice to get comfortable with that, because we don’t feel we deserve it, or we don’t feel we’re able. We don’t feel we can let ourselves go there, but we can. And because why? Because that’s what’s really inside of us underneath the stuff, underneath all the things that have happened to us, all the things we’ve done, inside there is a light, which is who we truly are, but that is covered up with our shit right now. We have to uncover that. And once you begin to take responsibility for your own state of mind, then things start to change, then you begin to take life and everything in it as your path, not something that’s happening to you, but something that’s happening here and you’re here right with it. It’s very different. It’s, in a sense, it’s happening within you rather than to.

But these are things that will come from the inside. You don’t have to hang on to them here so tightly. They come from the inside through practice. It’s good to have an idea of what we’re looking for, but everything I’m saying is stuff that you will see inside yourself. Definitely. You don’t have to be convinced by it. You don’t have to intellectually hold onto it, or make yourself believe, or manipulate yourself into acting that way. No, that’s all bullshit. You will feel these things because that’s what’s in there already, and we just have to find a way to uncover it, which is what the whole spiritual path is about.

So, sangha, satsang, very important. Really big. Huge. And next to that would be checking out what Sharon’s about, and beginning some practice that you do with sincerity every day, even two minutes. Two minutes. Three minutes. That you really do. Not like I do it, “Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram.” Really do it.

One Ram…  Maharajji even said, “Go on, repeat your lying, fake ‘Ram Ram.’ One of these days, you say it right, once. Boom. The real Ram will come.”

How do we get to that place? Right? That place is here, right where we are in our own hearts, right now, and you have it like everyone else, but you’re looking for it, and that’s different than most people. Most people are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, and they die asleep, and they never get one look up at the sky in a whole lifetime.

So, you’re doing good. Just opening yourself to this whole issue is huge, really huge. Most people really can’t. Don’t, can’t, won’t, but you’re doing, and that’s already 99% of the fight, is being willing to engage. That’s a big thing. Very big. Alright. I wish you the best

You know, Buddhism is really misunderstood by most people. People say, “Oh, Buddha said, it’s all suffering.” No, that’s not what he said. He said, yes, in this world, there is suffering inherent in almost every part of life, but he also said, the end of that statement was that, “Here is the way to liberate yourself from suffering.”

He did not say that there’s all suffering and that’s the end of it. He said, there is suffering. These are the causes of suffering. This is the path to free ourselves from the causes of suffering. It was life affirming, not life negating. Negation is when all we see is the suffering, and when we don’t believe, and don’t recognize that there’s a way out, and ultimately, our hearts are the way out, going, moving into our deeper, that place in our own hearts, which is where these names, the chants that I do, that’s where these chants come from. And they pull us right back into ourselves and realign the way our thoughts run and the way our feelings run, which is why practice is so important, because we’re getting in harmony with who we really are. We’re not trying to reprogram our thoughts. We’re actually trying to find, to experience directly the love that lives within us as we are already. It’s there. Of course, it’s there. It’s here, but we don’t know how to look. We are glued to our stuff. Practice dissolves that glue little by little, and we fall into the real place within us.

Q: Hi Krishna Das. Thank you for having this beautiful container here to share. I’m here in Northern California, and last March, I went down to Mexico City to see my family, just before the pandemic. So, my question is directly about, you having spoken so far about bhakti yoga and the offerings, and sometimes the spiritual part comes with a very sour pill, and sometimes the more we practice, the deeper peel gets bigger and sometimes I feel like, “Oh, I cannot take this pill anymore,” but it’s probably because that’s where I need to be.

So, I was visiting my brother, which is mathematician, and he has been, over his life, been extremely analytical and you know, so, we’ve been having dealings with situations with both of my parents already passing. So, my mother passed after a month I was there. So, and most of that part, and also personally shows in the family with health. So, my brother was taking, absorbing all that negativity from the family, and so I went there and he just like, he just dropped it. He had a huge crisis of hysteria, right in front of me, and I was just feeling like, I was just on my knees seeing him suffering. Because he still tried to help my family and everybody else. I saw that he can’t help himself. And he lives alone in a place that he can be, a lot of people can take advantage of him. So, I got to see all that in front of my eyes. And I was thinking like, “Well, you, should you supposed to be a spiritual person, you know? What service I can be to my brother?”  So, I was there with him, and I stayed at his house and I told him, “Listen, I want to spend these times here with you, and I need to see if you can allow me to help you up,” but at the moment, I mean, when you offer some fruits, my brother wasn’t able to take that fruit, and I saw myself in panic because I was thinking like, “You know what? He’s not getting any younger and he lives alone and so…”  But like how can he stop?

He is suffering. I am suffering. So, my question to you is how to detach? I can’t just talk to him, it’s just like a suggestion, because you can’t even tell him, you know, because he doesn’t listen to anything, because  like, he needs help. And when you say something like when you’re admitting that you need help, that’s a huge part of recovery, that his mind is like in, he’s no longer able to see himself reacting like that and having these hysteria at that. So, and I feel like, you know what? Only I shared to him that to seek a medical advice or professional advice.  So, I came back here in California and I keep him in my mind because I see here that I create a beautiful life. And I feel like, you know how unfair it can be, how unfair the world can be, because I can see real suffering and I can’t do anything about it. I can’t, so I need to detach myself from my brother, but I’m just saying, you know what? I love him a lot, but right now I don’t think his mind isn’t ready to see the light. So, I don’t know what I can do so. Listening to your music has helped me tremendously. I wish my brother can be a little bit able to accept something like that.

Yeah. You know, we should’ve, when they offered us the job to run the universe, we should’ve accepted, but we didn’t. So, the universe is running itself without our help, and people will be who they are, regardless of how we would like them to be. So, if the situation is that you can’t do anything for him, then you should really try to do something for yourself, which means to try to calm your heart down. You know, over and over, it’s said that real love is letting people be who they are and not trying to change them according to what we feel they should be doing or feeling. When we can’t even deal with our own stuff, how can we help somebody else? Other than loving them and accepting that this is who they are right now? It doesn’t mean they’re always going to be this way.

But one thing you could do is certainly offer your brother loving kindness, and caring within yourself. Now you can’t make him accept it, but he can’t stop you from offering it, and you can do that within yourself. You have a brother outside of you, but you also have this brother inside of you, just like we have our parents inside of us as well. You have this person, so inside of you, you are free to love him, and cherish him, and wish him well, and offer him strength and courage, and see him in the light, visualize him in the light, visualize him as being happy, and offering him this. Now, he may not get it, but what you’re really doing is, you’re purifying and cleaning your connection with him. Right now, your connection with him is blocked with emotion, and blocked with your own subjectivity. So, you want to free yourself from that to really connect with him, with his soul, and when you do that, you’ve liberated all the karmas between the two of you, which may or may not allow him to see things in a different way. And when you approach him, once you’re free of wanting him to be who you want them to be, and you talk to him, he won’t feel like you’re trying to manipulate him and trying to change him. So, he’ll respond to you naturally without defense. Right now, he’s going to defend himself against you, because you’re trying to change him.

And how dare you try to change him? Who do you think you are? Leave me alone. Get out of my life. He’s entitled to feel that way because you’re attacking him with your love. Why would you do that? Because you want something from him. You want him to be happy. He doesn’t want to be happy. Leave him alone. But inside of yourself, give him the real stuff, hold him in that light, hold him in your love and your heart and let it flow towards him, within you. You might find all kinds of things in there that you don’t even know exist from your side.

It’s so beautiful in here, and I feel like, I got to mother nature and just talk to her about questions and just seeing like, am I acting selfishless? And then just, you just mentioned something really important, that you cannot change somebody else. You need to accept them for who they are, for what they are.  And yeah, so I was thinking myself, I live a good life, a healthy life, and I wish deep in my heart, that’d be a part of me, which is my brother, benefit from that side, which is me, because as you say, my family, my mother and my father live within me. And so does my brother. Sometimes it’s hard for me to detach, to think, am I acting selflessly in here? And you say something very important. Like I need to take care of myself.

And your brother is a part of yourself, too. But the internal brother is the only one that’s going to listen to you right now, but be with that part of yourself, right? I mean, wish him well, and that way you’ll overcome your need to change him, your need to make him happy. That’s your issues, not his. So, in the meantime, you can offer him all that love and kindness that you have in your own heart, and that will free you, and it has to have an effect somewhere, because every action has a result. If your actions are loving and kind, even if they’re not external, they still will create good karmas there, and also, you’ll feel better, and you deserve to feel better. It’s not necessary to suffer like this. Suffering is inevitable. We can’t avoid suffering, but like one of these great saints once said, “I feel pain, but not the way you do.” Even the great ones, Christ, Maharajji Sai Baba, Shirdi Sai Baba, Nityananda, these great beings, they feel our pain, but not personal like we do. Very different.

So, if we want to liberate ourselves from our unhappiness, we have to free those old karmas that we’re carrying around inside of us. And we do that by offering love and kindness and compassion, to your brother in this case, and everyone else you meet, and yourself. So, just include him. When you go for a walk, include him, bringing him with you in your heart, and you may find many things inside yourself that you’re not even aware of yet, things that might be difficult and things that will be very beautiful.

So, I wish you well.

Boy, a lot of stuff. Very intense. This is the world. This is the world. We’re all, we all have this intensity of feeling these days, and it brings out all the things within us, and that can be very useful for us as practitioners, because until you see something, you can’t deal with it. You can’t meet it in a good way. Until we see it, those things push us around from behind, but it’s very difficult to take, to keep our eyes open.

Maharajji used to say, “I love suffering. Suffering brings me close to God.”

And I don’t know about you, but when things are regular and at ease, my practice is very lackadaisical, but when I’m suffering, “Help me, Goddammit!”  It gets pretty intense. So, in that sense, this is a very deep, powerful time, and each one of us is going to be dealing with it in the best way we can. So, very hard times. Very hard times. No one knows what’s going to happen, and it’s easy to get caught up in worrying about it all. But that’s too crippling, and when we cripple ourselves, then we can’t help others and we can’t help ourselves either. So, really, this is the importance of practice, because practice connects us to that place within us that is perfectly all right, as Mr. Tiwari used to say, “Perfectly all right, thank you, perfectly all right,” regardless of what’s going on in the outside world. Now, I know that could sound cold and unfeeling, but it isn’t.

Q: Hey. Hi Krishna Das. Welcome to a rainy day in Miami.

Miami? Oh my Goodness. I’ll be there tonight watching the Heat get beat by the Celtics.

Oh yeah. I’ve seen them live, the Heat, not lately.

Very good.

When you met Ram Dass in the late sixties, you talked about how you walked into the room and you sensed that it was immediately possible to enter the space where we truly live.

That’s a nice way of putting it. Let me think about that. Actually, the actual thought was, “Oh my God, it’s real.”

I knew without a word, even without any mental activity, all of a sudden it was like all the lights went on and I knew that whatever it was I was looking for, at the age of 20, something like that, 21, whatever it was I was looking for was real, it was in the world, and you could find it. Real. In the World. You Could Find It.  Boom boom boom. That was it. And I’ve just been surfing the rest of my life.

Before that revelatory moment, did you have any sense, like when you were a young Das, really young, like when you were baby or that, about the presence of God, or hope that there was a possibility or any inkling?

You know, I’d like to say that when I was born, rainbows filled the sky and music could be heard in the heavens, but I don’t think so. I was just a normal kid. I had no, all I had was unhappiness. That was my revelation and depression.

You had no sense that there was a way out coming up at all?

No, none, but by the time I met Ram Dass, I had already been into spiritual step for a few years. I had been reading about Buddhism. I’d been doing asana practice. I’d been trying to meditate probably in some weird way. So, I was already doing things. I mean, I already was looking very strongly for something, but I wouldn’t have known what to say it was. I still don’t.

Interesting. Thank you. Awesome.

You’re welcome.

Q: Yeah. So, I guess my question is, just thinking about like, how do you have courage to do something that you want to do for yourself, but you find it really difficult to face it? So, for me, I was in tech for like, 13 years and I found it a very abusive experience despite doing some things that I thought were meaningful. Probably the highlight was seeing you, and I realized there was something else beyond suffering. But I really struggled. I’ve struggled to get over coping with my experiences there, and I guess part of me, I’ve thought about, like, I would like to write it up into like, some sort of book, and I’ve written some things, but I just get frozen from fear, and I do practice. So, I guess my question is like, like how, did Maharajji ever say anything, or Siddhi Ma say anything about courage or how do you like, I don’t know, not letting the past, which they say isn’t real, just stop you from doing something else with your life?

First of all, I think writing’s a really good discipline, and if you were going to write, I would write to yourself.  Write, not to yourself as who you know yourself to be right now, but write to yourself almost like you’re somebody else that you want to share with, and not to teach or preach or anything, but somebody you want to have a heart to heart with. So, you’re writing to that person, from your heart to that person’s heart, and rather than, like mind spinning writing, writing, writing, but telling the story to someone you care about.

And as far as courage, yeah, Maharajji, you know this story. I was sitting with Maharajji and we had trailed him to Mumbai. It was a great adventure, and we found him there, and so every day we’d sit with him for many hours, and one day we’d been sitting for many hours. He was on the bed and I was on the floor, and there was one old Indian devotee with us, and me and another westerner, and all of a sudden He sits up and he looks at me.

He goes, “Courage is a really big thing.”

The Indian guy said, “Oh Baba, but God would take care of his devotees.”

“Courage is a really big thing.”

And then he laid down and went back to sleep, and I was just like, “What’s gonna happen?” You know?

Yeah, courage is a big thing, but it’s not the courage to go out and conquer the world, the courage to be here now, to be with ourselves as we are, to care for ourselves as we are, to imagine there’s no next chapter in your life, that this is your life now, and you’re not preparing for later or some other state of consciousness that won’t last anyway. You know, that kind of stuff. To be with what is now, as fully as you can, to be here with yourself, with all the beauty, and all the horror, and all the nastiness, and all the sweetness, and all the goodness, and all the selfishness, be with it, and inside of all that, to remember to let go, to come back, to let go, to come back, let go, come back, let go. That’s basically all we can do. Let go of the very stuff that pulls us out of ourselves, and then we won’t be pulled out of ourselves. Imagine that. The only thing taking us away from ourselves is our own stuff, nothing out there. There is no “out there.”

If we’re going to find anything in this life, we’re going to find it right here, right now, because next week it’ll still be right now. It’s always where you are, and trying to get somewhere else or have some… imagining that there’ll be a time when you’ll be free of suffering. It ain’t going to happen.

I used to go every day, I would go to sit with Maharajji, and I’d put on my clean clothes and sit down in front of him, and one day I was sitting there, and I almost laughed out loud, because I saw myself, that I was sitting there, waiting for him to touch me, and I would be liberated. I would be enlightened. And I laughed because I saw that my idea of being enlightened did not include me being here. Enlightenment was somebody else, somewhere else. I would not be there. I was waiting for myself to be gone. And I laughed because I understood that if there was one thing in the universe that was never going to happen, that was it. I would never be gone. I’m going to be right here always, but “here” deepens, and deepens, and deepens, and deepens as our thoughts don’t pull us out of it, as our emotions don’t pull this out of it, as our selfishness doesn’t pull us out of it, as our anxiety doesn’t pull us out of it, as our greed doesn’t pull us out of it, as our shame doesn’t pull us out of it, as our fear doesn’t pull us out of it. We’re here, and “here” is the whole universe. “Here” is the heart of God. So, courage means allowing yourself to be here and developing the strength to keep letting go of that stuff that pulls us away from ourselves. And all the practices, all they do is develop those muscles to let go.

So, where are you going to go? Where are you going to go where you won’t be? It can’t happen. Isn’t that great?

You don’t need to try anymore. You don’t need to drive yourself crazy anymore. You were already crazy. Why keep driving? All we need to do is be here, alive, this moment, with everything that appears in our life, moment after moment. Be here. And the wider our hearts are, that stuff just goes through like food from a certain country…

But that’s the big time. That’s the hardest practice, is just to be here and give yourself a break. That’s very difficult. There’s too many programs running. That’s why, if you write your story, which I think would be a great thing to do for everybody, you bring in that, as you write, you will recognize the space in which the writing is happening, and you’ll be able to communicate that, too.  And that’s fantastic.

So, you see.

Somebody wrote, “Maharajji’s nothing special, but his body fills the universe.”

Thank you everybody. Really. Thanks for coming and being here, and opening your hearts, sharing the space with all of us. Take good care of yourselves and everyone around you best you can. Much love, and see you again. Ram Ram.

The post Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD September 26 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 68 | Maharajji Stories

I just wanted to ask if you could please share your most favorite experience of spending time with Maharajji. Thank you.

“You know, He knew everything. Oh, Jesus. Every single thing. He knew how many times you chewed your toast in the morning. He knew what you were going to do 50 years from that moment. And He loved you completely. Totally. Every part of you.” – Krishna Das

Q: Hi Krishna Das. My name is Chad and I just wanted to ask if you could please share your most favorite experience of spending time with Maharajji. Thank you.

KD: I don’t know. One time I walked to the temple from, the town’s about a three and a half, four hour walk over the mountains, and I was practicing my Hindi. Over and over I was saying this, trying to learn how to say, “Maharajji, my life is in your hands.” And I was saying it over and over in Hindi, like, for hours, a big moment, you know? So, I got to the temple and I was up, coming down the ridge and I saw He was sitting all alone on His tucket, on His bed. I ran into the temple, I came. I ran up to Him and I said, “Maharajji, your life is in my hands.” He went, “Get out of here, go on, Jao.”

Q: You said it in Hindi though.

KD: Yeah, I said it in Hindi. I said it backwards. Another time, you know, He would get up, you know, He walked like a kid. He’d like, bounce from one leg to the other. He looked like He was ready to fall over. So, people would put their hand out. And He would take somebody’s hand and walk with somebody. So, one day, I always, I happened to be right in front of Him when He stood up. So, I put my hand out. And He looked at me and He laughed and He grabbed my hand and we went walking to the back of the temple and then He stopped and let go of my hand and He took a couple of steps, so I took a couple of steps, and then He looked at me and He said something I didn’t understand, and then He took a couple of steps, so I took a couple of steps and then again, He said something and He took a couple of steps and I took a couple of steps and then He just looked at me like this, and He squats down and He pees. He just wanted like 18 inches to take a piss and I wasn’t going to give it to Him. Ah, Divine Love. Those are the moments that, you know, it wasn’t all the other stuff. It was those moments where it was just too amazing, you know? One time, so after I met Ram Das, I told you last night if you were there, how I came into the room and, you know, I understood that whatever it was that I was looking for in the world was real. It could be found. It was a big thing. So after that, I actually began to dream about Maharajji and all I’d seen was a little black and white picture that Ram Das had, but I dreamt of Him, you know. So I’d had this dream long before to India, where I came back to my elementary school and I walked into the gym where we used to have school plays and used to play dodge ball and you know, do square dancing and all the stuff that people on Long Island did. And there on the other side of the gym, on the stage was, Maharajji was sitting on the bed, on a cot, and next to Him, standing behind Him was this guy with a white shirt and a dhoti, a cloth, and a black vest and he was standing behind him. And I came into the room and I fell down and I did what they call “danda pranam”. I just full out on the floor like this with my head like this. And I was just praying. I was saying, “Please, let me feel something. I have to feel something. Please let me feel something.” This is in my dream. And in my mind’s eye, I saw Him get up and walk down the stairs at the edge of the stage and come over to me and He put His hand on the back of my head and I started to calm down, calm down and as I was calming down, this bliss started to run through my body like, you know, it was unbelievable and it was getting stronger and stronger and stronger and I thought, “I’m going to die” and at that moment, He took His hand off of my head, went back and sat down and I woke up. So, this was in 1969. So, fast forward to maybe early 1972. I came to the temple. We were living in the town nearby and every day we would come to the temple and hang out with Maharajji and then in the evening we’d go home, go back to the town. So, this day, for some reason, I came late by myself. Usually, either we’d… anyway, so I came into the temple and I was holding some apples that I was gonna offer to Him and I walked into the courtyard and He was walking by Himself across the courtyard, right? Now, I realized that I had never seen Him walk before. We’d always been either brought into the room where He was already sitting or He’d just come out the door and plop down on the tucket out there on the cot right there by the door. But I’d never seen Him walk. And I just stopped at the edge of the courtyard and I watched Him walk and I, my mind completely blitzed out because, He was walking the way He walked in my dream, you know? I was just like, like this.  And the next thing I know, I’m standing right next to Him and He’s grabbing the apples and throwing them, I didn’t even offer the apples, I was just like… ahhhhh. And He was going, “These westerners.” And He takes the apples and He’s throwing them to people. It was just an amazing moment, you know? So, He had come to me. They say, when you dream about a Saint, you’re not making that up in your dreams the way we mostly make up our dreams. You can’t create the form of a Saint in your dreams. Only the Saint can come to you. That’s what they say. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what they say. So, if you dream about somebody, a great Guru or something like that, He or She has come to see you. That’s what they say.

One time, we were sitting with Him in the evening. This was after I was living in the temple. So, everybody would go leave the temple for the day and just the people who were living there and the workers would stay, and He’d come up to the back of the temple and sit and a few people there would sit around Him. So on this day there was maybe about six or seven people and I was sitting kind of behind Him and there were these people sitting on the other side of the cot and it was, the sun was setting, there was a sweetness in the air, there was this fragrance of what they call Raat Ki Rani, the Queen of the Night Flowers, it makes Jasmine look like poop, smell like poop. You have no idea. It’s completely intoxicating, this scent. And that was wafting through the air, you know, and I was thinking, “Wow, this is so great.” He looks over at me and goes, “Watch this.” Or, “See this,” He said. And then He casually just said to this person sitting, He said, “Is it cold in America now?” and in two seconds, everybody said, “Well, there’s different parts of America. There’s the North, there’s the South, and then it could be this, it could be cold there.” It was total insanity and He just looks over to me. It was like, “You see what’s in people’s heads? You thought it was peaceful.” Things like that.

You know, He knew everything. Oh, Jesus. Every single thing. He knew how many times you chewed your toast in the morning. He knew what you were going to do 50 years from that moment. And He loved you completely. Totally. Every part of you. And He knew everything. And if you think it’s easy to sit in front of somebody like that… half the time it was the most incredible unbelievable never-wanna-move, the other half of the time it was like living in hell, because we’re not used to that. We can’t be open. We’re just like… We close down. So, then, He would hit you in the heart with a banana. And you’d look, and then you’re open again. And then you’re closed down. And then He’d bang you with an apple. Or He’d look at you and go Ha Ha. And He’d look and He’d laugh. The minute you closed down, He’d open you up, or He’d let you sit there for a few days like that until you just were burnt to a crisp, you know, and then somebody would call your name and you’d turn and you’d get hit with a pomegranate. And He’d go, Ha. That’s how He taught. He didn’t lecture. He said, “If I know…” He said, what did He say, something like, something like, “I don’t know anything, I just know how to open hearts.” Something like that. And He didn’t want anything. Nothing.

He never took anything from us. We couldn’t even donate to the temple. I mean, nothing. He didn’t want anything from us. To be around somebody who doesn’t want anything, who has everything, is so discontinuous with our everyday lives. Everybody we meet is hungry. We’re hungry for so many things. We live in a hungry world. There are people out there who aren’t hungry, who’ve got everything and who are ridiculously disgustingly happy. One time, so, Ram Das had bought this Volkswagon bus from these people and we used to drive it from the town. We used to get sixteen or seventeen people in this Volkswagon, hanging off the back, up on the roof, and it became a bit of a scene, you know, and the Indian people, like the word was getting out, who were these crazy hippies and everything. People were coming to see what’s going on. So, He broke the bus. One day, it wouldn’t start. Anyway, that’s a long story, but anyhow, so He took the keys away from Ram Das and He gave them to me and He said, “Ram Das, you’re a saint, you have to go on the bus, on the regular bus.” And He said, “Jeff will drive.” Jeff was my name. “Jeff will drive.” And at that moment, He started calling me “driver.” So, for the next year, my name was “Driver.” “Driver! Ha. Come here.” Like this. Not a bad name. Kind of cool.  Hey. So, I had the keys to the bus and my desire was to drive Maharajji in the Volkswagon bus. I never told anybody. I never said anything to anybody. But I always had the keys with me. Ready. Right? So, like, a year goes by and I’m just sitting around with Him one day and He just looks at me and He says, casually, “Got the keys?” “Yeah.” “Let’s go.”

We went outside Dada’s house in Allahabad and Dada was one of these great devotees of Maharajji. Unbelievable. And Dada’s walking with Maharajji out to the van. Now, you know, He was short. Indian people, you know, most of them are short except these two basketball players we’ve got here. Where are they? There they are. Anyhow, so He kind of had to throw himself up onto the seat of the Volkswagon bus. You know, it’s a little higher than a car. And He bashed His head on the door jam. I mean, whack. I almost pissed my pants. My desire to drive Maharajji created Him getting His, bashed His head on the door of the car. Oh, my God, I’m so terrible. I said, “Dada. Did you see that?” What did Dada, the great devotee Dada, say? “He did it on purpose. Just drive.” That is a devotee. Because nothing the Guru does is by chance. The devotee knows He does everything on purpose. “He did it on purpose. Just drive.” “ok.” I get in the car and I start driving and I swear to you, He said, “Ok, drive to the sangham.” This very sacred place where the three rivers come together. I’m driving along very slow. He said, “Watch out. There’s somebody there. Be careful. Driver. Oh, you’re going too fast. Watch out. Slow down. Watch out.” The whole way there for fifteen minutes just like that. Nonstop. “Watch out. Over there. Over there.”

So, we get to the sangham, I stop the car, I turn it off. We sit there for maybe a minute. He says, “Ok, let’s go back.” That was that. But the interesting… so, the next day, or the day after, He was sending us down south because Ram Das had promised Swami Muktananda that we would do this pilgrimage with Him down in South India, so we all had to go with Him. So, I was driving and we were, there was this big long curve in the road, a turn, and off to the left there was this reservoir and I entered the turn too fast and I’m trying not to spin out as the car is going too fast and it looks like we’re going to just slide off the road into the reservoir and at the last moment, there was like, whoosh, it’s like this wind came. The car literally went, whoop, back on the road, like this. I think that was the bash on the head. So… He did it on purpose.

The post Ep. 68 | Maharajji Stories appeared first on Krishna Das.

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.

“Siddhi Ma once said, ‘In this age, God comes as medicine.’

So, you take medicine, you try to go to doctors, you do the best you can for your health, but you have your mental and emotional and spiritual health too, and you have to spend time on that, and there’s no quick medicine for that. Over time, you develop the faith to accept whatever comes the best way you can, and to keep giving those fears back to God, you know, offering them, you know, offering those emotions and trying to break the glue and dissolve the glue that those emotions come with. – Krishna Das

Hi, everybody. Some of you are becoming regulars. This is very scary.

Yeah, well, we’re still here. That’s one thing. That’s the main thing. When you’re not here, there’s nothing you can do. So, it’s good to be here. The past is gone. The future has not yet arrived. This is it. This is the moment that we have, to meet the next moment, which is just like this moment. This is the moment when we can make some effort to calm our asses down, and to try to be less reactive, and to, like they say in India, “bhajan karo” Remember.  “Remember” is the key to everything. Remember to remember. And then when you remember, what do you remember? You try to remember the love that lives within you, within us, and that has many different forms for us.

Each person has their own version of that love and vision of that love, and the names of God are the names of that love. It’s not a name of something outside of your true nature. It’s not something else. It’s not something other than you are, but, actually your true name on the deepest level, ultimate reality. In relative reality, there’s “me” and there’s others, but ultimately, like Hanuman says to Ram, “When I don’t know who I am, I serve you. When I identify with my soul, you are the whole, and I am a part. But when I know who I am, you and I are one.”

So, that’s a statement of reality. It’s not something you have to beat into your head to try to believe, because the limited conceptual mind could never wrap itself around that. It’s not something that needs to be believed with blind faith. It’s something that has to be experienced, or at least moved towards in our daily lives, and ultimate reality, oneness, means that we are all a part of that one, all of us, even the people we don’t like, and so, what we want to do is learn how to treat everybody well, but that also means learning how to treat ourselves well.

Like that guy said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

And that’s a big thing. If we could do that, the world would be a different place immediately. Immediately. But we can’t do that. It’s not easy for us to give up our defenses, our stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, all the lifelong. So, that’s what practice is about. Practices about learning to release that stuff. Let go of it. Weaken the glue that holds our sense of self to those miserable thoughts and feelings and emotions.

Okay. See you next week.

Hi.

Q: Hi. I’m here because I’m singing a lot of kirtans in this COVID period. I’m very happy, and I can’t stop singing kirtans. I thank you very much, and I’m in a very good place now because I turned, in my life, in some reactive things I was making, and it’s a very big change for me. So, I want to sing more, and it was very difficult for me.

It’s very difficult to do that. Wonderful. Keep singing. Just keep singing. And you know, you can sing silently inside as well. You know? It doesn’t have to be outside. When you go out in the street, you don’t want to be singing out loud. They’ll put you away. So, you just quietly, inside your mind, because it’s in the mind that the name is really being repeated, without thinking the name, without it coming into your awareness. It’s never going to come out of your mouth. So, you follow the name into the source, where it comes. You just keep singing and stay with it. Beautiful.

Thank you very much.

Yeah. Thank you.

Q: Hi. Thank you. I was reading this book, the one you shared, the PDF of “Divine Reality,” last week. And it’s a beautiful book. It has all the pictures of all the temples Maharajji built.

I wanted to ask you, because just half an hour before, I saw one video of Ram Dass, and he said, “Krishna Das suffered the most, the death of Maharajji. We all were sad, but he suffered the most about it.” And he said, “I wanted to help him, but I couldn’t.”

And you also said in your documentary that it took you 21 years to be on the other side of life.

My question is this…

It might have been 50 years, you never know.  It might be 60 years.

So, my question is, how did you get over this pain of losing Maharajji? We all crave him, even today, through your singing we go to him, through books, through Ram Dass. We still get the hint of what he is. You lived with him for two years, maybe more. How did you get through all the pain of, how did you get over the pain of losing him?

I haven’t, you know. One has a personality, a humanness along with everything else, and in my humanness, I still miss him. It doesn’t destroy me anymore, but I miss his physical presence. How can you not miss that? Because all the love and the beauty and the whole universe was wrapped up in that. I can’t not miss that, touching that, and laughing with that, and being hit by fruit thrown by that, and all that stuff. I can’t. I miss that. I miss that connection, because no one can be that for me, except him.

However, I also recognize that everything I’m feeling, all the love that I feel, is actually inside of me. I’m feeling that inside of me, and I’m feeling his presence also. So, it’s everything. It’s not one thing or another. Everything is, there has to be space for everything.

You know, Ram Dass said he didn’t miss Maharajji, but, maybe by the end that was true. Because he really had dissolved so much into that love and the fierceness of his tapasya, of his austerities, being in that wheelchair for 20 years, really ripened him and cooked him. So, maybe by the end, he didn’t miss him because he was so in his presence all the time.

But, you know, I miss him, because nobody can take the place of that on the physical plane. It’s not even, you know, it just can’t happen. Only He can be him. And even though he’s everything in the whole universe, that has to be something that we actually experience, not pretend, not manipulate ourselves emotionally to believe something that we hope is true. No, you have to have the direct experience. So, it’s okay to miss him, but it’s not okay to let that destroy you. So, I was saved from that, from being destroyed by my missing him, which is what was happening for so many years, and it was grace that saved me.

So, your job is to find that love inside of you, and to recognize that as the Guru, and you don’t have to worry about being attached to his physical form because you didn’t have that, and that’s a fucking blessing.

You think, you know, “I want a guru. I want a guru. I want a guru in a body. I want a guru in a body.”

Enough of that shit. Get on with your work. You never know what’s going to happen. In the meantime, clean the mirror of your heart. Become a good human being. And don’t worry about whether a physical manifestation of the guru is going to show up. The guru is with you. He has to be with you. She has to be with you. There’s no other place a guru can be, except with the disciple, with the devotee. So that’s where you have to look, is inside yourself, and right now, when you look inside yourself, all you see is your shit. 24-7-365. That’s what practice is about. Let go, come back. Let go, come back. Let go, come back. Let go, come back. Read the books about him. Read the books about the other saints. See how they lived, see how they treated other people. See how they went through their day, how they lived in the world. You know, immerse yourself in that stuff.

You can’t just sit around and do like, 10 minutes a day and think that you’re going to be blissfully happy and find the Guru. You have to see who you are. That’s who the guru is. Guru, God, and self. Not different. One thing.

What is self? Do you know? No. And yet there’s nothing that’s closer to you than your own true self. But we look outside, where our awareness is flowing out through the senses and meeting what we call the external world, and we don’t see what’s in there. Through practice, you’re turning your attention within, little by little, until you actually focus on something within yourself, your true nature.

And it’s all grace anyways, but you have to do some practice and cup your hands, right? To catch the raindrops. It’s always raining. Grace is always flowing over us, but we can’t drink. We can’t get it, because we don’t, we don’t know how to catch those drops of grace.

Through practice, we develop the ability, or the openness to allow the grace to come inside of us, to feel it inside. That’s the deal.

For the one who holds the sun in his heart, all negativity, all obscurations, all calamities, all problems are destroyed. So, that’s where you have to hold the sun in your heart, the sun of love, the sun of awareness, the sun of your soul.  That’s where you have to move, in that direction. You don’t have to, but you might want to. Two minutes a day, you might want to.

Thank you. When you say “Jao,” I get the blessing.  A little more sun comes and stays with Maharajji when you say “Jao” every time.

“See ya” is how we say “Jao” in America. See ya around.

Q: Hello. KD, I wanted to ask, you said once, Maharajji said, “I’ll turn your minds against me.” So, he might have done that sometime. How did you, because you said…

He never did that. He was just teasing us. And in fact, it’s the opposite. He turned our mind towards Him. He attracted us, just like flowers grow towards the sun. Right? So, our hearts grew towards him, grow towards him, because he is that sun. But he did transfer us, you know? He did definitely transfer people.

I told you this story about my friend Mira, right? Did I? You know, some years ago, maybe 7, 8, 9 years ago, this couple came back to India for the first time since Maharajji had left the body, and they came to Kainchi, and we, I was there, we were there. A bunch of people were there, and one day, we were doing Hanuman Chalisa in front of Maharajji’s temple, and I looked over and I saw this woman, the couple of standing on the steps just below where the tucket is, His tucket is, and that’s where we used to see him usually in the mornings, sometimes in the afternoon, and she was just staring, and wasn’t moving, and I went, “Whoa, what’s going on there? Something’s going on there.”

And later on, she came over to me and she said, “Krishna Das. I think you’re the only one here who could understand what I’m going to tell you.”

I said, What?”

“I was just standing on the steps, looking at the tucket where Maharajji used to sit, and I remembered that that’s exactly where I used to stand and watch him back in ’72, ’73. I was standing in the same spot, and I remembered that, in the old days when I stood and watched him, the feeling I had was, ‘I’m home. This is it. I’ll always be here. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.’”  And she just said, “What happened?”

Married. Family. Business. 40 years go by. “Krishna Das, what happened? I was just where I was supposed to be. I’d made it. I was home.”

“Transfer.”

He brought us there. He gave us what we had to have. And then he sent us back into our lives. He’s the one doing it all. He didn’t turn our minds against Him. He was just joking. Of course, he could do that. You know, in fact, one time, we were sitting with him and there was this beautiful old devotee. Of all the old devotees I met, this one guy was the sweetest of them all. He was nothing but sweet. He was extraordinary. He was so beautiful. Maharajji looked at him for a second and He pointed to him, He pointed to him and he said, “He was my enemy in our last life.”

What?

And he, of all the devotees, he was the sweetest of them all. But in their last life together, he was Maharajji’s enemy. What does that even mean? Who knows what it means? We don’t know. So, only he knows. He’s doing everything. He’s moving you here. He’s moving you there. And in fact, you, right now, are exactly where he wants you to be. Just because you haven’t seen him physically, you think he can’t do anything? What? He’s not like us. He’s the Lord of the Universe, and he does what he does for our sake. He does what he has to do for us. He puts us where we have to be to work out whatever karmas we have to work out and move along on the path to him.

He’s the goal. He’s the path. And he’s who we truly are, also. When we know that, then we’re ripe. So, we are exactly where he wants us to be. Everyone.

One time he said, even he said, he said to Dada, he said, “Dada, if I’ve done one thing in this life, I’ve remained wherever Ram has placed me.”

And I think there’s a line in the Ramacharitamanasa that says a being is always exactly where Ram wants him to be. So, the illusion of free will is something we have to get over through practice, not through thinking about it. Through practice.

So, when I said to Siddhi Ma, so I said, “Ma, you know, Maharajji said that he had the keys to the mind, which means to me that I am, not only am I where he wants me to be, but everything I think, everything I see, everything I feel is his doing.” So, I said, “Ma, what’s the deal? Do I have to make effort then? Or is it all his grace?”

She said, “Krishna Das,” She said, “Krishna Das, It’s all grace, but you have to act like it isn’t.”

So, that’s the deal. So, figure out what that means to you, and that’s the deal.

Thank you so much, KD.

Q: What you just said, “You’re where you’re supposed to be…” I’m in Southern Oregon, in the middle of Western America, that is on fire, and I feel safe because I’m where I’m supposed to be, and…

If you leave, then you’re also supposed to have left.

Well, exactly. The whole, Siddhi Ma, that beautiful thing Siddhi Ma said to you? I mean, it’s all grace, but our car is packed and we’re ready to go, and I’m here to testify that what you say about practice when you can, because you’ll need it when you can’t, for this week we were cut off from internet, and so I missed your course and I missed your Thursday satsang, but you recommended this book to us, and so I read the Ramayana, and thank you. It really speaks to Westerners, and I’m clearly a westerner, and what has really struck me is, every time something changed for Ram, he just was like, “Okay,” and he’d move into it. He was just so accepting of everything, and then this morning I listened to Ram Dass talking about Dharma, and I heard a lot of things that I hear from you.

And I’m leading up to a question. I guess I want you to, could you, well you kind of already have, speak a little bit to Dharma and accepting what, where we are?

Actually, I think you’ve already answered everything. But do you know what I’m talking about? Like I was just amazed at Ram’s consistent acceptance and you know, maybe understanding that bigger things are happening than what’s just right in front of your face.

Well, he is the bigger things happening to you. Remember, he’s the Supreme being acting like a human and every once in a while, he shows that he knows everything. Like when he gives Hanuman his ring. You know, there were a million monkeys, but he knew Hanuman was going to find Sita. So, he gave him his ring first, and he said, “When you find Sita, show her the ring.”

And every once in a while, it seems like he slips a little bit and forgets he was supposed to act like a human. See, Ram was, even though it was a full incarnation of God, just like Krishna, he was, he had certain limitations on his manifestation. He could only do certain things. He couldn’t reveal his divinity. And they say that, supposedly, he didn’t even know, but that’s bullshit. He just didn’t show that he knew, until his guru taught him about himself, and then he could, you know, admit that he knew something. But remember the Ramayan is a Lila. It’s Lila. Lila means “divine play” or “divine drama,” or even “divine play,” like playing a game, and the whole drama was created to destroy the darkness that had come into the world, and the negative energy, the demonic energy personified by Ravana and the demons who had taken over the whole world. They controlled the whole show. They told them when the sun went to rise, the wind went to blow. I mean, all the natural forces, they used to eat human beings. They used to sprinkle human beings on their, you know, for dessert. You know, it was a horrific situation. They ruled the four corners of the world completely.

So, Ram had to create a drama in this world, Ram, the Supreme, in order to destroy that negativity here. So, everything that was in that Lila, everything that was done, only had one purpose, whether we understand it or not, and it’s not possible to understand that with the human mind, but that’s the deal with that.

Well, I’ve got to say, burning down Lanka has a whole new meaning for me. There’s no negotiating with fire. It’s very thorough. So, thank you for all you’ve offered us. When I was all cut off from everything, my practice was still with me, and you’ve coached us through all that, and thank you.

And please take care of yourself. Don’t take any risks. There’s nothing you can do if the fire hits you anyway. So, you might as well be gone. So, make sure you have enough gas and the roads are clear.

Well, that’s the situation. There’s actually nowhere to go. So, staying here is the best, and staying, and calming our asses down, which you’ve taught us how to do, so thank you.

Somebody’s gotta teach me.

We’re all here for you, KD.

Okay, good.

Q: Well, hello to everyone. Well,I wanted to thank you, first of all, for all you do. Thank you very much for, you know already, and I have two questions, actually. One, if would you say that Guru and Buddha are the same?

Well, from an Indian, from the Hindu point of view, Buddha is one of the incarnations of God, like Rama, like Krishna, the full incarnation of God. The Buddhists don’t see it that way. They say that the Buddha is.. it’s very complicated and very subtle stuff.

Buddha certainly was a guru, is a Guru, of course. A Supreme Guru. But he’s, he’s also, from an Indian, from the Hindu point of view, He’s one of the avatars of God, one of the avatars.

And that means?

An incarnation. But he didn’t proclaim himself that way.

He said, “I’m a human being and I attained enlightenment by my own efforts, and so can you.”

That’s how he presented himself in the world because, well, I can’t say “because,” but his job was to help people. So, this is how he helped people. In that time, the Dharma was being… Actually, he brought the word “Dharma” into daily life, but religion was run by the priests and it was just the business and they controlled, they were the ones they would, they had to do special pujas for you. Otherwise, this wouldn’t happen, or this wouldn’t happen. So, they were making lots of money and the poor people were just suffering terribly. And so, he brought in the idea that everybody’s enlightenment is up to themselves.

Before, that was not the case. People would not, that that was not something that people were taught. They thought that they were, they were victims of their karmas and there was no way for them to become enlightened unless, you know, certain things happened for them. So, Buddha gave a whole, he was a rebel. He was like Christ in the temple. He destroyed,, you know, the whole power of the priestly  class. And he taught a way, he Himself progressed on the path, he taught to others.

And that wouldn’t be a different with Maharajji actually, because he taught that if we sing the Hanuman Chalisa, then we can be also, our karmas would be erased.

When you make a fruit salad, you put in grapes, you put in peaches, you put an apples, you put in bananas. They’re not the same, they’re all fruit, but they’re different fruits. And they taste differently. Some people like bananas. Some people like this, some people like that. So, and more than that, Maharajji is instructing us how to connect with him and his transmission. He’s the captain of this huge boat, and we are the passengers on that boat. He’s taking us to the other shore. So, he’s telling us what we need to do to get on the boat, and the best place to sit, and all that stuff. So, if his teaching is universal, but it’s also, it’s also a way of opening ourselves to him and his lineage and his transmission, which is what we really need to do. I mean, we can do other practices. We can have other teachers. We can go to all kinds of teachings and do all kinds of different types of meditation, but if you feel connected to Maharajji, what you want to do is connect even more and more deeply, and when I go to see other teachers, I don’t expect… what I expect to get from other teachers is a deeper connection with Maharajji who lives inside of me. So, they are showing me other ways and other practices, maybe, to find that deeper place inside. It’s not necessary, but, you know, I like it. I like Saints. I like hanging out with yogis. They’re great. So, but I don’t expect, all I expect to find is Maharajji, you know. I don’t expect to find anything else, whatever he is, you know, which is his presence and love.

So, “each path is fine in itself, and all paths lead to the same goal.” He said that.

So, for me, it’s all about connecting to him, the way I see him, more deeply, and so that’s what it can be for you, how you feel him, what you feel he is, what that feeling is, that you want to connect to that more deeply inside yourself.

And that leads to my other question, because you say that he doesn’t really appear, like nobody can make him appear. No? Like, he appears when he wants to appear, basically. No? So, if I see him, then I’m not imagining him. No?

The answer, the simple answer is, that’s correct. The subtle answer is, who’s who? What do you think you are that you’re seeing something you think you’re seeing? So, in the world of duality and you and him, yeah. He comes to see you. In the world of oneness, who is seeing who? It’s just, all your questions and all your whole universe is based on who you think you are. That’s all. So, of course, in that universe, he’s something outside of you that has to come to see you, but when you recognize yourself as the whole universe, you’re everywhere and he’s everywhere and there’s only one of you. So that’s ultimate reality, which is not where we live.

We live in this world where you think you’re you, I think I’m me, and if Maharajji comes into our awareness, it’s because he did that. Yes, that’s true. That’s what I believe. That’s what I’ve been told, but ultimately there’s no Maharajji outside of you because you are not you.  You are him.

And how do you do to really, not believe that or understand that, but to really feel that, you know?

You already said it. The Hanuman Chalisa. Repeat the Name. That’s what he said. I’m not telling you anything that’s new. I’m just, I’m a parrot. I’m just repeating what he said. Through the repetition of the name, everything is achieved. What else do you want to know? Oh, do we believe that? Well, maybe 30 seconds a day. But he said it, but we don’t believe it. Even when we read it over and over again, and think about it over and over again, we don’t really believe it, because if we really believed it, that that’s all we’d be doing. But we’re busy. We’ve got things to do.

“Oh,” you know, “I have to go to the movies. I have to go shopping. I have to make dinner. I have to do this.”

We forget the name in two seconds, because we believe it in our minds, but we don’t believe it with our whole hearts yet. The minute we do believe it with our whole hearts, that’s it. It’s over. So…

What’s over?  That’s the question. What’s over?

The delusion of being who you think you are.

And then what about family? What about everyone you love, also?

They’re all still there, but there’s only love everywhere, and everybody is exactly who they are and you’re exactly who you are. What do you mean? “What about family?” What do you mean? Do they disappear? You think that they disappear?

Yeah. I don’t know what I think exactly, but I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I  still have to say, I still have to sing.

There’s fear. You have fear of something, of letting go. Yeah. You want to hold on to the, you think something’s going to be taken from you if you let go and open into love. It’s exactly the opposite. That’s your ego talking. It’s the ego that’s afraid of letting go, wants to hold onto everything, maintain its separateness. So, that’s okay. Keep singing, keep repeating the name. Don’t think about it. It’s not your problem. It’s his problem. You do what he says. He’ll take care of everything. You don’t have to give up anything. You just have to remember the Name.

Hanuman, I’ve said this a million times lately, is that Hanuman is that great Lord, the great God Mahadeva, Mahakala, the Supreme, Cosmic time himself. He’s the one who allows us to become liberated by allowing us to enter into his state of consciousness, which is Ram. So, that’s how he gives us liberation, by allowing us to enter into him, into Maharajji, into the love, and more than that, he also allows us to satisfy the desires that we have to satisfy. This is not a renunciate trip. This is a trip of fullness and completion in everything, and finding the desires are not bad for you. The desires that will hurt you, you don’t get to do. He takes those away. The desires that you need to satisfy, they may even hurt you for a while, you have to go through that also, but he allows you. He makes it possible. He gives you the fruit of your desires on the way to merging with him. Life, you live a full life. You don’t sit in an ashram or a temple for your whole life. You’re in the world. You become a full, complete human being, and you treat everybody the same way you would like to be treated, and then you have no problem. He makes it possible for that, for us to have all the things we want to have, we need to have, not everything we want, and just like Mick said, “You can’t always get what you want, but you always get what you need.”

So, on the way to becoming him, that’s all his doing. He brought that football player into your life. He brought those kids into your family. He’s making it possible for you to get what you need, so you’re not hungry, and then, when you’re not hungry, you can move on. You can’t, He said many times, you can’t talk to a hungry person about God. Feed them first. All the stuff we have, he’s feeding us. He’s feeding us so that we’ll be ready to look for God, ready to allow God to open up to that, because you can’t talk to a hungry person about other things. They need food. Some desires need to be satisfied, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And that’s Hanuman.

Hanuman Saha Mahadeva Kaala Kalaha Sadashiva

Hanuman is that Mahadeva, the great God, Mahakala,  the eternal goodness, the blissful one who bestows Mukti, liberation, by allowing seekers to merge into his own state, as well as bestowing the enjoyment of all one’s cherished objects of desire.

Right? So, you think that, by allowing more love in, you’re going to lose everything you wanted or you created? No. You just enjoy it more, because there’s no fear of losing it. The fear of losing what we’re holding on to is so destructive to our happiness. So, you have to let go of that fear, little by little. That’s a program that’s running and has been running and will keep running until we practice letting go. That’s what the Chalisa is about. That’s what the repetition of the name is about, and the Hanuman Chalisa itself will purify the mirror of the heart. The fear, the dust on the mirrors, the fear, the anger, the shame, the grief, the selfishness, that’s what’s cleaned off the mirror of the heart, through the practices.

Thank you.

Q: Hi. Thank you. I have been listening to all the answers, KD, because like, all the questions that keep arising in my mind, I keep getting answers, little by little, in others questions, also. What brings me here today is like, I feel this great churning inside me for, I mean, I’ve been feeling it for, I don’t know how long, like maybe days or years, and I am in the middle of my samsara stage. Like, I had two young children and am responsible for the family, for the kids, I’m also facing this newly developed fear of death for some reason. Like me and my husband, we both have been going through physical ailments for the past few years, not like, they are pretty early for our age, I think. We are in our middle thirties, but every time we hear, these days it’s very easy for like, if somebody passes away sadly, like in other society, like in our, friends or friends of friends, you get these GoFundMe campaigns for them, for their families, and many of those people are parents of our age. They have young children, and they are mostly non-immigrant families in the U.S.   We are one such, we are not citizens of U.S., but we are living here for work. So that puts us in a spot where there are a lot of uncertainties. Like, we are good to live in the now, but we don’t have like, a very set long-term future in front of our eyes. So, that aggravates that fear of death for me, probably because every time I hear somebody else is going through it, I feel “What if that happens to me?” I know about … We also practice most of the times about being in the present moment, doing the right thing and all those things, but that’s still like, spiritually, it’s very, very dampening for the spirit of learning and moving forward, when you get stuck in the loop of… I think a lot of this is… I’m just letting out my personal anguish right now. I don’t know. I don’t want to bother like, the whole group with that, but yeah, that’s what I… I just wrote down what I was feeling and the main points are about the fear of death that I’ve been experiencing, and I also know that it might be a fear of uncertainties more than that of death. And why am I using the word so clearly? Like, why am I talking about death so clearly is because of the physical ailments that my husband suffered something six months ago, which was like a rare autoimmune condition, and then he’s been recovering from that, and I have been living with something and I developed something else, and something else like, by God’s grace on one hand, everything is good. But on the other hand, it’s always taking me, pulling me back to looking at the suffering part instead of like, looking at the grace part. Like, I hope you can understand what I’m saying.

Yeah. Well, first of all, this is a very unusually horrible time. Everybody’s suffering everywhere in the world. This is, we don’t know that there was ever a time like this, and so the whole atmosphere is filled with fear. You’re breathing it in, you’re breathing it out, everywhere you go. Forget your own fears. The atmosphere we’re living in daily, not even, I’m just talking externally. The news is full of fear. Everybody you meet on the street is full of fear. Your friends are full of fear. It’s a terrible time. It’s a very difficult, painful time. There’s no question about it. It’s unheard of that this, it’s never been been like this in the world, where the whole world has basically shut down. Really. So aside from your personal issues, this is what you’re sitting in every day. And there’s a lot of that, that we take personally, also. It fits right in with our story. So, it magnifies our stuff. Okay?

Look, what’s going to happen is going to happen. What’s not going to happen is not going to happen. Then? What’s our job is to stay here best we can. When we catch ourselves lost in the fear of the future, we try to let it go and come back. That’s what we do. We can’t change the karmas that are going to manifest for us and what’s manifesting.  They’re already here. So, the best we can deal with them, we have to find, we have to do the best thing we can, physically, for ourselves.

Siddhi Ma once said, “In this age, God comes as medicine.”

So, you take medicine, you try to go to doctors, you do the best you can for your health, but you have your mental and emotional and spiritual health too, and you have to spend time on that. And there’s no quick medicine for that. Over time, you develop the faith to accept whatever comes the best way you can, and to keep giving those fears back to God, you know, offering them, you know, offering those emotions and trying to break the glue and dissolve the glue that those emotions come with. They just glue us to them. Right? And we believe everything we feel, and then something else happens and we forget about them. And then they come back. And we don’t realize that we spent two hours not thinking about them, because when we’re in the grip of those types of emotions, one of the qualities of those emotions are, “it’s always going to be like this.”

It makes you feel like that. So, but when you don’t feel like that, you don’t even notice it. You don’t. Don’t tell me that you live in anguish and fear 24 hours of every day. No, but when you are in that anguish, one of the qualities of that anguish is that, “this is it it’ll always be like this,” and then it disappears. But you don’t notice when it disappears.

So, as far as your spiritual work, you need to pray and connect to a deeper place inside of you, and I would suggest, because it’s the only thing I know, is that you sing the Hanuman Chalisa, and if you don’t know it, just learning it is a big enough tapasya to destroy a lot of karma. So, this is what Maharajji gave us to develop strength and inner strength and also compassion and kindness. And don’t think about yourself all the time. That’s all you do, all we do, is think about ourselves all day long, every day, and we never get bored obsessing about ourselves and “what’s going to happen” and “how will I do this?” And “if this happens, what then?” and then “if this, and then that…” You have to find a way to release that stuff.

So, sing Hanuman Chalisa and repeat the names God, and try to connect with any of the great beings, great saints, the great yogis, with Ram, with Krishna, with Kali, with Buddha, anything other than thinking about yourself all day long, and then see how you feel. If you’re not thinking about yourself, you don’t even know how you feel. It’s not a problem.

Yeah, no, but like, like I mentioned to you, I mean, I was told that there is a tumor, like there’s a development on my thyroid and it needs to be taken out, and a lot of things are going on in the last one year, and that’s the main thing, and okay, the connection, I have one specific question written down over here to ask you, is, if everyone is love, we talk about the advaita, advaitism, like, non-duality, if everyone is connected, everyone is love, then we do we experience suffering to the level of getting physical ailments. Like, I mean, I have experienced bullying in terms of, it’s like a passive aggression. I take things to Maharajji. That’s what I think. I think that’s how things have been, like being too sensitive to whatever somebody says, does, behind your back, in front of you, to somebody else. So, all of those things like, gathering up and manifesting into physical elements, probably like that.

So yeah, that’s a story you tell yourself that, you know, because you’re so sensitive, you absorbed so much negativity and this made you sick. That’s just a story you’re telling yourself. It may not be true. It’s at least 50/50, but you believe that. So that makes you feel worse about yourself. What’s the sense? You keep telling yourself stories that make yourself, make you feel bad, and you believe them as if they’re ultimately true, and there’s no question about it. How could that be? It’s just your thoughts, your programs. Yeah. Based on certain experiences that you have, you make up a story about yourself that makes you feel worse.

Do some puja. Do some practice. Try to let go of this stuff. And you, as an Indian, you know what it means to ask God for things and ask God to help you out, and pray, and beg. And I don’t care if you don’t believe in it, you have to do it anyway, because you, what you believe in sucks. You believe in yourself and how horrible you are and how sick you are and how sensitive you are and how hurt you are. And you don’t see yourself at all, the true self. You don’t see God in you. God is in you. The love is in you. It’s in you. That’s what you are. You have to find that within you. You have to find a way to release all this heavy thinking. What’s going to happen is going to happen. What’s not going to happen is not going to happen.

So, you’ll be here now with it. You repeat the name. You pray. You do puja. You try to connect with something you believe in other than your own ego, and you do the best you can to take care of everybody in your life, the best you can. And don’t think about yourself all the time. But that’s what we all do. We all do that. Right? What good does it do? You can’t figure it out. So, if you want to feel better…

One good thing that happened, whatever result came up in my biopsy last year, it came better just  last weekend. The doctor who was advising me to go for an immediate surgery, she canceled it. She said, we can wait for another six months, and we can hold it off. So, yeah. And yeah, so I’ll tell you personally, it’s not like I’m sitting in this stress all the time, but yes, I hear you. I don’t want to like, you know, clarify and defend anything, because a lot of things that you said we are already trying to do, the prayers and practices, but then also some of the things…

You’re planning to do or you’re going to do now?

No, no. We do. I’m saying that already, like, you know, we practice Hanuman Chalisa. My two and a half year old sings the Chalisa with us. So that’s how we all are fond of, and we do it, all four of us. So, yeah, I mean, we are somewhere there on the way, and then we keep getting like off track many  many times. So, I understand like, you know, where I’m falling short.

Whatever you do, you should always get second opinions about your physical issues. Especially before surgery. Don’t take one doctor’s opinion of it. Find another, and make sure that that’s the best thing to do, at least with a different doctor. And there’s other ways to treat those things too. You know, there must be some Ayurvedic doctors in Charlotte. I’m sure. Herbs are very good. I know people who have those thyroid issues, but definitely get a second opinion. Okay? Have you done that?

No, I like, this is, this is the second time, we just went to the same doctor, but I have to find another doctor for second opinions.

Yeah, you should definitely find it, because it’s always a good idea to do that, especially before surgery.

Yeah. At least I put my foot down. Like saying that I want to repeat the biopsy instead of going for the immediate surgery. That’s what happened in August and at least that took us in the right direction. So, I’m glad.

Yeah. Hanuman Chalisa. Maharajji says, it can wipe the fate from your forehead. Okay? I wish you the best. Okay?

Thank you, KD. Thank you so much.

Q: Ram Ram.  I had two questions, and one is, one I think I’ve already asked you before, but there’s a quote from Dilgo Rinpoche…

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and he said, “To meet someone that really hurts you is a rare and precious treasure. You should hold that person in high esteem and makes the full use of the opportunity to eradicate your defects, to make progress on the path. Because if you can’t feel love and compassion, for those who treat you badly, it’s a sign that your mind has not been fully transformed and that you need to keep working on it.”

Sure.

And so, I keep doing practices to work on it.

You mean you keep looking for people who are going to give you a hard time? I’m an expert.

You’re really good at that. But it turns me to God, right? Because Maharajji said suffering, he’d rather you choose suffering over happiness because…

Yeah. You would hope so, but you know, it wouldn’t hurt to feel good sometime either.

Yeah. Well, I I guess my question is like, in my mind I do Metta and I put flowers on their head and I forgive them and wish them well, and time is supposed to heal all wounds, supposedly. And so, I guess my question is, how do you let go like, of those things, which are not real beause they’re in the past?

They’re as real as you are. They’re as real as you are.  Because you think you’re real, those things are also real. They’re your experiences. They happen to the real you and they’re real experiences. Neither are you real, nor are the experiences real, but we don’t know that. That’s a mind trip. That’s a head trip. We’re not here to manipulate ourselves emotionally or conceptually to believe something that we haven’t experienced ourselves. So, how do you let go? Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again and again. That’s how. And you also let go of the expectation that someday “I’ll be finished with this,” and you deal with the now and not the future. And when you offer Metta to someone, you really try to connect with the feeling. Deeply. Not just like, “Okay, feel good,” you know? Yes, “I wish you the best. I love you. May be safe.”

You try to actually feel that and connect with the feeling, and then that feeling expands within you and opens up a deeper field of okayness inside of you. It’s the feeling that we are okay as we are that we’ve lost, totally, touch with. And so, we keep trying to plug up all the holes in our emotional self, with stuff, with people, with experiences, because we’ve lost touch with the fact that inside, we’re perfectly fine. We’re okay. We are That, but we don’t know that. So, the practice of Metta, for instance, and offering Metta is a way of really, of dissolving and disappearing the situation that’s causing you suffering, because when you envelop that person in the field of loving kindness, who you think that person is just dissolves. You know, it’s not, then you see them differently. You see, “Oh wow. What a life this person must have,” you know?

And then you start to see that everything people do that hurt you, that seemed aimed at you, they’re not really aimed at us. They’re just exploding out of their own pain, and if they can’t fucking deal with it, you know, if we can’t fucking deal with it, how can we expect anybody else to deal with it?

So, that’s called compassion. It just arises naturally when you see somebody else in pain and then you don’t accept the gift of the negative behavior. Like with Buddha, you know, one time this farmer came to the Buddha and was yelling at him because his son became a monk. And then he had no one to plow the fields with him, and he’s yelling at the Buddha, and when he finally stopped, Buddha said to him, “Old man, can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah.”

“So, if someone brings you, someone brings someone a gift and the gift is not accepted, where does the gift stay? What happens to the gift?”

And the farmer says, “Well, it stays with the person who brought it.”

And Buddha said, “Just so, I don’t accept the gift of your anger. It stays with you.”

So that’s why the practice of loving-kindness can expand that field of love without, it’s not a field of love that can be expanded with our will. We can’t say, “Okay, now I’m going to love everybody.”

No, we plant the seeds of that love through our practice, which is why people who give us a hard time are such a blessing, because they force us to see ourselves clearly, how much shit we have, how reactive we are, and then we have so many options. First of all, we can, we deal with that person, but then we can also try to see why we feel this way about ourselves. Where does it come from? It has to come from somewhere. Everything comes from something. Every effect, what’s here now has come from an experience or effects in the past.So, that’s one of the ways that that starts to lighten up for us.

And so, you know, in the loving kindness practice, there’s different phases. The first phase is you offer to yourself, and then you offer to your benefactor, somebody who’s always been there for you, never judge you, has  always been on your side, like a grandparent or something like that, you know, or a teacher, and then, one of the other ones is the neutral person, somebody that you have no, you don’t really know much about, but they’re somewhere in your life and you see them, you know. So for me, it was the it was the clerk at the video store. That’s who came up in my mind when I thought of a neutral person. I don’t know anything about him, but I see him. In those days, in the ancient days, we used to rent videos. So, I spent like 10 days offering him, you know, loving kindness and nothing much was happening. You know, I didn’t really feel anything much. So, then after the course was over, I came back to the city and after a few days, I went down to rent a video. I walked into the video store, and I saw this guy behind the counter and I started weeping and I, Maharajji exploded with love. It was so crazy. I had to go hide in the back of the store until I could compose myself. It was just totally unexpected. I still, right now, this was 25, 30 years ago, I think about this guy, tears come to my eyes.

So, this is what the idea behind the practice, and neutral people and people who are supposedly, you know, called the “enemy,” people who always give you a hard time and seem to judge you all the time. It’s only, all the suffering is happening inside of us. It’s not their fault. They’re just being them. It’s us. So that’s why someone like Khyentse Rinpoche, who was like Buddha himself, was saying that, because this is how you see your stuff. If you don’t see your stuff, the shadows push you around. You can’t see them unless they manifest in our daily lives.

So, I wonder what happened to that guy. I hope he’s happy. I don’t know where he is, what he’s doing. I miss him.

Thank you for that. And then can I ask one more? Like the Rudrashtakam?

Rudrashtakam. Those are two words. “Ashtak” means eight verses, and “Rudra.” Rudrashtakam.

When you saying that recently, I found it extremely powerful and I was just curious, like, what, where did it come from? Like where did you…

Have you ever read Tulasidas? Ramacharitamanasa?

No.

I’m deleting you right now. You can’t not read that.

I think you just recommended a version in the class and I ordered it online but it hasn’t come yet.

You can get a PDF online right now. It’s an extraordinary book. You must read that. It will change your life. I guarantee you it’s going to change your life. It changed my life. When I first read it back in ‘69, Ram Dass gave me his copy to read, I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t. Even today, I can’t believe it. Yesterday, we read Sundarakand for three hours online. It was so beautiful to read it again. I have to read it more often. It’s just so extraordinary. The Rudrashtak is coming from the last chapter of the Tulasi Das Ramayana, in the Uttarakhand, it’s called, and the whole story of that is in there. So that’s what you have to do. You have to find that.

I’ll find it.

Yeah. It’s so great. You just, you’ll think you died and went to heaven. It’s so fantastic. Read it, read it. That goes for everybody.

Namaa miisha mishaana-nirvaana rupam

So good. Shiva Stuti. They call it the “Shiva Stuti,” also.

And did Maharajji like it?

I don’t know. I don’t, I’ve never, I didn’t hear it around him. Tiwari, It must be Tiwari that turned me onto it. It must be. I don’t remember exactly, but it must’ve been Tiwari. Because in the book, in the temple prayer book, the first temple prayer book was assembled by Tiwari. Siddhi Ma asked him to do that. So many of the prayers that he did all the time were the first outline of the prayer book, and then later they added others and stuff, but he had put the first one together. So many great prayers in that.

The Devi Aparadh Kshamapana Stotram. That’s a great one. That’s in there, too. That’s  a prayer to beg the goddess for forgiveness. That’s what the name is. So beautiful. Yeah.

You’re happy? You’re smiling. That’s enough. Very good.

Maharajji, you know, Hanuman, remember, Hanuman is Shiva. You know that. Hanuman… Shiva wanted to help Ram, and so he sent his shakti through the wind God into Anjani’s womb, and so, Hanuman is actually the form of Rudra, the soul of Rudra, of Shiva. There’s 11 forms of Shiva, and the 11th one is Rudra, which is the form of which is, what Hanuman has, that this energy to destroy all the demons, and especially Ravana, because Shiva had given Ravana of the boon in the first place. So, he created a way for Ravana to be killed, also.

So, Rudrashtak,  that’s Hanumanji. It’s all in the Ramacharitamanasa. Everything you need to know is in that book. I guarantee you. Everything. The whole explanation of incarnation and avatars and who’s who, and why, and how it happened, it’s all in there. The difference between form and formless and how to get to the formless through the form. It’s all in this book. Every bit of it. It just drips out of the pages. It’s so extraordinary. Really.

They say Tulasidas was an incarnation of Valmiki, and he wrote this in the, the book is written in the dialect of Hindi that was spoken in Ayodhya, Ram’s kingdom, in the time of Ram. That’s the dialect that’s written in. Avadhi, it’s called, and it’s all poetry. In Hindi. It’s all poetry, so extraordinary. It’s amazing. And Tulasidas, He was, he was, the Brahmins persecuted him because they owned all the scriptures, which were all in Sanskrit, and the poor people had to pay them to have recitations and to have pujas done and prayers, and religion, spirituality was not available to the poor people because the Brahmin priests were corrupt, and they took it all. Very similar to the time of the Buddha, when Buddha came and took the power away from the priests. So, Tulasidas brought the story, which they could only hear when they paid a priest, and they had no money, so they weren’t getting these things. He told the whole story in the local dialect, and not only that, he told the story in a way that feeds devotion and explains devotion and shows how devotion is the way to go. Without, and that without devotion and love…

The lines in there, every way you look at stuff like, “Ram only loves love.” There’s no other way to get to him, except through love, not penance, not mantras, not nothing. Only love. And the one who knows this, knows everything there is to be known. This stuff is in there. It’s all in there. It’s mind-blowing.

Ram only loves love. The only thing dear to Ram is love. Anything else is anything else, but if you want God, it’s love, it’s the only thing you need. And this book just feeds the heart, like a swollen river of bliss into the heart. That’s what it is. But you don’t like bliss, so maybe you won’t read it.

Q: KD, I read the Divine Reality book, KK’s book and others. There are many stories of Maharajji. Is there a story about Maharajji that you wish was told more?

All of them, every single story is extraordinary in its own way. Yeah. There’s so many stories. They’re all amazing.  The story, I mean, there’s so many, you know… the stories that I like the most, well, there’s so many stories. I like them all, but one of the stories I like the most, are the ones that show how kind and compassionate he is, without any needing to be prodded or reminded.

There’s that story, there was this young girl and she was at her grandfather’s house. She was eight years old and Maharajji was visiting that house because her grandfather was his devotte, Maharajji’s devotee. So, one day she comes running into the house crying, and she comes up to Maharajji and she’s crying. Maharajji says, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong. Ask me anything, whatever you want. Ask me, tell me what’s wrong. What’s wrong?”

And what had happened is this young girl had seen, in a neighbor’s house, she saw a dead body. Someone had died and it was the first time she saw death, and she was just like, in shock and she was weeping and weeping.

So, Maharajji is petting her on the head. “Tell me, tell me what’s wrong. Ask me anything, ask me anything. What do you want?”

And the little girl, eight year old girl, says, “Baba, When I die, bring me back to life.”

So, Maharajji is just petting her head and sent her away. So, many years go by. It had to be 25, 30 years at least. The woman was married. The little girl grew up, was married, had a family. She and her husband lived in another town. Her grandfather had died. They had lost contact with Maharajji because it was her grandfather that was his devotee, and so she’s living with her husband somewhere in some house, and she’s dying, she’s sick. And her husband calls, makes a call to her father, the little girl’s father, and says you know, “Sir, your daughter, she’s dying.”

And so he went to his guru, who was a very good Saint, and he said, “Baba, please,” you know, “save my daughter,” and his Guru said, “I can’t do anything like that, but pray the Neem Karoli Baba. He can do that. He’s the only one who can do that. He can bring your daughter back to life.”

So, the father of the young girl, who’s now an old woman, older woman, starts praying to Maharajji.

Now, back at the house where she’s living with her husband, there’s a knock on the door. Husband goes to the door and sees this bulky gentleman with a blanket wrapped around him, standing there, and he says, “Your wife is sick?”

And he says, “No.”

The guy doesn’t know who this is. He said, “No, sir, she’s actually died.”

“Nay. She’s not dead. Take me to her.”

So, he takes this guy into the house and Maharajji, and this guy looks at the woman lying dead, and he says to the husband, “She’s not dead. Do you have any grapes in the house?  Bring me some grapes and a spoon.”

So, the husband goes away. He brings some grapes, and this guy squeezes the grapes with the spoon and dribbles some of the juice into the mouth of the dead woman, and she begins to breathe again. And then he looks at the husband, says “She’s okay. She’ll be okay now.”

And he leaves, and the woman recovered and lived many years.

That was Maharajji.

Nobody had to call him. Nobody had to send a telegram. No one had to write a letter. No one had to do anything. He promised an eight year old girl, he would bring her back to life when she died, and 30 years later, he shows up at the door at the moment of death.

That’s the kind of stories I like. He had all the powers in the universe, but what does he respond to? The prayer of an eight year old girl. Because he said he would.

We don’t know. We don’t believe what we see. We were with him. We read the stories. We hear the stories, but it doesn’t, the sun does not rise. It doesn’t dawn on us, who he is, because he doesn’t let it dawn on us. Because once we saw that, if you look at the sun directly, you’re blinded. You have to find a way to be able to hold that, and so he hides himself. He doesn’t let us really understand, experience who he is, but he will. He’s also preparing us for that. That’s his job. That’s what he does. That’s what the spiritual path is, being able to see God, coming into the presence of God, inside, outside, up there, in there, out there, wherever you want to think of it, it doesn’t matter. So…

Q: I wanted to ask you a question about your experience, if you’ve had any, with Chogyam Trungpa, if I’m saying that right? And then I was hoping, maybe, I’ve been trying to find information on his behaviors, and I just can’t find too much about…

He was a wild man. He was what they called Crazy Wisdom Lama, Rinpoche. He was a great being. He did not, he really brought the dharma to America. He totally immersed himself In the way Westerners see themselves, and of course, in these days, and now with the “me too” movement, that’s not really seen as being very good, but this was a long time ago, before people thought this way. He used to screw his disciples and he drank endlessly. But he was pretty much seen as a great, great siddha, a great enlightened being by his own teachers, the Karmapa, Dilgo Khysentse Rinpoche, who were two of the greatest Lamas who ever lived, they respected him. And Kalu Rinpoche also said, “Just because an Eagle can jump off a cliff, a high cliff, doesn’t mean that you can.”

This is very complicated stuff, but he really spoke, he really expressed things in English that, in a way  nobody ever had before, because he had, he was in it completely, and he knew the English language so well that he, and  the Western psyche so well, that he was able to explain things in a very powerful way. But he was not, he was a teacher, but he was also a siddha. He also did things. He wasn’t just somebody who just taught philosophy. He would do things. He was fierce.

One day, Danny and Anasuya, Danny Goldman were living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I was living in their house for a while, up in the top, in this couple of, up in the very top of the three-story old Victorian house. Fantastic. And I met this woman, and we were, we had planned to get together that night and she came to the house and we were walking up the steps…

Oh, earlier in the day, Rinpoche was staying there, too, at the time. Earlier that day, he called me into his room, just me and him sitting there, and he, he took a big bottle of Saki and a water glass, and he poured a water glass full of Saki, like 16 ounces of Saki to the very top, just before it would spill. And it was extraordinary. He was drunk out of his mind. His hands were perfectly steady and then he pushed it across the table to me and just went. So, I drank the whole cup, the whole glass. Later that day, this woman and I were walking up the steps to my room and we got halfway up the steps and a guy comes and calls her and says, “Rinpoche would like to see her.”

She never got upstairs. She never made it up to my room that night. She slept with him. He stole my girlfriend. This is the kind of stuff he would do. He was fierce. He did not fuck around. He was there to destroy your ego. And he did it. Now, a lot of people would judge that from our present day point of view. That’s their prerogative. They can do that, but the people who were with him, it’s rare that you hear from someone who protested that behavior. I mean, they knew what they were in for, and he just jumped into the way we were. You know, everybody was screwing everybody in those days, and so he was into it. He did it, too.

I’m not here to be his apologist or anything. I’m just telling you some of the things, but he was so brilliant. His first book I think was called “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.” It’s perfect. And the teachings…he also was a treasure revealer.  In other words, he channeled, secret teachings were revealed to him  in his mind, and he gave those teachings to some of his students. The teachings on the kingdom of Shambala were a treasure that he revealed. You know, in the old days in Tibet, the treasure revealers would be able to put their hand in a rock and pull out scriptures, because they say that Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche, the great, the second Buddha they call him, would reveal these things, but he would hide them and like put a lock on them until they could be revealed, until they would be useful to people, it would be of use to people. So, sometimes they were hidden for like a thousand years, and then somebody would have a vision, not somebody, but a great, great being, a great Lama would have a vision that he could just grab this, these scriptures from inside of this rock. I mean, and people saw this. It was a mystery, but it wasn’t, people were there. Like there would be 150, 200 people and the guy just put his hand on a rock and pull out these tiny things written in the Dakini script, in the script of the Dakinis,  the Devis, really, the goddesses. And he would, he would be the only one who could actually read that script. Amazing stuff.

So, Trungpa was extraordinary and he was respected by his teachers. They did not judge him. And that, if you understand things from that point of view, then you have to, you have to really take that into account, that his teachers did not feel that he was abusing people. He was acting out in a certain kind of way, which was not unheard of in the Vajrayana tradition. There are many great beings who acted in ways that seemed inappropriate. For instance, there was an incredible, in the late 1800s, an amazing Siddha named Do Khyentse Rinpoche, who was a hunter, and he traveled with his disciples. They all had rifles and they would shoot at deer. They would cut it up, cook it up, and he would tell everybody to save the bones, and after everybody had eaten, they would put the bones in a pile. He would say a few mantras and the deer would get up and run away. Really. These things happened.

So, for those who can’t wrap their heads around that, it would be easy to fall into judgment or to feel judgmental about the behavior of those type of beings, but I believe that it’s not exactly, that wouldn’t be the right thing to think. That wouldn’t be correct.

Now that doesn’t mean there are a lot there aren’t like, an infinite number of assholes who do shitty things and should be beaten for it. There’s no question about that. Not everybody can do that. Very few people can do that, can be beyond the attachment, beyond good and evil, beyond fear and all that, you know, really beyond. And only those few beings can do that. The problem is that there are so many people claiming to be that way, and that really sucks, and they hurt people and they create karmas for themselves and others that will be unbearable for them. There are hell worlds that they go to, to burn, believe me.

So, what are you going to do? People are hungry and they’ll find any way they can to satisfy their desires. And they’ll eat people alive. They don’t give a shit about anybody. So, that’s bad stuff, and there’s really no way to know. That’s the other thing. There’s no way to know. There are probably a lot of people who feel that Trungpa was a bad guy, but I don’t think his students feel that. That’s one thing. Even now, all these years later.

Well, that was quite a blurt. Take care.

Q: Hello, Krishna Das. I’ve been hearing you since, I think I’m three years old, or somewhere around there.

What are you talking about? I haven’t been around that long.

Just like, 16 years. Yeah, and I think, especially this past year has been a very pivotal year for me, and you have been with me throughout this year. If it’s moving to college and doing laundry, I would always hear some kirtan, or even in the most random moments.

Listening to me when you do the laundry? Good.

It gave me a lot of peace and a lot of strength.

I see. I have to remind somebody about that later.

Yeah, recently I went through a very difficult period and had psychogenic seizures, non-epileptic seizures, and being, kind of, dealing…

Non-epileptic?

Non-epileptic. It’s called psychogenic seizures. I think just throughout this time, I feel like I have lost a freedom in myself. If it’s even just to, like, I have a fear of crossing the road at times, or like, I grew up in India and I’m not allowed to drive the bike anymore, at least for now. And I know these may be small things, but I think I internalized it into being like, I have no freedom in thoughts, or being, and I think one of my questions would be, how to separate the outer obstacles and the inner obstacles? Because I feel like I just take these outer obstacles and make them into the reality, but I do believe that in the mind, there is a strength to not see those obstacles and be free within yourself.

Well, you can’t fight against your thoughts. You’re not going to win, because you’re fighting on the same level that they exist. You know, all we can do is train ourselves to release those thoughts. Right? Which means developing a little bit of practice every day, a little mantra, a little chanting, a little breath, watching your breath, just calming yourself, just watch your breath come in. You know, you don’t try. You don’t get tense. You’re not trying to willfully make anything happen. You just watch your breath come in and out. Right? It’s doing it anyway, whether you’re watching or not. So, it’s always there. So, just bring your attention to it and let it come in and out by itself, and when you notice you’re thinking, you come back. What you’re thinking, doesn’t matter. What you’re feeling, “I’m afraid.”  Well, I’ll come back. Right? You just keep coming back and that develops this automatic ability to release the hold of those type of things. This is good work, you know. It’s good work. It’s good that you recognize the situation. That’s very good. And also, it’s even better that you recognize something can be done about it. That’s fantastic.

Most people spend their whole lives completely asleep. They don’t even ever think anything could be done to help themselves, and that’s really sad. So, you’re already, you know, you’re in the game and that’s where you want to be. So, it’s all good. So now you just want to find a way to relax a little bit. That’s all.

You know, physical exercise is good. Asana practice is very good. Gentle, loving, relaxed asana practice. You know, something that just gets your body moving. It gets your muscles moving and lets the energy flow through you instead of getting stuck in places. You know, something like that. Simple. It’s not something that you have to worry about. It’s not violent exercise. Just gentle breathing with the movement of the body. Very good. And that will actually help release some tension, and the tension always affects the mind, too, but definitely just sing a little bit, you know, sing little bit, dance around a little bit, relax, take it easy. Don’t give yourself a hard time. It’s okay. How old are you?

I’m 19.

Well, you can pretty much count on the next four or five years being hell on earth. No, 19 is a very, it’s very, it’s good that you’re interested in this stuff. Very good. It shows that you have a deep sensitivity to the spiritual path. That’s wonderful. So, you just want to start to take responsibility for your states of mind. Okay? But you don’t do it like this. You know, you do it like this. You know? Letting go, releasing. Letting go again and again. So, just practice that, you know, for a few minutes at a time. Don’t think don’t try to sit for a half an hour. Don’t try to sit for, you know. Sit somewhere comfortable and just watch your breath. If you fall asleep, that’s perfect. Don’t worry about it. And you come back, fall asleep again. Sometimes that happens to me. You know, it’s not really sleep, actually. It’s just, it’s the mind kind of sinking into itself in a different way than sleep. It’s not really sleep, but it’s similar. It feels similar.

You know, and do what you can to be healthy, physically. Eat well and that kind of stuff. Take it easy. And you know, and through these practices, we develop the inner strength to have the courage to deal with whatever arises in our lives. That’s the main thing. You’ll be able to deal with whatever happens, good or bad, what we call “good” or “bad.”  It might be painful. It might be physical problems. It doesn’t have to screw you up completely inside. But one must cultivate that a little bit, you know?

So, yeah. So, if you’re inclined to it, I would definitely try to learn the Hanuman Chalisa, because it’s a very powerful prayer that Maharajji gave to us in order to help us connect with him, with that place of real power inside ourselves, and to develop the strength to deal with daily life without being destroyed by it. So, it’s all good. It’s all good.

So, Ramana Maharshi was one of the great saints of modern age. He lived in the south, in a place called Tiruvanamalai, at the foot of a mountain called “Arunachala,” which is believed, actually, to be a living Shiva Lingham, itself. He was an extraordinary Being, and he wrote this. He said this.

“Remain all the time steadfast in the heart, in the oneness. God knows the past, the present and the future. He will determine the future for you and accomplish the work. What is to be done will be done at the proper time. Don’t worry. Abide in the heart and surrender your acts to the divine.”

This is so beautiful. So beautiful. This is a statement of where we’re really headed, ultimately. It starts off with, what he says is impossible for us at the moment. “Remain all the time steadfast in the heart.”

Well, next. You know, we would like that, but we’re working on it.

But this part, you know, “what is to be done, will be done. What’s going to happen, will happen at the proper time. Don’t worry. Abide in the heart.”

Once again, not easy. “Abide in the heart and surrender your acts to the divine.”

Surrender is, ultimately what he means is, surrendering the belief that you’re the doer. We see ourselves as being busy and doing lots of stuff. We’re meditating. We’re getting devotional. We’re getting this experience. We’re running around and now I’m going shopping. Now I’m watching TV. We have the sense of “me” all the time, but what we don’t have, is the sense of what’s in there.

There she is. She’s back. What happened to you? You went into samahdi? Like that?

My internet cutoff. I’m sorry.

Where are you?

I’m in India, in Tamil Nadu, in Auroville. I grew up here.

Oh, really? Very nice. Very nice. Maharajji went once and he, he met the Mother, and he later said, “Mother tried to keep me there. She tried to keep me, but I escaped.” He laughed.

I wanted to ask one more question, which is, what did Maharajji say to people for things about the fear of death?

Well, when I was going to kill myself, I was living in the temple and I was having a nervous breakdown, hallucinations, everything. I was out of my mind. He looked at me and said, “What are you going to do? Jump in the river?”

He laughed. “You can’t die. Worldly people don’t die. Only Jesus died the real death.”

What? Why? Because he never thought of himself. That’s the real death, the death of the ego. Thoughts of “me” never arise. They just don’t arise anymore. There’s only oneness there. There’s only the one, which is your true nature. So, he wasn’t worried about death and he, I can’t remember him really saying anything about it specifically. But I had a girlfriend back in the states before I went to India, and while I was in India, she committed suicide in America. So, I went to Maharajji, and I asked for blessings for her. It’s a long story. I’ve just compressed it. And he said, he hit me on the head. “Don’t worry. She won’t bother you anymore.”

Because she had come to see me after she died. She came to see me at night after she died and it freaked me out, and he said, “Don’t worry, she won’t bother you anymore.”

So, “But Baba, what about her? Will she have good birth?”

And he just said, “She’ll have a good birth.”

That’s the only time I ever heard him talk about rebirth. I never heard him, you know, he used to say things like, “Oh, I’m very old,” you know, things like that.

Which, and you know, when Maharajji left the body, some of the people who used to come see him in Allahabad went to visit this other Saint named Deoraha Baba, who was 270 years old, and he had lived in the county of Deoraha for all those years. Everybody knew him. That was in U.P.  There’s the county, Deoraha. And I’m not exactly sure what the county is called, but Deoraha Baba means, the Baba from that place, Deoraha.

So, he said, “Oh, I’ve seen this Lila so many times before,” about Maharajji leaving the body. “He can’t die. He’s not dead. I’ve seen him do this so many times before.”

You know, these guys live in another world that we don’t have access to. So, the body dies, but the dweller in the body, the soul, does not die. And that’s who we really are. It’s the ego that has fear, and the ego is the delusion that we are separate beings, the belief that we are separate from everybody else, and that you’re you and I’m me. That is not actually true, except on that level, of little bubbles of egos. So, when the bubble pops, what happens? When the wave dissolves back into the sea, what was that wave? Was it anything else but ocean? At any time? It was only ocean. Right? Nothing happened. There was ocean. It’s ocean, but we call it a wave. Just like you call yourself, “you,”and I call myself “me,” but we’re just waves. And the wave is caused by winds that blow in from somewhere. Right? And start the waves moving. Right? And those winds are our previous karmas. They manifest this “me,” and then they, the winds abate, and that wave disappears. But was it anything other than the ocean, ever?

So, are you anything other than God at any point? No, but you think you are. So, because you think that, you have work to do, which is to remove those thoughts and remove the glue of those thoughts that hold us and make us believe we are who we think we are. That’s where fear is. That’s where longing is. That’s where shame and grief and anger and selfishness, those are all thoughts of me, me, me.

So, if you just relax every day for a few minutes, just take a little time off where nobody can bother you for just a few minutes, and just let everything go, and just let all that energy drain out of the body. Let the thoughts drain out of the mind and just be with yourself, and when you notice you’ve been thinking, you’re actually already back. Right?

Otherwise, you’d still be thinking. You wouldn’t know. So, when you notice you’ve been thinking, okay, and then you just relax again and let them all go. That’s meditation. And at some point, if you like, you can add, you can do Japa with the breath. You know, just repeat one of the names as the breath comes in and out. That’ll help too, but just… it’s a game. Play the game. Enjoy it. Find a way to in there. That’s all.

Okay. Nice talking to you. So, that’s the deal. This is from the Bhagavad Gita:

“When he sees me in all and sees all in me, then I never leave him, and he never leaves me. And he, who in this oneness of love, loves me in whatever he sees, wherever this man may live, in truth, he lives in me.”

That’s Sri Krishna talking to Arjuna.

“When he sees me in all and sees all in me, then I never leave him, and he never leaves me. And he who, in this oneness of love, loves me in whatever he sees…”

Difficult people…

“Loves me in whatever he sees, wherever this person may live, in truth, he lives in me.”

Well, that’s the path of love. And, when we see Maharajji in everyone, then we see him all the time. We don’t get fooled by the appearances. This is something that comes as a fruit of practice and a fruit of devotion. It isn’t something you do in your head like, “Oh yeah, okay, I’m going to see Maharajji in this person.” No, no. It doesn’t work like that. It’s the fruit of practice we do, whatever practice that is, the love that’s generated in our practice and in our hearts.

So, and the Hanuman Chalisa generates that kind of devotion and love, and the Ramacharitamanasa, the Tulasi Das Ramayana, really opens the heart to those realities.

So, okay, wonderful to be with you today. Thank you so much for coming. Be safe. Be good. Take care of yourselves. OK? Ram Ram. Namaste.

The post Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD September 12, 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.

Q: I had an experience in India with Siddhi Ma. I felt very graced to be with Her before She left Her body and Siddhi Ma is a Saint in India and I was just wondering if you would be willing to unpack some memories from your time with Her and just share a quick story or something about Her.

“She was my Ma. She was my Mother. She saved my ass so many times, you have no idea. One time I said to Her, “Ma, should I meditate?” And She said, “Krishna Das, in 40 years with Maharajji, not once did He ask me to meditate.” She said, “What do you like to do, meditate or chant?” Duh. It never occurred to me that doing something I liked could be good for me.” – Krishna Das

Q: Ram Ram.

KD: Yeah, same to you.

Q: My name is Will and I was just wondering, I had an experience in India with Siddhi Ma. I felt very graced to be with Her before She left Her body and Siddhi Ma is a Saint in India and I was just wondering if you would be willing to unpack some memories from your time with Her and just share a quick story or something about Her.

KD: Siddhi Ma was one of Maharajji’s great great great devotees. She was really a great Saint in Her own right and She took care of all of us for 30, more than 30 years after Maharajji left the body, more than 40 years after Maharajji left the body. She was my Ma. She was my Mother. She saved my ass so many times, you have no idea. One time I said to Her, “Ma, should I meditate?” And She said, “Krishna Das, in 40 years with Maharajji, not once did He ask me to meditate.” She said, “What do you like to do, meditate or chant?” Duh. It never occurred to me that doing something I liked could be good for me. You know? Don’t look down… that’s where I grew up, you know? If you like it, it ain’t good for you. So that was mind blowing.  Then She said, you know, and here was a really interesting thing. It’s a kind of a deep thing but I’ll share it with you. She said, “The higher states of consciousness,” which is supposedly what we’re looking for, “Can not be created or can not be precipitated by personal will.” So, think about that. You, we can’t make it happen. The higher states of consciousness. She said, She said Maharajji said that. And He said, “When one is ready, they come naturally.” And how does one ready one’s self? Loving everyone.  Feeding everyone. And remembering God. Serving. Love, serve, remember. That’s what He used to say. Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems counter-intuitive that thinking about others was going to be good for me, but it turns out that that’s the way it is. Very strange. Because once again, like we started, we’re so stuck in our stories about ourselves. And we think about ourselves all day long. All lifelong. It’s ridiculous. And we never really pay attention to other people. And we don’t treat others very well for the most part. We treat others as they’re something that’s supposed to make us happy. And if they’re not doing that, to hell with them. So, that guy I just spoke about, He had some good ideas, you know? And one of them was, “Do unto others as you would have them…” If we could treat other people the way we, ourselves, want to be treated and do nothing else but that, our whole lives would change in an instant. Think about all the ways you turn people off all day long and look away from people and judge people and hurt people. Just because. That’s what we do. But you think it’s easy to treat people the way you want to be treated? Try. It’s not easy. That’s what practice is for. To help us. Give us the strength to treat other people the way we want to be treated. And then our lives change because it’s not all about “me” all the time. The burden of “me” is such a heavy goddamned thing to be carrying around. It lightens up. We don’t sit at home grinding it out. “What am I going to do? How am I going to get happy? What am I going to do? I’ll take more of this. I’ll take less of that. I’ll get more cable.” I don’t, I don’t, you know, 300 channels is not enough for me. You know, it’s what we do all life long. Trying to squeeze water from a stone. Happiness, real happiness doesn’t come from stuff. It’s never going to come from stuff. I’m sorry. I wish it did. Then I would have been happy a long time ago. But happiness, real love doesn’t come from stuff. It’s who we are. And when we start, when we start looking around, we see that even the people we don’t like, the people who have hurt us, they were acting out of their own pain. Even if we happen to be the recipient of something pretty nasty, still, they were acting out of their own pain. There was nothing they could do to not do that shit to us. You know, so remember when George W. was President? We thought that was bad. I’m sorry. No politics. So, I was watching television, going through the channels, I was going by CNN and they were showing the President, George W. Bush walking down the hall of this school down in Florida where in a room down the hall, a group of the first widows from the Iraq war were waiting to meet the President. There were like 20 women in there. And the cameras are following the President and he’s walking down the hall, “Hey Bob. Hi Joe. I’m the President. Yup. I’m walking down the Hall. Here I go. Hey, Jim.” Walking down the hall. Walking down the hall. I was just about to turn the channel and he goes into the room, he opens the door to the room where these women are waiting. He takes two steps into the room and he bursts out crying like a baby. I couldn’t believe it. He was crying like a baby. Weeping uncontrollably. I was really pissed. I couldn’t hate him anymore. Really. Look at this poor guy. His own actions, there he is, the President, but he’s the pawn of many different interests. He doesn’t have freedom with what he does. He has to make all kinds of deals. By the time you get to the President, you’ve made so many deals you can barely go to the bathroom by yourself. This guy has caused so much suffering for other people. He’s going to have to pay for that. And I have to tell you the truth, when I saw him crying, I didn’t want him to have to pay for that, but there was nothing I could do. His own actions, the karmas he created will come to fruition and he will have to pay for that. That did not make me happy. Before I saw him cry, it made me happy. Sorry. But after that, I saw, “Oh, shit he’s a human being.” And he couldn’t help himself, either. That’s the thing that got me. He could not help himself but do the things he did. He had no vote. Ok. How much vote do we have in our day? How much of a vote do we have as to how we go through the day? As to how we meet people? As to how we greet people? As to how we treat people? How much of a vote do we have, actually? Not much. The whole idea is to get a vote. I haven’t even registered to vote. We’ve got to get a vote. Otherwise we’re just unconscious slaves of our own karma and we get no vote and we keep creating more suffering for ourselves and the people that we say we love, and the people we say we don’t want to see suffer. We’re creating suffering for them, too. That’s why we repeat the Name. We don’t even know what the Names mean. It doesn’t matter. These names have been given to us as a way to find out who we really are, as a way to become a good human being in this world in these days when it’s not so easy. There are other practices, of course, and they all work the same way. Sooner or later, they’re all about calming our asses down, learning, allowing us to be here more, not to be so reactive to our thoughts and our stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves that we don’t like. That’s why we do practice. So we can learn to breathe in this world.

The whole spiritual path is learning to trust your own self, your own heart. If you don’t trust yourself, what are you going to do? When you fall in love, you don’t doubt that. Ah, yeah. You trust that. You also trust when you fall out of it. We’re training ourselves to fall in love with who we really are, which is the same as who everybody really is. So, we fall in love with the whole universe. Everybody’s invited to the party.

We’re very easily fooled because we’re so needy. We’re so needy. That’s just the way it works. We’re really needy. But these practices help us, help us hear our own hearts more clearly as time goes on, little by little. If it happens too fast, they put you away. Little by little.

The post Ep. 67 | Siddhi Ma, George W. Bush and Learning to Trust Yourself appeared first on Krishna Das.

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.

“Wherever we are, we are always held in this vast presence, which is our own true nature, and which is the nature of the divine. A real love. Spiritual practice is our way of beginning to remember how to see this space, how to turn towards it again and again, and by turning towards this, we let go of our stuff. We release our thoughts. We release anything that’s between our seeing what is right here all the time.” – Krishna Das

Hello everybody. If you’re here, we’re still here. If you’re not, well, I hope everything’s okay wherever we are.

So, as we sit here, we’re aware of a lot of things, our bodies, our thoughts, different sounds that we hear. But for a moment, just become aware of the space in the room that you’re sitting. This space is not a thought. It’s not a sense input. It’s not an emotion. It’s something we are aware of without any help from our senses or thoughts or any concepts about what is this and what this isn’t and who am I and what am I and all that shit. This is just a space. Now expand that space to the sky. Just see yourself sitting in the space of the sky, the sky that we feel, this vast space that we sense without our senses. This is like our nature. It’s like our soul. Everything happens within this space. It can’t be anything outside of this space. The space is everywhere. I hear a plane flying through the sky inside of this space.

When we’re lost in thought, when we’re caught in emotional distress and pain, when we’re lost in pleasure, we lose the awareness of the space. Stuff comes and goes like birds flying through the sky, like clouds through the sky. But we are this awareness, this space, and when that space is obstructed by our stuff, we suffer, we’re limited. We’re glued to our stuff. The space is presence, with a capital “P,” being with a capital “B,” and anything we’re thinking about it, isn’t it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not here.

Wherever we are, we are always held in this vast presence, which is our own true nature, and which is the nature of the divine. A real love. Spiritual practice is our way of beginning to remember how to see this space, how to turn towards it again and again, and by turning towards this, we let go of our stuff. We release our thoughts. We release anything that’s between our seeing what is right here all the time. This is Maharajji, always present. This is Hanuman. This is Ram. This is Krishna. This is the essence of all those great beings, and it’s also our essence. The only difference is their awareness is not obstructed any longer. They’re free.

All of our practice is to loosen up the way we hold on to our stuff, where we identify with that stuff and allow us to sit at ease in this presence. We don’t have to make this up. This is who we are. Ram Dass called this, “Loving Awareness.” Loving awareness.

One time, he and I were sitting together after breakfast in Maui at the house, and we started having a great conversation, deep conversation, but surrounded by a lot of space. We’d say something and then there’d be long silences, 10, 20 minutes maybe. And it just so happened I was recording it. I think towards the end, we said, “Wow, this was really intense.” And he said, “Yeah.” I said, “You know, I think I recorded it.” And he said, “Yeah, we could call it Dick and Jeff’s journey to Soul Land.”

Dick and Jeff’s journey to Soul Land. Okay. Well, let’s examine all the bullshit that we use to beat ourselves up with.

Q: There was a story you had share, I heard on Spotify, about waiting in an airport and a Lama that you had really wanted to meet for quite some time was coming through.

That Lama was Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, the oldest son of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who was one of the great, great, great masters of the previous generation, and he had four sons who were recognized also as great masters, great reincarnations of great masters. And in fact, the second oldest son just left his body a day ago. His name was Chokling Rinpoche, and he was a great Lama. I mean, these beings are so extraordinary. They are so wide and deep and vast and present. It’s just extraordinary, astounding to even know about them and to get a feel for where they live.

So, yeah, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche was somebody I wanted to meet for very long time, and I had been in Denmark and I was on my way somewhere else in Europe, and Danny Goldman, my friend had been at a retreat with Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche in Denmark and they were traveling with Rinpoche to another place, and it turned out that we were going to be in the airport at the same time. So, I said to Danny, I said, “Look, I really want to meet Rinpoche. Can we figure that out?” And he said, “Yeah, yeah.”

He said, “We’ll meet at such and shuts place in the airport at around this such and such time.” Right?

So, I got there and I was waiting and waiting and I didn’t see Danny and I didn’t see Rinpoche, but I figured they hadn’t come through security yet. So, instead I walked all the way down the other end of the airport to the security where you come through and I just stood there.

Now, the funny thing is, I had just finished getting all this work done on my, I had rotted my teeth out with Ricolas which I use to keep my throat moist when I’m singing, and so I had an extraordinary amount of dental work done, just finished maybe a month or so before this, just so you know.

Okay. So, I’m standing there outside of security and people are coming through, and then here comes Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, but he’s by himself. Danny and Tara were nowhere around. So, I stood there and he came out and he got his bag and he turns around and I went, “Rinpoche.

And he goes, “Oh, hi. Oh, hi.”

I said, “Hi, Rinpoche. How are you?”

He said, “I know you.”

I said, “Well, we haven’t met, but I know you.”

I said, “Well, thank you. My name is Krishna Das. Danny and Tara told me that I could, we could meet here.”

“Oh Good, come on. Let’s go.”

So, we start walking and he said, “So what do you do?”

And I said, “Well, you know, I chant with people.”

“Oh yeah, you chant, what are you chant?”

I said, “Well, you know, Hare Krishna, Sri Ram Jai Ram.”

“Hare Krishna? Hare Krishna?” he said. He grabbed, he locked his arms with me and we, and we started storming through the, the high class, the very rich shops area where everybody does their shopping, but it’s really the really super rich shops, right? And there’s all these people walking around and he’s dragging me down this hallway and he’s going, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,” and then he would elbow me. He said, “Come on sing, come on, sing.”

And all these people are looking at us, oh my God. And I’m trying to hide. He’s elbowing me. “Come on, come on and sing. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna!”

So, then we got to the place where we were supposed to meet Danny and Tara, and as we, about 50 feet from that place, they were sitting there and all of a sudden he changed direction and he took me to this little quiet corner and he looks at me and he says, “When you chant with people, do you talk to people?”

I said, “Yeah, a little bit.”

And he said, “Yeah. Okay, good. You should talk about peace. Peace is really important, peace of mind, really important. You should talk about that.”

I said, “Okay.”

And then he said, “If I write a song, will you sing it?”

I said, “Sure. If you write a song, I will sing it.”

“Okay, good.”

And then he dragged me over to where Danny and Tara were.

And so now, this was 10, 12 years ago, every time I see him, he looks at me, and he goes “Hare Krishna!” Like he’s sitting in front of a whole group of people ready to give a talk or something and he sees me, he goes, “Hare Krishna!”

That’s the story. So, you know, these guys are so, these beings are so extraordinary.

He said, “When you said, when you talk to people, tell them about peace of mind. That’s very important.”

So, consider yourself told. Peace of mind. Big thing. Very big thing.

So yeah, that’s the story. And his nephew was actually the son of the Rinpoche who just left the body, Phakchok Rinpoche, who is just an extraordinarily beautiful being. Somehow or other, we met at someone’s house at a dinner party, so he knew I chanted. He said, “Do you have any chants to Shiva?” And I said, “Yeah.” And so, I sent him a whole bunch chants that I did to Shiva. So now every time he sees me, he goes, “Namah Shivaya!” Like right before a class. “Om Namah Shivaya!” Great.

When I first met Lama Gyurme, who I’d been listening to for 15 years already. He’s the Lama who lives in Paris, who recorded those CDs. One of them is called the Lama’s chant and it’s one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever hear in your life. So, I was in Barcelona and some friends knew that I really loved Lama Gyurme, and he was giving a teaching about an hour outside of Barcelona. So, they came and picked me up and drove me out there, and so I got there, and we were taken upstairs. The Lama hadn’t come down yet. He was just, I think he was taking a shower or something. He just arrived. So, we waited in his room and he came out and he sits down and, “Hello, how are you? Yes,” he said, and he said, “What do you do?”

So, I said, you know “I lead chanting.”

“Oh yeah? What kind of chanting?”

I said, “Well, you know, Sri Ram Jai Ram, Hare Krishna.”

He said, “Oh.” He said, “You sing to the masters.”

And I went, “Oh.”

I never thought of it that way. You know, because in India, they don’t see it that way. They see these beings, those deities as gods, but that’s just another word. You know, these are our elder beings. These are the beings who have transcended where we are and where they originally came from, and they are elder, they are elevated. They are living in a whole different way than we live. So, yes, and since they are divine beings, but the way they see them that way, he said, “You sing to the masters.”

“Oh, okay. Very cool. Very cool.”

So yeah, that’s the story.

There was also another story. You said you had asked in a class, “What does it mean to be enlightened?” And I forgot the name of the Lama, but the answer was “not asleep.” Not sleeping.

No, this was another one of the four sons of Tulku Urgyen, Mingyur Rinpoche.  Chokling Rinpoche was the only one that I unfortunately could never meet, but I’ve been with Chokyi Nyima, Mingyur Rinpoche, and also Tsoknyi Rinpoche. Those are the three other brothers who were recognized as reincarnations. So, it was a course on, one of the teachings in Tibet, Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism is called Dzogchen, or Mahamudra, and this is resting simply in your natural being, in your simple awareness, natural awareness, with no concentrating and no manipulating and no trying. It’s very simple, but it’s of course the most difficult thing for us to do. So, it’s usually taught at the end of a long, many years practice of the different types of meditation. But the previous Karmapa, the 16th Karmapa ordered or asked Tulku Urgyen, who is the father of these four Lamas and other great Rinpoches, to start teaching these very advanced practices because they were needed now. And because people, especially Westerners didn’t have the time or the inclination or the ability to do all these other preparatory practices, but they could still get, they could still be helped tremendously by this Dzogchen, the Mahamudra teachings.

So, the point is, there was something called the rigpa, which means your natural awareness, pure awareness, or not pure in the sense of pure and impure, but just natural, spontaneous, what’s the word they always use? “Unmanipulated” is the word. Anyway, so somebody asked Rinpoche, you know, everybody was saying like, “So what, is it rigpa? Is it this? Is it rigpa, if that? Is it awareness of this?”

So, he just said, he said, “Well, just think and just think to yourself, ‘not sleeping.’”

Wow. I don’t know if you feel that, but in other words, you just noticed, “I’m not sleeping,” and then you feel something. You feel just simple being there. Almost, there’s no thoughts actually happening at that moment. All there is, is the awareness that you’re not sleeping. It’s different from saying “I’m awake,” which is thinking about it. “Yeah. I’m awake.” Well, maybe, maybe not, but when you say “not sleeping…”

So anyway, that’s that story. Not sleeping. So, we’re always not sleeping when we’re not sleeping, but we’re usually not paying attention. We’re usually lost in thought. So, we remind ourselves to look and that’s the practice of Dzogchen Mahamudra. There’s techniques that they teach you to see your true nature, so to speak. To become aware of it by dropping thought or by dropping, yeah. But it’s a very, it’s, it’s such a subtle practice, it’s just, it’s very it, you know, I’m in kindergarten myself. I don’t know about you, and this we’re talking about, you know, PhD classes here, you know, and I haven’t learned how to count two and two yet. So that’s what we’re talking about. But, “not sleeping.”

Q: Hey. First of all, you know, I’m a fan. Thank you. All that. I love you. It’s embarrassing. We have three questions and you can answer whatever you want.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

Just three. So, the first one is, can you tell the story about Maharajji and a thorn in my side Bible verse? And then, I’ll give you all three, and then you can pick. The second one is, in the Chalisa, the line, “Aura Devataa chitta na dharaee,” that we only need to praise or think of Hanuman and no other deities, if you could just talk about that a little bit, like what about the other deities? You know, like Ram. And then the third one is, if you could describe what it was like to touch Maharajji’s feet. And yeah, that’s it. Those are the three, whatever you want. And I don’t want to take up more time. So, pick whatever.

So, that verse in the Chalisa, you know, Hanuman is our special friend. He’s here to help us. Ram is everywhere all the time. Know what couldn’t be anywhere, is the doer of everything anyhow, but Hanuman is here as our special helper and Hanuman is that doorway into Ram, and he’s also the remover of obstacles and the purifier of our hearts and cleaning up our karmic situation that allows us to connect with the deeper place within us. So, “Aura devataa chitta na dharaee,” you don’t need to hold other beings, other deities in your mind. Everything, you’ll get everything from Hanuman. He’s the one that connects us to everything. Hanuman and your prana, your energy and your body are not even different. So, in that sense, Hanuman is specifically a part of our incarnation and exists to help us find the deeper reality within us.

So in that sense, Hanuman is our helper. He’s here to help us. He’s our special friend. He does. It also says, what’s that line in the Chalisa where, “Ram is the Supreme, the ascetic king, beyond, beyond, beyond. But you do all his work.” So, Hanuman and Rama are not separate, and neither is Hanuman far from us. So, that’s what we’re talking about.

And Maharajji used to say, also, you can only reach the formless through the form. And Hanuman is very close to us. Hanuman actually, he lives in our prana, in a sense, and prana is not just energy. It’s also conscious energy. There’s awareness in the prana, but we’re not aware of that ourselves beause we’re stuck in our physical bodies and our minds, our thoughts. But Hanuman is deeper.  He’s always available. He’s ready to help us find Ram at all times. And he is that flow of grace that awakens us and that connects us to that deeper reality, Ram, Krishna, all the so-called deities.

So, yeah, so one day I had walking in Vrindavan back in Maharajji’s time, I stepped into a hole in the road and I snapped my knee really badly. And when I woke up the next morning, it was like out to here. So, I thought, “Well, I’d better go to Mathura,” to the hospital and see a doctor because this is really bad. In those days, Maharajji told us not to come to the temple until four o’clock in the afternoon, because the visa guys were trying to get bribes to extend our visas and Maharajji was just fed up with all them. So, he just said, don’t come until four.

So, it was early in the morning, of course, but I thought I’d better take care of my knee, because it was really bad. So, Raghu helped me walk from the town to the temple, where we were in the Bazaar, where we were staying, because I couldn’t put any, almost no weight on my leg. It was really bad. And I limped in, we limped into the temple, and Maharajji was sitting all alone with one devotee there. Gurudatt Sharma was there with him in the middle of this big, empty courtyard, on his Tucket, on his bench, and I limped up very self-consciously, you know, and I pranammed, and then I sat down and I had to put my leg out straight underneath the tucket, because I couldn’t bend my knee.

And Maharajji, just as you know, he kind of hardly looked at me, looked at us and you know, people were always coming and going. It was no big deal. So, we came and we just sat there for a minute or two, for a few minutes, didn’t say anything. And I thought, “Well, I’m having darshan. You could cut my leg off above my knee. I don’t give a shit. I’m staying right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

So, after a few minutes, he gets up and he walks towards the back of the temple. He took Gurudatt’s hand. You know, he used to take somebody’s hand usually when he walked. Not usually, but many times when he walked, because He kind of walked like a two-year-old. Bang, bang, bang, you know, from one leg to the other. And so, they were walking away from where we were sitting towards the back of the temple. And the further away he got from where we were sitting, he started leaning on Gurudatt, leaning on him and limping, like he couldn’t walk, and I thought, “Oh,” I said, “he’s taking the karma of my knee.” Right?

As soon as I had that thought, he turned around and ran back to the tucket, plopped down on the tucket and patted me on the head and said, “Good boy, good boy. You thought I was in pain. You wanted to help me? Good boy. Good boy.”

So, we just sat around for hours with them. It was fantastic, you know, and he never asked anything about my leg. So, later in the day, I think it was, it could have even been the next day. I’m just not exactly sure. It was quite a few years ago. Other devotees had come and Girija was there, Larry, Larry Brilliant’s wife, Girija Brilliant was there, and in her shoulder bag, there was a Bible and Maharajji reached down into her shoulder bag and he pulls out the Bible and he opens it like this and just pushes it over to me and said, “Read this,” and he points to something on the page.

He didn’t even look. Right? And first of all, even if he looked, he’s not supposed to be able to read English. He just opened the book and said, “Read this.” So, this is what I read.

“And lest I should be exalted above measure, through the abundance of revelations there was given to me a thorn in the flesh. The messenger of Satan to buffet me.” Satan, being the ego, in this case, so to speak. “Lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing, I besot the Lord thrice that it might depart from me, this thorn in the side. And he said to me, ‘my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in your weakness.’”

“My grace is sufficient for thee, because my strength is made perfect in your weakness.” You know, so Ram Dass and I talked about this for 50 years, you know, and in fact, finally, one day he looked at me and said, “You know, we’re evidence that that’s true.” So, I had two t-shirts made up with the word “Evidence” on them and I sent one to him and I have one.

What it means is, what we’ve come to believe that it means is that Maharajji’s grace is all encompassing, and the power of his grace is made obvious in the fact that we can’t do shit to help ourselves. We can’t do anything. We can’t stop our thoughts. We don’t even know how to be good people. We don’t know how to take care of people. We don’t know how to take care of ourselves. We don’t know how to live in the world in a good way. We’re full of all our shit, 24 hours, 365. That’s our weakness. But even in that recognition of our inability to do anything to help ourselves, the grace is what uplifts us as we surrender and recognize that it all comes from grace. That’s when we understand the power of grace. Grace is enough. The grace is everything. And as we recognize our inability to overcome our own stuff, that’s what shows how incredible the grace is.

You know, it’s very much like when I started chanting with people. After some months, I saw what was happening. I saw what was going to happen, and I also saw that I was not able to chant in the right way, that I was a hungry guy and I was going to use all this energy and all this stuff that was coming towards me to satisfy my hungry desires. And I saw that there was no possibility that I could not do that, that I would not do that. There was no possibility that that wouldn’t happen, that I would usurp all this beautiful energy to feed me whatever, with whatever the hell I wanted. And I couldn’t do anything about it. I was helpless to change that. And it was horrifying because that’s not why I started chanting with people.

I started chanting with people, number one, to save my miserable ass and to reconnect with Maharajji’s presence, which I had left. I had left, let go of his hand, and even though he had not let go of me, I had stopped being able to feel it, and I needed to reconnect in a deeper way to that place again. And that’s why I started chanting with people, because I understood that that was the only way I could do that, reconnect, was to chant with people. And so, when I saw what was going to happen, and when I saw how I was going to use the situation and use people to feed myself and misuse that, all the good stuff that was coming out of the chanting, I quit.

And I said, “That’s it I’m finished. I’m not doing this. I am not going to fuck myself up. And I’m not going to fuck over all these other people. I just can’t do it. It’s horrible.”

So, I quit. And I said to Maharajji, I said, “You have to fix this. This is your problem. I’m singing to people in your name and I’m not going to be, I can’t do it. I’m fucking it up. And I can’t even fix it because I’m the problem. You have to fix this, or I don’t sing. You got it? That’s the deal. Good night.”

Every night. I would say that every morning. I’d wake up and I’d say, “You haven’t done anything. Don’t you understand? I am not going to chant with people until you fix this. Get it together.”

And then every night, again, for three months. I went to India, I quit. I stopped singing and I went to India. It’s funny. I arrived on the spring solstice, and I left on the summer solstice. I was there for three months, and every day for those three months, except for the last two days, I was in absolute, total despair. I was being prevented from doing the only thing that could help me. I was being prevented from doing that by my own stuff. There was no way around it. I was the problem.  There was no way around that.

So, what could I do? You know, I just said, “That’s it I’m finished. You have to fix this. You don’t fix this? That’s the deal. I’m not singing. That’s the way it is.”

So, I was going to leave India at the beginning of May, actually, or was it the middle of May? The middle of May, after about two months, and Siddhi Ma had come up to the Hills and I was living with the Tiwaris in Bhimtal, about 45 minutes from the temple. And we used to go to the temple every couple of days, me and Baba, or me and Mr. Tiwari, Mrs. Tiwari and Baba, Mr. Tiwari, and see Ma.

And one day she looked at me and she said, “What are your plans?”

And I said, “Well, Ma, you know, I think I’m going to be leaving for New York soon.”

So, she was quiet for a minute, and she said, “No, you have to stay until June 15th,” which is the day of the bhandara at Kainchi, celebrating the opening of the first temple, the Hanuman temple there that Maharajji built. “You have to stay to see you have to stay until the Bhandara.” And then she said, “You have to see Maharajji’s big form.”

I thought to myself, “What is she talking about? Big form? What is that?”

So, I made a couple of calls back to New York and nobody was looking for me. Right? So, I thought, “Okay, I can stay.” So, the next day I said to her, “You know, I can stay. Good.”

So, I move into the temple now, you know. So, I left the Tiwaris and I moved into the temple, but still nothing was happening. There’d been no change in my, in whatever. I didn’t even know what that would look like if it happened, but I just knew something had to happen, and every day I woke up, I saw nothing had happened and that I was exactly in the same place, total despair, and the days were clicking off. The time was moving on and soon I would be back in America, and I’d be fucked up, and what am I going to do?

And every night I would go out into the back of the temple. You know, in the old days when I lived there, there was one light bulb out in the front courtyard of the temple. That was it. The rest were candles and stuff like that, you know? And so in the back of the temple, I used to go up on the roof and lie back on the roof like this, and just look up at the sky and the shooting stars would, you could hear them like, like that. It was amazing, you know? And so, I would go up. So, but now everything was built up and there were lights everywhere, but there was a few little corners where, if you could sit, stand in the shadows and you can still see the sky very beautifully, and so I would go out to those places in the back and I’d look up at the sky and I’d talk to Maharajji and I said, “You know, I don’t understand. You haven’t done anything. You know? Get it together. Good night.”

So, on the night of June 14th, I was up out there in the back of the temple, and this was it. I was going to be leaving either the next day or the day after. And that’s it. It’s over for me. I’m finished. Because I won’t be able to sing, and I’ll just keep drowning in my own shit and there’ll be no way out of it. So, I went back to the back of the temple and I’m looking up at the sky and I’m talking to Maharajji, and I said, you know, “I don’t get it. You could do this. Why? I don’t, I don’t understand. I really, I just don’t get it. Okay. I mean, I can’t, if you don’t want to, I can’t make you do something you don’t want to do, but I just don’t understand why, you know. Fix this. All right, I’ll go back. I’ll sing. How bad could it be? Good night.”

Then I went to sleep. In retrospect, that’s what we’re talking about here. “My strength is made perfect in your weakness.” I gave up. I could not do this. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t make you do this, nor could I do anything to help myself. That’s it. Done deal. It’s over. I’m dead.

That was surrender. A New York version, but it definitely was surrender. The next day everything changed. Everything changed. My whole life started the next day. The rest of my life started in the next day. He changed it. He did something. He did just what I needed him to do. He did. It’s his grace. Very hard for us as Westerners. It’s very hard for anyone, West, East, West, North, or South. It’s only by grace that you know grace in the first place. That’s the way it goes. And you don’t make grace happen. No one deserves grace. That’s why they call it “grace.” When we finally recognize our inability and truly let it go, truly let it drop, let our own egoistic aspirations, which are masquerading as spiritual aspirations, when we let them drop, grace can manifest. It was very hard for us. We are so ambitious and so aggressive, and our egos are just so highly developed, you know, and it’s just like Ramana Maharshi said, “Ssking the ego or the mind to kill or transcend itself is like asking the thief to be the policeman. There’ll be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.”

So, “My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in your weakness, in your recognition of your inability to do anything else,” to do really anything. I mean, all we can do is begin to pay attention. All we can do is begin to look at our stuff, but we can’t make grace happen. We can’t make the universe touch us in a certain way. We could prepare and be ready. We can cup our hands and catch the raindrops, but we don’t make it rain. It’s very hard for us. But, at the same time, you have to recognize that you also need to do practice, because it’s only through practice that we can train ourselves to be aware of grace, to be aware of our true nature. But there’s no guarantee that when we say “Ram Ram,” we’ll be able to recognize Ram, even though, they say that the name and God, or what is named, are not different, which means if we say “Ram,” if we were open and ripe and not constricted by our mental constructs and the programs we tell ourselves about ourselves, when we say “Ram,” we would experience Ram, because the name and what is named is not different.

And that’s why Maharajji, used to say, “Go on, sing your lying, fake ‘Ram Ram.’ And one of these days,” I forget exactly what the quote is. I should look it up again, but, “one of these days, you’ll say it with sincerity and wholeheartedness, fullness, and the real Ram will come and you’ll be saved, but go on lying.”

So, you do have to go on faking it. There’s no question about that. That’s the strange situation. Because we’re asleep and we in our sleep, we can’t wake ourselves up. We get awakened by that divine presence, by Being. It’s not what we do that wakes us up. It’s when we clean the mirror of our heart, all of it naturally, the reflection is accurate, but as long as there’s dust on the mirror, which is all our stuff, it does not reflect things accurately. And we see our own stuff out there, our own projection. We see our own face, the face of our body in the mirror and not the face of our true awareness.

As far as the third question, I’ll let you answer that sometime in the future.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

Q: Thank you so much for the beautiful introduction about the expansion. I have a comment or a question about an experience I had. I was at work yesterday. We’re all working remotely, but I was at work yesterday and something happened that touched my very core, like really deep, long old, old, old feeling from my childhood, that in the end it had nothing to do with work, but that was the factor that it awoke that, that long, deep seated feeling, and I just was so angry and then afraid, and my mind went on some trip that was like, “Oh my God.” And I was in the middle of it. Now what was different from other times is that I just kind of paid attention to that. I was like one of the few people in the office. It was not crowded, not like I had my door closed, so I was able to sit with the feeling and eventually, it subsided, and I just didn’t try to deny it or say, “Oh, I’m crazy. Oh my God, I’m nuts.” I just sat with it for a while. And that was really amazing. That was the first time I had sat with a deep seated feeling, a very powerful experience. And I, as I’m listening to you talk today about grace and about surrendering, I’m trying to figure out what can I do with, you know, when those experiences come up again? I wonder if the surrender is in the sitting with the feeling, or if you have any other ideas. I just don’t know how those knots got in there, those buttons in my heart that just got awoken and are really powerful or, you know. So, I would love to hear if you have any ideas, because it was really interesting.

Well, the experience you had seems pretty cool. Why do you think that won’t happen again? Or rather, okay, so you have fear that the next one will wipe you out. In other words, like these are waves coming in off the ocean. Our own karmas created these situations. We were co-conspirators in many of these situations, karmically. In other words, nobody’s innocent, nobody’s guilty. Everybody’s just busy doing stuff. So, these ways were created and they’re still coming in off the ocean, and this last wave crashed over you and you were okay with it. I mean, you felt it. You got wet, but you weren’t wiped out. You weren’t suffocated. You didn’t drown. So, but because we don’t like unpleasant things, fear arises.

Okay. You know, “What if it comes again,” you know, “What do I do?” forgetting that naturally something really cool just happened, and that what happened was beautiful, and that was some sense of fruit of practice, or fruit of your own presence being there. You know? So, I would try to honor that and not just, “Oh, great. That was good. What about next time?” You know? Don’t go there. You know, that’s also a thought. Let go of it. And so yeah, what’s going to happen is going to happen. What’s not going to happen will never happen, regardless of how we feel about either thing. So, it’s best to just try to remain as present as we can, and be aware of that fear that’s there. That’s the here and now. That’s actually in some sense, wiping you out now, even before the next big thing comes. You’re already clenched and waiting for the big one and what’s going to happen. So that’s this moment. So, work with that moment now, this moment now, and don’t worry about what’s going to happen in the next moment. This one’s enough to deal with.

So, it’s a question of, you know, noticing things and you know, unwinding, letting go again and again. And when we do practice, every time we notice that we’re gone and we show up again for a second, that’s a big thing. And that creates a deeper neural pathway in the brain, actually, and makes it easier and easier and more natural to be here and to release things more easily. So that’s what practice does. It’s not like, you don’t mark yourself with “Yeah, today’s meditation was a three on a scale of one to 10, but the day before was like seven and a half. I wish it could have been a seven and a half.”

No. That’s not what practice is about. It’s just every day, whenever you remember, letting go being with things as best way you can. I think.

Thank you. I actually had a great experience and I look forward to the next one.

See. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I know you’re joking, but let’s just, but you’re not joking, too. You’d rather have that experience than another experience, but the bottom line is we don’t have any say over that. So, notice that, too. Notice how you want to have things. We all do. We want to have things that are pleasant and not painful, but the point is we can’t control what’s coming. We can only ultimately have a say or a vote in how we meet each moment. So don’t get too stuck wanting to have only those experiences and not wanting to have the other ones, which is natural for us. We do it all the time, but let’s notice it more often so that we can let go of that, too. And then we’re just, whatever happens, you know, as it, as it arises in a good way.

Thank you very much.

Q:  I visited a refugee camp in Tijuana, Mexico, and I went there to teach yoga, and I happened to just check out the kitchen and I saw people eating rotten food and, very bad quality food, and all these refugees are from Central America that are coming there and piling up because of immigration policy. And when I notice that, I left yoga and I started like, a vegetable garden for them, and we have a big farm now, and then I’m trying to extend all that work to Nogales border as well as Jordan and a lot of other refugee camps now. So, one of the inspiring quotes from some of the talks you’ve done is, I think that conversations with Ram Dass about, “How do I raise my Kundalini?”

Yeah, Maharajji said that. We asked, “How do we find God?”

He said, “Serve people.”

“How do we raise Kundalini?”

He said, “Feed people.”

What does that mean?

That is a great inspiration for me. So, I would love if you can expand on what you saw in India and your experience around food and people. And the second question was more around, you know, I always feel like I am doing bhakti, but I feel like, if I’m not on the ground, actually like, working with people who are suffering, I find a big disconnect to be on my own. So I wanted to understand how you think about those things as well.

Well, one of the reasons Maharajji, or one of the results of being involved in service of other people is that we’re not thinking about ourselves. But when we’re alone and we’re not busy serving, what are we doing? Thinking about ourselves. So that’s what you’re experiencing. So, you know, I would imagine that Maharajji would encourage you to keep serving as best you can without hurting yourself or denying your own karmic responsibilities, et cetera. You know, whatever, the people you are responsible to in Gujarat, et cetera, you know, whatever you have, but doing the best to serve others, because he never encouraged us to do spiritual practice for the sake of our own enlightenment, or whatever. Never. He said, “Serve people. Do your Japa. Remember God, but serve people.” Don’t be thinking about yourself.

When I was going to kill myself in India, I was having a nervous breakdown in the temple with him, you know. Hallucinations, the whole thing, completely out of my mind. He just said, you know, “What are you going to do? Kill yourself? Jump in the river? You can’t die. Worldly people don’t die.” Then he said, “Only Jesus died the real death.”

And I’m thinking, “What is he talking about?”

And he said, “Because he never thought of himself.”

Right? Just keep serving, doing the best you can, and gradually, but inevitably, those thoughts that you call yourself will just thin out and disappear, and you won’t be tortured when you’re home alone with your mind. But on the other hand, this particular time in the world is brutal. Let’s face it. We are confined in the prison of our own stuff here. And we can’t, all the places that we used to go and things we used to do to get away from ourselves have been pretty much taken away, to a large extent. Everything’s right in front of our face all the time. So, that’s a good opportunity if you’re someone who works on that stuff. You know? This is a great, powerful opportunity to see your stuff and practice letting go, and finding different ways to, to get through the day.

But I can’t believe the work you’re doing. It’s fantastic. I totally bow to you. I think it’s an amazing thing you’re doing and it’s incredible. Really great. So, keep doing. Keep doing. It’s wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Q: Hi. Hi KD. Yeah, it’s been a while since I could talk to you the last time. I think it was two months ago. Then it was fine, and since there’s been a roller coaster ride. I lost my job. I was so scared that, you know, I’m going to be kicked out of this country. I’m in Boston on a visa, obviously. And I just kept praying. Thank you. I mean, I was just hanging on to Hanuman Chalisa, praying to you, Maharajji, Hanumanji, and it was, it was a tough time. Like I just didn’t know. I was kind of losing my shit.

Yeah. Big time stuff. Hard stuff.

But unexpectedly, I wasn’t too scared because I’ve been getting calls from different companies, and I didn’t imagine that. There’s one company that I got an offer from finally. And that’s the best thing that could happen to me. Like it, it just all worked out in such a small time that I just couldn’t think of it. And I don’t have the confidence. Before the interview, I was late. Maharajji, it’s all all to you. It’s all to you. It’s all, you know, your grace. You’re going to over. Finally it worked out. So, thank you so much. And I want that blessing to, you know,  I’m really thankful for that blessing and COVID continues, and as you say, you know, if one thing is over and another one is here. I’m not working, currently, just waiting for the immigration thing to be over and just instead just hanging on to the Hanuman Chalisa to pass my day. These are miserable with the COVID and I’m confined within my house.  But hopefully it will be over. So, I want your blessing. I’m planning to go to India and possibly arrange bhandara, maybe. I want to visit Vrindavan, maybe a temple Khanpur. So, I wanted your blessings to be able to do that. Hopefully everything works out in time and I’d be able to travel in, in time.

Yeah. Sounds good. Sounds good. I don’t think you already have all the blessings you need, or you wouldn’t even been thinking about these things. Really. And first of all, my blessing will only give you diarrhea, especially in India. So, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

If it’s a blessing, I’m happy to take it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sure. And it will, again, I’m sure. So don’t worry about it. But wonderful. I’m so happy for you and very glad. Yeah, I think things will ease up with the visa situation very shortly, so hopefully everything will work out for you.

Yeah. I still cannot imagine that, you know, this happened. It was a rollercoaster ride.

Well, make sure we give thanks to the one who deserves the thanks.

So yeah, I mean, now I have this, because of COVID and all, I don’t know what to do the whole day. There are just standing thoughts in my, you know, I’m thinking all the bad things and what not. And maybe listening to your bhajans all the time or doing Hanuman Chalisa. What more can I do? Or it’s the way, it’s going to improve someday?

I would watch some television, watch some movies. I would try to walk a bit, get some physical exercise. Maybe learn how to cook some good food. Spend some time cooking, taking care of yourself. Don’t try to beat your mind up. There’s no button to push to make it all go away. It’s just a question of living every day in the best way you can. And these days it’s very hard. Welcome to the human race. That’s the way it is. There’s nothing to do. 1, 2, 3 to change everything. Practice takes time to ripen us, but we must do it. You must do it. So do your Chalisas every day, regardless of how you feel about it. When you don’t feel like doing it, that’s the best time to do it, because it’s only the vasanas and the tendencies of your own mind. Because you’re suffering. If you keep giving into those vasanas, then what the fuck’s going to happen? Nothing. You keep getting buried by your own stuff. So even when you don’t feel like doing it, do it, and don’t expect it to feel good. Don’t expect to change everything, but just do it. And then whatever you do with the rest of the day, just do. There’s so many good things on Netflix and Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, you could watch 40 hours of TV a day if you want, but just do your practice whenever you’re not busy watching television. And move around a little bit. You’ve got to move a little bit.

Thank you so much.

All right. Be well. Ok?  Ram Ram.

Q: Namaste, KD. I just want to ask you, I just saw the movie on Sunseed, and then you spoke to that person who had made the movie. In the end there was a chat with you and him where you talk about, we have to remove the shine. You know, and Dada Mukherjee also showed you the lota that Maharajji had left. And he said, “You see KD, you don’t have to shine. You don’t have to shine.”

Is there a deeper meaning to this? That, you know, of the shine thing? Is that the spiritual ego?

There’s only one ego. Everybody’s got one of it. Everyone thinks they have one of it. Let’s put it that way. And we’re always busy trying to shine it up and make it look good to attract things to ourselves, to make ourselves look good, make ourselves feel good, to make other people notice us, so we can get things we want, et cetera, et cetera. But we don’t have to do that.

Dada was responding to this sadhu who came to his house to bring us to the Mela. And Dada thought that this other was the guru, but he wasn’t, he was just one of the chelas. And he was a total asshole. This guy was really disgusting and all full of himself and preening and walking in like, “I’m such a great, you know, I’m so great and you people are nothing.”

So, Dada just went “Whoa.” And that’s when he grabbed me and took me into Maharajji’s room. And you don’t have to shine. It’s okay not to shine. Just be yourself. And don’t spend all your time trying to shine yourself up. You know? Spend your time cultivating good qualities. Not just shining up the ourside. That’s basically what it’s about, you know. Be compassionate and kind and think about other people instead of thinking about ourselves all the time, which is what we do.

Thank you so much, sir.

Yeah. You’re welcome.

Q: Hi. I just wanted to thank you. I’ve been so enjoying all of these weeks, the chanting and your speaking and how you respond to everybody with so much heart, and I don’t know why, I’m feeling sad today. When I, I think I told you last week, how I gave away all of my Buddhist stuff, when I thought I had broken my vows. So, I started to look through old boxes from my childhood, because I was so young when I took refuge, and I started to find so many pictures of my teacher.

Beautiful. I never met him. I really regret that. Yeah. One of Maharajji’s devotees, Annapurna, who was with us in India, she was with Dudjom Rinpoche, and she kept telling me about them, but I was too stupid to listen.

Well, I mean, I’ve met many, many, Rinpoches throughout my life, but he’s definitely my root guru. So yeah, I’m looking at this and I’m remembering like, oh, we did a two week retreat with him, you know, and I remember, and so memories have been coming back of that. Like there was definitely a heart connection, but it’s, I don’t want to say it’s different when you’re a child, but it’s something about being a little girl, and he loves to have, all of them love to have children and animals around them. And you know, I think I told you, I’ve always had, it’s not a snobism I just haven’t felt close to sanghas in general. I’ve just kind of felt, and for whatever reason, my karma has always been that the Rinpoches or Lamas have been like, “You come with us.”

I wouldn’t complain.

No, it’s been wonderful and it’s, it’s all happened. My dad says it’s tendrel. You know, it’s just, yeah. And I’m feeling sad today just because I know Tulku Thondup is upstairs and he’s fine. He’s totally happy.

Yeah. Yeah. They’re fine. We’re not. What are you going to do?

So yeah, there is a saying, someone said this to me once, and it’s something I’ve been repeating a lot lately, that the lesson of betrayal, is trust. So, the kind of pain that you feel is kind of like, the way you betrayed yourself, your deeper self, and got rid of all that stuff and denied this and denied that, and really hurt yourself that way, and now you recognize that and, and that’s that pain, but that also leads us, gives us our self back. It doesn’t mean we don’t hurt because we do. That’s what we do as human beings. But we also get ourselves back that way.

Yeah. Oh, I’m thinking of when I moved in here five years ago, when he, when I happened to just, you know, meet him on the street and he said, you know, “Move in.”

And so, I did, directly below him. His apartment is upstairs. It’s like a temple. It is a temple. I mean, every wall is covered with Thangkas. And he came down and he, he blessed every wall of my place with his phurba. And my dog has some Buddhist connection, some connection. He goes into trance whenever, whenever Tulku Thundop does mantra, my dog just goes completely… So, he said, “You can bring your dog on retreat.” This was when he was in better shape. So, I brought my dog on retreat and everyone says, “Oh, no.”  Sanghas can be such jerks. But anyways, you know, they were like, “What are you doing with this dog? What’s your connection to Tulku Thundop?”

And I’m like, “I don’t know. He invited me and told me to bring the dog.”

Don’t you love that? Yeah.

I’m not great at sitting still. My dog is just like… for six hours. Totally.

I remember, you know, some years ago there was this guy in the temple who had a position of some kind of, in the temple, you know, helping out. And he was just vicious to the Westerners. He was such a miserable shit. It was hard to believe the things he would say to us. You know, so one day myself, Arjun and Archit, we were in the kitchen with Ma in the back of the temple, just hanging out, and this guy walks in and he’s standing behind us. And then I was just, we’re just talking with Ma, and then I noticed in the corner of the room, there was a chapati making machine.. They have a machine that makes chapatis. It kneads the dough. And I looked and I laughed out loud, you know?

And Ma said, “Krishna Das? What were you laughing at?”

I said, “Ma, look. it’s the machine, you know?”

And then she looks at me and she said, “Yes, Krishna Das. These days, no one comes to do seva the way they used to in the old days,” you know? And then she turned to this guy, this was the greatest moment, she turns to this guy, and she said, “You will never see the things that Krishna Das has seen.”

Yes! Boom. In your face. It was a great moment for me because this guy was so miserable. I mean, the things he did were so horrible. You have no idea.

There’s a lot of strange scenes. I mean, I’ve been in this since I was six, so I’ve seen a lot of strange stuff and yeah.

Yeah, it brings out, you know, it’s like an organization just immediately brings out the worst part of everybody. People grasping for power and importance.

I mean yeah, they’re jockeying for where they’re going to sit and “you’re on my place and that’s my, and move over. That’s my spot.” It’s funny.  

It’s great though. Isn’t it? Seeing how stupid we all are? We’re just the same.

I have my own ego, I realized. I’m used to be like, “I’m with them.” You know? “I’m with the band,” you know?

So, the Lama I was trying to, I found all these photographs from my childhood of all these different Lamas and Kalu Rinpoche and, you know, everybody that I took refuge with and took vows with. I’m like, “Oh my God.” I stopped doing my ngondro when this whole thing happened. Tulku Thondup said to take it easy, just take it easy. And at 30, when I had the abortion and I went into deep mourning, basically, I was also at the height of my external power as a studio executive in Hollywood, and I gave it all up and I, I moved to New York and I got a degree as a, as a social worker, and I knew I wanted to work with children. I just love children. They’re just, and what I’ve been doing for 15 years, and Tulku says, this is my work. And I’m so grateful for when you talked about service, like, what keeps me alive and when I feel totally happy and in my highest purpose, something other comes out of me. I work mostly with extreme sexual abuse cases in foster care. So, kids who’ve been raped by their father from zero to five and left on Harlem hospital steps. You know, just really like, severe, severe trauma, multiple personality disorders from trauma, and yesterday I was working with a girl that I just love. I’ve had these same kids for four years, which in a kid’s life is a lot of time, like seeing them go seventh grade to now she’s in high school. She got raped freshman year of high school. She’s black. Before that she had been raped in Haiti with her mother. And anyways, I’m going to ask Tulku Thundop after this, I’m going to call him. But the chief of psychiatry called me, and she said, “I was looking at your notes and they say ‘severe trauma and suicidal ideation.” I said, “Well, wouldn’t you?”

I mean, she, you know, she’s been raped twice. She’s straight A’s. She also brilliant, straight A student. Her mother’s Haitian and doesn’t believe in therapy. I speak French to her. I speak like five languages. I speak to her in French. So, she finally said, “You love my daughter. I see that you love my daughter. And so, I’ll let you, she can only talk to you. She can’t talk to anyone else.”

That’s their cultural thing. So, I’m holding all these secrets. So, then her best friend killed herself. She got the diary of her best friend. It turns out the father was raping the best friend. Then her other best friend in, she went to go visit her father in New Hampshire. She wrote to me, “Something, I think terrible has happened.” But she always thinks something terrible has happened. I said, “No, I’m sure it’s fine.”

“I haven’t heard from her in two days. I just know. I think she was killed.”

And I said, “No, she wasn’t killed. She’s fine. It’s New Hampshire. She’s probably out playing by the lake.”

Turns out she was killed. She was killed by this older man and drowned in the lake. She has six personalities. Luckily none of them are very mean to her. So, they have different nationalities. Two are dating. And I said, “Are they parts of yourself?” I don’t want to give her the schizophrenia diagnosis because I just don’t want that on her. I don’t like pathologizing people. So, the psychiatrist said, “Why haven’t you given her schizophrenia? And why haven’t you sent her to the hospital?”

I said, “Well, Harvard, Yale, everybody wants her. She’s a straight A student. This is that’s her thing. She’s doing well in school.”

And they said, “Well, your record is on the line. You know, if she dies, it’s, you know, you’re going to be sued and lose your license.”

And I was like, “What do you want me to do?”

They were like, “We want you to report to the police that you have a rape investigation.”

I said, “She doesn’t want to report. And that will cause more trauma.”

So, I think I’m going to leave my job. I mean, I just, I wrote, I talked to her afterwards, and I said, listen, “My  job is saying that I know we’ve been keeping this secret, and I think it’s for the best. I don’t think you have to announce to everyone that you were raped and have everyone on your high school know you were raped. I do think that will cause more trauma. I think you’re right. But my job is pressuring me. We need to come… They want you to come forward or they’re going to report, or they’re going to send you to the hospital. I don’t want that to happen.”

And then she wrote me this beautiful two-page letter about, you know, my mother would, basically I’d be an outcast for the rest of my life. And so, I wrote back to her, “Okay, I’ll keep your secret. I’m going to leave my job.”

I wouldn’t have told her that you’re going to lose your job, because if something happens then she’ll have more guilt, which she doesn’t need.

No, no, I’ll take her into my private practice. Like we can, you know, we can, we can work this out another way. I’m not going to betray you. Tulku, every time I have a hard case when something’s really, because these are all hard cases, I go to him and I ask him and he says, “Well, you know, you’re, it’s true. You’re not a great practitioner, but this is your practice. This is your service.”

Yeah. Ask him for blessings for these girls. Only blessings can deal with the karmic realities.

Yeah. A lot of suffering.

Okay. Nice to see you. Take care.

Q: Hello. Hi. Again, I don’t have a question. I just have something that I felt compelled to say, and…

How many pull ups can you do?

Now?  Seven. Before? Many more. You should see my kids. Yeah, I have a situation that is, it’s a challenge for me. My co-parent, who’s not in the same country as me, he’s from Ethiopia and his family is in a region in Ethiopia where the government, the national government has declared war on this region, essentially. And for about six weeks, they cut off the region from telephone, power, electricity banks, everything was shut. There was no way to really find out anything. He’s got, his parents are there and about seven of his brothers and sisters. He has one brother in Sweden and one sister in another part of Ethiopia.

So, for about six weeks, he had no news of his family, and finally, he’s just gotten a hold of them. They opened up the phone lines and everybody’s alive and they’re relatively okay. And I’ve found that I think the kind of scale, that what he’s going through is something that is, I’ve not experienced personally in my life with somebody who’s such a close person to me in this way, in the moment.  I have friends that have come from war torn places, but I haven’t gone through something with them. And I have tried my best to, you know, just be present for him and available to him and just be there in whatever way that he needs and not try to impose, you know, what I think is good for him. And I feel like inside, like it’s so, I feel like I’m just so helpless. I’ve also tried to do things like write letters and, you know, actions that might be effective in some way. But I feel, I feel really, really helpless, and I think the only thing I can see right now is that. Just the scale of the suffering and the pain, not just for him, but you know, for everyone that’s going through that, and when I just, all I can feel my frustration is coming through. I can only think that I just have to feel this and it really just hurts. And I just don’t know if you have any other thoughts.

You can only do what you can do, and you can only feel what you feel. There’s no where to go to change it. You have to let people be who they are and do what they have to do. You can’t live someone else’s life for them. And you can’t make everything in the world right. Nobody can. And we may feel certain ways about things, but there’s nothing we can do about that. So, we just have to drop it. You feel what you feel, but you also, we’re not, you know, we can’t even, we can’t even take care of ourselves. What are we going to do about other people? So, you just wish them well.

This is a good time to do a Metta practice for yourself, for your partner, and for the world. That’s what it’s about. That’s why those practices are here. You know, all the great beings, they know all this, they feel all this themselves because they’ve become the body of the universe and we are the cells in their body. So, they feel everything that every one of those cells feels, but they are not destroyed by it, because they are the whole body and they have a pain in their knee, but they don’t identify with it. They’re beyond being caught by the egoistic delusion of being separate. We are not beyond that, but inside of that delusion of separateness, we can transform our emotions into wishing the best for everybody, which is a recognition that we can’t change other people. We can’t even make somebody else feel good, but we can wish that they do. We can wish that they don’t suffer. We can offer them the friendship of our hearts. And we can offer ourselves that too, because it’s only the thickness of this emotional flow that is causing us suffering. We don’t have to suffer that way. There are ways there are ways to suffer that is good and useful for us and other people, because the suffering encourages us to expand our hearts and not close down.

So, whatever’s going to happen is going to happen. What’s not going to happen is not going to happen, regardless of how you and I feel about it. So, as Ramana Maharshi said, “the best thing is to remain in silence, which is our true nature.” “Peace of mind,” as the Rinpoche said.

Regardless of what happens, that’s where we’re headed. That’s what this is all about. So, the more we get with the program, the more our suffering will serve the greater good and not destroy us.

We take ourselves so seriously, all our emotions. It’s so important how I feel. It isn’t actually, but we think it is, so we get right into it, you know? Okay? But it’s very difficult. We’re human beings. So, we have to deal with that. All the coverings that we have, all the emotional shapes and colors and emotions and stuff that we are carrying around. But a practice Metta practice is so beneficial for all of that, all of that, just connect with the feeling of wishing yourself and others well. Just wish them well. You can’t make them well. It’s not our job to make them well, but it’s in our own best interests and theirs to wish them well. Do we really want them to suffer? No. So, I wish I wish you well.

I heard you say the other day, and something that I’ve heard you say a couple of times about the Dalai Lama, when someone asked him if he was happy and that really resonated with me.  I’m so far from that, but..

No, you’re just close, a breath away, that’s all.  You’re not far from that at all. It’s right here. It’s your true nature. It’s not somewhere else. It’s not in somebody else. It’s right now. Are you going to let this situation destroy your peace of mind and your essential goodness? Feeling of goodness? And if the answer is yes, well, okay. If it’s no, then motivate yourself to deal with it in the best way you can.

So that’s the deal, you know. In order to get out into the ocean, we have to go through the waves, and there’s only one way to go through the waves, which is right through the waves. You know, if I could, I’d get a helicopter to drop me out into the ocean, but those helicopters aren’t available on this world. We have to go right through the waves and those waves are our own stuff. So, just like we started this whole afternoon, we’re getting wet, but that can’t be avoided. But are we creating more waves? The best way not to create, to calm the waves is, like the Metta practice or the repetition of the name, or whatever works for you. But whatever it is, if you don’t do it, you don’t do it.

I do. I’ve been doing Metta a little bit every day for probably a year. It’s a little bit of what I do, but it’s actually interesting that you said that because I hadn’t even done it with a situation, you know.

We tend to do our practices, like as if, we tend to rush through them and feel good that we’re just doing them, you know, and not really being there very much. So those are the moments when you’re shown how much you’re not there. So now do the practice and you’ll be there because you need to be, because you’re suffering. When we’re not suffering too much, it’s like, “Okay, Sri Ram Jai Ram. That’s nice. I did a whole mala. This is fantastic.”

But we didn’t even connect. We weren’t there for a second. Not that it’s not useful. It is useful and it’s planting seeds, but so much more of ourselves is available or could be available to bring to the practice. And that’s part of our situations, that we’re not here and we’re not there. We’re nowhere, even when we do practice. But it is from practice that more practice, that deeper opening happens. So, like Maharajji said, “Sing, repeat the name whether you’re happy or sad or angry or tired.” If you don’t… Repeat the name without any devotional feeling or anything. Do it with no devotion, but do it.  Otherwise we don’t plant the seeds that we need to plant.

Thank you.

And one thing. So, for the other people who are not an immediate question, you know, where are your heads? Where are your hearts? You know? Are you present with what’s going on? Are you judging? Are you avoiding? Are you checking your mail? Are you with the suffering here or do you think that your, you know, it doesn’t really apply to you?

This is an opportunity to be present with someone who’s going through something in their lives and to be included in the family of the world, the people in the world, to feel a part. Everything that everyone says in these gatherings is coming from inside of each one of us. All of us suffer. All of us will go through horrific things in our lives. All of us will lose our loved ones. All of us will find new loved ones. All of us will have to get up every day and deal with what arises. So, during this period of a couple of hours every other week, be here. Overcome your own judgmental mind about what you like and what you don’t like about what you hear, and open your hearts and extend that opening to whatever everyone is going through here. It’s a good opportunity to see yourself and to see what makes you uncomfortable and judgmental and to see what makes you cry, to see what causes emotional this or emotional that, and still try to be here with it all and with everyone. Everybody here is a part of humanity and we are all one family. We share the same blood, as Maharajji said. Try to be here with it all, if you can. It’s good practice. And by judging others, we’re judging ourselves very harshly.

End of lecture. Next victim.

Q: Thank you, KD. You offered that amazing meditation at the beginning, and in that moment, I believe I heard that, in the space there are no emotions and it’s free and it’s infinite, and I love the invitation to the sky and all of that. But when you shared about your key months in India, I started to feel tremendous, like almost burning. And I do know, you know, the images and statues of Hanuman, but it was almost unbearable because the suffering, which you might have experienced then, has traveled through the space or something was like terrible grief, despair, sadness for a few minutes. But almost every time you share about your suffering, I start to gently tear up.  It’s not a problem, but emotions are in the space sometimes. There is a lot in this space. I went to Maharajji’s ashram in Kainchi and in Vrindavan,  and I felt his presence, and I actually point out and I said, what happened to the ceiling? And they told me, oh, we changed it. And I almost felt like, his mudra. So, when you said there are no emotions in the space and I feel something like that, can you talk a little about the, you know, love in the room and, you know suffering in the room? And I wrote a very short poem and yes and I hear you, I hear everything. But to integrate it takes time. And I did Metta Meditations since the day it was suggested. I was okay for two weeks. And then, a couple of days ago, I just sobbed in “may I feel safe.” I never felt safe with my family, and I still don’t. “May I be healthy.” I never felt healthy around the family. So sometimes Metta meditation is not just calming. But I know the time is running. So, I will be listening.

I never said there’s no emotions. Clouds go through the sky. But if our awareness is on the vastness of the sky, then the clouds don’t affect us the same way.

If my awareness is listening to you sharing about the suffering, I sometimes feel the suffering. I feel the emotion. I feel the bhavana because it was very, very difficult. And it’s still karmically, it’s hard for you, I feel. I know this sounds so arrogant, but I speak to you from my heart. It’s not even easy to talk about that. And I felt it. So, is that ego? I mean, it, to me, I don’t know, but maybe I shouldn’t even worry. You know? I mean, from worrying about where I put my books, now, it’s, you know, but I feel this and not just because of you. I feel that, you know, emotions of some people. You know, the whole universe is suffering, but I don’t make it my own. But it’s still happening very vividly and very physically. So, what is that?

Well, its okay. I won’t worry about my emotions. I’ll let you worry about them.

So sweet. May I take another couple of minutes to share the poem? it links to something you said. I have to read it. I don’t remember the poems I wrote years ago, but it’s called “I.”

“Once I could see if myself as I am that. I am here. Once I believed that love is to call someone dear. Once I could not accept that fullness and void are the same. And I kept asking, how come consciousness did not  get affected by playing the game? Once your touch, your look, and your words felt like a bridge. Once I thought that in order to get enlightened, one must cross, connect, or reach. I was unable to see that love joy and bliss dwells in the infinity of hearts. And I used to look at you breathlessly, admiring you as a marble statue, not realizing that my mind was shrinking the whole into different parts. I was afraid of the concept that real itself, it’s real. It’s unreal. But one day I finally saw Brahma sitting in your eye. He waved at me and accepted, and I accepted his invitation to enjoy the effect without a cause. And I might even start to laugh at the paradox that all my complex questions have such a simple answer: ‘I.’“

Thank you for being wonderful guy. Please do not go into silence. We need you.  Love you all guys. Have a happy holiday.

You know what, since we’re talking a lot about karma today, I’m just going to read you, this is from a wonderful Rinpoche called Lama Zulfa Rinpoche.

“People say, ‘It’s my karma,” as if there is nothing they can do about it. Whatever comes along, they have to experience it. This is very depressing because it would mean that there is no method at all to escape from suffering. It would mean that if we planted a seed, whether it died or grew strong and tall would be determined by this unchanging karma, regardless of whether we tended it or not, watering it, feeding it, taking care of it. But that is clearly not so. We do have an influence on the seeds we plant. In the same way, like external seeds, where the strongest will grow the fastest and biggest, our karma works in the same way, and like external seeds where and how we tend them, makes a huge difference in the outcome. How we tend our karma can determine which ripens and which doesn’t, and like weeding, we can purify the negative imprints on our mental continuum.”

That’s interesting. We can purify the negative imprints of our own seeds on our mental continuum.

“Perhaps at present, the negative imprints overwhelm the positive one and we are destined for rebirth in a lower suffering realm, but that is not preordained. By purifying and by accumulating merit, we can reverse that. Definitely. We have the free will to determine our next birth.”

But that’s a very powerful statement, and it should help us understand a little bit of what karma is about in a very simple, very powerful way. Karma, the laws of karma, of cause and effect are actually the blueprint for freeing us from suffering. They just simply explain the way things work, and once you know how things work, there’s an antidote to things. You can change the way things manifest by our, we can change the way by our actions. So, it’s a very powerful statement, and I think it’s very simple and very beautiful. And whether you believe in rebirth or not, it can certainly change the way we get reborn every day when we wake up. So that’s not one of the things we need to worry about. It can change the way of how we go through our days and how our life manifests to us and in us.

So, yeah, that’s great.

Okay. So good to hang out with you all again. And please take good care of yourself. Be safe and see you soon. Namaste.

The post Call and Response Special Edition Conversations with KD December 19 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 66 |Find Out Who You Are

Q: I started thinking, I don’t have a Guru in form, maybe I’m not doing something right. What if the practices won’t be as beneficial because I don’t have a Guru?

“What you’re looking for is your Self. Your true Self. Rama, Krishna, Radha, Sita, these are the Names of that Place inside of you. There’s no reason to manufacture anything or visualize anything other than to be present and the Name itself will reveal your deeper places as you go deeper into the repetition of the Name, as your thoughts allow you to.” – Krishna Das

Q: Hello.

KD: Hi.

Q: Hi. Thank you so much.

KD: Ok.

Q: My question, I’m Katie, and I starred in a movie called…

KD: You’re who?

Q: Katie.

KD: That’s me.

Q: I know, right?

KD: Are we one?

Q: I think that’s were supposed to be right, maybe?

KD: No, you blew it. We’re not one.

Q: Crap.

KD: Ok.

Q: I always do that.

KD: You didn’t really blow it because we really are one.

Q: Ok, so my question is twofold, the first part is, yesterday you talked about the practices opening your heart and really, you do this, paraphrasing, “to love the world so that you can really…”

KD: Did I say that?

Q: Maybe not exactly but in a way.

KD: Oh yeah, ok.

Q: So you can give this love to Maharajji and I was like, at first I was going along with it and then when you said, “To give it to Maharajji,” I was like, I was like, “Oh, he’s not just loving to like, love me, he’s doing it for something greater.” So, I got caught up in that. And so, then I started thinking, I don’t have a Guru in form, maybe I’m not doing something right. What if the practices won’t be as beneficial because I don’t have a Guru? So that’s part one.

KD: That’s part one? That looked like part 10.   Somebody else remember this? Did you write this down? We’ll go back and start at the beginning, ok?  Why don’t we just, can we deal with one?

Q: yeah.

KD: Because one’s like, huge.

Q: Ok.

KD: And tomorrow come back for number two.  Or next year or whatever. What was, ok, start at the beginning. So, ok, so you misquoted me five times in the first five things you said, which was very nice of you, thank you.

Q: Paraphrased, sorry. Not direct quote.

KD: Well, ok, you paraphrased somebody else because I never said that shit.

Q: Ok. Something about the practices, you wanted to open your heart, right? Or learn to love the world?

KD: Well, ok.

Q: And to give that, and you do this so you can give your love to Maharajji.

KD: No.

Q: Ok.

KD: That’s where we go wrong.

Q: Ok.

KD: It’s a misunderstanding. And because, first of all, ok, hm.  Jesus. What I was talking about, why I sing, I sing to enter more deeply into the Presence of Love. Ok?  For me, I call that “Maharajji.” You don’t have to call that “Maharajji.” But that’s how I got the hit, right? So, for me, He is that love that’s everywhere all the time. It’s not a guy. You know? Not some dude with a blanket. So, but I know that if I say it that way, it’s easily taken just the way you took it, you know, and I kind of apologize for that because I didn’t mean to say that you have to love Him that way, otherwise you know, you’re not going to make it. It’s not like that at all. These great Beings, Rama and Sita, Radha Krishna, Hanuman, these great Beings are manifestations of the love that is who we are also and that who everybody is. And the love in which the universe floats, so to speak. So, when I chant, I’m trying to, by doing the practice just the way I described it to you, when I notice I’m not paying attention, I come back, try to give myself fully to the practice as much as I can, I’m moving more deeply into that open space of love which is everywhere and everybody. Everybody’s inside of that. But we’re identified with the little meat puppet, right? And everybody thinks everybody thinks you are who you think you are. So there’s a few hundred meat puppets in here all thinking they’re different. But underneath that thought of difference, everybody’s exactly the same inside. And everybody is that love inside. That’s what they say. So, that’s what I meant. Ok? So, now, part B of part 1.

Q: Ok, so part B of part 1.

KD: Yeah. Ok.

Q: Or do you want to know part 2?

KD: Whatever…  whatever makes you happy.

Q: Ok, so part 2…

KD: If it makes you happy…

Q: I’ll move on. I think you answered my part B of part 1 within your answer. So, thank you.

KD: Thank you. You’re welcome.

Q: So, part 2 is, when I’m chanting, you said that, I love the simplicity of just bringing it back to singing and bringing it back to the present moment. I don’t find myself getting lost so much in thoughts about what to do or what’s coming next but more about manufacturing an experience of “I’m chanting and I need to be visualizing Krishna or Rama or I need to, I’m not doing it right if I don’t have all of this and I have a real hard time with just trusting that just chanting is enough.  How do you…

KD: Ok, but when you look in the mirror, do you think that you are your elbow?

Q: No.

KD: How about your shoulder?

Q: No.

KD: How about your knee?

Q: No.

KD: How about any other part of you?

Q: No.

KD: Then you think that’s Rama?

Q: No.

KD: Then why would you want to visualize something that isn’t what you’re really looking for?

Q: Yeah.

KD: Ok? What you’re looking for is your Self. Your true Self. Rama, Krishna, Radha, Sita, these are the Names of that Place inside of you. There’s no reason to manufacture anything or visualize anything other than to be present and the Name itself will reveal your deeper places as you go deeper into the repetition of the Name, as your thoughts allow you to. So, let’s forget the content of your thoughts and your fears. You didn’t notice that you weren’t paying attention. You thought you were thinking about something worth thinking about. That’s what we all think. We all think everything we think is worth thinking about or we wouldn’t be thinking about it. Which is not actually very interesting. So, now on the other hand, these are called murtis in India. They’re not statues. A statue is a slab of clay or marble or stone. These are maybe made out of one of those things but there’s been a ceremony done with these things.  Yeah, I know what it’s called, my Lord. Thank you. Thank you. Your kind servant here is telling you to… So, there’s a ceremony been done called “Pran Pratishta.” Does that make any sense to you, Pran Pratishta?  That’s why I didn’t say it. Because it doesn’t. And that ceremony brings life, they say, brings life, the one who does the ceremony connects with a deeper place and then that is transmitted into these statues and it makes them murtis. It gives them a magnetism and that even though we think we’re looking outside of something, it’s actually a reflection of our true nature. And in India, these are the forms of God. You don’t see these forms on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that often. Every once in a while at certain times of the night you can find it. But in India, this is one of the ways that they remind themselves that God exists. It may not work for you. That’s ok. And it may not work for Westerners. I lived in India for large parts of the last 49 years and if you asked me, “Do I really believe that Krishna and Radha are standing there,” I can’t say I do. I’m sorry. I have to be honest. Do I think that it’s not possible? Oh, no, I think it’s possible. I just think that I don’t see things clearly enough. But that’s ok. I just want to find out who I am first and then everything else will fall into place. That’s what I believe. If you don’t believe that, that’s ok. But I wouldn’t torture myself unless you particularly enjoy that.

Q: No. I’m good on that.

KD: Good, so then let it go.

Q: I know. It’s exhausting. Thank you.

KD: But it’s, you know, and that’s why, for Westerners, you know, one time these friends of mine, they were doing a teacher training for their yoga students and they had pictures of all the deities on the wall, you know and they had asked me to come and sing with the students. So, I was waiting there in the room with them and one of them got up and said, “You see these pictures? If you don’t know the story of all those pictures, you’ll never be a yoga teacher.” I wanted to kill myself. I could not fucking believe… sorry, believe that anybody would say that to anybody. You know? Can we just deal with what’s happening? It’s hard enough. What the shit we get into going through the day, can we deal with that, whether these Beings are alive and more real than we are, how would we know?  We don’t even know who we are. So, let’s everybody deal with life the way you feel you have to deal with it. Some people love to come here and worship the deities. That’s fine. That’s fine. You know, sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. You do whatever you do. Do it the way you want to do it. Don’t think that you have to do it any particular way. Really. And anybody who tells you that you have to do it their way. If you don’t run as fast as you can, you’re doing the wrong thing. Because somebody’s trying to sell you something that you don’t need. If you needed it, you would know. You would accept it. But when you feel manipulated or pushed around or told “you just don’t understand, you’re a stupid westerner, you don’t get it.” You know, get out of there. My Guru never, you know, He was, it was a Hanuman temple. There was a Shiva, a Lingham, there was Lakshmi Narayan temple, Hanuman and then a Durga Temple. He never once made us do anything there if we didn’t want to. It was not, you know, it wasn’t, He never, He loved us as we are. You’re thinking, “I have to do it this way. I’ll never make it unless I do this.” That’s called, “a thought.” Let it go. Ok. Which part of what question was that?

Q: That was the final one.

KD: Praise the Lord. Which is part of a whole other thing we could talk about, too. There I was sitting with this wonderful little Indian man with a blanket, you know? And He starts talking to us about Jesus. In the Himalayas.  I was wearing a red dress, walking barefoot stepping in cow poop and He’s talking to me about Jesus? You know, so, ok, this is funny… so I used to tell, before the song we sang last night, “Jesus on the Mainline,” I used to tell this long story before I sang it, right? About, Yeah, I was in the mountains in India and we were traveling around and we heard about this ancient temple that was in this hidden village way up in the hills and no Westerner had ever been to this place, so we found some people who knew where it was and they guided us to this village and we got to the village at night and the people were really cool, they were very nice to us, they fed us, gave us a place to sleep and in the morning, they took us to this really ancient temple. And so we walk into the temple, they open the doors to the temple and this beautiful murti, beautiful murti of a male deity and in one He has His hand out in this, the abhaya mudra, don’t be afraid, no fear, everything’s cool. And in the other, He was holding a phone.” So, I said to my guide, I said, “Excuse me, is that a phone?” “Oh, yes, that is telephone. Very good.” And I said, “Well, what’s the deal?” He said, “Oh, this deity is very compassionate, you see. Always waiting for your call.” And I said, “But isn’t the temple thousands of years old?” “Ha, temple is thousands of years old.” No explanation whatsoever. And so then, they started their morning prayers, right? And there was the most amazing mantras I have ever heard in my life, you know? So, I spent a couple of weeks in the village and they taught me those mantras and then I’m going to sing it for you now.  Then I go into “Jesus on the Mainline.” So, one time, a Tibetan Lama, a very beautiful young Tibetan Lama came with some of his students to sing with me, right? I knew Him from before and I said, “Rinpoche, what are you doing here?” He said, “Oh, we came to hear you sing.” I said, “ok.” So they came, they sat like in the second row, you know. Jesus, what am I going to do now. So, when I sang, He was just, He was like this, right? And then when I was telling jokes He was laughing and everything. So, that was about fourteen years ago. So, two years ago, maybe more, 15  years ago. Two years ago, I was at a week long retreat with that Lama, who was teaching that retreat. And I got invited to dinner with Him and some of His students, right? And during the dinner, He looked at me and He said, “You know that story you tell about the murti with the telephone.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Is that true?” I said, “No, Rinpoche. It’s not true. But I tell that story because, because we’re so screwed up about Christianity and Jesus in this country, in this world, that we’ve just totally lost it, you know? And I like to loosen up the whole thing. It wasn’t until I got to India that I really, honestly felt what and who Christ really is, you know? Because I was meeting people who were saying the same, teaching the same things and manifesting the same love and it was blowing my mind. So, I had to kind of, what do you call it, rewrite my history.  I had to go back and revise my feelings because, you know, I remembered when all my Catholic friends came back, they took a day off in the morning, off one day, to go to… and they came back and they wouldn’t talk to me. So, at like, the end of the day, I said, “Hey, what’s wrong with you guys?” “You killed Jesus.” I don’t remember killing anybody. So that was it for Christianity, you know? So, anyway. That’s why, I don’t know how we got there, so the idea was that, I think, really, I think all of us, everybody from, everybody in the West, there’s something in our hearts about that issue. About who Jesus was. Jesus didn’t start Christianity. Did He? It was like a Jewish guy 100 years later, fell down and hit his head and all of sudden: Christianity. His name was Saul. And they called him Paul. They didn’t know how to write an “S.” And from that, the whole thing comes. You know? Jesus did not start a religion as far as I know. I could be wrong. But I don’t think so. You know what the greatest line in rock and roll is, by the way? Van Morrison. I just, he wrote this song called “Ballerina,” and the line, “Well, I may be wrong but something deep down in my heart tells me that I’m right, that I don’t think so.” Great line. Anyway. I don’t think I’m wrong about that. Especially after being with these incredible Saints in India manifesting that kind of love and caring for people that is Christlike.  You know? It really changed the way I feel about it and so when I force people to sing that, I think it’s a good thing. All right, who has the mic?

Q: Ram Ram.

KD: Yeah, same to you.

Q: My name is Will and I was just wondering, I had an experience in India with Siddhi Ma. I felt very graced to be with Her before She left Her body and Siddhi Ma is a Saint in India and I was just wondering if you would be willing to unpack some memories from your time with Her and just share a quick story or something about Her.

KD: Siddhi Ma was one of Maharajji’s great great great devotees. She was really a great Saint in Her own right and She took care of all of us for 30, more than 30 years after Maharajji left the body, more than 40 years after Maharajji left the body. She was my Ma. She was my Mother. She saved my ass so many times, you have no idea. One time I said to Her, “Ma, should I meditate?” And She said, “Krishna Das, in 40 years with Maharajji, not once did He ask me to meditate.” She said, “What do you like to do, meditate or chant?” Duh. It never occurred to me that doing something I liked could be good for me. You know? Don’t like down… that’s where I grew up, you know? If you like it, it ain’t good for you. So that was mind blowing.  Then She said, you know, and here was a really interesting thing. It’s a kind of a deep thing but I’ll share it with you. She said, “The higher states of consciousness,” which is supposedly what we’re looking for, “Can not be created or can not be precipitated by personal will.” So, think about that. You, we can’t make it happen. The higher states of consciousness. She said, She said Maharajji said that. And He said, “When one is ready, they come naturally.” And how does one ready one’s self? Loving everyone.  Feeding everyone. And remembering God. Serving. Love, serve, remember. That’s what He used to say. Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems counter intuitive that thinking about others was going to be good for me, but it turns out that that’s the way it is. Very strange. Because once again, like we started, we’re so stuck in our stories about ourselves. And we think about ourselves all day long. All life long. It’s ridiculous. And we never really pay attention to other people. And we don’t treat others very well for the most part. We treat others as they’re something that’s supposed to make us happy. And if they’re not doing that, to hell with them. So, that guy I just spoke about, He had some good ideas, you know? And one of them was, “Do unto others as you would have them…” If we could treat other people the way we, ourselves, want to be treated and do nothing else but that, our whole lives would change in an instant. Think about all the ways you turn people off all day long and look away from people and judge people and hurt people. Just because. That’s what we do. But you think it’s easy to treat people the way you want to be treated? Try. It’s not easy. That’s what practice is for. To help us. Give us the strength to treat other people the way we want to be treated. And then our lives change because it’s not all about “me” all the time. The burden of “me” is such a heavy goddamned thing to be carrying around. It lightens up. We don’t sit at home grinding it out. “What am I going to do? How am I going to get happy? What am I going to do? I’ll take more of this. I’ll take less of that. I’ll get more cable.” I don’t, I don’t, you know, 300 channels is not enough for me. You know, it’s what we do all life long. Trying to squeeze water from a stone. Happiness, real happiness doesn’t come from stuff. It’s never going to come from stuff. I’m sorry. I wish it did. Then I would have been happy a long time ago. But happiness, real love doesn’t come from stuff. It’s who we are. And when we start, when we start looking around, we see that even the people we don’t like, the people who have hurt us, they were acting out of their own pain. Even if we happen to be the recipient of something pretty nasty, still, they were acting out of their own pain. There was nothing they could do to not do that shit to us. You know, so remember when George W. was President? We thought that was bad. I’m sorry. No politics. So, I was watching television, going through the channels, I was going by CNN and they were showing the President, George W. Bush walking down the hall of this school down in Florida where in a room down the hall, a group of the first widows from the Iraq war were waiting to meet the President. There were like 20 women in there. And the cameras are following the President and he’s walking down the hall, “Hey Bob. Hi Joe. I’m the President. Yup. I’m walking down the Hall. Here I go. Hey, Jim.” Walking down the hall. Walking down the hall. I was just about to turn the channel and he goes into the room, he opens the door to the room where these women are waiting. He takes two steps into the room and he bursts out crying like a baby. I couldn’t believe it. He was crying like a baby. Weeping uncontrollably. I was really pissed. I couldn’t hate him anymore. Really. Look at this poor guy. His own actions, there he is, the President, but he’s the pawn of many different interests. He doesn’t have freedom with what he does. He has to make all kinds of deals. By the time you get to the President, you’ve made so many deals you can barely go to the bathroom by yourself. This guy has caused so much suffering for other people. He’s going to have to pay for that. And I have to tell you the truth, when I saw him crying, I didn’t want him to have to pay for that, but there was nothing I could do. His own actions, the karmas he created will come to fruition and he will have to pay for that. That did not make me happy. Before I saw him cry, it made me happy. Sorry. But after that, I saw, “Oh, shit he’s a human being.” And he couldn’t help himself, either. That’s the thing that got me. He could not help himself but do the things he did. He had no vote. Ok. How much vote do we have in our day? How much of a vote do we have as to how we go through the day? As to how we meet people? As to how we greet people? As to how we treat people? How much of a vote do we have, actually? Not much. The whole idea is to get a vote. I haven’t even registered to vote. We’ve got to get a vote. Otherwise we’re just unconscious slaves of our own karma and we get no vote and we keep creating more suffering for ourselves and the people that we say we love, and the people we say we don’t want to see suffer. We’re creating suffering for them, too. That’s why we repeat the Name. We don’t even know what the Names mean. It doesn’t matter. These names have been given to us as a way to find out who we really are, as a way to become a good human being in this world in these days when it’s not so easy. There are other practices, of course, and they all work the same way. Sooner or later, they’re all about calming our asses down, learning, allowing us to be here more, not to be so reactive to our thoughts and our stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves that we don’t like. That’s why we do practice. So we can learn to breathe in this world.

The whole spiritual path is learning to trust your own self, your own heart. If you don’t trust yourself, what are you going to do? When you fall in love, you don’t doubt that. Ah, yeah. You trust that. You also trust when you fall out of it. We’re training ourselves to fall in love with who we really are, which is the same as who everybody really is. So, we fall in love with the whole universe. Everybody’s invited to the party.

We’re very easily fooled because we’re so needy. We’re so needy. That’s just the way it works. We’re really needy. But these practices help us, help us hear our own hearts more clearly as time goes on, little by little. If it happens too fast, they put you away. Little by little.

Q: Hi Krishna Das. My name is Chad and I just wanted to ask if you could please share your most favorite experience of spending time with Maharajji. Thank you.

KD: I don’t know. One time I walked to the temple from, the town’s about a three and a half, four hour walk over the mountains, and I was practicing my Hindi. Over and over I was saying this, trying to learn how to say, “Maharajji, my life is in your hands.” And I was saying it over and over in Hindi, like, for hours, a big moment, you know? So, I got to the temple and I was up, coming down the ridge and I saw He was sitting all alone on His tucket, on His bed. I ran into the temple, I came. I ran up to Him and I said, “Maharajji, your life is in my hands.” He went, “Get out of here, go on, Jao.”

Q: You said it in Hindi though.

KD: yeah, I said it in Hindi. I said it backwards. Another time, you know, He would get up, you know, He walked like a kid. He’d like, bounce from one leg to the other. He looked like He was ready to fall over. So, people would put their hand out. And He would take somebody’s hand and walk with somebody. So, one day, I always, I happened to be right in front of Him when He stood up. So, I put my hand out. And He looked at me and He laughed and He grabbed my hand and we went walking to the back of the temple and then He stopped and let go of my hand and He took a couple of steps, so I took a couple of steps, and then He looked at me and He said something I didn’t understand, and then He took a couple of steps, so I took a couple of steps and then again, He said something and He took a couple of steps and I took a couple of steps and then He just looked at me like this, and He squats down and He pees. He just wanted like 18 inches to take a piss and I wasn’t going to give it to Him. Ah, Divine Love. Those are the moments that, you know, it wasn’t all the other stuff. It was those moments where it was just too amazing, you know? One time, so after I met Ram Das, I told you last night if you were there, how I came into the room and, you know, I understood that whatever it was that I was looking for in the world was real. It could be found. It was a big thing. So after that, I actually began to dream about Maharajji and all I’d seen was a little black and white picture that Ram Das had, but I dreamt of Him, you know. So I’d had this dream long before to India, where I came back to my elementary school and I walked into the gym where we used to have school plays and used to play dodge ball and you know, do square dancing and all the stuff that people on Long Island did. And there on the other side of the gym, on the stage was, Maharajji was sitting on the bed, on a cot, and next to Him, standing behind Him was this guy with a white shirt and a dhoti, a cloth, and a black vest and he was standing behind him. And I came into the room and I fell down and I did what they call “danda pranam”. I just full out on the floor like this with my head like this. And I was just praying. I was saying, “Please, let me feel something. I have to feel something. Please let me feel something.” This is in my dream. And in my mind’s eye, I saw Him get up and walk down the stairs at the edge of the stage and come over to me and He put His hand on the back of my head and I started to calm down, calm down and as I was calming down, this bliss started to run through my body like, you know, it was unbelievable and it was getting stronger and stronger and stronger and I thought, “I’m going to die” and at that moment, He took His hand off of my head, went back and sat down and I woke up. So, this was in 1969. So, fast forward to maybe early 1972. I came to the temple. We were living in the town nearby and every day we would come to the temple and hang out with Maharajji and then in the evening we’d go home, go back to the town. So, this day, for some reason, I came late by myself. Usually, either we’d… anyway, so I came into the temple and I was holding some apples that I was gonna offer to Him and I walked into the courtyard and He was walking by Himself across the courtyard, right? Now, I realized that I had never seen Him walk before. We’d always been either brought into the room where He was already sitting or He’d just come out the door and plop down on the tucket out there on the cot right there by the door. But I’d never seen Him walk. And I just stopped at the edge of the courtyard and I watched Him walk and I, my mind completely blitzed out because, He was walking the way He walked in my dream, you know? I was just like, like this.  And the next thing I know, I’m standing right next to Him and He’s grabbing the apples and throwing them, I didn’t even offer the apples, I was just like… ahhhhh. And He was going, “These westerners.” And He takes the apples and He’s throwing them to people. It was just an amazing moment, you know? So, He had come to me. They say, when you dream about a Saint, you’re not making that up in your dreams the way we mostly make up our dreams. You can’t create the form of a Saint in your dreams. Only the Saint can come to you. That’s what they say. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what they say. So, if you dream about somebody, a great Guru or something like that, He or She has come to see you. That’s what they say.

One time, we were sitting with Him in the evening. This was after I was living in the temple. So everybody would go leave the temple for the day and just the people who were living there and the workers would stay, and He’d come up to the back of the temple and sit and a few people there would sit around Him. So on this day there was maybe about six or seven people and I was sitting kind of behind Him and there were these people sitting on the other side of the cot and it was, the sun was setting, there was a sweetness in the air, there was this fragrance of what they call Raat Ki Rani, the Queen of the Night Flowers, it makes Jasmine look like poop, smell like poop. You have no idea. It’s completely intoxicating, this scent. And that was wafting through the air, you know, and I was thinking, “Wow, this is so great.” He looks over at me and goes, “Watch this.” Or, “See this,” He said. And then He casually just said to this person sitting, He said, “Is it cold in America now?” and in two seconds, everybody said, “Well, there’s different parts of America. There’s the North, there’s the South, and then it could be this, it could be cold there.” It was total insanity and He just looks over to me. It was like, “You see what’s in people’s heads? You thought it was peaceful.” Things like that.

You know, He knew everything. Oh Jesus. Every single thing. He knew how many times you chewed your toast in the morning. He knew what you were going to do 50 years from that moment. And He loved you completely. Totally. Every part of you. And He knew everything. And if you think it’s easy to sit in front of somebody like that… half the time it was the most incredible unbelievable never-wanna-move, the other half of the time it was like living in hell, because we’re not used to that. We can’t be open. We’re just like… We close down. So, then, He would hit you in the heart with a banana. And you’d look, and then you’re open again. And then you’re closed down. And then He’d bang you with an apple. Or He’d look at you and go Ha Ha. And He’d look and He’d laugh. The minute you closed down, He’d open you up, or He’d let you sit there for a few days like that until you just were burnt to a crisp, you know, and then somebody would call your name and you’d turn and you’d get hit with a pomegranate. And He’d go, Ha. That’s how He taught. He didn’t lecture. He said, “If I know…” He said, what did He say, something like, something like, “I don’t know anything, I just know how to open hearts.” Something like that. And He didn’t want anything. Nothing.

He never took anything from us. We couldn’t even donate to the temple. I mean, nothing. He didn’t want anything from us. To be around somebody who doesn’t want anything, who has everything, is so discontinuous with our everyday lives. Everybody we meet is hungry. We’re hungry for so many things. We live in a hungry world. There are people out there who aren’t hungry, who’ve got everything and who are ridiculously disgustingly happy. One time, so, Ram Das had bought this Volkswagon bus from these people and we used to drive it from the town. We used to get sixteen or seventeen people in this Volkswagon, hanging off the back, up on the roof, and it became a bit of a scene, you know, and the Indian people, like the word was getting out, who were these crazy hippies and everything. People were coming to see what’s going on. So, He broke the bus. One day, it wouldn’t start. Anyway, that’s a long story, but anyhow, so He took the keys away from Ram Das and He gave them to me and He said, “Ram Das, you’re a saint, you have to go on the bus, on the regular bus.” And He said, “Jeff will drive.” Jeff was my name. “Jeff will drive.” And at that moment, He started calling me “driver.” So, for the next year, my name was “Driver.” “Driver! Ha. Come here.” Like this. Not a bad name. Kind of cool.  Hey. So, I had the keys to the bus and my desire was to drive Maharajji in the Volkswagon bus. I never told anybody. I never said anything to anybody. But I always had the keys with me. Ready. Right? So, like, a year goes by and I’m just sitting around with Him one day and He just looks at me and He says, casually, “Got the keys?” “Yeah.” “Let’s go.”

We went outside Dada’s house in Allahabad and Dada was one of these great devotees of Maharajji. Unbelievable. And Dada’s walking with Maharajji out to the van. Now, you know, He was short. Indian people, you know, most of them are short except these two basketball players we’ve got here. Where are they? There they are. Anyhow, so He kind of had to throw himself up onto the seat of the Volkswagon bus. You know, it’s a little higher than a car. And He bashed His head on the door jam. I mean, whack. I almost pissed my pants. My desire to drive Maharajji created Him getting His, bashed His head on the door of the car. Oh, my God, I’m so terrible. I said, “Dada. Did you see that?” What did Dada, the great devotee Dada, say? “He did it on purpose. Just drive.” That is a devotee. Because nothing the Guru does is by chance. The devotee knows He does everything on purpose. “He did it on purpose. Just drive.” “ok.” I get in the car and I start driving and I swear to you, He said, “Ok, drive to the sangham.” This very sacred place where the three rivers come together. I’m driving along very slow. He said, “Watch out. There’s somebody there. Be careful. Driver. Oh, you’re going too fast. Watch out. Slow down. Watch out.” The whole way there for fifteen minutes just like that. Nonstop. “Watch out. Over there. Over there.”

So, we get to the sangham, I stop the car, I turn it off. We sit there for maybe a minute. He says, “Ok, let’s go back.” That was that. But the interesting… so, the next day, or the day after, He was sending us down south because Ram Das had promised Swami Muktananda that we would do this pilgrimage with Him down in South India, so we all had to go with Him. So, I was driving and we were, there was this big long curve in the road, a turn, and off to the left there was this reservoir and I entered the turn too fast and I’m trying not to spin out as the car is going too fast and it looks like we’re going to just slide off the road into the reservoir and at the last moment, there was like, whoosh, it’s like this wind came. The car literally went, whoop, back on the road, like this. I think that was the bash on the head. So… He did it on purpose.

Q: My name’s Christian.

KD: Hello.

Q: How did you take losing the physical form of your Guru? And how did you cope with it?

KD: I didn’t cope with it. I just lost it totally. I had become very attached to His physical presence. He kept me in India two and a half years, pretty much longer than any of the other Westerners. He kept me with Him for two and a half years. Then one day, He looks at me and says, “Ok, go back to America.” “What? I’m just learning Hindi.” “Too bad. You have attachment. You have to go.” So I went back and then after a few months, He wrote to me, He had somebody write to me and said, one day He looked around and said, “Where’s Krishna Das?” The guy who knows everything. So, somebody said, “Baba, You sent Him to America.” “No. Tell Him to come back. I want to hear Him sing. I want to hear Him sing.” So my friend wrote to me. “You’ve got to come on back. You’ve got to,” you know? So anyway, long story short, I didn’t make it back in time. So, when He did leave the body, I was destroyed. Because the only place I ever felt loved was with Him. That kind of love. I never felt it anywhere. And now it was gone. Why live? What’s the sense?  You know? I mean, we find reasons to stay alive, but we don’t really believe there’ll ever be any real, real happiness for us.  That’s how it felt for me. For a long time. So then, He left the body in 1973. In 1984, I went back to India. I was in pretty bad shape. I had been strung out on cocaine, freebase cocaine for a year and a half and I had just gotten over that but I was pretty fragile, pretty freaked out. And I thought, “All right, I’ll just go back to the temple. I’ll just go in my room and sleep for a month,” you know? So I get to the temple and it turns out it’s Durga Puja time, which is this ten day ceremony honoring the Goddess Durga and they do a fire ceremony every day with the “swahas” and everything. It’s really great, you know? So, I get into the temple and everybody’s “Oh, Krishna Das, you’ve come. This is so good. Come, you’ll sit with us in the puja.” Really? And you can’t say, “No.” They love you too much. So instead of hiding in my room and sleeping, all day long I sat in the goddamned puja with this hot fire, “Swaha” into the fire, sweating with ashes and dirt all over me, you know? Sitting up. I hadn’t sat cross-legged for ten years and now it’s like… aargh. I can’t tell you how horrible it was. It was indescribably horrible. So, there was a morning session and an afternoon session. And there was a couple hours break in between the two sessions, but you had to fast all day, by the way, you couldn’t eat until the last session was over. Terrific. You know? So, and then, so during that break, at the end of the morning session, everybody would come from the yagya shala, the place where the fire is, the sacred fire, they come up to the front of the temple where Maharajji’s cot was, and we’d do aarti, we’d sing this hymn and wave the lights and then everybody would go rest for a couple of hours before the next session. So, four or five days into it, everybody comes up from the fire and we do this puja and I’m just standing there like this, you know? All right. When’s this over. I’m going to go lie down, ok. So, while I’m standing there, the chant was over and everybody bowed down, you know, like this, and then everybody left except one old lady had put her head down on the tucket and she didn’t get up. She went into samahdi.  She went into a very high blissful state. Just from bowing to His tucket. She was just like, gone. And I saw that. And it was like a knife in my heart. And I thought, “He’s real for these people. They feel Him.” And I felt, I couldn’t imagine… you can’t imagine how I felt. And I’m just, it was like a shock and I just went, like, sat down on the edge of the temple right there and I was just like, like this. And this woman comes out of the back of Maharajji’s rooms and said, “KD, KD. Siddhi Ma calling.” And I thought, “Why doesn’t she just leave me alone. Let me just die here. Leave me alone.” But you can’t say “no.” They love you too much. You can’t say no. Ok, I got up. I walked in this back door through this little courtyard where Maharajji used to sit and into this room where Siddhi Ma was sitting on the floor by His bed and I walked into that room and I got hit by a lightning bolt right here. I fell to the floor. And I was crying uncontrollably because in that second a few things happened. The first thing that happened was, I saw every second of my life from the moment I heard He died until that moment, like the frames of a movie, you know? Ffft. When they used to have film. Like this. Every frame was a moment of my life. I saw everything in an instant. I saw my whole, every second of my life for the last like 12 or 13 years. And I saw that He had never left me for a second. But I would not let myself feel Him. I refused to let myself feel that love because I was angry, I was pissed, I was sad, I was hurt that He had left me. And I would not let myself feel. I was like a little kid. I wouldn’t let myself feel that. But I saw He’d been with me every second, that I had put a wall around my heart and I wasn’t letting anything in, but that He was on the wall, in the wall, over the wall, both sides of the wall, the wall meant nothing to Him. And I saw every brick in the wall and it had like a little flashing neon light… shame, fear, anger, selfishness, everything, every brick had a flashing light of bullshit. And I saw in that second, I can take this wall down. I can take this wall down. All I have to do is look at this stuff. I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist. It exists. I put this wall up. But I can take it down. And I have to tell you, I was in absolute total bliss. I was blissed out of my bird. I was gone. I could, every breath felt like the whole universe was making love with me. It was unbearable almost. It was like I could barely stand up. And then, and the whole time, Siddhi Ma’s just sitting there, She didn’t say a thing. I kept thinking, I’ve gotta stop crying, She must think I’m crazy, but I couldn’t stop crying. And then somebody comes to the window. “KD? We’re waiting for you for puja.” Where did two hours go? So, I’m weeping. I’m still weeping. And I go sit in the puja and I’m going… you know and Indians aren’t big huggers, you know? So, the guy next to me who was sponsoring the puja, my good friend, he kept looking at me and I’m weeping. He said, “Krishna Das, has someone died?” He kind of, very tentatively reaches around and pats me on the back like this. It was incredible. Incredible. I’d taken a thousand micrograms of pure Sandoz acid. I couldn’t even see it from where I was. It was so down there. Nothing compared to this. This was beyond belief. And it lasted for days. I was just walking around like… I was just like melting all day long. One morning I woke up and I woke up and I realized it was gone. I felt like an old burnt out building that had been rained on and the dogs came in and pissed all over the place. And I was just like, I completely went nuts. And I went up on the roof of the building in the back of the temple. It’s a big long roof and I was… the temple’s in this beautiful valley with a river running through it and this acid blue sky and it’s just so incredibly beautiful and I was storming back and forth on the roof screaming at maharajji.  “If you’re going to close me down, then don’t open me. Just leave me alone,” at the top of my lungs. The whole valley was like, “What is this? What is this?” You know, and I’m screaming back and forth, “You son of a bitch, you leave me alone.” So after a while of this, that same lady comes over and said, “KD, Siddhi Ma calling” and then she ran away. I was like, you know, and I said, “Good. Because I’m leaving. I’m going back to America today and I’m going to tell Her.” And I stormed down, boom, boom, like what’s that big green guy, what’s it, the Hulk. Boom, boom, boom and She had come up to the Tiwari’s room, my Indian parents that are up in the back of the temple and I walked up to the door. And She looked at me and said something and everybody giggled and I said, “What did She say?” And I was told that She said I was like a little boy who had been given a sweet and gobbled it all up in one bite and wanted another one. But I couldn’t have another one right away, but I’d have another one, don’t worry. Oh. Ok.

“I’m going to go lay down, ok? Yeah, you know, in my room. Ok? Yeah, ok.”  I slept for like two days and when I woke up I was back to normal.

But that was it. You know?  It was ok to be alive. I really didn’t think I’d ever feel like that again, that it was ok to be alive.

So that’s how I dealt with it. Or it dealt with me, really. But that was just the beginning, you know, it was ok to be alive, now what? You know? I had to look at those bricks. I had to look at that stuff, I couldn’t pretend they weren’t there and that they weren’t screwing me up. It was a good beginning.

Q: Hello, oh Hey.

KD: Hi.

Q: A little lighter question: What are some of your favorite places that you’ve been to in India?

KD: I like the mountains really the most. India’s a lot different now than it was in 1970. Not only weren’t there mobile phones, but even telephones didn’t work. You had to book a call. Like, if I wanted to call back to the states, I had to call the local operator who called the county operator, who called the state operator, who called the federal operator, who got in touch with the international operator, who made the call and then, once it was connected, the international operator called the federal operator who called the… it could take a couple of days sometimes to get through. So, it was a very different life up there in the hills at that point. There was only one road. There still is only one road, although now it’s busy 24 hours a day. But in those days, just a few cars, a few trucks… modern life didn’t make it up to the mountains very far at that time. They were still living very much the way they had been living for thousands of years. Most of the villages didn’t have electricity way up in the hills. There’s incredible places all around India. I’ve been in the jungles and there’s places that are so beautiful it’s hard to imagine, just incredible. There’s beautiful places everywhere. I don’t, I don’t, when people say, “I want to go to India,” I say, “Why?” Really, you have such a desire for dysentery? Very good. Anything you can get in India, you can get here, because you’re here. You think you can go to India? I thought I was going to go to India and live in a cave, right? One snake is all I needed to see before I got my ass out of there. Whoa. You know, and the vibe of these snakes, these are not just like, little snakies. They’re like prehistoric. Dark. Hello.  And vipers, they’ll just bite you for fun. Cobras will not bite you unless you’re really threatening them, but a viper, you know, they’ll just bite and then go, they don’t care. They’ll bite you.

Yeah. The Grand Canyon’s nice. At least the rattlers you can hear, you know? So many beautiful places. There’s places in India that are just so extraordinary. I mean, they say it’s the actual, the earth, the ground in India has, is able to hold a certain vibration that makes it easy for Saints to live there because, well, whatever. So, for thousands and thousands of years people have been doing practice there, you know? One place in the center of India, we went to, and we were staying with this yogi who was 163 years old. He’s about 190 now, I guess. And He would take us through the jungle, and He’d say, “You see that mountain over there, that hill? It’s not a hill.  Inside that hill, there’s, it’s a crystal cave inside there.” He said, “There’s a yogi in there who’s been in there for thousands of years.” And He kept pointing to places like that.

KD: Yeah, next question.

Q: Hi.

KD: Hi. You don’t have to stand if you don’t want to.

Q: I’m short.

KD: Ok.

Q: It’s hard to see. May I ask you…

KD: No.

Q: Ok. About Ma Joya, the Guru who used to live in Florida. May I ask you about her?

KD: You can ask whatever you want.

Q: I have been down there a couple of times. And they claim you as Gurubhai and say that you come and visit and I’m just… ok.

KD: Yeah. I visited once to visit a friend who was dying.

Q: And this is what I wanted to clarify, because they claim you and I asked about Ram Das and about the article and they’re like, “Oh, KD, no, he’s family.” And I just wanted to say…

KD: It’s nice they feel that.

Q: But that was what I wanted to clarify.

KD: So what’s your question exactly.

Q: My question is, what are your thoughts and opinions on her?

KD: I was, I spent, Jaya, “Joya” we called her. Ram Das met Joya in New York through another woman who we had, I had been kind of studying with, her name was Hilda, she was a, she had lived many years in India and had a really good Guru. Nityananda was her Guru. Also, she said, she was very close with Sathya Sai Baba. That’s a whole other story. But, so she put us in contact with this woman Joya and I stayed with, kind of with her, for maybe three years and then I left. And then I saw her maybe once after that. That’s the whole story. If I, obviously if I thought, I didn’t stay, let’s put it that way. So, I would have stayed if I was getting something that I thought was worth getting. But I didn’t. The people there I know, you know, but, they’re all good people. People say lots of things and who knows, you know? I don’t know. I just know what I felt and at one point I felt, this is not for me, and I left.

Q: I’m short, too, So I’ll just stand. I wanted to thank you for coming and making it so accessible for everybody regardless of gender or anything…

KD: Or what planet you come from.

Q: Well, my question is, obviously there are societal and cultural differences between the U.S. and India.

KD: Oh, really?

Q: Does that make it more difficult for a woman to find a teacher in India?

KD: Well, that’s like two different questions. India’s difficult for women in general because it’s difficult. A lot of terrible things happen there and they can happen very quickly. So, I never, if a woman says she wants to go to India, I say, “Well, ok, if you’re gonna go, you can not go alone. I’ll kill you if you decide to go alone, so you’d better not. You have to go at least with one other person and preferably travel with a guy as well.” Because it’s a different place and it’s, for anybody it can be, very immediately, the bottom can drop out and it can get pretty crazy. On the other hand, there’s millions and millions of extraordinarily wonderful people and I’ve met so many of them, but I still don’t think it’s a good idea for… I never suggest that people go and just wander around India. I say, “If you know where you’re going, get your tickets, you can’t travel alone. Get your tickets and go where you’re going. And then if you want to go somewhere from there, you’ll meet somebody who wants to go where you want to go. You go together. Don’t go wandering around like, you know…” That’s not the best idea. A lot of, a lot of things happen that aren’t a lot of fun. As far as finding a teacher, that’s a whole other ballgame. Why would you go to India when you’re here? If you think there’s more people… A teacher comes to you as a result of your karmic ripeness. And that’s, you’re here. But why go there? If you’re pulled there like I was pulled there, I was just going and I was never coming back. That was different. I had to go. So, unless you feel like you have to go, that your life is over if you don’t, until you go, well, then I guess you have to listen to that. But, it’s not an easy place. Even though it’s easier on the physical plane, getting around, it’s a different culture, they do things differently and it’s often difficult to navigate those differences. But as far as finding a teacher, when the student is ready, the teacher comes. That’s the way it is. You don’t know when you’re ready. You may think you’re ready. But if you’re not, if the teacher’s not there, you’re not ready. That’s just the way it is. That doesn’t mean you’re dead. You still have things you can do. You still have practice you can do. You can treat everybody, you don’t wait for your teacher to come. You’re here. You’ve gotta breathe, you’ve gotta eat and you’ve gotta find a way to be a good human being. And there’s plenty of teachers. There’s so many teachers now teaching meditation and asana practice and pranayama, all kinds of things that are really helpful for you, helping calm your ass down and learning how to be happy. So, why not take advantage of that? Go try to find a guru? You know, you’ll wind up… you know, defecating in places you wish you didn’t have to. I’m sorry. There’s a lot of Indian people here, you know. If I didn’t feel like you were my people or I was your people I would never say things like this. And if I hadn’t defecated in any places that I wish I didn’t, I wouldn’t have said that, either. Oh, boy. Try being in a bus, you know, on the way up into the mountains and if you don’t have lamotil you’re dead.

KD: So, yes, you have the mic yet?  Pass it up here. Hi.

Q: Hi. I’m Sarah and I was one of the fortunate few to come up and get a picture and a hug last night and I was wondering…

KD: Did you take a shower?

Q: Not since last week. Boy. So, I’m curious, is the performance or the singing, the chanting that you did last night, does that prepare you for all the wanting and the needing or does it feel like that to you to see all these people wanting just a hug and a picture with you, does that fill up your soul more? Or do you kind of have to prepare for that experience?

KD: No. It’s not like that at all. I feel like I’m sitting in my living room with my family, basically, except for some people. You know, it’s just love. There’s nothing to prepare for. It’s nothing like that at all. And it’s not a performance, so there’s nothing going on. We’re sharing our practice. We’re sharing the moment. And that’s the whole deal. Yeah. Good. You got it?

Q: May I ask a question?

KD: Yes, you may.

Q: Well, thank you for being here.

KD: You’re welcome. I tried to be somewhere else but I couldn’t do it.

Q: I’m here now, formally I live out on the West Coast of our country, about 2 hours West of Seattle almost in the Pacific Ocean.

KD: Wow. Beautiful out there.

Q: I recently, or I hear your message today that we’re here and when you’re, when the student is ready, the teacher appears and I have my spiritual technologies that I’ve been able to access in my rural area. We just got our first yoga teacher about eight years ago in my town because I was too busy to be a yoga teacher myself. My question is this, first, let me confirm with you, I saw a post that my sister sent me about you and it said, and you’ve already used the “F” bomb in here, so I know I can use these words without embarrassing people, but your statement, and I want to make sure it was you who said it, you said, “30 years ago I woke up and saw an asshole in the mirror, and today I got up and I saw the same asshole.” And I wonder, when we don’t…

KD: Sounds like me.

Q: It does sound like you and so, and so, my question is…

KD: But I don’t hate that asshole as much as I used to.

Q: Ok, good, because my exposure to Ram Das was when I was a young hippie girl, started traveling around and people had torn pages out of his book, Be Here Now, and so everywhere I went was these pictures of his, of pieces from his book, and I said, “Wow, that seems really wise, who is that?” “Oh, that’s Ram Das, Be Here Now, don’t you know?”  And so, my question is, for those of us who don’t, is it simply just, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, because some of us, I don’t have access to Ram Das except by video and I don’t have access to Krishna Das except every ten years when he comes to Atlanta, so my question is, do you have any suggestions for those of us that live out on the rural area, is it simply, focus on your spiritual technologies and realize that you’re going to be the same person looking in the mirror only with a different perspective.

KD: Yeah, but you might not hate yourself as much as you do.

Q: You might not hate yourself as much as you do.

KD: You might not judge yourself as much as you do right now. And as far as advice, I would say, “Be here now.” Well, ok. That was cheap, I admit it. It was a cheap hit, but that’s the way I am. Yes, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, but what draws the teacher is the longing in our hearts and the longing is what saves our lives and ruins our lives as well because nothing will ever be enough until it’s enough. So, that longing is what draws everything we need to us, whether it happens to come in the form of a physical being or not is fairly irrelevant, because you’re getting what you need right now every moment of every day. It shouldn’t and couldn’t and wouldn’t be any other way. That’s the bottom line. Whether you’re able to recognize that and learn from it and use it as a spiritual practice, that’s a big thing. So, that’s kind of up to you and if you feel the need for a teacher, when the need is strong enough, you’ll move out of the rural area to where there’s somebody you can work with. Why not? It’s a question of what your priorities are and what’s meaningful for you and also what you can do according to your situation, of course. So, but that’s not a mistake either, your situation. So, you just have to kind of work with it all and be present with it as it all changes, because it’s always changing. Yeah?  Go ahead.

Call me up?

Q: So, in my life in the last two years, I ran into a fellow who is just a pragmatic worker tradesman kind of guy and he talked to me in much the same kind of language that you’re using both tonight and last night about love and so forth, and that it is all within us. It comes out from within us. And he talked to me in the same kind of language that you’re using, but he’s not a recognized Guru.

KD: Neither am I.

Q: And neither are you. But I’m getting at is, isn’t this wisdom like a stream that goes through the universe or something that the universe rises up through, that we can access? Isn’t that the case? Isn’t that what these spiritual technologies are for? And if that’s the case, then do we need a Guru?

KD: I don’t know.

Q: Good question.

KD: Yeah. The whole issue is irrelevant because you’re talking about Guru as if it’s something outside of you and it’s not.

Q: Thank you very much.

KD: Ok, thank you. Yeah. Good.

Q: Hi, KD.

KD: Hi.

Q: My name is Amma.

KD: Amma?

Q: Thank you very much for being here today and blessing all of us. I wanted to ask about your song, your hymn, “God is Real / Hare Ram”.  So, that song has done, it’s, it has ministered to me on many a dark night and I would like to know if there is, if you have a specific creation story about that song and if so, if you would mind sharing how that came to be.

KD: Well, I grew up with my parents listening to Mahalia Jackson and that song is based on an old gospel song, “God Is Real.” Of course, I totally perverted it, like I do everything else. But it just came, you know, I don’t really think about that stuff. It just kind of goes through like Indian food. It kind of comes out of me. But I love that, I love gospel music, you know, so, and it just seemed to work with the Hare Ram, so maybe we’ll sing it to end the evening, daytime, which is pretty soon, I think. What time is it? Yeah, you know, we have a hard stop at 6 o’clock and, this is a temple, actually, and they’re very kind to have people like us in here and they do their worship, they start, we have to be, all our equipment out by 6:45 so it’s, we really have to stop and then if you want to say “hello” to me, I’ll go out into the hallway while everybody cleans off the stage. So, we’re close, getting close to the end. But, we will sing that in a few minutes. Yeah, if I can remember it. Wake up you guys. Get ready.

Spirituality and Modern Politics

Q: Hello there.

KD: Hi. Hello there.

Q: Hi. It’s wonderful to be here with you. I’ve been chanting with you for a long time and your practice that you’ve shared with us all has helped so many, including me, deeply, and I’m wondering, so these days now are quite trying. Maybe not more so than others, but I personally find them very trying as a woman with an eleven year old daughter growing up under this particular, it’s hard not to talk about politics because I am a householder and I’m doing the work that needs to be done raising a family and trying to be as active as I can in the political arena because it feels very necessary. So, I am, this opportunity to be with you, to sit in this sacred space that you’ve created here, that Chantlanta has created here in Atlanta, is really, really meaningful, and I’m just wondering, since you’re here, if there’s anything that you can suggest that we all do to practice. There are so many people that are, I feel like I’m more awake than I’ve ever been, and living here and doing that fully and well, as well as I can at the moment, which has got lots of problems, but still, it’s not so bad anymore and there are a lot of people that are not at all awake and you’ve talked about them tonight and you know, made jokes about Bush and you know, people in our political arena that are really, really shut down and closed to love and as we sort of grow and open our hearts, you know, these, I feel like these forces are coming and clamping down on us more and more and I guess I’m just wondering if you could speak to that and to what, perhaps, you know, how we could help ourselves or how you could help me or how I can help myself move through all that. Chanting is so important to me because it’s individually moved me but it also connects us to each other and when we sing together and sing with you and all that, I mean, this feels infinite and so, it’s about the action of the moment in response to the political arena that I’m asking about.  Thank you so much for being here.

KD: I sing. That’s what I do. Everybody does what they do. I sing. There was either this or pump gas. That’s what I do. You have to find out what you do and I mostly read the sports pages. I kind of get to the front page, I start at the back of the newspaper. Actually, online, you just go right to the sports section. These times seem trying, but you know, World War 2 was trying, the Korean War was trying, the Vietnam War was trying. There’s wars right now where people can’t eat, sleep or do anything without bombs getting dropped on them. So, it is trying for sure and our job is, you know, there’s that beautiful line, I don’t know if Gandhi really said it or not, but in the movie “Gandhi” that was really nicely done, the British had done something so unbelievably horrible, they’d slaughtered all these people, and Gandhi’s cohorts came to him and they said, you know, “Guruji, now, now we can do that, now we can fight. We can. Now, they’ve done this. Now, we’ve really, now we can fight.” And he said, “Yes. We can fight. We can fight against our anger.” So, that’s the deal. You know, we want to, let’s give ourselves a break and say we want to do good in the world. We’d like to make it a better place to live. At least two minutes a day when we think about it. But, we’re not capable of not reacting and every reaction creates another reaction.  Plain and simple. We want to do good but we don’t know how, really, we don’t even know what that means, ultimately. Right now, we can’t get through the day without getting angry at someone or turning away from someone or hurting someone or not giving someone what they want. How are we going to change the world when we can’t change ourselves. Not to say that you don’t do whatever you can do, whatever you want to do and whatever you need to do to make it, your life better and the lives of other people better, but you have to deal with reality, which is that we don’t, we can’t even deal with our own shit. How are we going to deal with anybody else’s? But that’s why we’re doing practice, I think. That’s why I’m doing practice. To become a better person, a better human being and that means, less reactive, less a slave to my own negative emotions, that’s, and it’s a long haul. And you know, you know, I’ll tell you this, but I don’t know what you’ll think about it, but back when Maharajji was in the body, somebody came to Him and there was all kinds of terrible things going on and this guy said, “Oh, Baba wouldn’t it be great if there was a great king of the world like Janaka.” You know, in the old days, Sita’s father in the old days was King Janaka, who was not only a king but He was an enlightened being. He was called a Raja Rishi, a Saint King, and He ran His kingdom in a great way. So, this guy said, “Oh, wouldn’t it be great if there was a king like Janaka.” And Maharajji said, “There’s a king much greater than Janaka.”

So, we don’t see the whole picture. Not by any means whatsoever. We see our own limited little version of it and even within that, we have a hard time creating or allowing for goodness to arise, so all we can do is the best we can do. Everybody. We’re already doing that, by the way. You’re doing the best you can do. I’m doing the best I can do. It may not be very effective but it’s the best we can do and that can be better and then that’s the best you can do. It’s tough stuff. Because if you do any action, the key to any action is your motivation. Ten people can do the same thing and have ten different results from the same action based on what they were really feeling inside. They could have been unconscious of what their real motivation was. For instance, coming to visit a Saint in India, many people come to see Saints, and in the old days especially, there weren’t doctors, so whenever a yogi was around, people might have believed that that yogi had powers to cure people’s problems or help them get jobs, you know they have siddhis, powers. So they would come to the saint for that. But very few people would come to a saint out of love only. And if, when they did, that’s what they would get. So, it’s interesting. And Maharajji said, Dada, like I told you, was really one of Maharajji’s wonderful and great devotees and Maharajji would be seeing people all day and Dada would be busy and he’d come into the room and he’d see that Maharajji would be sitting there for like, six hours, people coming and going, and nobody gave Him a break to pee, you know? So, He’d get… “Everybody get out,” and then he’d take Maharajji to pee and Maharajji said, “Dada, Dada, people come here out of their own desires. Nobody really comes for Me.” Interesting, huh? Very interesting. Motivation is the whole thing. The secret agenda we have inside that we’re not even aware of most of the time and as we become aware of those agendas, then we can let go of them, then we can work with them and see them and clean it up, but if we’re not aware, what do we do? We just keep bouncing off of each other all the time.

KD: Oh boy, ok, come on.

Q: Who do you follow in sports?

KD: Huh?

Q: You talked about how you look at the sports page, so who do you follow in sports?

KD: I don’t know if I’m going to tell you. I have my secrets. It certainly ain’t the Hawks. Hey, look, I’m born in New York. I’ve got the Knicks. It’s like a disease. But I can’t get away from it. Yes, m’am.

Q: Krishna Das.

KD: Yeah.

Q: I want to offer my salutations to you from the bottom of my heart and for being my own hero for the last one year. I just got back from Kainchi Dham. I’ve been to all the different ashrams in India ever since I was in college days, came to this country about a quarter century ago. I listen to your bhajans, kirtans, since a year back and I heard your google talk. It’s easier for me, coming from a tradition of the Hindu religion and but, it took me you, to understand the significance of the ecstasy that you offer yourself, that you’re doing now, traveling around the world for your singing and when I listen to your Hanuman Chalisa and all the different kirtans, I genuinely feel the grace of your Guru, and the love that I experience when I listen to your bhajans and kirtans , the Hanuman Chalisa, at least so far, I have not found in any of the rendering of anybody else that shows the grace of the Guru and you make a lot of difference to a lot of people. And sometimes I don’t think even you realize the power you have, and all I can tell the people here is, when I went to Kainchi Dham, I had a gentleman who’s from Colorado, who’s 30 years, both of us had miracles happening and I can’t attribute to anything and I just want everyone to know, I get the glimpses of the love you’re talking about with Maharajji. And, I get it being with you, too. I just want to let everybody know that love is all we all need. Nothing else matters in this life. And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.

KD: Thank you. Your check’s in the mail. Next question.

KD: Give her the mic because she’s a very important person. A VIP.

Q: Thank you. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for being here, also.

KD: Was I here, I guess I was.

Q: In Atlanta, visiting us, on behalf of everyone, the same thing. I just had a quick question about if you are a seeker and you, whether you’re looking or you’ve been waiting for a Guru or a teacher, can you share what that process is? I don’t even know if that is really a question. I don’t really know how to frame this because I’m sure there’s a lot of us out here that are in that place but we don’t really know exactly maybe what to look for or how to even look for it or maybe even, I don’t know, I don’t know how to ask. I’m trying to frame the words but..

KD: So you’re talking like about how to look for a teacher in a person or just what to look for in life and stuff like that?

Q: A teacher in a person and if that’s even necessary, because part of me feels like we are our teacher, you know, life experience is our teacher and I agree that it’s not in a person per se but there are people around us and experiences that we, or things that we experience that teach us if we’re paying attention. I think it’s more about being open and being aware and listening.

KD: Ok, but that takes some practice and so, we need to learn some methods. We need to kind of expose ourselves to the path and learn about different methodology like she was talking about her spiritual technology, whatever it was. We need to explore our minds and our hearts and those technologies, those methods, that’s what they are for. It’s not possible to pick yourself up like this, you know.

Q: But I’m talking about beyond that.

KD: Beyond

Q: Beyond that, because someone asked some questions earlier about this subject. You said that the teacher will find you.

KD: Yeah.

Q: So…

KD: A Guru finds you. Teachers you can look for. Teachers are advertising, you know? You can find them pretty easily and see if it works for you. Gurus don’t advertise. I’m sorry. Real gurus don’t advertise. They come to you, if it’s, you understand that an enlightened being, a real Guru has no agenda of their own whatsoever. The only reason they’re here because we are suffering. So, if they’re here for that reason and you’re suffering, if it was the best thing for you, you would meet that person in a body. If that was what was what you needed at this point in your life or lives, to meet someone like that and that was what was going to work for you, that’s what would be happening. If it’s not the thing that’s going to work for you, why even long for it? It doesn’t work like that. So, to want to be looking for that, I’m not saying you’re doing this, but to look for that and you wind up short-circuiting your own heart because what you, you have to find, you have to, we have to learn how to trust our own hearts, how to trust our own intuition, how to respect and be aware of our own feelings and the multiple, the different feeling that we have about so many different things, to sort out what’s really important to us. That’s what life teaches us. And if at some point we’re, it would help us to meet somebody like that in a body, the body will show up. You know, Maharajji used to tell stories about other Babas. “Oh, there was a Baba who lived in that place. He was a good Baba. He did these things.” “You know, there was a Baba who lived there.” So, after He left the body, Siddhi Ma and some other people got in cars and they drove around to some of these places and they get to the place and they find out that Baba had just left the body. And then they said, “Well, what was He like?” And they described Maharajji perfectly. And then they’d go to the other place.  And they’d say, “We’re looking for this Baba.” “Oh, He just left the body.” And, “What was He like?” And they described Maharajji perfectly. So, these Beings can do anything. If it was right, if it was what was best for us, they’d be sitting in our lap or we in theirs. So, you have to take responsibility for your life in a joyful way and say, “This is what I’ve got. This is what’s supposed to be here. Let me deal with this. Let me find out what this is.” You can’t be waiting around for somebody to hit you on the head. It doesn’t work like that.

Q: And you agree with the “don’t wait.” And that’s why I’m posing this question because I feel like there are a lot of people out there that are waiting for something or someone. And I don’t think it’s about that. I think it’s about taking what you are, being in the presence of and learning from that itself.

KD: That’s true. Very true, but I’m waiting. I know He’s going to come back. He didn’t go anywhere. Once they put me away, He’ll show up. So, yeah. You know, the Guru, the issue of a Guru is very, it’s a big story and but, Westerners and everybody, we subtly want somebody to do it for us and whether you have a Guru or don’t have a Guru, nobody’s going to do it for us. We have to do it for ourselves. So, that’s the deal. Nobody can chant for you. Nobody can make you pay attention. We have to do that. Maharajji never told us what to do. He never told me to go out and sing with people. If He had told me, I might have done it and then I would have probably not done it. And I would have had a whole story line about it. “Ah, He told me to do it. I don’t want to do it. It’s just not working.” I had, I didn’t start singing to people until I had to because I was up to here in the water and if I, and singing keeps me here. If I don’t sing, I drowned. So, I keep singing and I can breathe. That’s the deal. I have to sing. I’m not doing this because I like it or I want to. I have to. I do like it but I have to. This is what I do to keep me where I need to be according to my own miserable life.  So, when your life gets like that, it gets easier, you learn to follow your heart. That’s the whole thing. That’s the whole thing. Trust. Learning to listen and trust your own heart and that’s not easy. But it doesn’t matter because God is Real.  This song is God is Real and you’re not.

The post Ep. 66 | Find Out Who You Are appeared first on Krishna Das.

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 Dec 5 2020

Hi everybody. It’s nice to see some of the same faces, week after week or whatever it is. Somebody wrote to me and said, “Such a nice community has grown up.” Really? You know? Amazing. I never thought of that, but it’s true. It’s true.

One time Sharon and I were doing a workshop weekend maybe, or maybe just one day together in LA and it was such a nice afternoon. It was really great. You know? So, at the end I said, “Oh, this is so great. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all find someplace and be together and we could just be together our whole lives?” And then I said, “Oh, we did that. Earth.”

David Nichtern, my friend, our friend David, he said he was riding on the subway one day and he looked around and he thought to himself, ” What if I had to spend the rest of my life in this subway car, this train car, with these people?”

In New York, you don’t look at anybody, because you look at anybody, they immediately look at you, “Yeah? What do you want?”

But imagine, you know, if you were in a car with 30 people from all over, all different shapes and sizes, and these were the people you were going to spend the rest of your life with, you would need to, and you would want to connect eventually. You would have to connect. So this is where we are on this, as Jimmy Hendrix called it, “this third stone from the sun,” this planet. We’re all together here passing through. Passing through.

Hi.

Hi. Namaste. Ram Ram.

Same to you.

I just wanted to ask a question in regards to, back to when KK told you to give up smoking ganja. I’ve been listening to, over and over again, when you were still smoking weed and then KK Shah said you must give it up.

Actually, it was Maharajji. Actually, it was hash in India and I wasn’t smoking much at all, every once in a long time, but we were standing outside his door, outside Maharajji’s window, and somebody asked him about I guess, about smoking hash, and he said, “It’s not good for you. It destroys your body over time. If it was good for you if it would bring us to God, I’d get a room built and we’d fill it with hash and we’d all go in together and smoke it.”

The reason I ask is, because I’m trying really hard to give it up as a coping mechanism and it’s really hard to surrender into that.

Why do you want to give it up?

Because I have this ridiculous thing in my mind that, to be a good devotee, you have to do all these things.

You have it in your mind that you’re supposed to give up all these things? Is that what you said? Forget about it. Smoke your ass off until you get sick of it and then you’ll just give it up. You won’t like it. Go somewhere where nobody’s going to bother you for the weekend. Get like about a half a pound of the shit and smoke your brains out. That’s why we do it. We’re looking for bliss. You see? We’re looking to be freed of our suffering and our fear and we can’t deal with our shit. So we try to numb ourselves. All that does, is it numbs us. And what, the other thing it does, it actually, over time, it destroys our will. It destroys our ability to actually take care of ourselves and gets us really confused about what we want and what’s good for us. It’s a very confusing situation. You know, there was a great Lama named Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche who said, “What most people call bliss is just a little less pain.”

So, that’s our situation. You know? We think that a little less pain, a little numbing is gonna do the trick for us, but it always comes back. Reality or our subjective reality just rears its ugly head, and we look in the mirror and all we see is our shit. So, welcome to the human race. That’s where we are.

So really, you’re running a trip on yourself for a trip you’re running on yourself. Give yourself a break. At least run only one trip on yourself. That’ll be a lot less painful.

But I wouldn’t worry about forcing yourself to give anything up, but why don’t you play around a little bit, and when you smoke, be present. Look at, “W hat is this doing to me? Am I really feeling good? Yeah. Okay, cool. I’ll keep doing it.”

But don’t just like, smoke and then go out and roll around in the mud, you know? Pay attention to what’s really going on. Is it really something that you’re enjoying? Or is it just a very ineffective way of avoiding dealing with issues? Sweetheart, if we don’t deal with our issues, they deal with us. But still, don’t push yourself. Don’t push yourself, you know. Just pay attention. That’s all.

“Is this really what I want?” Ask yourself. “Is feeling like this really what I want? Or am I really getting what I want from doing this?”

That’s the question you could ask if you want. But don’t give yourself such a hard time. It’s not worth it. Because if you didn’t give yourself a hard time, there would be no hard time. Right? So why do we give ourselves a hard time? Well, there’s a lot of reasons. So at least let’s pay attention to what we’re doing every day and see if it’s really getting us what we want, and if it’s not, let’s try something else. That’s all, it’ll fall away. It’ll fall away because it’s not what you really want.

You get attached to doing the same thing and you forget that it’s not really working. You’re not noticing that it’s not really working.

I started smoking to turn off the mind and then it just became a habit.

Yeah. When I used to smoke, I would get so fucking paranoid I couldn’t breathe. I would get so paranoid, I couldn’t even function. When I was younger, I’d just get stupid. And when you’re young, stupid is normal. So that was okay. But later on I just realized, it was just making me so paranoid. I had to stop. I couldn’t bear it. And I just stopped, you know. It just was not working.

So yeah, you’re cool. Don’t worry about it. It’s all right. Just get good weed, for God’s sake. Don’t smoke shit. And you’ll get over it. You’ll get over it. And if, it’s not even something to get over. This is your life. You know? Is this the way you want to spend it? And if the answer’s “yes,” then do it. No problem. If it’s not, you will change because you don’t want this. And if you want this, there must be a lesson in it for you, you know?

Sometimes we do things just so we can run trips on ourselves and be negative on ourselves, you know, because we’re used to that. It’s like sometimes people who grow up in an abusive home can’t really accept affection, unless there’s some dark side to it, some abuse to it as well. We keep acting out those original programs that were put in there when we’re young, but the more we pay attention to it, and the more we try to just give ourselves a break, it kind of develops, you know. Take it easy. We’ve all been beat up enough by life. We don’t have to add onto it so much, you know?

Thank you.

Yeah. You find some good weed, let me know where to find it, okay? I haven’t smoked in so long. People always ask me, ” Are you clean and sober?” And I said, “I may be sober. I’m not sure if I’m clean.”

It’s hard. It’s real hard.

It is. But it’s hard because we have a need to get away from the stuff that hurts us. So we find something that seems to work, but does it really work? That’s the thing. And if it doesn’t, and you know that, sooner or later it’ll just fall away. Really. But it’s difficult to give up our habitual actions, you know, and really in a sense, the smoking is just another habitual action that we’ve picked up on, because the other ones that we were doing weren’t working. So when this one is finished, there’ll be something else. So just pay attention. Be with it. You know, are you really getting what you want? And if you are, and there’s nothing to say, fine. Keep going. No problem. But it’s up to you to really take a look at it, and don’t be so hard on yourself. Come on.

I’m hard enough on myself for all of us.

Hi, sweetie.

Hi. How are you?

Good. How are you doing?

I’m good. I’m healthy and writing a book and doing well.

Ah, you think writing a book is a healthy thing to do?

 So I have a question. I have a friend whose teenage son, I think he’s 17. 16 or 17 now. He reached out to me because he’s had some encounters with Maharajji, some fairly, without the help of substances, he’s had some fairly psychedelic experiences in which he feels he’s been visited by Maharajji. He did not know who he was. He didn’t recognize him, but then he did some research and he said, “That’s the guy.”

Can you just tell him to give Maharajji my address next time?

So he was asking. His mom suggested that maybe he reach out to me and ask for guidance and so I just, I did my best, but I wondered what you might say to him. By the way, he’s read, “Be Here Now” and “Polishing the Mirror,” and he listens to you. He listens to your music. Is there anything else?

Well, certainly there are more books he could read to immerse himself more in that with his mind. But is he having problems like stopping at the red and going at the green? I mean, is he having trouble getting through the day and dealing with other people?

No. So he’s good. He’s inspired and he just wants to immerse, I think. I thought of Parvati’s new book.

That’s a great book. Dr. Larry’s book is great, “Sometimes Brilliant.” It gives another, a whole other version of, a whole other way of seeing Maharajji and what he does and what he’s done in the world and what he’s doing.

Yeah. I would definitely encourage him to, as long as he’s dealing with daily life in a good way. If it’s something that all of a sudden he’s saying, you know, I can walk on water or cars can’t hurt me, then you have to be careful, but if he’s really more or less together, then, you know, he could certainly immerse himself more. There’s more. And let him listen to Ram Dass, too, some of the Ram Dass stories and stuff like that. That’d be great., So he gets to understand this is, it’s not just something else. It’s also here. It’s also about how becoming a good human being now and living in the world in a good way, that it’s not going somewhere else where Maharajji is, somewhere else.

You want it to integrate. He’s kind of young, but you want him to feel okay about himself now, here in the world, not just think that I have to go somewhere else to get this, or, you know. And tell him to talk to Maharajji. Well, yeah. Tell him. Tell him to feel his presence where he is, not somewhere else, you know. Try to guide him to be in his body, you know. It can be here. And yeah, give him my address. Tell him to give it to Maharajji the next time he comes. “This guy wants to see you. Here’s his number.”

 Speaking of seeing people, can I ask you personal question?

You can ask. I don’t have to answer, but you can ask.

I’m wondering how you’re doing in the aftermath of Ram Dass’s transition, and if you feel him.

Oh, I feel very much. I miss him very much, but it’s like that country song that I’m writing, you know, “How can I miss you when you won’t go away?”

I miss my interactions with him. My favorite thing was making him laugh. You know, he would explode in laughter sometimes. We had so much fun and I miss him a lot, but I feel him a lot. No, “but” is not the right word. I miss him a lot and I feel him a lot, and a lot of my dearest elders have passed on from the body in the last few years and there’s a well of sadness there for sure. And that’s okay. You know, I mope around anyway. It’s just a little bit more moping. I’m used to it.

Thank you.

You’re welcome. Take it easy. Yeah, all right.

How are you today?

Hi. How are you?

 I was thinking a lot about something that I think you said, quickly, in our last time together about, I think I wrote it down correctly, that the lesson of betrayal is trust, and I’ve been thinking about that and looking at my life and the one thing that has come up a couple of times is I notice my sister-in-law, my very dear sister-in-law, who was a very good friend also to me passed away between the time you and I were together in this time, and one of the things that I notice, and I don’t know if it’s betrayal, but I’m trying to kind of map it that way, like I have , I’m angry, like I’m mad at her. I’m mad at the universe. I’m mad at whoever it is there is to be mad at that, you know, that she left, that she took, that she went away, and really for me actually it’s a little bit like she took herself away. My little granddaughter, who was only 10 months old in this year of 2020, also passed away, and again, my experience was being really angry. Like how could that little girl do that to my daughter, who was her mom. And I’m just interested in kind of exploring that the lesson of betrayal is trust. That’s sort of what I’m interested in.

I’m not sure if that particular phrase pertains to what you’re talking about. I think what you’re talking about as a loss of control, you know, when God died, she made you the boss. So you’ve been in control of everything and now people are doing things without your permission, and that’s very painful, and actually the pain that you feel, the anger is really just more protection. self- protection, because the grief is so strong. So, it just transforms itself into anger. So yeah, if you’re angry at something outside of you, you think but grief is so internal, you know, that it’s a much deeper kind of emotion and more painful.

So yeah, that’s a lot of pain there. I think the anger is just protecting yourself from the depth of the, and that’s okay. You know, really. I mean, I think as the days go by, the anger will dissolve and the grief will rise up and you’ll become more aware of it, and then you’ll be able to process some more of that.

You know, everybody has their own life to live, and they’re not living it for us. They’re living it according to what they have to work out for themselves. People don’t come into this world a blank slate. All little children are not totally pure in a sense of they’re all good. Everybody comes in with their own predispositions for things. The parents, they were born to the culture they were born in, the experiences they have, all constantly like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and they do the work they have to do, and there’s no way to understand it in the mind because it’s beyond the mind.

Yeah.

You know, let me read you,, let me read this letter. Maybe most of you don’t know this. This is very heavy. Okay? It’s really heavy, but so is death, and so is life. So I want to read this letter to you. The background? This is a letter that Ram Dass wrote to the parents of a very young, a young woman, a teenager, I believe, who was killed by somebody. She was raped and killed. And so her name was Rachel and Ram Dass wrote this letter to the parents.

“Rachel finished her work on earth and left the stage in a manner that leaves those of us left behind with the cry of agony in our hearts as the fragile thread of our faith is dealt with so violently. Is anyone strong enough to stay conscious through such teachings as you are receiving? Very few, and even they would have only the briefest whisper of equanimity and peace amidst the screaming trumpets of their rage, grief, horror and desolation.

I can’t assuage your pain with any words, nor should I, for your pain is part of Rachel’s legacy to you. Not that she or I would inflict such pain by choice, but there it is, and it must burn its purifying way to completion. For something in you dies when you bear the unbearable, and it’s only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees and to love as God loves.

Now is the time to let your grief find expression, no false strength. Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to Rachel and thank her for being with you all these few years and encourage her to go on with her work, knowing that you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience.

In my heart, I know that you and she will meet again and again, and recognize the many ways in which you have known each other. And when you meet, you will, in a flash, know what now is not given to you to know, why this had to be the way it was.

Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts, if we can keep them open to God, will find their own intuitive way. Rachel came through you to do her work on earth, which included the manner of her death. Her soul is free now, and the love that you can share with her is invulnerable to the winds of changing time.”

In love, Ram Dass.”

Thank you for that. And thank you for reminding me that grief is there, and it’s like in his letter, the burning of it, you know, burns up something, consumes something.

Let’s thank Ram Dass.

We get so caught up with the details of our daily life, the little hurts that we get, the little joys we crave and the little discomfort that we might feel. It’s also important to us until we step back a little bit and see the whole picture as best we can.

I remember when I was young and I knew everything. You couldn’t tell me anything. So, it’s good to be reminded again and again, what this is really all about. There’s great joy in our hearts that can’t be destroyed by anything in this world, and our work is to find that joy, find that love, find that happiness, despite what the world is telling us about ourselves.

“Ram nam karne se sab pura ho jata.”

Maharajji said, over and over, “From repeating the names of God, everything is accomplished.” Because when we’re doing that, when we’re listening to the sound of the name, when we’re repeating these names, at that moment, we’re not obsessing about ourselves. We’re not caught in our version of “me.” We’re tuning to a deeper place inside of us, where everything is okay just as it is.

That’s why practice is so important, because it’s not how you feel when you’re doing the practice. How does a farmer feel when he’s riding on a tractor planting seeds? He’s not eating the fruit of his work at that moment. The seeds have to grow, but if you don’t plant them, they don’t grow. So, it’s our responsibility to ourselves and to everyone, everywhere, everyone in our lives and everyone on the planet, to do this work of turning within, opening a window into that place within us that’s deeper than all this shit, deeper than the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves that we just believe day after fucking day.

So, it’s up to each one of us to do that work for ourselves and for the ones we love and for the people we don’t even know, because we’re all in this together.

One Ram Dass’s greatest, I think it was his greatest quality, was his willingness to drop his own trip at any moment for you. No matter what he was feeling, no matter what he wanted for himself, he was ready, willing, and able at any moment to be there with you, with us, regardless of what else he had going on. He would drop it in a second to be present with somebody. It was amazing. And that quality, as his life went on and he suffered terribly from the wheelchair and the stroke and the neuropathy and the pain, and that quality turned into real humility, real presence, and he didn’t inflict his suffering on anyone else. Quite extraordinary.

Every once in a while, with people he really knew well, yeah, he would be an asshole, but that was allowed. One time when I first met him, not the very first time, but the first couple of times I met him in, he said something so horrible to me. This is way back, you know. I wrote him a letter, or I said to him at the time, you know, “You’re just, you’re a fucking asshole.”

So, two weeks later I got a letter from him. He said, “Shiva is a cosmic asshole,” which was his way of apologizing.

It’s so interesting. You know, we see other people as we see ourselves, as egos, really, we see other peoples’ stuff, and we see our lives as stuff, just chugging along, you know,? But when I look at Ram Dass, I see this incredible being of light that was always there, manifesting more and more, and by the end, that’s pretty much all there was, even though sometimes he didn’t think that, because it’s still, there’s always stuff when you’re here in this body. There’s always some stuff.

Over the 50 years we were together, there was so much, so many different types of teachings going on. Even though the situation about this letter is not exactly the same, it’s the context that’s important, not important, but it’s the context that’s so powerful for us. We chop life up into little soundbites or little Tik Tok clips, and we forget what else is going on.

We don’t know. We’re not aware of the context for things, for the reality of things. We just pick little snippets and then we get off on that or we have reactions to that, but our hearts have to get as wide as the world to encompass everything that’s going on.

These great beings, Maharajji knew everything. He was aware of the suffering of every being in the universe, and everything he did was to relieve that suffering in whatever way he could, every minute of every day. These great beings, they’re aware of the suffering, but it doesn’t destroy them, because there’s nothing to destroy. There’s no ego. There’s no one holding on to a version of yourself. There’s just the whole universe. These beings have become the sky that holds all the clouds and the smog and the planes and the birds and the cities and even the earth, everything’s held in that sky, and the sky is not affected by it. It holds it lovingly and with gentle kindness and compassion, never destroyed by whatever happens inside of that sky. That’s where we’re going. That’s what we’re on the way to becoming, that sky, to recognizing that we already are that sky like presence.

But we forget, again and again and again and again, but you don’t know you forget until you add a practice to your life. That’s what shows you that you’ve forgotten when you’re gone. You’re there singing “Ram.” There’s a thousand people singing with you, and you’re thinking about screwing the girl next to you. Or the guy. Whatever you’re into.

And then you go, “Oh, shit. I’m supposed to be singing.” But you were singing, but you just weren’t paying attention. So you noticed you were gone. Without practice, you don’t know you are gone. You just grow up, go to high school, drink some beer and die, and you’re not there for one second. And that’s not good.

Well, there you go. It doesn’t have to be that way. So, when we add some kind of practice to our lives, that’s what shows us. It reveals to us how, that when we’re not here, but we only see it when we come back.

I’ll drink to that.

Hi Krishna Das. How are you?

Okay.

 The past couple of sessions that you’ve had, you’ve told a couple of stories about your Indian father and yeah, I was curious about how you met him and how he came to be your Indian father.

Well it was our, my first trip to India and Ram Dass’s second trip. We were in Kainchi. I think it’s probably the spring of ’71, which was the first spring that we were there. Most of us arrived in the fall. Many of us arrived in the fall of ’70, and then the spring of ’71, we were living in Nainital and going to the temple to see Maharajji probably every day, and we might’ve met Mr. Tiwari there. But then, we were invited to dinner at his house at some point, and KK was our kind of, go between. So we went to dinner at KK’s, the Tiwari’s house, which was up on the top of the hill in Nainital at the school, cause he was the headmaster at that point of it was very prestigious school up there, and we had a very nice dinner and Tiwari was very charming, very happy that night. He loved Ram Dass very much. He was very attracted to Ram Dass, but the funny thing was that KK had said some things about Tiwari to us. He communicated that there was something about Tiwari that wasn’t right. You know, something was off. We felt that because KK had transmitted that to us about the way he had talked about him, and so that first visit was very nice. We had a great meal. Mrs. Tiwari was one of the greatest cooks that ever lived, on a little kerosene burner and a little fireplace, you know, a little fire.

But the rest of the time in India, that first trip, while Maharajji was alive in the body, we weren’t very close with him. But it was after Maharajji left the body, one of my Gurubhais became very close with Tiwari, got to know him more and some of them, I was already gone from India, so in the summer of ’73, that’s when they got to know him better. And after Maharajji left the body, they continued to be close with him, and then through that connection, I met Tiwari again, and I still had this attitude about him because of what KK had, originally when he introduced us to him. But there’s a funny story about that.

And so the story is this, that KK and Tiwari were also Gurubhais of another very great Saint named Brahmachari Maharaj who was believed to be the reincarnation of Sombari Baba. If any of you have read KK’s book, “Devbhoomi,” it’s an incredible book, incredible stories of the saints and especially Sombari Baba.

So is this getting too complicated? Anyway, so I got close to Tiwari anyway, because he was so kind to me and Mrs. Tiwari was so loving and sweet to me and they took me in and allowed me to live with them and stay with them as long as I wanted, and really they just adopted me, you know, and I really became like the the oldest son in the family. To this day, I’m called “KD Tau,” which means “brother’s, brother.” It means “uncle.”

So, some years later, it may be, was even like as late as, I don’t know, the late seventies, I was in the temple with the Tiwaris in Kainchi. We were staying in the temple and KK came. Now there’s a backstory. Okay. This? Great Saint, Brahmachari Maharaj, when he left the body, before he left the body, he gave a bunch of money to KK’s cousin, you could say, and with instruction that he should use that money to build a small temple to Shiva at this little orchard where KK had a kuti, a little cabin, and Brahmachari Maharaj used to stay at that place. He did a lot of sadhana out there, and he wanted a little lingam installed, a little small Shiva Temple built.

So, he gave the money to KK’s cousin and over the years, Tiwari was the eldest disciple of that guru. So, KK was always asking him to organize the building of the temple that their guru had asked to get built, and Tiwari was not doing it, and after a few years of trying to get Tiwari to do it, KK just lost his patience and got pissed off at Tiwari, and that’s why when we met to the first time, there was all this negativity. Okay?

So the thing is, why did Tiwari not do it? So here’s what happened. It turns out that KK’s cousin had given that money away to his sons and the money was gone. He had just pissed the money away. KK didn’t know that, but Tiwari knew that. But he didn’t want to tell KK because KK would be angry and hurt and furious, and so he didn’t tell KK all those years why he wasn’t going ahead and having the temple built, and he took the brunt of KK’s anger. So finally KK found out ,and he came to the temple, and he came into the room where we were and he was crying. And he kept saying to Tiwari, “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?, Why didn’t you tell me you knew? All these years you knew and you didn’t tell me. Why?”

And Tiwari just said, “Would you have believed me?”

And of course, that’s when KK really broke down and cried, and in order to make up for his anger towards KK, he said, “I’m going to make halva for you.” You know? So he made this huge pot of sooji halva, and he brought it to us and we had to eat it, but he’d used so much ghee that we all had the shits for about a week.

This is how these people are. They’re so great. All these years, KK, Tiwari was willing to take the abuse so KK wouldn’t be hurt. So he wouldn’t be angry at his cousin, and it was only after his cousin died, that KK found out. Until then, Tiwari wouldn’t tell him. I mean, the humanity of these people is so extraordinary. I mean, we’re just like babies next to these people.

So yeah. So over the years I got very close with them and I could tell him anything, and I did tell him everything, but he always gave me the bottom line. He always chilled me out. He always showed me a bigger space to hold it in, no matter what I was going through. It was amazing. And he was such a great Yogi. He was extraordinary. I mean, whenever I was there, Ma would sleep with the kids and I would sleep in the same bed with Baba, with Tiwari. So, he’d get up at three in the morning, 3:30 in the morning, go piss, come back, sit in bed, cross his legs, boom. Gone. For four or five hours, until the house woke up and tea was prepared and, you know, then he would wake up and, you know, have his morning hot milk and read the paper. Not once in how many years? Not once in 22 or three years did he ever say to me, when he woke up, ” Would you like to meditate? You know, maybe you should sit up, you fucking asshole.”

Not a word. And I kick myself now. What I could have learned, what I could have experienced. I never said to him, “How do I meditate? Help me.”

All those years. God, I mean… but still, he loved me so much. He kept chiseling away, trying to get a little chip in there so he could slip in a little awareness, you know, and I wasn’t having any of it. Unbelievable. So what to do? Here we are.

Thank you for that. Thank you very much.

Okay. So we also have a question from someone who would like me to read the question to you. “Thank you for this opportunity. I would like to thank Krishna Das, for Maharaji came to me through Bernie’s Chalisa.” He has been like an an ambassador to Maharajji in the same way that Ram Dhut is to Raja Ram. I just wish to know how to find Maharaji’s love back. I live in fear that because of my impure life and thoughts, I may lose him forever, and that life would be like without his love. Basically, I feel I cannot live up to his expectation of me.”

I want you to save that question. Write it down somewhere and set a timer on your calendar and read it again in a year. Okay? Maharajji has no expectations for anybody because He knows, everything, not just who we are now, but who we’ve been and who we’re going to be, what we’ve done and what we’re going to do. He knows why we do the kind of things we do. And he’s already shining on us and ripening us so that we do less and less to hurt ourselves and more and more to save ourselves and others. The only expectations here are your own, and that’s a program that’s running, that’s put into us by our upbringing. The way our parents saw themselves is what we absorb, not how they see us. Yeah. That’s in there too, or how they treat us, that’s in there too, but more how they see themselves, how they go through the day, how they move through their lives is very much how we take a shape moving through our life.

So the self judging that you’re doing, this is what we do to ourselves. There’s no love. Love isn’t something you earn. It’s something that we are already, because he is love and he lives within us, and that love lives within us as who we are, but we don’t see it. We don’t know how to look for it. Most of us don’t even know that it’s there, but you know it’s there because you’ve already felt it, and as he says, “Once I take a hold of your hand, I never let go. Even when you let go of my hand.”

So it’s okay. Keep beating yourself up and keep believing that you’re a piece of shit and that you’ve done all these terrible impure things. Like nobody, you’re the only one in the world who’s ever done anything like that, by the way. All the rest of us, you know, we only live for the neck up. We don’t have sexual desires. We’re not greedy. We’re not full of anger and shame and grief and manipulation of other people for our own desires. No, you’re the only one like that. So, you know, when you’re tired of doing that to yourself, you’ll begin to stop doing that. Even believing those things about yourself, we all do that. That’s why we turn towards the great saints, why we turn towards the Dharma. That longing in our hearts is already, the longing, to be free, the longing to live in that love, that’s already grace. That’s already Maharajji reaching in and pulling you out of your shit. So just relax. Go with the flow and take it easy on yourself. You can’t make it go faster and you can’t slow it down. It’s already happening. There’s just no reason to keep giving yourself a hard time, except for the reasons you think you have to do that, but why do we believe those things?

Because we’re trained to believe those things. We’re born in a culture that only has those things, materialistic, Western culture. There’s no soul. There’s no reality. And even the people in Western culture who talk about God, most of them, you know, it’s a pity, they don’t even have a clue. What they’re talking about. They’re just glorified, egocentric, power tripping, manipulative, good and evil, judgmental minds. “God is love. Love is God,” he said, but we have to find that.

So get in touch with that longing that you have, that you feel. That longing is where the love is. That longing is not where the stories about yourself are.

My question, as a devotee of Hanuman and Ram, was there any meaning behind the choice of the first track on your first album being to Shiva?

Shiva? Hanuman is a form of Shiva. Hanuman is a form, is a manifestation of Shiva’s energy in order to be a part of Ram’s Lila and serve Ram. There are 11 Rudras, 11 faces of Shiva. The last face is a monkey face, and that is Hanuman. That’s where that energy comes from.

But that chant came from Mr. Tiwari and Maharajji, after Tiwari died. They just dropped it on me and there it was, and the chanting at the very beginning of that, Om Nama Shivaya, of that track, is Tiwari chanting the Shiva Puja up in the mountains in a place called Jageshwar,, which is a famous ancient Shiva Temple in the Kumaon Hills. And I recorded that and that, I put that in there first, and then the song starts after that few seconds of Tiwari chanting.

And that was the beginning of my, the real beginning of my chanting. The first CD was just a good try. There’s some nice things on it. It’s okay. But when I listened to it, I hear my mind. I hear me trying. That’s just me, not you, but I hear me trying. It’s from Pilgrim Heart on that I feel I was finally able to sing in a good way, sing the right way. But that’s just my judgmental mind.

So yeah, that’s all. And you know, really the old devotees of Maharajji worship him as Shiva. Tiwari worshipped him as Shiva. That’s the next level from which is projected into this world. So Shiva takes a form of Hanuman. Vishnu takes the form of Ram. The goddess takes the form of Sita. The shakti takes the form of Sita, and all the other beings take those forms in order to live out this drama, to eradicate negativity from the world.

That’s what an avatar manifests. That’s what allows an avatar to manifest, this intense darkness. So, I don’t get into , you know, who you like better? Vishnu or Shiva? I once said to Tiwari, I said, “Baba, who’s greater, Vishnu or Shiva?”

And he looked at me and he said, “My boy, how can you compare infinites?”

How can you compare infinites? They’re both infinite. How do you compare them? Infinity is infinity. They’re just the same thing. So this is all stuff. You know, just sing. It’s all, these are all the names of your own true nature, ultimately, because there’s only one in the whole universe. At least that’s what they say. Maybe someday we’ll know what that means, but that’s what they say. Anything else?

Thank you.

I spent a lot of time in Colorado over the last 10 years with Erin, the love of my life, who I love dearly, and she passed away in a Colorado hospital on the 15th of November, and I didn’t get a chance to be with her, and my heart was completely shattered. All our hopes and dreams have been ripped away from us. I loved her. She had a lot of health problems, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and many things. And she turned 70 this year. I’m 36, but inside we were the same age, you know? I loved to take care of her and to do things with her, and we watched old movies, and we used to watch the Andy Griffith show and all that. We just loved the same things, and now I’m just, I’m just devastated. I guess you probably covered this already, but I just wondered if you had any stories or any insights about grief and what to do with this?

Yeah. Even under the best circumstances, this kind of grief is, you can’t move it. You can’t think yourself out of it. And these circumstances, these days, when we’re locked up with our minds pretty much 24-7 makes dealing with anything very difficult, almost impossible. But you know, my dear friend, Bob Thurman always says, “There are no dead beings.” He yells at me, “No dead beings. Beings don’t die. They drop a body, when the work is finished, they take another one.” But because you and I are attached to who we think we are, it seems like somebody’s walked off the stage, you know, and left us here, and that’s a real feeling. We can’t up-level that. We can’t make it go away, but when we’re in that feeling of that person and missing that person, we’re missing the body. But the person is like right inside of us already at that moment. It’s almost like the virtual reality thing that we’re into these days, you know. So you and I are looking at this image of each other, but I can’t touch you. I can’t. And you could turn your screen off and I could still hear you talk. We’re in the space together.

So, but because we have our programs, man, you know, all our stuff, our hopes and dreams as you say, when we’re not getting what we thought, what we want, what we thought we were gonna, it hurts. But as the flame of those emotions slowly burn down, what’s left is the presence of that person. And the love does not go away. The love does not go anywhere. And the love is really who those people are. They’re not who we think they are. They’re not who we imagined them to be. Our dancing partners aren’t who we think they are. They are love. They are reality. They are being. And we’re all connected, always, and I know, so many of my dearest elders and friends have passed on in the last couple of years. It’s extraordinary. I miss them and it hurts, but I can’t deny that they’re here, also. I just don’t want to let myself feel that. I want to hold onto my, you know. What are you going to do?

You live through it. You’ve live through it. You keep breathing. And the intensity of the grief will go, will definitely become more transparent, and as that happens, the sting of the loss will lessen and you will remember the love more. And the love is what you want. Love is what we always want.

It’s hard for us to let ourselves be okay with things that we don’t want to be okay with. One time, Tiwari and Maharajji were up on the roof of this temple and all of a sudden, Maharajji just starts to dance around like this, you know, in ecstasy, and he says, “Oh… Died in this,” you know? And he was saying that this woman, this old lady that had taken care of him for many years and always brought him food, and had just died in some village, some place else, and he knew.

So Tiwari says to him, “You butcher, she’s, she served you for 40 years, and this is what you do. You dance when she dies?”

Maharaji just looked at him and said, “What? Do you want me to act like one of the puppets, like you?”

We’re all puppets here, man. You know, our stuff, all the strings that pull us around is our stuff, and what to do? It’ll get better. I guarantee. There’s no doubt. Just be with it as best you can and talk yourself down from the grief a little bit. And remember that you’re feeling them right now. They’re here with you right now. Not in a body. We can’t see it with our eyes. We can’t touch, but our hearts are touching that. We’re feeling them now, but we don’t, you know, we’re spoiled brats, you know. We want it the way we want it, and when we don’t get it the way we want it, we get pissed off and angry and that’s not going to help, but we can’t help it. What are we going to do? So be with all of it. But don’t deny that the love is still here, because the love will always be here. Even when your body is gone, the love will still be here. So, don’t push it away. We can’t do that. We have to live with it. It’s a gift in a way. The grief is a gift. The grief forces us to look deeper and be with the love that is there, and let go of the attachment to all that stuff around what we thought that person was, like you said, the hopes and dreams, you know. You know, be in the now, right here where we are, all those loves are together in our hearts, always. We’re all together with those beings that have passed on.

How many lives we’ve lived? How many people we’ve left behind? How many people we’ve met again and again? There’s this story of this Buddhist elder, one of the great elders, Maha Kashyapa. After the Buddha had left the body, he was like the elder. And he came out of the jungle one day with some of his disciples to beg for food. And as they approached this village, they stopped and the elder looks out and he smiles, and one of his disciples sees this and says, “Oh, great one,” you know, “an arhat doesn’t smile without a cause. What is the cause of this smile?”

These are the way Buddhists supposedly talk. So the elder says to look upon that scene. “Look upon that then tell me what you see.”

So the disciple looks out and he says, “Well,, you know, at the edge of the village, there’s this little hut, and out in front of the hut there’s the a few people. There’s this woman sitting on a chair, nursing, a baby, holding a piece of meat that she’s eating, and there’s a dog trying to get the meat and she’s kind of kicking the dog away, keeping the dog away from the meat.”

And the eldest says, ” Just so. In fact, that young woman is nursing her enemy, eating her mother and kicking her ex-husband, her former husband away to keep them away from the meat that she’s eating.”

In other words, we think we’re seeing reality. You know, you think you’re you. I think I’m me. You think she’s gone and you’re still here. They say that we’ve all taken so many births and been everything to everyone, which is why we should treat everyone well, because they’ve been our parents. They’ve been our lovers. They’ve been our friends, our brothers, our sisters, our enemies.

One time Maharajji was sitting around with some devotees, and one of them was a very old devotee of his, the sweetest of all the old devotees that I ever met, and he just casually, Maharajji just casually pointed to him one day and said, “Well, in our last birth, he was my enemy.”

What? You know, it’s like you can’t, it’s beyond processing with the mind. The play goes on. The characters keep changing.

When I was going to kill myself, my ex-girlfriend, my former girlfriend killed herself in America when I went to India, after I was in India, and then she came to see me at night, one night after she killed herself. So I was really devastated, and I was flipped out when she came to see me and I went running to Maharajji. So, anyway, it’s a long story. But after that happened, he started to tease me about getting married, and he said, “Oh, Krishna Das cried when his wife died, but he’ll be happy when he’s married again.”

And I was freaking out because what would happen is, there was a big group of people, I mean, 20, 30 people at the most, and, you know, people would kind of get together and start spending time together, the boys and the girls, and Maharajji would look at them and say, “Oh, you’re friends. They’re friends. Isn’t that nice? They’re friends now.”

And he’d pat them on the head. “Oh, your friends. That’s good.”

You know, a couple of days later he said, “Whoa, you’re good friends. They’re good friends. Wow. That’s great.” You know, pats them on the head.

A few days later, he taps him on the head and says, “Now you’re married. Go back to America. See your parents. Go.”

So I was totally dedicated to not getting sent away. So I was like this. I would not look at a woman. I would not get involved with anybody like that. I wanted to stay with him. And I saw that this was just a ticket to Palookaville if you got, you’re back to America, you know? So I don’t know where I was going with that, but oh yeah. So, so then he kept teasing me about getting married. And of course I was flipping out that he was trying to send me away and a few different things happened and I wound up actually having a complete nervous breakdown. I mean, full on hallucinations, out of my fucking mind. And one day, I was sitting in the back, in one of the rooms that we hung out during the day while he was in his room, and in the floor in front of me, this, this black Whirlpool, slow motion, charcoal, gray, black Whirlpool opened up in the floor in front of me and was like slow motion, you know, going around. And I was going down into it. And just before I would have I don’t know what, one of my Gurubhais came to the door and said, “Krishna Das.”

“What?”

“Maharajji’s calling. He wants you to come right away.”

“Okay.”

So, I got up and I went into the front of the temple and as I walked towards him, I completely broke down. I started weeping and I just basically fell into his lap and I just was weeping uncontrollably, and he was really quiet, which was unusual. He didn’t move. He didn’t say anything. He was completely still and little by little, I calmed down, and he started talking very quietly, which was also very unusual. He was always laughing and joking and teasing and throwing food all around. This was different. This was like he was talking, but it was my own inner voice talking. It was like he was talking inside and he said, “The soul is never born, never dies.” You can’t cut it. You can’t wet it. You can’t, you know, this is from the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter Two, I think it is.

And then he looks at me and says, “What are you going to do? Jump in the river. You can’t kill yourself.” He said, “Worldly people don’t die.” He said, ” Only Jesus died the real death.”

What is he talking about?

He said, “Why? He never thought of himself.”

Thoughts of “me” never arose in that being. There was no agenda. He was one with God. There was no thought about himself. He gave his life for his people and he became immortal, but worldly people don’t die. The real death is the death of the ego. He said, “Someone dies and people crying and weeping and they don’t eat. They don’t do anything. But after a few days they’re eating and drinking again.” He said, “This world is the flow of attachment.”

One attachment replaces another attachment, one after the next and that’s this world. Samsara is the flow of attachment. And it looks at me and said, “The fruit of attachment is tears. And you’re reaping that fruit now.”

You know, as the man said, you reap what you sow. You reap what you sow. But attachment is not love. Then he says to me, He said, “You’ll be happy when you’re married again.” Meaning, you know, and I said, “Maharajji, I want to marry you.” And he just laughed at me. He said, “If you marry me, all you’ll get is love.”

You won’t get laid. I mean, come on, you know? So that’s the deal, man, you know. So it’s a big thing. You know, this life is a big thing. Even though we’re not seeing it, the big picture is right here where we are, you know, and we need a tremendous amount of courage to really stay with that, regardless of what the world tells us, you know, regardless of what our own emotions tell us, what our own stories tell us about ourselves and life. We need tremendous courage to even look for the big picture, to try to really be with that true awareness.

It’s a lifetime work. It’s not something that happens, you know, like this. You realize you’re in it. We’re in it. We don’t know how we got here. We don’t know where we’re going, but we’re going to do the best we can. That’s all we can do. We can’t do anymore.

Hi. My questions seem to have been answered by listening to everybody else, which is always the case. I did have one thing to say though, kind of a question. I feel like more as I get into the practices and I learn to, that my pain and my stuff, especially now going through COVID and everything that I’ve been going through, that it’s all about just being present. Right? So all of our practices that we do, it’s a way to escape being present. I mean, not our practices. When the mind is whirling, when we’re like, you know, being hard on ourselves and all that. So more and more, I learn how to be in my heart and to be in that, the heart is wide as the world, and I get in that space, whether I’m chanting or whatever it is that I’m doing, and it’s, I want, I feel like, like a need, like to share, right? Not necessarily with sangha people who also can understand that space, but when I’m trying in this world right now to, because I feel like I have some sort of a calling, because I can get into that space and it’s real for me and I want to share it, but what’s hard is I recoil because so many people, it’s hard for me to stand in that place that I see my teacher, you know, I see Ram Dass stood there. It was like unattached, you know, just giving the love, feeling, you know, darshan and all the teachings from him, but not, for me, I still feel like, everyone else’s negative energy. Like, that love is bull. You know, that’s not real, where you’re at. Like we have to fight about politics. We have to have different sides. So, I’m trying to stand in my heart and it’s easy when I’m alone, but I’m just saying, when I want to join, be out in the world and sometimes I feel the negativity coming back. Do you understand what I’m saying? Am I explaining it somewhat?

I do. You know, our job is to heal ourselves, because when we heal ourselves, we will experience directly the oneness of the world, that it’s all one. Your job is not to heal anybody else. You can’t save anybody else. All you can do is be. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink unless it’s thirsty. Unless somebody is ready to look at themselves or whatever, however you want to say it, those that feel that will know it. Those that don’t feel it won’t know it. So your job is just to be you and then do whatever you do. But you know, when I sing with people, I’m not trying to make anything happen for anybody else. I’m sharing my practice. My practice includes, that part of my practice includes other people. So they have their own experience and I have mine. I don’t have theirs and they don’t have mine. So there’s no agenda that you have to go out and save the world.

I know that’s not, I know that to be true, but I feel like I’ve been so healed and that it’s like, I don’t want to change other people, I just kind of want to share it and wherever it lands, it can land, you know? But I still, I mean, I’m sure when you’re at your kirtan, you know you probably feel like all everyone’s stuff, and then at the end, maybe it’s dissipated. But I just feel like sometimes I allow, I feel like it’s the right place to be, just coming from my heart because I feel like I’ve gotten so much, but I would kind of recoil when the world is, a lot of people aren’t coming from that place and I don’t want to fix them, but I just want to share.

Yeah. But that this is all ego stuff, you know. Let it go. You use the word “I” so many times in this last two minutes. You’re talking about yourself again. “I think more and more what I want to do, what I want to do. I want to do this. I want to do that.” Let it go. Be happy. And then everyone around you will feel that, and they’ll be attracted to that happiness and the vibration will help them. It’s not your job.

See, the fact that you’re you recoil at the negativity shows you how much “you” that is left. You recoiled into negativity. It hurts. It hurts me when you see people doing things that are just, don’t get me started. But you know? That’s our stuff. It’s not their stuff. They’re just being them, which they’re allowed to do. It’s not our job to change them. Our job is to love them, but love is letting a person be who they are. They’re already perfect. I get that. Love everyone as they are, not as you could make them into your image of what you want to be, what’s lovable.

But it’s so simple and I feel that, but I feel like people are like that’s, you know, cause I feel love is so much strength, and you know, I have a problem I guess.

Strength to what? Impose your will on somebody else?

No, no. It’s they impose it. They’re telling me, it’s I kind of allow them to tell me like, “That’s bullshit. Like you can’t be in that love amidst all this that’s going on.” Like you have to be in a fight.

Well, they’re right. They’re showing you. They’re telling you the truth. You’re not in that love. You’re losing it because you’re not in it, really. You have to go deeper, sweetie. That’s all there is to it. Love everyone as they are. Don’t try to tell them how to be so you can love them. They’re just being themselves.

I guess I just want them to feel the love that I feel. And I guess that’s just, I know, I hear you.

It’s not that. That’s coming from self protection. You’re protecting yourself. You want them to feel the love you feel so they don’t hurt you with their negativity. That’s your ego.

So they can be in love.

No. There’s nobody out there, Sweetie. It’s all your projection. All those people who are negative, that’s Maharaji showing you your own stuff. You don’t want to see it. You want to blame it on them. Go ahead. Blame it on them. But it’s not their fault.

Yeah, I just want, I feel like it’s simple. It’s a simple shift and I just don’t want, it’s not necessary for me to be in pain. I don’t think it’s, I don’t know. I know what you’re saying.

Calm yourself more and more. Let yourself calm down. Get over what you think it should be and be with it as it is, and you’ll see that you need to be wider. You need to look beyond their negativity, but you can’t see because that’s your negativity. Don’t you see that? Your judgmental mind.

I love them regardless of their, of it, but

Love is not something you do. It’s a space that you live in. It’s your true nature. When you’re finished being who you think you are, there’s only love. So, and in that love, all these people who you think are negative now are just bubbles of love. You don’t see. There’s nothing to react in you against negativity. You don’t see you and you don’t see them. There’s only one being and they’re cells of the same being.

So calm down. Part of this is that, in these crazy times, we get very pressurized. We can’t really let go. There’s a pressure. We feel we have to do something. We have to make something happen. We want to rearrange the world. Now, we can’t rearrange the COVID, we can’t rearrange a lot of stuff, but we still want to rearrange people, you know, the way we want them to be. We want them to play the role the way we’ve written it, not the way they’ve written it. And that’s a way we protect ourselves.

I just want to alleviate suffering, you know? I mean…

First alleviate your suffering.

I am, to some degree, but yeah.

No. Yes, to some degree. Yeah, maybe more than a few others, but it’s still all about “me.” We’re at this point.

Wow. Okay.

Right? That’s okay. And it’s good to see this. I’m not attacking in any way. I just want you to understand that.

I hear you.

You know, the whole conversation with us is about “me” and “what they’re doing to me and what I don’t like about it and what I want for them” and all this stuff. And “I want them to feel the love I feel.” Maybe.

I hear you.

Yeah. Let them be, as soon as you stop trying to change them, you’ll be feeling very differently about yourself even. And…

I didn’t realize that I was still, I didn’t realize I was still kind of stuck in, I thought I had evolved from that, but I guess not. Like maybe even if it’s good intention. Yeah.

“I thought I’ve evolved from that.” Who said that? You know? Oh yeah. I thought I was God. Yes. “At 8: 23 in the morning, I thought I was God, but 8: 24. What was I thinking?”

Oh boy. Okay. Yeah.

Good.

Thank you. I just want to thank you again because it’s my birthday. Yesterday was was my birthday and for the last, I don’t know, six years I was on Maui with Ram Dass and you always for my birthday. So I felt like this is a, I’m on the retreat, so I came to Chat and Chai to kind of celebrate.

So you celebrated your birthday here for a bunch of abuse from me. That’s very nice. I appreciate that.

Obviously. Yeah, it’s good. I needed it. Food for thought.

That’s good. Yeah, that’s what we do. We stick our foot out and then Maharajji steps on it, you know? That’s good.

All good. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Take care.

 Hi. Nice to see you again. I wanted to share a story with you that shows my self-centeredness, but I was, I’ve been very moved by everything. It just feels like your heart is very open. It’s very moving. So I think I told you, I… Dudjom Rinpoche recognized me or whatever, he took me in, when I was a little, 1972, maybe ’73, in New York. He had just arrived. He’d been there a couple of weeks, and then my life was Dharma until I was 29, always around teachers, teachings, and I always thought, “I’ll marry a Rinpoche.” Of course I have to marry a Rinpoche. I have to. I mean, who, how can I marry like a normal guy or even, and I was a snot. I was like, and not even someone in the sangha, because they’re kind of annoying. Like, I was kind of backstage with you know.

I never liked sangha very much. I’m not really a group person. That’s embarrassing. I’m just not, I’m kind of a loner. So I, you know, I don’t know. Somehow they took me, I had tea. I was always with the Lamas and having tea with them. And they taught me how to cook with ginger and scallions, you know, Tibetan food and momos.

So then at one point, I was 29 and I thought, well, I should be getting married soon. And then I was having a relationship with Gesar, who’s Chogyam Trungpa’s younger son, the bad boy, and I thought, “This must be really good. This is perfect. So karmic.” You know, and then he dumped me.

And that wasn’t karmic. Right?

And Leonard Cohen had given his studio for us to, this crazy Terton had come into town. I forgot his name. He’s from the same…

Bhagavan Das, probably.  

No, not Bhagavan Das, but I met him. He was wonderful. No, it wasn’t Ram Dass, it was, he was a Tibetan Terton. His fingers were chopped off. Oh, Tulku Tundop knows his name because they’re from the same small village. Anyways, they had tortured him and chopped off his fingers. And he was really wild. And I didn’t feel a connection with him, but I was still going and practicing every day. And my dad was sitting up in the front and practicing and that’s where Gesar would kind of come by to pick up chicks. And anyways, I forgot what my point was. Oh. So he wanted a break. So then Gyatrul Rinpoche came into town and they said, “Sanghye Khandro, you go with Sanghye Khandro and Gyatrul Rinpoche, and these other, and Penor Rinpoche’s coming and you’re going to go meet this Tibetan female Lama who’s been recognized by Penor Rinpoche, Jetsunma Akhan Lama.” Have you heard about her?

Yeah.

Yeah. So we go there and they say, “You should go in and meet her, have an audience with her.”

I was like, okay. So I go in, she says, ” Oh, wow. Oh, I’ve heard about you. And your, you came with them and blah, blah, blah. Your name is Uma.”

I said, “No, my name’s not Uma.”

And she said, “Oh, well, Bob Thurman’s daughter came through and her name is Uma. And you remind me of her.”

And I was like, “Well, that’s nice. Yeah, I know her, but I have a name from my, from Dudjom Rinpoche, and I’m not changing it.”

She was like, “Well, anyways, I know you want to get married. I know you want to marry a Rinpoche, but I think you should marry my son.”

So I’m like, okay, well let me check him out.

So she says, “Well, come for dinner.” And everyone’s like, “Oh my God, you’re,” you know, a huge sangha around this woman and we’re all there. And so I meet him and he’s beautiful. And he’s 23 years old and he’s cute. He smokes pot all the time. He’s constantly stoned. And I was like, I don’t like that. But we get together and I get pregnant and she’s like, “Oh my God.” And then everybody leaves town. It’s like the circus leaves town. And she says, will you stay. And I was like, I’ve got to get back to LA. Like I have a life there and that’s where my teacher is and my dad and I was working in the film business at the time and oh, he breaks up with me. I get pregnant and the son broke up with me and I was like, oh, I’m like, what?

And she’s like, ” Don’t worry about it. He’s just off his course. I’m your Lama.”

And I’m like, “I don’t know if you’re my Lama.”

And she’s “I’m your Lama. And you have to have this baby like this isn’t, you know, this is going to be a high incarnation.”

And I was like, oh my God. And he’s like, “I don’t want to be with you. I’m actually still in love with this Israeli girl.”

Anyways I leave and I’m devastated and I’m confused. And I’m so ashamed. Then they start calling me like 20 times a day. This is when we had answering machines, before cell phones. She says, “Well, you’re going to go to hell in this life and all future lives, you know that right? You’ve had the teaching since you were a little girl.”

And I was like, “Oh my God.”

She was like, “Just have the baby being given to us.”

And now, I wanted to marry someone in the Dharma, like a Rinpoche. This has been my path. Something’s wrong here. But I was so ashamed that I gave away all my dharmic stuff. Everything. I’d been doing practice every day since I was a little girl. I gave it all away to my dad. Don’t talk about Dharma around me. I lost my faith and I stopped talking to Sanghye Khandro, everybody. And 20 years later, I moved to Cambridge and I became a social worker, left Hollywood, was a vice-president of a studio, made a bunch of movies, had the money and that stuff and it was, didn’t make me happy, had an abortion. So I was like, “Okay, I’m fucked.”

Like on the outside things look good, but I’m fucked because I’m going to hell in this life and all future lives. And I can’t ever see my Buddhist friends again, because it’s, I’ve broken my vows. And and then I came to visit my mom and Tulku Tundop walks out of her building. And he’s, I was like, “Wait,, oh, you’re a Lama.”

And he says yes.

And I said, “I’ve read your books.”

And he was like, “Oh, have you studied the Dharma?”

And I was like, “I used to, but I don’t anymore.”

And he said, “Oh what’s been your…”

And I said, “Well, I took refuge with Dudjom Rinpoche,” and he was like, “huh?”

And I said, “But then I broke my vows, so I can’t be a Buddhist anymore.”

And he said, “You know what, there’s an apartment in this building. I think you should take it. And you’re going to study with me.”

So I moved in here. He’s upstairs. He’s actually, he’s leaving his body soon. Yeah. Yeah. He’s not yet, but he’s down to a hundred pounds and I’ve spent every Saturday for the last three, four years with him. And I told him what happened and I was just crying and he said, “I’m so sorry. I just,” and he said, “You’re mine.”

Yeah, that’s called real love. There’s no judging in real love.

And then he said, “Why don’t you call Gyatrul Rinpoche? He’s a little confused now, but he’s like 96. He’s still alive. He’s your teacher. Why don’t you call Sanghye Khandro? You know, she’s like your sister.” And then he said, “I’m going to call them.”

So Sanghye Khandro came to town a month later and Rinpoche’s son was, it was the death of Shenpen Dawa. So we went to the funeral and they said, oh you sit up front with Sanghye Khandro, and I was like, ” No, I can’t. I’m like a bad Buddhist.” And they were like, stop it. You’re not a bad Buddhist. So I’m sitting up there with the whole family and they said, “We remember you.” The sisters were there and the whole family.

Beautiful. Yeah, we just can’t stop judging ourselves, huh? Unbelievable. No matter how much love we get, we can’t stop judging ourselves. Like I say, over and over, it if we weren’t judging ourselves, not one place in the whole universe would there be any judgment of us? It’s just our own stuff over and over again.

Does Tulku Tundop have everything he needs? Are there people taking care of him?

His wife, who’s one of my best friends is taking care of him. She’s my age. And she’s been with him since she was 19. When she was studying at Harvard, he was teaching at the divinity school. And he’s now 82, I think. So, anyways, but he, I mean, he’s happy as a clam. He’s fine. Totally fine. We’re just like “ no, stay in your body.”

Yeah. That’s like Ramana Maharshi. They said, “Don’t leave us. Don’t leave us.”

He said, “Where can I go? I’m here.”

He just keeps getting smaller and smaller.

They have enough money?

Yeah, she teaches. She’s a lawyer and she teaches law.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. Beautiful. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that.

Yeah, I just thought I’d share. I was so touched by that, but how we can get off track you know, how and how not all, I mean, I don’t want to say anything bad about, it’s not about Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. I mean, of course I’d heard the teaching many times, like in old traditional teachings, you don’t commit suicide. You don’t kill a baby. You don’t do that.

Well, on the other hand, there’s a story about Nityananda, who was Muktananda’s Guru.

I remember Muktananda.

Yeah, well, his Guru was Nityananda, and he was really one of the great beings. One day, a car pulls up outside of his ashram, at his little temple, and this couple comes in and the woman’s carrying a newborn baby that had died, a dead baby. And they come up and they said, “Baba, please open his eyes.” You know?

So Nityananda takes his hand and he goes like this and the baby’s eyes open. Then he goes like this and the baby’s eyes close. And then he says, “Now take him away and bury him.”

So they leave. And one of his disciples says, “Baba, why didn’t you bring him back to life? You can do that.”

And he said, “Of course I can do that. But do you want to take responsibility? This soul took birth in this family three times, just so he could die in my presence.”

Oh, wow. Yeah.

” You go ask them what happened.”

And it turns out the woman had two miscarriages before this. And he said, “You want to take responsibility?”

Our arrogance in thinking we understand anything, that we can do anything for anyone, is so ridiculous. It’s so childish. It’s so sad. So we have to really expand a little bit, you know. So that baby took birth just so he didn’t have to stay here very long. He had that much work to do with you, and that his father, and all his ancestors, that’s all he needed to be here for this moment. So, any other story you tell yourself is your imagination. “Oh, they say this is bad and they should, you should never do this.” You don’t know that.

But you also say how you were influenced when you’re, when, what was your Indian father’s name?

Mr. Tiwari.

Right. And someone cast a slight negative vibe on that. In the beginning, when you were told, “Oh, there’s something a little strange there.” How we’re influenced. I’m not. So when Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo, this female, the first female, supposedly enlightened being that I met, who’s a Lama, says to me, you know, “You’re supposed to be my daughter and you were supposed to bring in the next great incarnation of a Buddha and you will be…

Yeah. That’s why we have to trust ourselves, because anybody out there could tell us any fucking thing they want to control us. They don’t believe it, but they want you to believe it. So they get what they want.

This is the part of the story I didn’t tell you.. So Sanghye Khandro comes to town. She gets my phone number. She calls me and says, ” Where have you been for 20 years?”

And I said...

“I’ve been living in hell.”

I said, basically, “I’ve been living in fucking hell. I broke all my Buddhist vows. I haven’t been able to see you or any of my teachers.”

And she said, “Well, didn’t you know that Penor Rinpoche dethroned Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo?”

And I was like, “No.”

And then she said, ” What did she tell you that you’ve been, why did you leave us?”

And I’m like, “Well, because I got pregnant and had an abortion.”

And she’s ” Oh, why didn’t you come to talk to us?”

Yeah.

20 years.

Because of your own programs. Yeah. So maybe now you’ve finished doing that to yourself.

I hope so.

I hope so, too. All right. Take good care of, huh?

 I have a question, do you have recommendations to calm the mind in personal and professional moments that cause a lot of anxiety?

Everything we’re talking about is, we’re talking about just that. Every word that’s been spoken in the last two hours is about how to do that and why we learn how to do that, how to recognize how to do that.

For me, the chanting practice is one of the most powerful tools that I have, but it’s not a button that you push and then it makes all the anxiety go away. It’s something you add to your life that over time ripens and deepens and allows you to gain some vote over how you go through the day.

See, in those moments when you’re freaking, there’s very little, you can do, especially for us who are beginners on the path. We have no understanding, no ability really to change the way we go through our day very much, except a little bit at a time, but one thing you can do is just, for a second you know, if you’re at work, going to the bathroom and sit down on the toilet, take a couple of deep breaths and just let everything go through you, roll off you like rain over the body. Just let it drip off of you for just a second, and then go back and get stupid again, because you won’t be able to hold on to it. But that effort you make for one second to release it all is very powerful, and that will deepen as time goes on. But no, there’s no button to push that makes it all change right now. One must start to learn about what the spiritual path is about, what life is about, and get with the program just a little, so that over time, these practices really have a positive effect on you and change the way you go through your day, change the way we react, change the way we lash out, change the way we hide, change the way we try to manipulate other people to make it all okay for ourselves.

So it’s just, it’s little by little we have to learn how to do that. But we should always remember that the only reason we can learn how to do that is that inside we are already perfectly okay as we are. And there’s no doubt about that. We don’t think so, but that’s okay because in here we are already perfectly okay as we are, and nothing we could do can change that in any way, ever. So, it’s a question of finding out how to uncover that place within ourselves again and again and again, until it becomes natural for us to be in that place.

Okay?

Thank you. The last time I was here, I shared about some insight that I have recently garnered from my past, and so it’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve been together. Basically the process that I’m going through right now is I’m having a very stark, very eyeopening experience where I’m actually seeing the patterning that was put the, how, the experiences that I went through through my childhood, and honestly for the last 30 years have created so much of my self-talk, and the patterns that I had continued to tell myself that I wanted to outgrow. And so much of that patterning was stuff that I felt was out of my control, but I continued to seek and ask, and really what ended up happening, it was just so strong and so, just so powerful and so monumental in my life, and I think I will look back on it for, I mean, the rest of my life, probably as a turning point, as a switch that was flipped. It felt like a lightning bolt. It felt so illuminating. It was such an experience that, you know, and even in the moment that experience was so, it was actually a bit of a volatile experience. But it was also the last straw. And it got me to that point where I, after 30 years of what I’m now coming to realize was living under the abuse of a narcissist, it just, it threw me right over the edge finally. I just could not take it any longer. And then this, kind of this monster came out of me. And, you know, even that experience, it created some shame and some real, I was just like, “Wow, that doesn’t feel like me.” It was very uncharacteristic. However since then, and even honestly, during the, you know, the processing of that experience, I knew exactly where it came from. But its obviously left in its wake a situation where I’m sitting with and processing, and it’s kind of interesting because, you know, we talk about, and I’m listening that, you know, people are perfect as they are, and people are love. And as a person that, you know, embraces love and I attempt to shine my light as brightly as possible and continue to do that, even for that person for the last 30 years, I’m at this spot now where my mother is tied to this person, and my mother is my best friend. And so I continued to play the part and the role of, you know, the best daughter that I could be and always wanting to be the people pleaser and always wanting to kind of stuff the scenarios that were harmful or hurtful, or even when there was justification about why those things were okay.

For example, I was molested by my stepfather’s best friend and when my mother found out 10 years later, they continued to be friends with him and they are to this day. So that’s just one example. And so I was kind of made to feel like I had to deal with that, you know, and had to be… My mom’s motto has always been about letting go and of the past and not holding onto the things that are hurtful, and so that’s what I attempted to do, especially because it was a relationship that I cherish, you know. She’s my person.

So since this lightning bolt situation happened with my stepfather, after he pointed a can of WD 40 at me, and I unleashed my self upon him, a wall came down between my mom and I, an energetic wall. And it was completely not ever anything that I would have expected. And so now I’m sifting and sorting. And part of that sifting and sorting has been realizing the truths, my truths, realizing that those experiences are the experiences that created the voice in my head. And I’m realizing that I no longer want to attach myself to those stories, but also realizing that I am attached to those people, especially my mom, and she’s attached to him. So I recently had the opportunity to, she was open to having some voice clips, because I mean, she’s missing me terribly. And so I sent her some voice clips and I did tell her from the start that it was my intention to come across with kindness and compassion and, you know, and it’s always my default to feel like I want to protect her and to please her.

And so it was an odd position for me to be in because that’s my default, but I’m also at this spot where I really feel that I, my truth must be told, like how these situations, a number of them, have created who I am and how I have, I mean, honestly, I’ve struggled so much with depression and pain and chronic, you know, illnesses and things like that. And I’ve been seeking answers, like, why? Where’s this coming from? How do I move beyond this? And so you know, I’m now to this point where I feel like I’m having some answers about realizing these things have played such a huge part in who I am. So I guess the, kind of, the part where I’m at right now is like, how much of that is, you know, ego based? Like how much of that, of her needing to hear me and for me to feel validated, how much is that, is ego based? Versus loving her, you know, unconditionally for who she is? And I mean, I know for one thing, he’s not going to change. He personally is not going to change. And I don’t think that’s a relationship that I want to continue to try with because I have and it’s never met with anything except for ugliness, honestly, right, discussed, you know, kind of told her the things that had played into me. Then there’s this little tinge of, I want to honor, you know, my process and where I’m at, but then there’s this little spot where I’m like, well, how much of that really needs to be out there, you know? But it’s out there now. So that’s where we’re at.

Listen. This is a really, this is very deep and complex stuff. Really. This is a situation that, it took a lifetime to get to this place and it’ll take a while to unravel itself. If I might make a suggestion , it would be very useful for you to find a counselor who’s really good at this kind of stuff. And there are people who are just phenomenally gifted in helping us work with these type of situations exactly, and that would really help you a lot, because you have a lot of processing to do, and there’s a lot of your relationship with your mother and your relationship with her husband, and really deep stuff there.

And it’s something you’re going to need help with over time. I really feel that. It’s going to be very difficult for you to really unravel this by yourself. Really. If you can find a way to find a counselor or a therapist that really specializes in helping these situations unravel, and there are people like that who are really good, and that’s, that would be the best thing you could do for yourself at this point. And if it’s the best thing you can do for yourself, it’s also the best you can do for your mother. So for the whole situation to release all this energy that’s locked in the emotional programs that are that are intertwined here, really it’s something that’s going to take time, but you see, you have the courage to deal with it, now you just need the tools. And I don’t have those tools, but there are people who really do have those tools, and I would suggest you try to find somebody, because you’ll be so happy that you did. To talk to somebody who really knows how to help you unravel, I mean, it’s a gift that some people really have.

So take your time and look around for somebody like that and I think that’s the best thing you can do, to add that to whatever processing you’re doing. Okay?

Yeah. It makes good sense. Yes. And in the meantime, I will continue to chant and, you know participate with all of these cool events. There’s so many that we can find online. And I mean, so cool. That’s I mean, this COVID thing, if nothing else, it opened up world, you know, we can intervene with so many other people and so many resources are out there.

Definitely. Definitely. Yeah.

Okay. So that’s it for today. Thanks so much to everybody for coming. And I really appreciate the way that we, all this opening up and the sharing of our stuff really helps everybody, because we all have the same stuff in one form or another. We’re all trying to find out what’s going on with us and find our find that love that lives within us and we all have the same issues, so it’s really useful to talk like this, and so I wish you all the best. Take good care. Be safe. Be safe. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Hide yourself in the bathroom. Don’t do anything. Okay. Much love. Bye bye. Ram Ram.

The post Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD December 5 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 65 | The Repetition of the Divine Names

“Thoughts are going to come because thoughts come. That’s what they do. What we have to do is train ourselves to release them as soon as we notice that we’re stuck with them.” – Krishna Das

How sweet the sound. So, what are we doing? In India, this is called, “The repetition of the Divine Names.” The Names of God. We don’t like the name, “God” here in the West. It’s such a hard sounding thing. Some guy up in the sky with a big beard throwing down thunderbolts at us. Not my idea of a fun night. That’s what I was doing last night. Getting thunderbolts thrown at me. How sweet the sound… so these Names, these are the, what are these the Names of? Some God floating around up in the sky or maybe by Venus or Mars or something? No. At least probably not. Well, maybe. I don’t know. These are the Names of who we really are underneath who we think we are.  That’s a big thing to say. Because we spend most of our lives in a very narrow bandwidth of who we think we are. We wake up. “What am I going to do today? Ok. I’ll go there. What’ll I wear? Yeah, I’ll wear that. Then I’ll go do this. I’ll do that. Maybe they don’t like me. Maybe I should go somewhere else. Maybe they don’t like me. Maybe I should go somewhere else. If I do this, maybe they’ll like me. I’ll do that, they’ll like me. I do this. Maybe I’m going to get my…” all day long. The movie of “Me.” We write, direct, and act in the movie of “me.” And we play all the parts in our movie. I’m playing all your parts in my movie. I don’t know who you are. But you know, you sit there like this, “Oh, that guy’s grumpy.” Or something else. The way you hold your hair. I’ve got a version of you and me in my life. It has nothing to do with who you really are or even who you think you are, but in my movie, I know who you are because I’m playing your part. And then, you write reviews which you read and get more depressed. And that’s how we go through our life. Stuck in this movie that we’re creating. So, these names, they come from a place within us that’s deeper than the movie and through the repetition of the Name, gradually but inevitably, the presence within us, the love that lives within us as who we really are is uncovered. It’s uncovered. It’s already there or we wouldn’t be here. It’s not something we get in each one of us, in everybody. So, through the repetition of the Name, that place, that presence within us, that living love is uncovered.

But it’s not so easy to… you can’t stop thinking. That doesn’t work. Thoughts are going to come because thoughts come. That’s what they do. What we have to do is train ourselves to release them as soon as we notice that we’re stuck with them. So, you’re chanting, “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare Hare,” and then you know, you wind up thinking about what you’re going to buy tomorrow when you go shopping, you know, “Maybe I shouldn’t leave too early, there’s a lot of traffic Monday morning, you know,” and then, “that’s ok, I’ve got Sirius Xm. I’ll listen to the Krishna Das channel.” And then you remember, “Oh, wait a second, I’m supposed to be singing and I haven’t been paying attention,” and so you come back. And that happens every millisecond if you’re actually paying attention. You can’t pay attention for more than two breaths before you’re gone. Neither can I. But we keep coming back. That’s the thing. And that’s the amazing thing, if you think about it. Why do we ever come back from Dreamland?  I don’t know. But we do. So, you’re chanting and you know, “Wow, this is so great. This is fantastic. Oh, man. This is great. I can’t wait. You know what, I’m going to lead chanting myself. Yeah, next week I’m going to get people over to come, you know, we’ll vape a little bit, it’ll be great, man, yeah. Yeah, fantastic, you know?” And then you remember, you’re supposed to be chanting, you’re supposed to be paying attention. “Oh shit,” right? “But I can’t wait to vape. What time is it?  Yeah, I think I can make it til then.” You see, it’s not so easy because we’ve been spending our whole lives believing everything we think and feeling that’s what we should be doing. We don’t even doubt that for a second. We believe everything we think. “I’m feeling a little fat today. Nobody’s going to like me. I’ve got to get bigger pants. This is terrible.” You know? Totally identified with everything. All life long. There’s only one way to, one thing to do is eventually, is to do some spiritual practice. Spiritual practice means anything that helps free us from the storylines that we, the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves all life-long. Even if they’re nice stories, like “Hey, I’m really cool.” Yeah. “This is great. I’m cool. I’m walking down the street, see? They like me. Hey, this is cool. Yeah.” It’s just a story. But it makes you feel good so you hold onto it until you walk into a goddamned wall. “Oh, shit. I should have been looking. Oh, man, my head. Oh, this is terrible. God, I’d better go to the hospital. This is bad.” So, then you have another story that you believe in. We’ve gotta calm our asses down, little by little. If you don’t deal with it, it deals with you. There’s no way around it. You’ve got to deal with it. Yeah, did I miss something? I don’t want to… don’t leave me out of the joke. So, that’s what it’s all about.

Audience Member:  I’m bad, I’m bad.

KD: What’s that?

Audience Member: I’m bad.

KD: You’re bad? You’re not bad. Diedre, don’t give me a hard time.

Audience Member: She was just agreeing with you.

KD: Oh, good. Hey, what do I look like here? Yeah.

So, yeah. So the repetition of the Name, that’s what I do mostly. That’s my main practice and it’s a very interesting practice. So, and different people and different groups and different lineages share that practice in different ways, ok? There’s many ways to do this, I just do it the way I do it, just because that’s the way I do it. Nobody told me. And so I share it with you. And I say, “Don’t try to manufacture any kind of experience.” Don’t try to feel blissful. Don’t try to feel high. Don’t do anything except repeat the Name. And when you notice that you’re not paying attention, repeat the Name. And when you notice you’re not paying attention, repeat the Name. And when you notice… because that’s what it’s like. But here’s an interesting thing, I don’t know, you know, it’s interesting, so ok, so, “Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram, ok, you know, oh, yeah I’ve got to go to this store tomorrow, and I’ve gotta go to a doctor’s appointment… oh, Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram,” Ok, so, you were chanting and you were paying a little bit of attention to it. You were hearing the chant go on and then you got lost in your thoughts, right? Then, you noticed. You became aware that you were lost in your thoughts, right? I hope. At least once this life. At least once every second. So you became aware that you were not paying attention. How did that happen? Hm? Anybody got an idea? How did that happen? I’m sorry…

Yeah, yeah. That’s reasonable. How did that happen?

How did you notice that you weren’t paying attention?

Ok, I’ll tell you.

I don’t know.

But the idea is, every time you come back, so, you’re chanting and then you’re gone and then you notice you’re gone and then you come back. You just created a deeper neural pathway in your brain. And they’ve actually proved this. And that neural pathway, that pathway through the, to the present moment gets deeper and deeper the more you travel on that pathway and it gets easier and easier the more it happens. So, but how does it happen? You know, nothing can happen, every effect has certain causes. Everything is caused by something. So, what’s the cause for waking up? It must be that we’ve woke up many times before. We’ve woked ourselves up, however you say it. We’ve awakened ourselves many times before. Otherwise we would never wake up now. So, that’s what the practice encourages and emphasizes and deepens is that moment of when we wake up and remember that we’re actually sitting in this room. You actually drove here and paid a few bucks to come sit here to sit down and remember. I don’t know what you thought you were doing, but that’s what this is about. We’re here to remind each other that we’re really here. And gradually, what “here” means changes to us as the moment deepens, as we get more comfortable being here, being with ourselves and it’s a feeling like, eventually it feels like coming home and little by little we stay at home no matter what happens, no matter what thoughts come through. They don’t think us anymore. And if they do, it’s not as long or deep or when you get depressed, it doesn’t last ten years. It only lasts nine years, eleven months and 30 days. I’ll take that. So, that’s the fruit of coming back and of training our minds, training ourselves to come back, little by little. Because “here” is where everything is. Where are we now? We’re here. Right? Tomorrow, if you ask yourself the same question, “Where am I now?” The answer is going to be “here.” We’re always here. But our thoughts take us out of this moment into the past, into the future. We live in Dreamland and it’s hard to wake up. Well, why would we even want to wake up, right? I’d rather sleep through this shit. Maybe in four years it’ll be over. Who knows? Well, the problem is, that even in our dreams, we’re getting eaten alive by our suffering and our unhappiness and we don’t like that and so we want to find a way out of that dissatisfaction.  Out of the “not getting enough in our lives”, enough of what we really want. So, that’s what forces us to try to wake up. Sometimes, many times, dreams are not that much fun either. Because in a dream, you get no say about what’s happening. It just happens and life is like that. We’re not running the show and until we find a way to meet each moment with a kind of openness and presence and not be so reactive all the time, because we’re reacting to things that aren’t even happening half the time, you know? Somebody looks at you weird, like there’s somebody at work, right? And he never talks to you and he’s always moping around and everything like that and you develop a storyline about that guy. “That guy hates me. What did I ever do to that guy? He never talks to me. Sonofa… I’m going to…” and then somehow or other it gets back to you that the guy’s got a brain tumor, you know? And it isn’t about you at all. It was never about you.

But you believed it was about you. And because you believe that, you suffered. And you’ve got all this shit going on, your anger, for no reason. You did that to yourself. We do that to ourselves every day all day. All day. We’re doing it to ourselves right now. So when we add a practice to our lives, we kind of, it’s like sinking an anchor down in the ocean. The wind’s will blow us, but they can only blow us around so far before we hit that chain that holds us to the anchor and we don’t go too far. Without the anchor, the waves, the wind, we’re finished. We’re gone. And that anchor is right in there. Right in each one of us. That anchor is who we really are. Right there. Right in our own hearts. These names come from that place. Somebody in this world brought that name into this world. “Krishna.” “Radha Krishna.” “Sita Ram”. They brought that Name right here into this world as a way of coming back home. And the way we do the practice has a lot to do with the kind of fruit that it brings to us, the effects it has on our lives. So many times in India, a sadhu will come up to me, put his hand out for some money, you know, and he’s going, “Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram Ram…” He’s repeating the Name but you know, it’s not going to do him much good. That’s like taking a seed and throwing it onto the concrete. How we do these things, the intensity and the motivation and the sincerity that we live with every day has a tremendous effect on our lives. We need a lot of strength to become good human beings. Every one of us has been hurt, has been betrayed, has been left behind sometime or other. Every one of us hurts. Every one of our hearts bleeds. And it’s very hard to expand when we’re feeling that kind of pain, when we have those kind of things within us. It’s very hard. But who’s suffering from it? We are. No matter how it happened to us, it hurts us. And until we find a way to release that pain and anger and the fear and the shame and the guilt that come with it, we can never be free and we can never be, we can never really be here and really enjoy our lives. And we can never get what we really want in life. The reason I started chanting was because I had an epiphany in my room in New York once. It was about twenty years after my Guru died and I hadn’t been doing much except trying to kill myself in one way or another. And I was standing… I came into the living room and I just stopped and I was struck with the very deep instant understanding that if I did not sing with people I would never be able to clean out the dark corners and the shadows in my own heart. And I understood completely that it was only those shadows that were causing me pain. Nothing else.

It took me awhile to get with the program. But eventually, I did. So, that’s the reason why we sing. And that’s what happens even if it’s not the reason why you sing. We are cleaning out the dark corners of our own heart through this practice and little by little, we begin to understand that and the understanding comes from inside. The real changes are under the radar. You can’t be like, “Wow, I’m becoming a more generous person now, this is fantastic.” It doesn’t work like that. You know? The real changes are, your life changes from the inside out. You just start making different decisions, hanging out with different people, going to different places. You may not even notice, but what turned you on yesterday no longer feels like it’s worth it. And you don’t question it because it’s what you understand, it’s what you feel. But that’s the fruit of training ourselves to release the thoughts and emotions that push us around all life long. You know, it’s kind of like, you got born with a pair of glasses on that are the wrong prescription. You know? So you’re walking around like this and everything looks so weird but it doesn’t even look weird. That’s what you think it is, you know? That’s what you think people look like. That’s what the trees look like. That’s what the road looks like. But through practice, that prescription self-corrects, little by little and eventually, you see clearly and everything’s different. But it happens at its own speed. It happens slowly. Every once in awhile you might get a little glimpse. It’s called a “teaser.” You know? You give somebody a hit. You hope they get strung out so you can make more money. And that’s what happens. You get a little hit and that helps. “Oh, wow. Something might be possible.” You know, we do all these practices, yoga, meditation, all this shit, but nobody really believes it’ll work. If we really believed it’d work, boom, it would have already worked. But we do it. “Ah, maybe if I do this, something will happen.” You know? And nothing happens. So, not only do we have to do the practices, but you kind of have to deepen the understanding of what the whole thing is about. And believe me, there’s one thing it isn’t about, and that is, trying to become something you’re not. This is the last thing it’s about. I once was sitting with my guru and I would, you know, during the day we’d hang around, do this and that, and then He’d come out in the afternoon and we’d hang out with Him. We’d always, we’d take a shower and put on our clean clothes and come out and sit there, you know. And I burst out laughing one day and I realized that, unconsciously, my understanding of what enlightenment, you know, liberation, nirvana, would be, I saw that I believed it was some place where I wouldn’t be. You know? I was in going to disappear. That was going to be enlightenment. And I thought, if there’s one thing that it isn’t, that’s it. Where are you going to go that you’re not going to be? There’s no place to go where you’re not going to be. And they say, and that’s what I say when I don’t know what I’m talking about, they say that even when you drop this body, you’re still here, you just get another one. So, you’ll still be here. So where are you going to go? Nowhere. So enlightenment has to be here where you are. So maybe enlightenment is when we stop giving ourselves such a goddamned hard time about being alive.

Applause for that? I’ll say it again.

So, it was really an interesting moment for me. And you now, the funny thing was that Maharajji never, we didn’t wear the same, we didn’t wear white clothes, we didn’t all dress the same, we didn’t act, we didn’t even, all the Westerners around Him, we didn’t even like each other. Basically, we tolerated each others’ presence, but if somebody tried to get closer to Maharajji than me, “Get away.” So, yeah. We’re so busy trying to be somebody else, get somewhere else. It’s ridiculous. But that’s, you know, that comes with the package. You know? Our parents didn’t know. My grandparents didn’t know. Nobody in my family knew. So how was I going to know? How are you going to know? You trip and fall into it once and then you go, “Oh, so there is something to find out.” It’s not just hope, but when you get a hit yourself then you know what it is and it comes from inside, the hit. Nobody gives it to you. Because it’s already, it’s who we are. But we’re so busy thinking that we’re not enough. We’re not worthy of love. We’ll never get what we want. And in order to get what we want, we have to kind of give somebody else what they want and if I push that button, they’ll push my button, you know.  It’s hard. A lot of business going on. And a lot of tension with business. Can we really just be ourselves, you know? It takes, you know… try it and then duck.

And nothing’s going to happen. You’re going to be yourself. And the thing was, with when I met Maharajji, you know, He never tried to make us into anything else, you know? We didn’t have to behave. We didn’t have to be good little boys and girls. It was quite extraordinary to be loved that much just as I am. Oh my god. Even my parents didn’t love me that way. You had to be good. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t talk to me. Don’t raise your voice in this house.” You know, just normal stuff. But this was a different kind of love, you know? This was not, it wasn’t between Him and me, it was everywhere. One of my friends said, “It wasn’t just that when I was with Mahrajji I loved Him. And it wasn’t just that when I was with Maharajji, I even loved myself. It’s that, when I was with Maharajji, I loved everybody.” That’s disgusting.

Loving everybody? Jesus. How many showers do you have to take?

All right. So why don’t we have some questions…

The post Ep. 65 | The Repetition of the Divine Names appeared first on Krishna Das.

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.

“You are the protector of sadhus and good people. You are ever a support to devotees.

I’m taking over.  Good morning, everybody. It’s always morning somewhere, and that’s usually wherever I am.

So, we’re still here. Amazing. How’s everybody doing? I hope everybody’s okay.

Let’s just do the Hanumat Stavan, as we start. As you know, this is a prayer to Hanuman, a short prayer, and it describes many of the qualities that he has and many of the things that he’s accomplished and the things that he did. First, I’ll sing it, and then and then I’ll point another thing out to you at the end.

Pranawun Pawanakumaar khala bana paawaka gyaana ghana

Bolo Bajrangbalee Hanumana Ki Jai

I don’t have the book here, but the last couple of verses really struck me very strongly, powerfully one time, many years ago.  It describes Hanuman sitting at the foot of this tree, a special tree called the Parijat tree, which I think is, it’s supposed to be up in heaven somewhere. And it describes him as sitting there with his eyes full of tears, of bhava, of love for Ram, and I understood that this is how he is. He’s always in that feeling, in that flow of grace with Ram. With Ram. And it’s only when he has to do some service that he manifests whatever’s necessary to serve, and to serve Ram, to serve and to destroy suffering, but when he’s not being asked to serve or there’s nothing to do, he’s sitting there, lost in love, all the time.

This prayer is really like a visualization, like they have in Buddhism, Vajrayana, where you visualize a Being and you commune with that Being. So, this is really very much a visualization for Hanuman.

But for me, Maharajji is Hanuman, and someone once asked me, some Baba in India asked me, you know, who’s your Ishta Devata, who do you worship? And I said, “Well, Guru.”

“Oh, very good. Very good.”

So, we see Maharajji as Hanuman. He’s always engaged in helping people, all the time, everything. Dada used to say he has two blankets, an outer blanket, and an inner blanket. The outer blanket hides his body from us, because he was always taking people’s karmas and having sores and stuff on his body that would come and go and disappear. There’s a beautiful story in Dada’s book, I forget which one. It must be, I think it’s in “The Near and the Dear.” And if you haven’t read those two books, they’re extraordinary, “By His Grace” and “The Near and the Dear” by Dada Mukherjee.   Dada was one of those wonderfully close, extraordinary devotees and we spent a lot of time with him over the years after Maharajji left the body. And he describes how, one time when Maharajji was away, he had knelt down at the tucket in the bedroom where Maharajji had stayed in his house, and he used to rub the leg of the bed of the tucket, the bed, and in his mind, without even really thinking about it, he took it as Maharajji’s leg, you know, he would just, it wasn’t a big thing. He would bow down and hold the leg of the bed. But one day, as he touched the leg of the bed, he came across a rough spot with splinters and little a rough place on the leg that he had never felt before, and it occurred to him that, “Now, wait a second.” He said, “If this is, if I take this as Maharajji’s leg, if I’m really plugged into Maharajji and I believe, and I experience this as his leg when I touch it, and now there’s a damaged part of it that I never felt before. What does that mean? Does that mean that he, there’s some problem with his leg?”

And he began to like, flip out and obsess about this, and he was having a meltdown.

“If it’s his leg and I feel this, then he, it must be true. He must have something wrong with his leg. But if it’s just all my imagination, then what is this all thing with murtis and, you know, images of the deities? Are they just our imagination or is there some reality to it? Can they possibly be a manifestation of the real thing? Or are they just like our way of pacifying ourselves?”

So, he was really going on and on about this in his head, and then sometime later, Maharajji came, maybe it was one of his unannounced visits. He arrives at that his house and he goes into the room and sits down and Dada is with him, and you must read it from Dada because it’s so much better, but at one point Maharajji was sitting there without his blanket, or something like that, or his blanket opened up, and Dada saw on his leg, a sore, an actual sore on his leg. Now, when he saw it, I think he, as it always was with Maharajji, things would happen and you would see them, but they didn’t really register in your, like, you didn’t really know you were seeing them. It was like you were in a dream. It was only later that he’s realized that he had seen that sore on Maharajji’s leg, and then it wasn’t there later in the day or the next day, or the next time he saw his leg, but it was there. He saw it and he didn’t recognize that he saw it until later, and he went, “Whoa. So, he was showing me that my experience was real,” and you know, that’s a really, really deep teaching because we are living in our own subjective universe. Everything we see, think and feel is only our version of what’s out there. Apparently there really is something out there, but everybody sees it differently, and so we need to really pay attention to what we see, think, and feel, and work with it directly.

So, in this case, Dada saw this, he felt this sore on the leg of the bed, and then Maharajji showed him that, yes, in fact, the leg of the bed represented Him to Dada, not to anybody else. We all have our own path into our own true nature within us. So, Maharajji was showing Dada that he, that yes, the leg of the bed represented his leg, and he should trust that, and that’s his path. That’s his devotional attitude, his devotional practice, which connected him, which was a direct connection to Maharajji.

We don’t trust ourselves. We don’t trust ourselves. We’re in reaction mode all the time, and we don’t drop out of that into our hearts very often, but we should allow that to happen, and we’re, even though we’re stuck in our own subjective version of the world, if we don’t see, if we don’t recognize what we’re seeing, we can’t let go of it. We can’t free ourselves from our fear, and our anger, and our shame, and our grief, and our selfishness, and our anxiety, and our tension, and our longings for this and that, and our aversions to this and that. If we don’t see them, we don’t notice them. We cannot let go of them. We can’t be free of them. And I’m not saying you have to do 20 years of psychotherapy for every little thing that you have, every little issue that we have, but through practice, through the doing of practice, how we see what we see, is changed. It’s altered. Just very simply. Like it says in the Hanuman Chalisa, “I take the dust from the Lotus feet of the Guru, the pollen like dust, which is consciousness, awareness, real love, to clean the mirror of my heart.”

And when you look in a mirror, if it’s covered with dust, all you see is the dust. You may see a little faint version of your face in the mirror, but it’s not accurate. There’s dust all over it and you see the dust. So, we take awareness to clean the dust off the mirror of our hearts, the awareness, the loving awareness, as Ram Dass used to say, because it is loving. It is love.  To clean the mirror of our heart, and then gradually as that mirror is cleaned, we see our true face, our true being.

So, Hanumanji is always immersed in true being, which he calls “Ram,” which for him is Ram, the name of Ram. Maharajji’s used to say, “Krishna’s left this world and Ram has left this world, but their Names are still here.”

And so, we take those names to remember, to re-member, to put together that presence within us, to recognize. So, Hanumanji is always here, always immersed in Ram, and this is actually our own being. Our own true nature is always immersed, always turning towards God, towards love, towards  reality. Ramana Maharshi used to say our true nature is invocation. Our souls are always invoking reality, the Paramatman, the Supreme Soul.  We’re always bowing to that. We’re part of that. And so that’s what we will discover as we become less reactive, less attached to our own versions of ourselves and others, less attached to what we see in the physical world, the so-called physical world out there, and of course in these times, we’re just being banged up against the wall of our own mental issues, and fears, and anxieties and stuff all the time.

So, it’s so important to sit down, or stand up, or whatever you do, to calm down, to just calm down. Calm down. Let the body relax. Let the mind relax and just pay attention what’s going on in your head, and when you notice how stuck you are and how stuck we are in dreamland, we just come back to the Name. Come back to the name. “Through the repetition of the name, everything is accomplished. Everything is brought to fullness. Everything is completed.” That’s what he said, over and over again. Go on repeating the name, whether you feel good or bad, whether you have love or not, whether you’re tired or angry. Go on repeating the name and as time gradually, but inevitably you will definitely experience the grace of the Name. The grace of love will start to manifest in our lives. He said it, and that’s the deal.

Q: So, because the pandemic is going and the quarantine is going on for so long, I think that the people are having problems, like let’s say with people that they have to be close, not necessarily living with them, but around, because they can’t just go out anymore, so, let’s say people’s families or groups where family or a set of friends that they have a lot of contact with, and after a while, since its going on for so long, people could start getting on your nerves, you know? And not every time, you know, in relationships, whether it’s family members or, you know, like things can be worked through and just like be really honest, and the other person, you know, but people get defensive. They can’t, especially when there’s more than one person involved. So, I guess I have my question is like, like, what’s a good suggestion of how to handle it in terms of, if you’re feeling angry, sometimes I don’t think it’s worth, especially now, that you can’t just like go out and go do something to get things out of your system. I don’t think it’s necessarily good to just say you’re honestly like, “this is bothering me” and try to work it through. So, I think sometimes maybe it’s better to just distance, rather than talk about it. Just distance. But I don’t know.

I don’t think it was a good time to be confronting people with their shit.

Because it’s not like, a year ago where maybe you want to have a big discussion and you know…

Yeah, especially since it’s your own shit you’re confronting people with.

Well, it’s reactions to other people, so it’s not just your own shit.

Oh, I see. You have no problems yourself. You’re just a totally clear being it’s all everybody else’s problems. Okay.

No, it’s mutual.

Om Guru Om. Namaste. Yeah, it’s just your shit you’re throwing on people and they’re throwing it back at you. They’re throwing their shit. It’s a good time to go like this.

So, don’t say anything?

Be nice. Don’t force people to react, because it’s only your own reactions. It’s not their problem. It’s your problem. They have nothing to do with it. This is all you. Everything you see is you. You see they have problems, and they have issues, and they’ve done things to you in the past. That might be, there might be some reality to that, but the other reality is that you haven’t processed anything, that you’re still reacting inside. You’re still hurt. You still vengeful. You’re still angry. You still want to make them understand who you are.

Go into the bathroom, stand in front of the mirror and talk to yourself. That’d be the best thing you could ever do, and calm yourself down, and notice how caughtyou are, and don’t expect anybody else not to be caught. Everybody’s in the same soup here. It’s not a good time to be trying to justify your own subjective reality.

That’s what I was trying to say. It just feels like this is not, it’s not a year ago when you could do that, and maybe something good would come out of it. It feels very bad to do that instead of just…

Well, you know, love everyone.

Oh, but that’s the thing. What, in case you don’t feel the love? That’s my point. You don’t feel love, you don’t feel like… you try… you’ve got a list of things you appreciate about the person, but you’re not feeling it no matter what you do.

I said that sarcastically, by the way. You just missed it.

Wait a minute. Oh, when you said “love” you were being sarcastic.

I was being playful. Let’s not say “sarcastic.” That’s too negative. No, but recognize that you don’t love everyone and work on yourself

To love everybody?

First of all, love yourself. That’s the first thing. Give yourself a break from your own stuff, which we don’t know how to do. So how are we going to give anybody else a break? We can, we don’t have to be, what’s the word? We don’t have to make people angry. We don’t have to push stuff on people, but we also don’t have to, you need to recognize this is your staff. There’s not anybody else out there. Turn off the computer and you’re alone with your stuff. They’re not even there. It’s all in your head. And work on it. See what it is. See what’s bothering you and soften it. Breathe with it. Relax with it. Let go of it. It comes back. Let go, it comes back, let go, it comes back, let go, it comes back. If it takes you the rest of your life to keep letting go of one thing, that would be good work. This is not anybody else’s problem. This is your issues.

When people make you angry and let’s say you’re working on it.

Okay, wait a second. Okay. Stop. So, one time a farmer came to Buddha, an old guy, and this farmer, his son, had left the farm and become a monk, a Buddhist monk, and as a result, this old guy had to do everything himself. He was alone on this little farm. He had to do everything himself. He had no help, and he was furious with the Buddha for taking his son away. So, he comes to the Buddha and he starts yelling at him and Buddha sits there, and finally, the guy’s finished.

Then Buddha says to the farmer, he said, “Old man,” He said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah.”

“So. If you bring a gift to me and I don’t accept the gift, where does the gift remain?”

“Well, it remains with me.”

“Just so, old man. I don’t accept the gift of your anger, and it stays with you.”

So, all our stuff stays with us. It’s up to us to take it easy on ourselves, to see where we’ve been hurt, to see how reactive we are, to see how much we want validation from the outside world. We want everybody to see it our way, you know, and that’s never going to happen, because everybody wants everybody else to see it their way. That’s what they call Samsara. That’s this world. Nobody agrees on anything. And if they do, it’s just a business deal and they’ve agreed to agree for 10 minutes, and after that, they’ll stab you in the back.

So, this is good. It’s very good that you’re in the game here. You understand? This is good, and this is really, this is positive. This is not negative, even though it doesn’t feel good right now. You’re becoming aware of your issues. That’s what’s happening in the pandemic time.  If you’re not aware of your stuff, how will you ever let it go? It just grabs you from behind. It’s like a shadow that will never leave you until you turn and face it.

So, this is great. Take the opportunity to spend this time, calming your ass down, relaxing, taking it easy. Scream and yell if you want. Stand in front of the mirror and imagine the person you’re angry at and yell at that person, but you’re seeing your own face while you’re yelling, and that’s going to be an extraordinary experience.

Why do you say, “you’re seeing your own face” if you’re reacting to what they said in your, like let’s say they said it and you would not say that to yourself. Why is it youyourself?

It’s not that you would say it to yourself. It’s your reaction to what they said. What they see and do is their problem. This farmer was angry at Buddha, and Buddha said, if you’re angry and I don’t accept that, where does that stay? So you’re angry and you don’t know where to give it away. You can’t even give it away. You have, it stays with you. So, that’s what I mean by, it’s our issues.

So, really, I’m telling you, try this. This just came to me. Just stand in front of the mirror, if there’s a mirror you can sit in front of, and you look at yourself and talk to the person that you’re pissed off at. Talk to them, yell at them, scream at them, throw them kisses, whatever you want to do. And you’re going to see so much about yourself in those moments. It’s going to be amazing. So just try it. And if you come back next week or whenever, let me know how it goes. I think it’s a great practice to do. I think it could be really intense, because you’re going to see the person making all these faces, and the person whose face is contorted in anger is not the person you’re imagining is in the mirror. It’s your face.

I really do like that you said that my reaction to somebody… it’s… how can I say it? Really, it is their issue. Like whatever they did that got me upset, really you’re right. It has nothing to do with that. I mean, that is like so true. It has nothing to do with me, and my decision, like the farmer, to take it so seriously and be upset about it for days. It’s really my decision.

No, no, it’s not a decision. You see everything like up in here. You’re up here between your ears. It’s not a decision. You haven’t decided to make yourself miserable for days with this feeling, but you can’t help yourself.

Right.

That’s not where you want to be living. You want to be able to help yourself, don’t you?

Yes.

So, would you please what I’ve asked you to do. I’ve explained and asked you to sit or stand in front of a mirror and just sit there and just on one hand, imagine this is that other person, but on the other hand, you’re gonna imagine that the other person, but you’re, it’s your face you’re going to see. I wonder what’s going to happen. You know, give it a shot. Don’t do it from here. Do it from here. Ok? Do it. Feel. You will feel. See what happens.

This is why Maharajji said, “I love suffering. It brings me closer to God.”

Because God lives within you. God is what you’re seeing in the mirror. But you’re covering that up with your subjectivity. You’re going to be talking to this other person and you’re imagining you’re really talking to that person, and in your head, you are, but you are seeing yourself at the same time, and you’re going to see your own face contorted. You may see yourself crying. You may see yourself happy. You may turn away, but the mirror is always there, and the mirror is pure awareness, our own awareness. It’s reality. It’s not what you see. It’s the seeing of it.

Anyway, don’t worry about that. Just sit in front of the mirror and have a conversation with this person and just, you know, let’s see what happens. You might spend a lot of time in the bathroom. You never know.

Okay. Thank you.

Good to see you. Take care.

Q: Hi, and hi, everybody.

Where are you?

I’m in Tanzania now, in Africa, East Africa.

My goodness gracious. Hello? How are you?

Hello. We’re fine. But, in fact, I’m from Brazil, and I have spent, I have lived three years in India in Delhi from 2015 to 2018, and I went to Delhi. I went to India. It really opened and wishing to have a spiritual experience, and I did have. I changed a lot. I grew a lot, but I wanted so much to meet a guru and I couldn’t.  I can say that I met many gurus because the people that I met every day, most of them, they would have something to teach me. But when I went to ashrams, when I made trips to meet a Saint, to meet a guru, I met a lot of celebrities. So, my question to you is, maybe I don’t know how to look? Or it is business now. It is a lot of business. There’s a lot of business. And so, are there still gurus like Maharajji?

Yes. So, underneath everything you’re saying is your belief that a guru is a physical being like you. That’s not the case. A guru, a real guru is not at all identified with the physical body. It’s just like driving a car. You get in a car, you drive it and then you get out of the car when you get where you’re going, when you’re finished with your work.

What they say in India is, Guru, God and Self are not different. Because we are identified with our physical body, we want to guru in a physical body. We want somebody we can talk to, somebody who will pat us on the head and tell us we’re good little boys and girls, and teach us in words that we can hear and think about. You know, guru is always with us because we are here. Guru is your own true nature. It’s not outside of you. If you happen to meet a being in a body that you recognize as your guru, that’s because that was the best thing for you. That’s what you needed, and that was, what was able to happen for you according to your karmic situation. But if you don’t, you don’t. That doesn’t mean you stay home and watch TV for the rest of your life. You know, you’re here. So do what you have to do to find out who that is. What are you? Who are you? What is, where is that love inside of you? This is, there’s no sense thinking that you have to wait to meet a guru in the physical body. That is not true.  It’s not true. It’s not helpful and it’s not the way things really are. Guru is always with you because Guru is always with you. You may not see the Guru. You may not be aware of the Guru as something outside of you, another thing, a person, but that doesn’t mean that Guru is not with you. Guru is always with you, with everybody, but we don’t know how to look. So, because you’re identified with your body and your emotions and your thoughts, you want something you can find in that little box, but you know, that’s just what you want. That may not be what you get. The other thing is, your guru is always doing what’s best for you. So, if you meet one physically, that’s what was best for you. If you don’t, that’s what was best for you.

Most people who say they have a Guru, they don’t even know what a guru is. They make an emotional attachment with another human being who is more than happy to, in the worst case scenario, more than happy to allow you to worship them and take your money and your time and make himself polish his own ego up. That’s the worst case scenario. It’s not, not all the people you meet who are thought of as gurus are bad. Not all of them. And not all of them are deluded either, but we don’t know. How would we even know? Are we qualified? Have we gone to Guru recognition school? But on the other hand, when you know, you know. It happens from the inside. It’s not something you do. It’s not something you imagine. At some point, it’s possible that you will recognize someone as your Guru, whether you meet them physically or not. That’s not required. It’s not necessary, because a Guru is not away from you.

You know, we’re like little bubbles in a huge ocean, and we think we’re separate from every other bubble in the ocean, and that’s called “ego.” When the ego pops, you’re in the same ocean, just the same way, but you don’t feel separate. So, this identification with being separate is what causes us pain. Guru knows that they are the whole universe. There’s no separation, that this temporary belief that we have that you are you and I’m me, is a temporary delusion. Guru is not deluded. And Guru lives inside of you as who you are. Really. Who you really are underneath your thoughts, underneath your identification with the body and physical sensations, underneath your emotions, underneath everything you believe about who you are. Guru is there. Guru is here.

So, run around and look for Gurus if you like. If you enjoy doing that, that’s fun, but you’re going to find the Guru inside of you. When I met Ram Dass for the very first time in 1968, ‘69, when I walked into the room where he was sitting, before eye contact, before a word was spoken, I knew inside of myself, the thought I had was, “It’s real.” It’s real, whatever it is. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew, it’s real, it’s in the world, you can find it. And that was Maharajji. And then happened to me like that. I didn’t meet Maharajji. I didn’t see his picture at that time. The first thought I had when I walked in that room wasn’t even a thought, it was an epiphany, you know? It’s real.

Because I had been searching for years already, reading books, pretending to meditate, doing yoga, but no light ever went on and this, the light went on. That’s where it happens, inside of you. So, don’t spend your time running around too much. It’s not, you just get tired. You spend a lot of money. Stay home, relax, take it easy. Find that loving presence within yourself.

Well, in fact, if I’d seen this perspective, I think I have met my guru many times, because I had many meaningful encounters in India. Not with Saints, but people who would change me forever, and I’m still in the process of changing the three years to two years after I left India. And those peoples, like a beggar, a teacher, they changed me for life and the lights, they turned on the lights.

Trust that. You should really trust that. That’s the deal.

I can feel that I can do that. Thank you. Thank you.

Q: Hello. Where I saw you, the first time I saw you was in Sacramento… and then saw you in Nevada City too.

Grass valley. Yeah. Wonderful.

Yeah, God, I got such a hit that first night I saw you. It was amazing. I just went because I was in this yoga class and these three pretty ladies invited me to go see you, and that’s kind of where my head was at, but then when I heard you sing and I heard you do that Jesus song, Jesus on the Mainline, I got such a hit off that song. It was just, it was amazing. And this “Greatest Hits of the Kali Yuga,” I love that.  The DVD was so good. The story you told about Jesus, I mean, it totally changed my perspective, it turned me around about God and Jesus and everything and just God, I get such a hit off it. I guess my question is, how did you come up with that Jesus song? Did you really do it to mess with people or, I think you used a different word.

Well, I, you know, I love the blues and I always listened to blues music, and I discovered blind Willie Johnson and he’s, that’s his song and it’s you know, my whole life I just… Blind Willie Johnson was an incredible Being. I have no idea who he really is, but he just, he was, you know, in those days he was a black minstrel who was basically homeless, and he wandered around the streets, singing gospel songs, and then at one point I think he got married. He was with a woman who sang along with him, and he was blind and he just, he would just wander, singing the songs, and finally somebody heard him and somebody else heard him, and he got, they recorded his songs. So, you know, we’re so lucky that somebody recorded, otherwise, and you know, who knows how many people there were like that. This was in the early 1900s, or I think, yeah, the 1920s, maybe 30’s at the most? The latest? So, yeah, he’s got an incredible song. So many amazing songs, really. And he had two voices. He used to sing, he could sing in this beautiful high falsetto and he could also sing… extraordinary. He was really amazing. Check him out. Blind Willie Johnson.

Blind Willie Johnson. Ok.

So yeah, you know, same thing for me. It wasn’t until Maharajji, he started talking about Jesus that, that my whole mind, my whole thing changed. You know, because I grew up with such an attitude about it, you know? I was born Jewish, and in those days there was a lot of discrimination, a lot of negativity about being… people would say things and, you know, so I didn’t want to be Jewish, you know? I wanted to be something else. So, actually it looks like I made it, right?  I’m like a HinBhuJew, but even then in the old days are, I remember when I was probably like six or seven, I made my parents get a Christmas tree. I don’t, I have no idea what I was thinking, but I remember I had a fit and I made them do it and they did it, to their credit. They brought a little Christmas tree in the house, but it was only when I heard Maharajji talk about Jesus and the way, that incredibly powerful depth of emotion that he spoke about him. I mean, it just washed away all the illusions about him, all the stuff that the church teaches you about good and evil and original sin, and you know, it was like all that stuff that people do to other people to control them for their own selfish desires, self-centered needs and desires, it just washed all away. It was so amazing.

Somebody said once, you know, the four wise men who came from the east with gifts for the child, this is how the Tibetans recognize the reincarnation of their teacher. They come to meet the baby, bringing things with them to test the child. They’ll bring beautiful new, shiny things, and then they’ll bring some old dusty beads or some dusty, old thing, you know, that belonged to the previous incarnation, and the child will grab the old stuff. You know, most kids go for the shiny stuff, but the Reincarnation grabs the smallest stuff and goes “mine” many times, and then they know that this is really theirs. So, those four wise men that came from the east to test, you know, to bring gifts for the child, that could have been testing the reincarnation of one of the Lamas that they knew. And then it’s been said that Jesus spent time in Tibet, too. There’s two monasteries in Tibet where there are records, apparently, of him being, of this guy being there. You know, I’m not sure if it all works out chronologically, but anyway, it’s a nice story. I’ll take it.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Take care.

Q: Hi, how are you? First ofall, I want to say thank you because the last time we spoke, you helped me a lot, but now I have a question.  Things happen to me like when I get in touch in with nature,  you know, like this love, like overwhelming love, and it feels like it’s too much, like it’s kind of unbearable. Like almost like, like if I get high, you know, and I feel all this love and I get to feel like I want to love everyone. And it almost feels like, dangerous, you know, sometimes.

Fear comes.

Yeah, like if I get to love that much and if I get to experience that love, like I get like…

Love isn’t something we do. Real love is not a verb. You don’t do “love.” There’s no requirements to act out any feeling or show anybody anything. And when your heart starts to open, you know, many things start to happen. A lot of the stuff that we’ve held inside and hidden from ourselves, different times where we’ve been hurt, where we haven’t gotten what we wanted, when we’ve been betrayed, when we haven’t felt good about ourselves, that stuff’s all, you know, it’s still, we’re holding it in. So, when you start to relax, these things start to be released and very powerful feelings.

So, it’s okay. It’s all good. Just allow it to come and go. You know, there’s nothing you have to do. There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Even the fear, that has to do a lot with, when we previously exposed ourselves to other people, we were hurt. So now you feel, you feel you want to be more real with people, so to speak, but there’s going to be a lot of fear there. So, take it easy. What’s the problem? Where are you going? Relax. You’re here. You’re not going anywhere. So just allow it to come and allow it to go. And when you get caught in that fear, just try to just notice it, release it, let it go. Just don’t push it away. You can’t push things away. This is not, you’re not trying to change anything here. You’re just trying to be with whatever arises, because eventually, what will be arising is only love, everywhere, all the time. But not a love that comes and goes, not a love that’s between two things, two people. You don’t fall in it. You don’t fall out of it. You know, it’s always here. This is our true nature. This is underneath all our stuff. So, as you start to allow yourself to relax a little and breathe a little, and you give your heart some room to kind of relax, you know, a lot of stuff comes up.

It’s all good. It’s good and bad, but it’s all part of the path of letting go, and once again, if you don’t see these things, if you don’t see your fear, if you don’t see it, the feeling of danger,  it’s like a shadow, it’s always behind you, and it’s influencing the way you go through your day. It influences who you choose as partners, who you choose as friends. It influences where you go. It influences what music you listen to it, what you eat, everything is influenced by our stuff. So, just relax, take it easy. There’s no rush. You’re not going anywhere. You’re just being you. You’re just being, and you don’t have to convince yourself to love everyone.

At one point in our life, we hope, we will see that all there is everywhere is love, but that’s not today, you know? And that’s okay. That’s okay. We’re here with our stuff. And if we don’t deal with our stuff, it deals with us. So, have courage and give yourself some space to be really stupid and really unhappy and really hurt and all that stuff. But keep coming back. Keep letting it go and coming back.

One should try, I don’t like to say “should” or “must,” but it’s important to develop a little bit of a regular practice. So, the practice brings you back. It extracts you from whatever you’re stuck in, little by little, but it’s necessary to do regular, a little bit every day, even if it’s just five minutes, three minutes of just that. You turn your phone off. No matter what happens.

The minute you sit down, you go, “Oh, geez. I think I left the food on the stove. I better turn it off.”

Let it burn. Five minutes. You know? Cause you’ll get up and you’ll go and you’ll go, “Oh, I did turn it off.”

So, this is really giving yourself a break, and it takes tremendous courage to sit down and just let yourself be there. Not to try to love everyone, not even to try to love yourself, but to just allow, because real love is letting yourself be who you are. Right? And it’s not easy when we see all the hurts and the pains and the betrayals and the dark stuff. It’s not easy. It hurts more, but we should be relieved that we are seeing it, and recognize that it’s come in order to go, that it’s from the past. It’s manifested right here now, and now it’s on its way out.

Yes. Tomorrow the same thing could happen. But the strength that we’re developing of letting go is a very big thing. A very big thing. So, it’s all good, not necessarily pleasant, but good. Don’t look for good feelings all the time, because those kinds of pleasant feelings, that we think, “Oh, I’m going to meditate. It’s going to be very calm. I’m going to feel peace.” You know, that’s not required. That’s an obstacle, because you’re creating, and you’re imagining, “this is what it’s going to be,” and if it’s not that, which it probably will never be, you always feel that you didn’t do something right.  So, notice the expectation. Notice the imagining, also. Keep letting go of that. And just be you. Be there. That’s all. That’s where you are anyway. You can’t be somewhere else. Right? You go to the kitchen, where are you? You’re in the kitchen. You’re here. You go there, you’re here. You’re always here, wherever you are.

So, as we practice letting go, as we practice releasing, as we practice coming back, as we practice just being, and just letting it be, we get more comfortable just being with ourselves in a very simple way. And it doesn’t necessarily feel this way or that way. It’s just here. And being here gets deeper. The feeling deepens. There’s an endless depth to it because it’s an infinite space. Right? Ultimately. So, we’re just touching it. And just touching it releases so much stuff. It’s all good. Cry all day. Cry for weeks. It makes no difference. It’s good.

And then, you start to see the stuff that happened in our lives that forced us into this, taking this position, so to speak. It’s like, when my mother was dying, she was in the hospital and she was pretty stoned on morphine. She had cancer, and so she was lying in her bed and she had, you know, they had those tables in front of you, a little hospital tables on the bed and there was a glass and a pitcher of water, so she asked me to pour some water for her. So, I reached over, and as I reached over, I bumped the table just a little bit. Right? And she went like that, and my stomach clenched. It was like getting punched right in the stomach, and at that second, I recognized she was always doing this to me, and she had done this to me before I can even remember. Right? Before I was even aware. She and I saw that I had adopted this shape in relationship to her, and that I carried this shape around with me in life, and I was always waiting to get hit in the stomach. I was always in a defensive mode or always expecting hurt to come in certain situations, and it was, I can’t even describe to you. It was just such a powerful understanding of why I have all the kind of stuff I have, you know? This is what happens. You’ll see something like that, and then you can let go. But if you don’t see, you can’t let go.

So, it’s not always fun to see, but it’s not always horrible either. Sometimes it’s just like, “Oh, I got it.” It doesn’t have to be all big and emotional, although it can be, 99.9 times of the time, but it doesn’t have to be. So just keep sitting, keep allowing yourself, you know, sing. You know, you don’t have to try to, you can’t grab your mind and kill it. You can’t grab it. Where is it? You know? I don’t see it anywhere. Although actually, it’s the only thing I see. So, you just allow yourself to be with it. Take it easy, relax. You never know. We don’t know who we are unless we actually relax and take it easy and stop trying to please some inner need to be this, or be that, or be seen this way or that way, you know. It’s okay to be who you are already.

Q: Hello Krishna Das.

Namaste. How are you.

I had a question to you, which is there’s this picture of Maharajji which, in which he has dark hair and he’s very young.

Yeah.

There’s only one picture. Can you, do you know anything more about it?

Yeah. His name at that time was Lakshman Das, and He was a Sadhu, you know, he wandered around. He had left home at a very early age, at about eight, because his father’s second wife, his mother died, his father’s second wife didn’t feed him, wouldn’t take care of him well, because she wanted her son to inherit the property owned by his father. So, he left home and became a Sadhu, wandered around. We don’t know too much about those days, but yeah, that was from that time period. I think it must be, eventually his father found him and brought him home and then he married the girl he had been engaged to when he was eight, you know, in the villages. So, and then he, they had three children, and his daughter describes him as the perfect father.

You know, Maharajji, no one really knows anything about him. Let’s put it that way. We have a few little facts that we think are facts, that look like facts, but if they’re really true or not, we just don’t know, because he was completely in control of how and what you saw and thought of him.

And he used to say, “I have the keys to the mind.”  “I have the keys to mind,” and he would tease us. He said, “I could turn your minds against me.”

And we would go, “Baba, don’t do that. Don’t do that.”

He would laugh. He loved it, you know.

So there seems to be some basic story, but you know, whether it’s true or not, we don’t know. But those were the days, probably between the time he first left home and the time that his father found him and brought him back home, and then he stayed around a lot more, until the time when his daughter, who was the youngest child, went off to a school. She was about 15 or 16 and she went to college, I guess, and then from that point on, he was always wandering after that. But for some years he was always around the home, it seems more often. There’s another picture right after he got his hair cut off. Have you seen that one?

He’s under a very big statue.

No, that’s later. That’s in Neeb Karori. That’s when he came out of the cave that he was living in for five years, and then again, for another three years or something like that. I think he came out of the cave and they did a big bhandara.

Our experience of him is what he wants it to be, and he shows us just as much of him as we can take, and he reveals just as much of himself that will be right for us, because we all have these karmas to live out and some karmas have to be lived out and some karmas can be removed, so to speak, through grace, but we still have to, there’s still a lot of karmas that we have to live out, and for instance, when I was living in India, I thought I would always stay in India. I never thought about coming back to America. Really. I was dedicated to staying there and he let me stay. He kept me there for two and a half years. And then He said, “Okay, you have to go back. You have attachment there.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. I never thought about America. There was nothing I wanted there. I was happy with Him, but now 50 years later, I see everything that’s happened to me, everything, and I see, oh, that’s what he was talking about. This is, these seeds were inside of me and they had to come out this way. That was the best way for them to come out, rather than trying to keep me in India and blah, blah, blah. I would have exploded. It wasn’t going to work, really. So, this was the best thing for me. And since he knows what’s best, he allowed it to happen that way.

So, that’s really actually, if you really think about that, if you have that understanding, if you really believe that, if we really believe that, that’s it then? Right? We have no problems. Whatever has to be here is here. Whatever’s not here, didn’t have to be here. So, whatever’s here is what we need to deal with, and it’s his will that it’s here, because he could change it if he wanted to, or if it was best for us.

Like for instance, with the stroke, with Ram Dass, what a terrible thing. And he suffered so much for all those years, over 20 years in a wheelchair, and at first he would say, “Maharajji stroked me.” He would say that Maharajji essentially gave him the stroke for his spiritual advancement, but when he went back to India in the wheelchair, the one time that he went back after the stroke, Siddhi Ma looked at him and, “Ram Dass, that’s not right. The stroke was your physical karma. Was your physical karma.  Maharajji’s grace is the ability to overcome that stroke and be able to use it as spiritual practice. You know, you transcend the effects of the stroke on your soul.”

So, and that’s exactly what happened, especially over time. So, we can relax in a way, you know, because everything that’s happening is the way it has to be. It can’t be any other way. So, let’s just be here and open our hearts and be as calm as we can, and as open as we can with whatever arises in our life. It’s not easy, but we have to develop those muscles, our letting-go muscle. It brings us back home again and again.

Yeah, and not have desires, not to have as many desires as we still end up having.

The desires come. They’re the result of past karma. What we do with them in the moment is up to us.  Some desires, there’s no problem. You know, in the Vinaya, you know, do you know the Vinaya Chalisa? So, what does it say in there? It says, “You only satisfy the desires that are good for us.”

So, not all desire needs to be killed here. We’re humans. We have to breathe, we have to eat and we have to watch TV. So then? There’s nothing wrong with that. If it’s happening, he allows it to happen because that’s what we need. But the things that we would do that would destroy us or interfere with our becoming our true selves, He makes sure that doesn’t happen. So, if we have that kind of faith, we can just relax really and enjoy and be present.

On the other hand, you know, when he would talk about desire, he would say, he would hold up a teacup or banana, and He would say, “So you want it? Don’t take it.”

Once again, anything you say about him, the opposite can be said, so the point is you just have to do whatever is right for you, you figure it out, and that’s what he wants you to do, is what’s right for you. For one person in that group at that time, that teaching might’ve been exactly what they needed. Maybe I was the guy and I didn’t get it, and I kept taking more bananas until I got sick and threw up and had to go to the hospital. But then I learned not to take the banana. Right? But other people, it might not have been relevant. They might not even remember that.

That was the other thing. We sat around with him, 20 people. If each one of those people could write what happened in that period we were with him, it would be 20 different stories. Absolutely. Because each person was seeing him, he was relating to each person differently at the same time, showing this one that, showing this one that, saying this to that person, but meaning it to that person, and only that person got the message. It was so amazing. It’s just extraordinary. Have you read Dada’s books?

Yeah, I have them. I have started reading them, but I’m reading the book on your website now, Divine Reality.

So, after that, read Dada’s books, too, because “By His Grace” is such a great book. Oh my God. It’s really amazing. So yeah.

I have one quick question, before we go, I could not find the Vinaya Chalisa sung by you. I  have looked for it everywhere. You have not recorded it?

I have not, you know, I actually read it in English mostly. I mean, I can sing it in Hindi somewhat, but I don’t…

It’s difficult in Hindi.

A little bit. Yeah. It’s not quite, yeah, maybe, but  I want to, in the case of that particular prayer, I want the meaning to really resonate deeply. I want to connect with the meaning. I don’t want it to be just, you know, like when we first started singing Hanuman Chalisa to Maharajji, we didn’t know what we were singing, but still he loved it and he encouraged it, and over the years, now the meaning arises to some degree, but that’s okay. But with the Vinaya Chalisa, I want the meaning to be the main thing for me. You know? So, I keep reading it in English, and even then sometimes I don’t, you know? Yeah. I’ve changed some things. “I’m ignorant. I have no faith and devotion, so I’m offering this prayer because it’s the only thing I can fucking do. God dammit.” You know, I yell at him, you know?

Yeah. Do your fake prayers and still it will hold.

Thank you. Nice seeing you again.

Q: Hi. KD I am with Aditya Hridayam Punyam. Hello from Kainchi. We’re both in Kainchi.

You’re in Kainchi now? I didn’t even know there was so much wifi there, there was so much internet. That’s amazing.

Yeah, we lost the call twice. We just wanted to say to you, “Hi from Kainchi.”

Yeah. Lovely. Thank you so much. For those of you who don’t know, Kainchi is one of Maharajji’s temples that I spent much time in. It was one of the main places we were with Maharajji over that time.

Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful. It’s getting cold up there now.

Now the weather is supportive.

Have you been to Nainital?

 Yes.

Accha. Are you going back there?

We’ve also been down to Anandamayi Ma’s ashram.

Down the road there. Wonderful. How long will you be in the Hills?

10 days.

Why don’t you go? Have you been to Kakrighat?

Every day. Every day.

Okay. I’m just going to shut up, you know everything.

We sat exactly where you sat and sang the Kakrighat Hanuman Chalisa.

Wonderful. Very nice. Good. Very good. Okay. Well, don’t forget to say, give my pranams to Girish and Naresh, and their mother. She runs the whole show. She’s the goddess of the whole Kainchi Valley. Make sure she gets my love and pranams.

Sure. In the morning. Ram Ram.

Q: First, I have to say you and your team have been a silver lining for me through these times, and so I appreciate all of you and all of your work. But I also wanted to share, I started meditating when I was about 21 with TM, so that was $33, a long time ago, and a few years later, a friend of mine took me to see Muktananda in New York and I got Darshan from him. I couldn’t remember “Om Namah Shivaya,” because I need to see it written. So, he gave me “So’ham.” So, I’ve been back and forth between those two mantras. So, now when I sit down to meditate, I don’t know which one to use. Sometimes I use “Sri Ram” and anyway, songs and chants always pop into my mind. It’s like, I can think of a mantra, but there’s a song, and I can’t. So, I don’t know if you have anything to say about that. I love the Hanuman Chalisa. I play that. I have a copy upstairs and downstairs in a less than 800 square foot house. I really love it. And all your CDs. I’ve seen you a few times, actually. I saw you in Yogaville and about 2008. And I have a picture of us.

Yeah. I it’s no problem. Whatever, you know, sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don’t, You know, you just, whatever mantra works for you, allow them to come and go, you know. It’s the effort to be aware of whatever’s going through your head which is the best. So, if these mantras and these songs, these chants are coming to you, that’s good. They’re pulling you out of your thoughts and out of your subjective stuff and bringing you back. Right?

Right. I love that. I like that.

So, it’s all good. You know, I wouldn’t obsess about it, and I would not worry about it. I would not try to fit yourself into a straight-jacket because you think you have to.  That wouldn’t be that wouldn’t be useful in any way. So just recognize the coming back as much as you can, you know, that’s all and enjoy the chant going on in your head or the mantra, the name repeating itself, because these names, these mantras are, they are repeating themselves within us. It’s not us doing it. It looks like that to us, but that’s because we think we are who we think we are, but that’s not reality. The reality is that the name is repeating itself within us, bringing us back home from dreamland. So, it’s all good. Just be at ease of heart and take care. That’s it. No problem.

I’m fairly disciplined. I usually sit twice a day. That’s from TM, I established that. So that works. Okay. Just be at ease and keep doing it.

Don’t try too hard.

Okay I won’t. That’s good. It’s all good. Really.

Q: Hi. How are you?

I’m good. Was that your question? Okay. I’m fine. Thanks.

I have a picture of Hanuman, which is Hanuman in the middle and he’s got many other faces. Yeah.

Panchmukhi Hanuman. Five faced Hanuman. Ok, go ahead.

Very cool. And I got it. It was part of a calendar when I was in Delhi, it was part of a calendar. So, I thought, and I feel like it’s all connected to like Ganesh and Shiva and all of them in like one picture, and wondered if you had anything to say that.

Well, actually it’s not Shiva and Ganesh. It’s different avatars of Ram. There’s the Boar, the Horse, Garuda, and Narasimha, and then Hanuman, the monkey face. Those are the five faces. And that’s a very powerful manifestation of Hanuman for destroying evil and negativity. Yeah. Very powerful diety. Yeah. Very nice. I have right there. I have one beautiful murti of five faced Hanuman.

Are you able to go outside a little bit and get some fresh air?

Oh, there’s lots of fresh air here. This is the windows. There’s windows in this house.

And you are able to do some yoga and take care of yourself?

I’m doing the best I can. Yeah, it’s good.

I can’t wait to see you.

You’ll have to.

I know.

Okay. Thank you so much. Be well.

Q: My only question was just, if you had any more stories about Anandamayi Ma meeting Maharajji? Because I know somebody who used to hang out together at the Jaganath temple, and I was wondering, is there anyone alive that was there when they met? Probably not, right?

No. Well, the first time they met, Tiwari was with Maharajji and of course he’s long gone. When I was on pilgrimage around the Narmada river, the yatra, I was told that Anandamayi was also on that, the same one that Maharajji was on, that there were thousands of sadhus traveling and Anandamayi was one of them, in her previous body. That’s what I was told. And I’m not sure, but it seemed to me, I can’t quite remember, but it seemed to me that her previous body was a male body, by the way. That was, I think that’s what I was told, the way it was told to me.

That was amazing pilgrimage. I was traveling with Mr and Mrs. Tiwari and the Narmada river starts in a place called Amarkantak, and it travels, which is in the center of India, and it travels Southwest to the Arabian sea, and it goes underground and comes up and disappears and comes up and yeah, I had some amazing, really great experiences on that yatra.

So, this Baba that I was with was the old Baba, 160 something at the time, and he told me that those, they used to, they would start, a thousand sadhus would start at Amarkantak, and they would walk on the Southern bank of the river all the way down to the Arabian sea, and then they would go out into the ocean, into the sea about 15 kilometers, 18 kilometers, and that’s where the river came up. You could see the waves, and they’d go around that and then land on the Northern bank of the river. And there’s a temple on the Northern bank with two murtis, a young, beautiful young Narmada, Goddess Narmada, and an old, very old looking murti, image. And they represent the, what they call it, the source and the end of the river. And the sadhus would make their way along the Southern bank and then never cross over to the Northern bank until they went around the river and then make their way back to Amarkantak on the Northern bank, and it would take 12 years to do that pilgrimage because they would just walk a few hours every day and then sit down and they’d make their fires and cook food and do bhajan and stuff, and then get up in the morning and do it again.

And those pilgrimages, they, it was led by a thousand year old Yogi named Gauri Shankar Maharaj, and this old Baba I was with, we were sitting by the river one day, in the middle of the pilgrimage, and he said, “It was right here that Gauri Shankar Maharaj was talking to the river. He spoke to the river and the river spoke to him. He addressed her as “Daughter, his daughter, the Narmada.” He saw her as his daughter. And he was talking to her and said, “Oh my daughter, what should I do now? My body is so old. It’s just useless.” And he goes, “Oh, okay.”

And he got up. I mean, he was sitting right next to this Old Baba at the time, he gets up and he just wades into the river and disappears, and no one ever saw him again. He took Jal Samahdi, water samahdi, he just disappeared, dropped the body in the river. She had told him to do that. She said, “Well, just come into me then,” and he disappeared.

Yeah. And we were sitting right at that spot. The Baba told me, the old Baba told me this story. He was a young Baba in those days. And he told me this story.  It was beautiful place. A beautiful place. Amazing places along the Narmada. They say, in the Kali Yuga, all the yogis hide along the banks of the Narmada. The Ganga is for the Sat Yuga.  But these days, everybody hides. They don’t see people, they don’t meet people. They stay along the banks of the Narmada. That’s what they all say.

Did I tell you the story about Dhuniwala Dada Maharaj? He was an extraordinary Siddha who lived in the early 1900s, maybe the twenties and thirties maybe, and as far as I know, and he used to walk around completely naked all the time. He never wore clothes, and not even a langoti, nothing. He just was, he was really extraordinary Siddha. He would be seen many places at once. One time he was seen, he got eaten by a tiger and then he shows up somewhere else. I mean, these things were happening all the time with him. He was really something.

So, along the banks of the Narmada, his main place was, and right by the banks of the river, there was like, a big roof built, but it was all open, and unlimited the roof there was an old, huge old black car from London, England, one of these really big old model, like a model T Ford, something like that, you know, that kind of thing, and inside the car, there was hanging on a hook, a tuxedo type thing with a top hat. And once a year, this Baba, who never wore clothes, would put on this tuxedo with a top hat and shoes and everything, and he’d get into that car and he would drive back and forth along in this tiny little village, maybe it was just a few hundred meters long, the road, dusty, old road with holes in it, you know, a dirt road, just potholes and everything. And he would just drive back and forth all day long, back and forth along this little dusty piece of road in this village, and then he would park the car and take off the tuxedo and walk around naked again for another, the rest of the year. One day a year. And this went on for a long time and they kept the car there. They Polish it and  the tuxedo is inside. And his fire is still burning. Dhuni is the fire, the sacred fire, and he was called Dhuniwala Dada. The elder brother. “Dada” means elder brother of  the fire. That was his name, Dhuniwala Dada, and that is a powerful place, an extraordinary place.

India is just another universe. I mean, now it’s, the ancient stuff is kind of disappearing. It’s harder to find, covered up with MTV and fancy cars and big houses. But underneath that, mystical India is still totally raging alive. No problem. Amazing.

Q: Hi. I just, I don’t have a question. I just wanted to truly thank you so much. I don’t know if you remember, over the past few months I’ve asked a few things about my mom who has been dying, and excuse me while I cry, but she left her body two days ago, and I just want to thank you so much, not just for the support that you gave when I asked questions, because that I really carried that in my heart through this process, and there were times when remembering things that you said really helped give me courage and strength and the capacity to be there with her and with my own stuff that was coming up as everything was going on. And I really just want to thank you for the fact that you’ve shared your practice in the world, because that’s what introduced me to chanting, and the chanting practice that I have has given her so much peace and ease of heart in these months. And I never could have anticipated that. I mean, I never would have thought that would have been such a support for her in the process of dying. And I was able to be with her virtually when she actually took her last breath and right up until then it was chanting for her that night, and it was really beautiful and really peaceful. And I just really, I’m so grateful. So, thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. I remember when I was in India, my mother came. No. It was later. I think it was later, my mother wrote a letter and she asked Maharajji to bless her mother, something like that, who was, had a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear and was pretty out there sometimes, and Maharajji said, “She’ll have peace.”

So many years later, he was long out of the body, what happened was, I think it was a Haitian woman, was her caretaker, would come and take care of her. And she was a Christian and they used to sit out on the balcony in Miami beach, which was like, you know, like a Jewish enclave in those days, all the old Jews went there to die. So, they sat on this little Veranda, and the woman would read the Bible to my mother, my grandmother, the New Testament. And my grandmother got peace at the end of her life. From that. It was amazing. You would have never imagined, you know. But there it is.  Maharajji can do anything for anyone at any time. So, that’s wonderful. I’m very happy to hear that.

And I also just want to mention, probably a week before she left her body, she told me that, you know, because sometimes I would play her your chants, also, and she said that she felt like you had become a real part, a big part of this part of her life and that it was really special and precious to her.

Wonderful. That’s great. Wonderful.

Thank you.

Okay, I’m going to read the Vinaya Chalisa. “Vinaya” means to beg, or to implore, or to you know, request with great intensity, something. Right. I think that’s what it means. I’m not very good on what these things mean, actually, but that’s okay.

And there’s one thing I want to say. There’s a lot of stuff in here where it says, “not only do you give liberation, but you also bring wealth to the home and happiness to the home.” You know, we have this idea in the west that, you know, we get from some sannyasis, from renunciates, that you have to be a renunciate and you have to push everything away and deny everything and have no desires. But that was not what Maharajji was about. He was about bestowing the fruits of life, all the good things in life, on the devotees, and allowing them to fulfill their desires and get on with it and have a good life. So, you’ll see. There’s a lot of that in here.

“Lord, I’m ignorant and lack faith and devotion. I don’t know how to pray to you. Still, I humbly offer this prayer. “

That’s not the way I say that line. I say, “I’m ignorant without faith and devotion. I don’t know how to pray to you, but I’m going to do it anyway. God dammit.” That’s what I say to him.

“Lord, I am ignorant and lack faith and devotion. I don’t know how to pray to you. Still, I humbly offer this prayer.

Glory, glory Neem Karoli Baba, please purify my heart with your grace.

I always just say, “You turn non-believers into believers when you give them a shot of your real love.”

Followers of all religions bow their heads to you.

You know, Maharajji was, I’ll tell you a quick story, one time Maharajji was in Vrindavan, and he was walking down the street the middle of the day. It was about 120 degrees, brutally hot, and on the way, a sadhu comes up, a real, you know, with jatta, the long hair, and naked with ashes, and when they saw each other, they jumped and they danced around together and they were so happy, and the sadhu says, “Oh Baba, this is so great. We’re meeting after so much time together. We used to spend so much time together in the Himalayas and now here, finally, after so many years, we’re meeting,” and they just enjoyed each other so much, and then finally Maharajji said, “Okay, you go, now. I have to go.”

And the sadhu said, “Baba, I’m not leaving you.”

“No, no, don’t stay with me. Don’t stay with me.”

“No, I’m not going anywhere. After all these years, we’ve finally met. I’m not going to leave so quickly.”

And Maharajji said to him, “You don’t understand. I’m surrounded by worldly people now. It’s not good for you. You should go back. You should go to the mountains. Don’t stay with me.”

And the sadhu says, “No way. I’m staying with you.”

And Maharajji said, “Okay, let’s go.”

And they started walking to Mathura from Vrindavan, which is about, I think, 18 kilometers in the middle of the day. And in those days, there was nothing, only desert between Vrindavan and Mathura, and they’re dying of thirst and they’re in the desert, and in the distance they see a well, and there’s a woman at the well, bringing up water in a pale. So, they go running.

Maharajji gets there first and he puts his hands out like this, and he says, “Ma, pour water for me.”

So this lady pours water into his hands and he’s drinking and she’s pouring. He’s drinking, drinking, drinking, and then he finishes and the other Baba comes and puts his hands out. No, he puts his gourd. He had this gourd pot with him, and he puts his gourd out, and the woman pours the water in. As she’s pouring in the water, Maharajji just starts chatting her up. He starts talking to her, because that’s where he did.

“Oh, Ma, what’s your family? what village? what’s your caste? Where are you from?”

And she says she’s an untouchable.

When the sadhu heard this, he flipped out and he took his gourd, and he smashed it on the ground. And he looks at Maharajji and he says, “This is your fault! Now this, my gourd has become impure because it’s been touched by this woman who’s an untouchable. And it was my only possession and I needed to bathe and drink and everything, and now because of you, I had to destroy it, and how could you do that?”

And Maharajji’s going, “What’s what’s the problem? What’s the problem? I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I thought you were a sadhu. what is caste to you? What does that mean? I thought you were a sadhu.”

And the Baba realized what had happened, and Maharajji said, “He washed my feet with his tears and went back to the mountains to finish his work.”

Maharajji warned him. Maharajji was so soft-hearted. He did not want to see anybody suffer, and he knew what was going to happen. He warned the sadhu, “No, don’t stay with me. It’s not good. I’m only with worldly people now. No, no, don’t, it’s not good for you. Go away.”

The sadhu wouldn’t leave him because of the love, because of the love we can’t turn away. And that forces us to release all our negativity, all our bullshit, all our attachments, all our stuff, all our fears, all that stuff, because we want to be in the love. The love pulls us into it into itself, and in order to get there, we have to let go of our stuff. There’s no other way.

Ram Ram Ram Ram

Namaste everybody. Wonderful to be with you again. See you in a couple of weeks. Be well.

The post Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD October 10 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 64 Consciousness, Spiritual Names, Vipasana

Q: When you sing other lineages’ Names like “Tara” or “Jesus on the Mainline” like how do you integrate that with all the other Names that you got from the Vedic tradition?

“My parents were about as Jewish as the Pope. So, but still, I didn’t know much about Jesus and then I get to India and He looks at us and says, ‘Hanuman, Krishna and Christ are the same.’ Terrific. Who wants to hear that?  I’m in India. You know? But He started talking to us about Jesus and whoa, it was powerful. Really powerful. I have to say, it was more powerful than the way He spoke about Hanuman, Krishna and Ram.” – Krishna Das

Q: Namaste.

KD: Hi.

Q: Hi. Yesterday you were saying that all the mantras are love.

KD: All the what?

Q: All the mantras are essentially love.

KD: Yeah.

Q: And today you were talking about how we get what we need. And I kind of have this theory that I’ve been running with that certain mantras just come to me and I’ve been thinking maybe it’s my Guru sending me what I need and I just wondered if that happened to you or what you kind of thought about that.

KD: I never thought about it. But if that thought works for you and that helps you do your practice more sincerely and more completely, that’s a good thing. But ultimately, it’s another thought. Some thoughts are helpful because they help us let go and they help us enter more deeply into our self, and some thoughts aren’t helpful.

Q: Hello. You spoke about the heart connection to consciousness. Could you touch a little more on that. Just, you said it’s not heart chakra but it’s a different connection?

KD: No. Because I don’t know. I was repeating what I read that Ramana Maharshi said, who was one of the great saints that ever lived. So, whatever He said is cool. So, that’s what He said. He said there’s this consciousness is always present and there’s a spot in the body that we kind of, like a little… that fills up the body with the consciousness. When we leave the body, the body’s just inert. There’s no consciousness in the body itself. It’s just flesh and bone and blood and pus and all that stuff.

Q: Could I ask you anything that you have taken from that for your life?

KD: You could ask whatever. Ask.

Q: From that insight that He gave you?

KD: No. I mean, I don’t think about that stuff. I thought, “That’s true.” And that’s about as far as I went with it.

Q: Thank you.

KD: Ok.

_________

Q: I have a question around, in certain moment you were given the name “Krishna Das.”

KD: Yeah.

Q: But you were born “Jeffrey.”

KD: Yeah. So…

Q: Sometimes I struggle with this thing about the spiritual Names. And I think to myself, “What happens when the spiritual Name is not just given, but you embody it.” Can you share a little bit about that?

KD: It’s just more stuff to deal with. My real name was “Driver.” For a year, Maharajji called me “Driver” because He took Ram Das’s keys away to the van and He gave them to me. “Driver.” Then I was going to kill myself because He didn’t give me a Name. So, finally He gave me a Name. He said, “Arjun. Krishna. Nay. Krishna Das.” I said, “Krishna Das? I’m a Hanuman guy. What’s that stuff?” And He just laughed. He said, “Don’t worry. Hanuman served Krishna, too.”  It didn’t change me at all. It just gave me pride which was hard to get rid of. You want a Name?

Q: No. And about singing other lineages, where you have sung, “Tara” or “Jesus on the Mainline…” When you sing other lineages’ Names like “Tara” or “Jesus on the Mainline” like how do you integrate that with all the other Names that you got from the vedic tradition?

KD: I like it. I sing what I like. Right? What’s the big deal? If I don’t like it, I don’t sing it. A Name is a Name is a Name. Right? Different traditions, same God. Big deal. You know? Come on. Argue. Come on. Come on. What do you think?

Q: No, I think it’s true.

KD: You know, Maharajji talked to us about Jesus. Listen, I’m Jewish from Long Island. My parents were about as Jewish as the Pope. So, but still, I didn’t know much about Jesus and then I get to India and He looks at us and says, “Hanuman, Krishna and Christ are the same.” Terrific. Who wants to hear that?  I’m in India. You know? But He started talking to us about Jesus and whoa, it was powerful. Really powerful. I have to say, it was more powerful than the way He spoke about Hanuman, Krishna and Ram. For us, He Himself would just like, you could see how intense it was for Him to talk about Jesus. “He never died. He felt no pain on the cross. He loved everyone. He loved the people who nailed Him to the cross. He tried to die but He couldn’t. He became immortal.  Why? Because He never thought of Himself. Thoughts of “Me” never arose in that Being. Why would they arise? There’s only God in there. There’s no “Me” anymore.” So powerful and deep.

Q: I like Jesus on the Mainline.

KD: Yeah, there’s a lot of songs I like that I sing.

Q: I was wondering if you’d ever practiced Vipasana meditation.

KD: If I did Vipasana? Sure. I did five or six ten-day courses in a row in Bodhgaya in 1970-71. And I’ve done other, you know, since then I’ve done a few courses.

Q: Were you already into kirtan chanting?

KD: You know, somewhat. Not that much at the time. Not yet. That kind of started…when we started… not so much at that moment during those courses. I had just got to India and then after a couple of months, Maharajji sent us away and disappeared and then we went to Bodhgaya for a few months and then after that we found Him again. You know, the bus story? You know the story of the bus? You don’t know the story of the bus? So, we were all, it was a break between like, the fifth and the sixth ten-day course. There was like a day and a half between the courses and this guy arrived in a huge beautiful Mercedes bus that he had driven across from Europe to India. And he offered. He said, “Anybody who wants to go back to Delhi, I’ll give you a ride in the bus.” So, we were pretty much, me and the other folks… Ram Das had shown up and done a few of the courses and the other Westerners who had come to see Maharajji were there, so we had decided, it’s time to leave, let’s go find Maharajji. So, and Sharon was there and she still can tell you how she felt as she watched that bus drive away. Anywhow. So, we took off and we’re on the way to Delhi and one of the guys in the group said that he had been to the Mela in Allahabad. A Mela is a festival that happens every year in different places in India and it’s a gathering of pilgrims and spiritual aspirants and yogis and teachers and all those people. And there’s… one of the places it happens is in Allahabad at the Sangham where the Ganga, the Ganges and the Yamuna and the Heavenly River, the Saraswati, comes together. “Sangha” means “together.” Coming together. So, we were going to pass within a few miles of that on the way to Delhi, so it was a big discussion about whether we should just go right to Delhi, which was the Ram Das group, or whether we should go visit the Sangham and see what was going on there, sounds cool. That was my group and almost everybody else, other than Ram Das. Ram Das just wanted to get to Delhi and that was it. “We’re going to Delhi, we’re going to find Maharajji. That’s all we’re going to do.” But there was a lot of discussion about it, for hours. So, finally it was decided that we’ll just go. We’ll see it. Boom. Then we’ll turn around. Then we’ll head to Delhi so we could make it by nightfall. That was the idea. So, the bus pulls into this area where there had been maybe ten million people up until about two days before. Now, everybody was gone. There was hardly anybody there. Ten million, that was forty years ago. Now there’s 20 or 25 million at those festivals. They call them “Melas.” “Kumbh Mela.” “Ardh Mela.” “Magh Mela”. So, the bus pulls into this, the Mela grounds, which is absolutely deserted. Nobody. A dog. I remember there was a dog running across that thing. So, we pulled into this big vast place where there’s nobody. A vast field. So, the bus starts making this big turn, maybe this way and so Danny said, “Well, you know, there’s a Hanuman temple over there in the corner. Why don’t we go have darshan of the temple, see the temple, and then we’ll head back to Delhi.” Ok. So, the bus comes around this way and it’s at the edge of the field and there’s like a path at the edge of the field and the bus is going this way and who’s walking the other way? Maharajji. And He’s holding somebody’s hand and He’s walking and the bus passed Him and one guy just happened to see Him. And they said, “Wait, there’s Maharajji!” And the bus and we all went running off the bus and everybody’s weeping and crying and so then Maharajji said, “Ok, everybody get back on the bus and follow us.” He hops in a little rickshaw with Dada, this man with Him and this huge big silver Mercedes bus follows this little cycle rickshaw all through the streets of this little village and the rickshaw stops in front of a house and Maharajji and Dada go inside. We didn’t know Dada yet. They go inside and the bus stops and we get off the bus and we’re like, “What do we do now?” We’re looking around. And the woman comes out and says, “Come in. Come in. Come in and take your food.” And we said, “Food? There’s like 27 of us. What do you mean, food?” “Well, when Maharajji woke up this morning, He told us to prepare food for 27 people. That you would be coming later.” So, who decided that we should go see the Mela spot? We had… it seemed like we were making a decision, to us. There was a lot of discussion. There was anger and there was a lot of emotion, you know. Ram Das. “I want to find Maharajji. I want to get to Delhi.” I mean, it was intense. Then finally, “All right, all right, all right, we’ll just go by there and then we’ll take off.” We thought we did that. How could that… how did we do it if eight hours earlier He said to prepare food for 27 people? That was 26 people plus the driver.

This was happening every day. All day.

All right. That’s it. Thank you.

The post Ep. 64 | Consciousness, Spiritual Names, Vipasana appeared first on Krishna Das.