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.

Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD May 28, 2020

“Any mantra will work for you if you do it, and any mantra you do will work for you, but we bring so much to the practice, our hopes and fears, our anguish, our desires, all our emotions. We bring our fractured will and a million little pieces. We can’t even do one round of mantra without, you know, thinking about 4 million other things. So, it’s not the mantra’s fault. It’s our fault. It’s our situation. Let’s not blame ourselves because we are who we are, but it’s our situation. It’s very hard to do practice.” – Krishna Das

Welcome back or forward or upside or downside.  We’re here again. And, we get a chance to hang out together. If you’ve sung with me before, you know that I always start with a prayer that I introduce as an invocation to the love that lives within us, as who and what we truly are. And, what I’m going to do today is I’m going to tell you the translation of that prayer and tell you what it’s about. It is a prayer to Hanuman, and in India, Hanuman is considered to be the perfect servant of God, of Ram He has no agenda of his own, only to serve Ram’s agenda, which is also very simple, which is compassion for us. To help us overcome our suffering, our negativity, and of course, in the story of the Ramayana, Hanumanji helps Ram win the war against Ravana and his demon hordes, the personification of evil and negativity and selfishness, and if you don’t know the story of the Ramayana, it’s a very wonderful story,  and, one of the, one of the two great Indian, well, I don’t want to call it a myth because it’s supposed to be real… It happened at some point many, many thousands of years ago. So, Hanuman is, you know, Maharajji used to say to us, “Who is Hanuman?”

And we would give him all the pat answers, you know, “The perfect servant,” this and that.

And then He would say, “Nay, Hanuman is the breath of Ram, the breath of Ram, the breath of God.”

The breath is very powerful.  You know, in the Greek rendering of the gospels, the new Testament, which was written a hundred years after Jesus left the body, it was one of the first times that it had been written down what is now and later was translated as “holy spirit,” in the Greek, it’s “holy breath.” And the breath connects us to life. It connects our bodies to life. Without breath, we have no life. Without prana, we have no life. And the life of our soul is connected to the Paramatman, the Supreme Being, the Supreme Soul through the breath of God, which is Hanuman. And as that breath moves through us, it cleans our hearts, it removes obstacles from our path. It destroys our suffering and mitigates all kinds of calamities and stuff like that.

So, I’m going to read you the translation of this prayer. Much of it has to do with the stories of Hanumanji from the Ramayana, and much of it is description of his qualities, which on the deepest, deepest, deepest level are our own qualities, are the qualities of our real, our warrior hearts to overcome all limitation and merge with love, fully.

This is called the Hanumat, the Sri Hanumat Stavan.

I bow to the son of the wind, which is the name of Hanuman, a fire to consume the forest of evildoers, destroyer of the darkness of ignorance and whose heart resides Sri Ram, the holder of the bow and arrows. I bought to the son of the wind, the abode of immeasurable strength, possessing a body’s shining like a mountain of gold, a fire to consume the forest of the demon race. The foremost among the wise, abode of all virtues, chief of monkeys and the most, most beloved devotee of Sri Ram. I worship Hanuman, who made the great ocean resembled the furrow of a cow’s hoof. In the Ramayana, Hanuman jumps across the ocean to search for Sita, Ram’s wife who had been kidnapped. So, he makes that ocean, he literally jumped across the ocean, which was 800 miles wide and he made that huge ocean seem as small as the water that’s collected in the footprint of a cow in the mud.

Who killed giant demons as if they were mosquitoes and who is like a gem among the beads of the rosary called the Ramayana, a gem on the mala of the Ramayana.

I worship Hanuman, the brave son of Anjani, the dispeller of Janaki’s grief, the Lord of Monkeys, slayer of Akshakumar, who was Ravana’s son, a great demon, a great warrior, and the Terrorizer of Lanka, which was Ravana’s kingdom. I offer homage to Anjani’s son who leapt easily across the oceans waters and with the fire of Janaka’s daughter’s grief, burnt Lanka.

So, Sita was in terrible desolation in her separation from her Lord, from her love, and Hanumanji took that grief, the fire of that grief, and he burnt the whole kingdom down. Now, you have to also recognize that Sita and Ram are not two separate things. They are like fire and heat, fire and its heat. Without fire, there’s no heat and there’s no heat without fire. So, you take one, they’re two sides of one coin. They appear different, because of qualities, manifestation, but one without the other doesn’t happen. So, in this case, Hanumanji took Sita’s… the other thing about this whole story is it is Lila. Lila. Ram Lila. It’s the play or the drama that God lives out in order to cleanse the world of darkness. So, well, there’s a lot to say about all that.

I take refuge at the feet of Hanuman, who is fast as the mind and strong as the wind, who has conquered the senses, who is the most exalted among the wise ones, son of the wind, chief of monkeys and the messenger of Sri Ram.

I meditate upon Hanuman with ruddy face and a body that glows like a mountain of gold, who can bestow all boons and fulfill all desires and who resides under the Parijata tree.  It’s a tree that grows, as they say, in heaven.

I bow to Hanuman, who goes wherever Ram’s name is chanted, bowing in reverence, eyes filled with tears of love, head bent in adoration, and who is known as the Slayer of demons.

So, Hanumanji goes wherever Ram’s name is sung.

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Maharajji used to say to us, “From repeating these names, going on repeating these names of God, everything is accomplished. Everything is brought to fullness and completion.” Purna. He didn’t talk to us about the meditation. When we asked him, how do we find God? He said, “Serve people.”

When we asked them, “How do you raise Kundalini?”  He said, “Feed people.”

From his, where he was sitting, it was all about taking care of all of us, including all of us in our open hearts. This practice of the repetition of the name is a very powerful practice and most of the saints that I met would say that, in this age, in this Kali Yuga, in these dark ages, when the light is buried very deeply within us, this practice is the best practice to do. There are many practices and really, whatever practice you do is the best practice to do. But obviously this practice must have tremendous strength and power and efficacy. And in fact, these mantras, these names are the sound form of the deity itself. This, the being is not visible in this world at this time with physical eyes, but the name is here, and the name is the form of that being, now the sound form, the vibrational form of that being. So, through the repetition of the name, gradually, but inevitably this presence within us is uncovered.

Okay.

Aiim.  Aiim is a bija mantra. There are some mantras that have no meaning at all in the conceptual mind, but they are like sticks of dynamite, so to speak, for your thought processes. So, aiim, hrim, klim, hlim, all of these mantras, theoretically, they also have some meanings, but really they are sounds that are meant to manifest the deity, the presence of that deity in your mind stream.

And  “aiim” is the bija mantra for Saraswati. Shreem is the bija mantra for Sri, Lakshmi, et cetera. So, there are many bija mantras.

Q: Why do you think Neem Karoli Baba wanted, when they saw a couple and asked if they would get like, if by doing it, the attachment is so big that difficult…

No, Maharajji said that if you’re with one partner for your life, there’s no problem with, it’s no obstacle to finding God. And, you know, we would be sitting around with HIm day after day. There was a lot of love, a lot of juice, and then we would go back to town at night and I would just go to my room after dinner and go to sleep. I later found out everybody was partying. And so, we’d come to the temple and Maharajji would look at these two people and go, “Oh, you’re friends, they’re friends. Isn’t that nice? They’re friends. Oh, that’s so nice.”

A couple of days later, “Oh, you’re good friends? They’re good friends. That’s so nice. You’re good friends.”

A couple of days later, Boom. “You’re married. Go home to your parents.”

So, he honored what was going on and people getting together and falling in love. And so, he married them. I don’t know how many marriages were arranged by him at that time, so to speak. But I think there’s only two people, two or three couples left. One of them came, already together, after all these years. So, it’s interesting. But whatever karmas they had to work out together, they’re working out.

Q: Hey, I wanted to ask, I’m just 18. So, should I search for a guru for me, or should I just meditate and chant?

So, you don’t search for a guru. The guru shows up in your life in a body if that’s what’s best for you, if that’s what it’s going to take to move you on in your path, but don’t look outside of yourself for a guru. Meditate chant, do your practice and become a good human being, a compassionate human being, a kind human being, a strong human being who can help other people. Become someone who doesn’t, who overcome self-hatred, who overcomes shame, who overcomes grief, who overcomes selfishness, be that kind of a person. And then you you’ve already found your Guru because Guru, God and Self, true nature, your true self, they are not different. Those are not three things. They’re one thing. And they are who you already are in your deepest place of your heart. Which we are not aware of at this point in our incarnations. However, through practice, meditation, chanting and loving all beings and developing that kind of generosity of spirit, which overcomes fear and anger and all those things, you’ll find what you’re looking for. You don’t know what it really looks like yet. You think, “Oh, I want a Guru in a human body,” because you think you’ll recognize your Guru, but you might not, you might’ve met your Guru 20 times already, but until, and unless the Guru wants you to know who he or she is, you won’t know. And there’s no way around that. That’s the deal.

So, what are you going to do? Watch TV and eat ice cream for the rest of your life? No. Do some practice become a good person. Develop good qualities. And become a real human being, a good human being.

Q:  I find it very hard to practice loving kindness with my brother-in-law. He likes to make people angry and push people’s buttons. I get angry before he even walks into the room. How can I not let him get to me?

I think your brother-in-law is standing right here. Did you hear what you said? You know where the loving kindness practice comes from? At one point, Buddha sent a group of monks to meditate in this forest and they went there. But there were these tree demons, these kind of small level, low-level kind of beings that were causing a lot of confusion and it, they, they disturbed their meditation wouldn’t let them meditate. So, the monks came back to the Buddha and said, you know, you know, “This is what’s happening. Give us a weapon. Give us a weapon against these tree demons,” you know?

And Buddha said, “I will give you the most powerful weapon in the universe.”

What was that? Loving kindness practice, Metta meditation.

I would, if I were you, I would look into it more. You know, it takes practice. You don’t do it, just because you want to. It doesn’t happen because you want it to happen, it happens as your heart ripens through practice. So, your brother-in-law right now is a great teacher for you. He shows you exactly where your bullshit is. We don’t like that, but unfortunately that’s the deal.

So, it’s not like you’re doing anything wrong. You’re acting the way most of us act, you know. We don’t like people who piss us off and we only like the people who are nice to us. You know, that’s not actually going to work in the long run. That’s not a good strategy for moving along the path.

So, Ram Dass used to say these people are just God in drag, and they’re fooling us into thinking that they are that way and pissing us off. So, we have to see, we have to transform and transmute that situation. Very difficult. But, you know, as we grow up and mature a little bit spiritually, we begin to notice how our suffering and our fear and our shame and guilt and grief and selfishness, how those things cause us to act in certain ways. And we find mostly it’s very hard not to react to situations with those knee jerk reactions. So, if it’s hard for us, who are supposedly so spiritual, right, imagine how hard it is for somebody like your brother-in-law, who doesn’t have any concept that there’s any way to live in this world in a good way. Either that, or he’s just fooling you. Maybe he’s your guru. And once we notice our own suffering and how hard it is not to hurt ourselves and others, we start to feel, we start to see that these people who are difficult for us and seem to be aiming their shit at us, they can’t help themselves. Isn’t that terrible? All they do is go everywhere and they create suffering for themselves and everybody else. That’s a horrible place to be. There’s no happiness in that for them ultimately, really. No peace of mind. No love, no joy, even though they might seem to enjoy pissing you off.

So, it’s really your work. It has nothing to do with him or, but you need to just calm your heart down, let it settle. Let it settle. Let it settle. Let it settle. And I don’t know how much you know about Metta practice, the loving kindness practice, but the idea is to offer friendliness. Offer acceptance. Offer loving kindness to other beings, as well as ourselves, but we’re not trying to change anybody. We’re trying to just simply offer them this friendship, which expands us, expands our hearts and relaxes our hearts and unwinds our hearts, which allows us to ultimately not feel as if we’re the target of those people’s actions, which we’re not, even though it seems that we are. They’re just blurting out over everything out of their own pain.

So, that’s our work. Our work is to grow up. Not easy. Nobody wants to grow up.

Q: Why do some gurus and enlightened beings eat meat and dairy? Does this conflict with the practice of ahimsa?

Well, it would seem so. You know, the Tibetans in Tibet, there was no, they don’t grow anything there. It’s like 12,000 feet. They don’t grow anything. So, they had to eat meat apparently. However, the way they need is they have certain people, a group of people who do the slaughtering, but they also do a lot of prayers over that. Not that that makes it okay. But it’s a survival thing. There’s no food up there. So, it’s very hard to, to survive if they didn’t eat meat, you know. And I was once at a dinner, having dinner at a friend’s house and there were some wonderful Rinpoches, some Lamas there and we were all sitting around the table and one of the older Lamas looked at me and said, “You’re not eating?”

I just had some vegetables on my plate.

“You’re not eating?”

I said, “Rinpoche, I’m vegetarian.”

He went, “Oh, thank you very much. Thank you.”

He was honoring the fact that I didn’t want to eat other beings. So, well, it seems so, that it’s against ahimsa, but the last time you wanted to kill somebody who cut you off in your car was also against ahimsa, and that anger might’ve created more toxin in your body than eating, than a Saint eating some meat. So, and as Jesus said, it’s not what comes in the mouth, it’s what comes out of the mouth that’s more important. So…

Q:  Did neem Karoli Baba teach you to do yoga? Is it effective to do so?

By yoga you mean Asana practice?  No, he did not. He asked us to love everyone, to serve everyone and to remember God. He liked to sing. He liked to hear us sing, chant and do kirtan and bhajan, but he did not teach us or encourage us to do asana practice. I had done a lot of asana practice and meditation before I went to India. And when I got there with him, I just stopped doing all of it. Because, it was funny, I was home. I was exactly where I wanted to be in the universe. So, I hadn’t, I felt no need to do any practice, so to speak, other, any formal practice that way. It was a funny situation.

Of course, years later, I started to do more asana because my body was getting old and decrepit and I wanted to keep it working. Right? So, you have to do something, but he did not encourage us to do that. In fact, he, one woman was doing a headstand in the temple and he saw her and he told her not to do that. He said, “Unless you’re eating a very pure sattvic diet, when you do a headstand, the impurities in the food go into your brain.”

That’s what he said. So, he’s, he asked her not to do that.

Q: There were two incidents when I saw Maharaji: First in my dream, he was sitting in bed in my home and just staring at me and the second time while I was running and he was smiling at me.  Was it real?

Are you real? First find out if you’re real and then you’ll know what anything else is. They do say that when you have an experience of a Saint like that, or even in a dream that they have come to see you, because they say we can’t conjure up the form of a Saint with our own,  out of our own willful egocentric desires to do that.

If we can bring the name or the form of a Saint into our consciousness, it’s because they are, they’re coming to see us. So, when we repeat these names, you see, we think we’re doing the whole show. “Yes. I’m going to sing kirtan.”

That’s not actually reality. The reality is that the name is doing us. We are not doing the name. We are not remembering the name. The name is remembering us. So good luck.

Q:  How long do I have to practice on the path until I feel peace in my heart? It’s been a while already and I feel so many emotions.

You know, give up. It ain’t going to happen.

How long? You know, that’s like saying how long do I have to hold my hand in this fire before I can take it out? You know, I can see my skin is burning off and I smell the flesh burning, but you know, how long do I have to keep it in there? Well, take it out.

How long do you have to practice? You don’t have to practice. You don’t have to do shit. Don’t do anything if you don’t want to do it. When you notice that your hand’s in the fire, you’ll try to find some way to get it out of there. And if the practice isn’t working for you, don’t blame the practice. Blame your own intention, blame your lack of sincerity, blame… and I’m not saying just for you, I’m talking to myself… blame my own laziness, my own inability to conjure up any real love, any feeling of connection. Yeah. That’s your mind. That’s our mind. That’s the vasanas of our mind. Vasana means the, the tendencies of the mind, the channels that the mind is used to running in. Until you change that, it’s always going to be like that. So, complaining ain’t going to help. Find a way to help yourself. I don’t know what that’s going to be, but it’s up to you to find it. Find what works for you. And if you don’t want to find what works for you, then don’t. I mean, there’s, nobody’s forcing you to do anything. However, Maharajji said this, I’ll read this quote to you.

“Constant repetition of God’s name, even without feelings of devotion, in anger or lethargy… constant repetition of the name, even without any feeling of devotion or love, in anger or lethargy, it brings out the grace. It will bring out grace.”

Once you realize this, then there’s no misunderstanding about things anymore and you don’t worry about anything. This is what he said. Now, I don’t expect you. I don’t expect anyone to go, “Oh yeah, fine. That must be true.”

Because you don’t, you weren’t with him. Even me being with him, if I really believed this, why would I waste my time watching television? Why wouldn’t I repeat the name all day long, every day. Because of the vasanas of my own mind. Because of my own dullness.

What can I say? This is who we are. So, accept that you’re somebody who’s not very happy about all this and see what you want to do. But he said that. “Constant repetition of God’s name…” Or as constant as you can do, “even without feelings of devotion, even in anger, even in laziness and lethargy,” and not even hardly paying attention, “even that will bring out the grace,” bring the grace into the heart, make us aware of the grace within us.

So, if you believe it, get with it. If you don’t, then find something to do, because you got to do something. You’re always doing something. You’re always planting seeds. When we chant for half an hour, most likely nobody who was chanting with us was robbing banks, was beating anybody up, was banging their head against a wall. And that’s good. We avoided all kinds of negative behavior for a whole half an hour. And at the same time, we planted positive seeds in our own hearts.

Q:  How can I find a mantra that’s right for me? And do I have to stick with one mantra once I pick it? Or can I use any mantra or any name?

Yes. Next question.

Any mantra will work for you if you do it, but, and any mantra you do will work for you, but we bring so much to the practice, our hopes and fears, our anguish, our desires, all our emotions. We bring our, our fractured will and a million little pieces. We can’t even do one round of mantra without, you know, thinking about 4 million other things. So, it’s not the mantra’s fault. It’s our fault. It’s our situation. Let’s not blame ourselves because we are who we are, but it’s our situation. It’s very hard to do practice.

Do you have to do one mantra? No. You don’t have to do anything.

How do you find the mantra that works for you? I don’t know. You do .You just pick one, unless you’ve been given one by somebody you respect like a teacher or a guru who initiates you or suggests a mantra to you, you might want to give that one a try. If you don’t have a teacher to do that, then find something that kind of works for you that you like, that you think you like, and then like, it might be “Ram.” So, you’ll do “Ram Ram Ram,” and then you’ll start to feel, you know, “This is just not working.”

Well, really? That’s your mind. That’s… let it go. Come back. It doesn’t matter what mantra it is. You have to come back when you go away. So, when you notice you’re not paying attention, you come back and little by little, you’ll probably finetune your heart a little bit, maybe over 30, 40, 50 years or 50 lifetimes or more, so there’s no hurry. Don’t rush. Find something you’d like to do and do it.

Don’t give up just because you can’t pay attention. Nobody can pay attention. And when you start to pay attention, that’s when you recognize how little attention you can actually pay. So, you keep coming back. Use that mantra to ground you and keep coming back, coming back, coming back, whichever mantra it is. They’re all the same on one level.

Q: Somebody is asking, who is Maharajji?

That’s Maharajji. His name is Neem Karoli Baba. He lived, he left the body in 1973. He was mostly in North India, in U.P. mostly. And, yeah, here I was with him for two and a half years.

Q: I am a vegetarian and meditating and practice yoga and at home right now, finding it hard to keep calm around my daughter. What do you suggest doing in the moment when anger and frustration comes up? When she pinches me it’s so triggering.

Your daughter is just being your daughter. And it’s up to you to find a way to use the teaching she’s giving you to overcome your knee jerk reactions.

You know, one day, a farmer whose son had become a monk under Buddha, came to Buddha and started yelling at him and was very angry because he lost a son who was going to do the work on the farm with him. So, when he was finished, Buddha said to him, “Old man,” he said, you know, “If I gave a gift to you and you don’t accept it, what happens to the gift?”

And the farmer said, “Well, it stays with you.”

And the Buddha said, “Just so old, man, I’m not accepting your gift of anger. Where does it stay? With you, it’s your work.”

So, your daughter is giving you many gifts that you don’t like, and by reacting, of course you’re accepting those gifts. But most of us don’t have any vote in our reactions. They’re just instant knee jerk reactions. And that’s the whole point of practice, is to get a vote. There’s no button to push to make it happen right now. This is not, you know, this is not instant gratification. This is long-term commitment and practice to finding a good way to live in this world.

So, you ever tried talking to your daughter? O are you too angry? It’s hard. Kids, especially adolescents, they don’t want to talk to their parents. Their parents don’t know nothing. And of course, we’ve pretty much proven that to them.  Hare Ram.

Q: Is it right that we move away from family responsibilities to attain something, meditation, truth, which requires overcoming these worldly things like love, affection, charm, and grief?

Where are you going to go that you’re not going to take that shit with you? You want to leave the situation that’s causing you suffering because you, you’re not, you’re not advanced enough to deal with it. There’s no place you can go to get away from your karmas. And if you have family responsibilities, the worst thing you could do is to run away from that. That’s not, that’s not a good situation. If you were meant to be living in a cave, you’d already be there. If you tried to move to a cave now you’re actually bringing your whole family with you, inside of you, and they won’t leave you alone because they’re inside of you. So, while they’re in this world, there’s no better way to purify your heart than to find a way to love them and include them in the so-called love that you think is a problem. All love is good. It’s clinging and attachment to that love, and wanting to keep it, and afraid of losing it, and all that stuff, and use it to control people, that’s not good, but that’s not the Love’s fault. That’s our fault.

So, you know, there are times when you can go on retreat to try to calm your ass down and find a better way to interact with the world around you. But there’s no way you’re going to go where you’re not taking your stuff with you. This is a big misconception.

There’s no worse place to go than an ashram to deal with political stuff and intrigue and power trips, and people are more important and people are less important. This guy’s higher and this one’s lower. It’s a horror show. You know, it’s no different than the world. And, not every ashram, of course, but any institution brings out the worst in everybody in it. Guaranteed.

And besides on this path, the path, the lineage of Hanuman, it isn’t about Sannyasin, it is not about renunciation. It’s actually the opposite. It’s about embracing life. Hanuman actually makes it possible for us to realize and satisfy the desires that we have that are our karmic situation, to satisfy them and fulfill them so they don’t eat us alive. He makes it possible for us to get what we need to get and at the same time, get rid of the things we don’t need, but it’s not a renunciate path in the, in the strict sense of the word. These aren’t, we are not, Hanuman bhaktas are not necessarily swamis. And more than that, when those basic hungers are fulfilled, then you are ready to be liberated from your delusions.

Maharajji used to say, “You can’t talk to a hungry person about God. Feed them first.”

So we have many different hungers, hungers of the body, hungers of the heart, hungers of the mind. They need to be honored because they cannot be destroyed. You can’t go around them to get somewhere. You have to transmute them and go through them, recognize them and give yourself some love and attention. This is not easy because nobody teaches us that, because our parents didn’t know that, their parents didn’t know that.

In India, just a couple of generations ago, there was, it was a very different situation. The traditional culture was still very much alive. But now since Asian MTV hit new Delhi, and now you can watch TV shows from all over the world in India, the whole, the culture has been very watered down with Western influence. It’s very different now, but still it’s, there’s an incredible amount of spiritual energy in India. They say it’s actually in the soil. It’s the magnetism in the earth there that makes it possible for saints to live more easily in the body, in that place. But anyhow, so that’s the deal.

Q: If everybody is Atman, why is there any evil in the universe?

The evil’s in our minds, “our” being humanity’s minds, that’s where the evil is. Greed, fear, shame, guilt, anger, selfishness; this is evil, and this is within us. And it’s manifesting in the outward world. And, everybody is in truth, Atma. Atman. That’s our true nature, but you don’t know your true nature. Neither do I. So, we keep on creating negative karmas as we go through our days, because we act out of those other things; fear, shame, guilt, anger, selfishness.

So why? Because that’s, that’s what human beings do. It’s not who we are, but it’s what we do it because we’re identified with our bodies and we think we are separate beings. And if we’re separate than “I need to get as much stuff that I can get so I can stay okay. And I need to keep you out of my area and keep safe.”

So, we start to divide things in countries, make all these weird lines, and “This is this country. That’s another country.”

It’s crazy. And of course, how did this all start? Well in the Rg Veda, there’s a hymn that they call the creation hymn, and it’s very clear. It starts off, “In the beginning, there was this, and then there was this,” and it goes on for a couple of pages. “And then this happened, then this, this,” and then it says, “and why, why did, what, what, how, why is this? Why did this all happened?”

It says, “Only He in highest heaven knows, or perhaps he doesn’t.”

It really says that. So don’t worry about why, just worry about how to purge that selfishness out of your own heart, to purge that hurtfulness and that self-hatred, and not letting yourself be at ease in your life. That’s our work.

Okay, well, let’s do maybe one more.

Q: My parents and brothers don’t tolerate the fact that I invest time in meditation and chanting mantras. I live with my parents and it’s really difficult for me to be free and work and feed my spiritual life. They all prejudice me and think is better if I’d have other priorities, like finding a job.

Well, first of all, I would imagine you’re trying to prove something to them, that there’s a part of you that’s showing off and that’s a part of you that thinks you’re better than them because you’re doing spiritual practice. So, you’re higher. You’re a higher being than they are, and they should let you alone so you can do what you want to do.

It doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t work like that. You need more love. And when you have more love, you won’t be showing off to your parents. You won’t be trying to prove anything to them. You won’t be pushing their buttons.

I had an old friend named Fred in the old days when we first met Ram Dass. He was a Zen student, mostly and we used to sit together at the San Francisco Zen center.

One day he said to me, “You know, when I go home and see my mom, she just hates it when I’m a Buddhist, but she loves me when I’m Buddha.”

That’s a big thing. So, you give up your self-righteousness and your thinking that you’re better than anybody and more advanced. And if you’re living at home, you have responsibilities. You’re living off your parents’ money, you’re taking their food. You have to be reasonable. You’re in relationship with them. If you don’t want to be around them, go ahead and go move somewhere else. But then you need a job anyway. So, it’s all in your own mind and your own head, all this stuff. And you’re using your so-called spiritual practice to just be like a cranky teenager who doesn’t want to give his parents a break. I don’t know how old you are, but we’re teenagers until our fifties or sixties mostly. So, give everybody a break and give yourself a break. Why do you want to create all the situations? You are the one creating the situation. Why do they have to know what you do? What do you meditate in the living room while they’re trying to watch TV? Go upstairs to your room. Meditate in the bathroom. They don’t have to know anything. Hide your stuff, because if it’s going to bother them, why would you show them what you’re doing? Why would you flaunt it?

It’s just a very unskillful. So, get it together.

The post Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD May 28, 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 53 Devotional Poetry of Shabkar and Remembering Geshe Wangyal

“Don’t be sad. Look at the mind that feels sadness. The guru is not other than the mind. It is the mind that remembers the Guru. It is the mind into which the Guru dissolves.” – Shabkar

KD: Saint John of the Cross wrote, “In the beginning, the Father uttered one word. That word is His Son and He utters Him forever in everlasting silence. And it is in silence that the heart must hear.”  The Father uttered one word. That word is His Son and He utters Him forever in everlasting silence. And it’s in silence that the heart must hear.

Good morning.

What? What?  So, this, you know we’ve been talking a little bit about devotion and how that it lubricates the connection to our true nature. It makes it, it helps us access that place. What you love, what we love we will think about. It will be with us and so there was very great yogi in Tibet named Shabkar who was also, He used to sing these songs of teaching songs and this is a poem or song that He wrote. He said, “I was in retreat. One day at noon, when the sky was clear, I walked to the summit of the hill above my cave and I sat there alone. Toward the North, I saw a pure white cloud billowing over a mountain peak like milk boiling over. At that moment, the memory of my precious Guru overwhelmed me and I sang this song of longing. To the North, a single white cloud surges over mountain peaks, white as overflowing milk, when I see this, I think of my Guru’s kindness. Beneath that distant cloud rise the solitary heights of auspicious hermitage. The way my master once lived in that excellent retreat place comes back to my mind. When I think of His kindness, tears well up in my eyes and sorrow in my heart. My mind is dazed, my perception uncertain. All is hazy and unreal. How wonderful if He were here again. I am but an ordinary man, a man with scant devotion, but I still long to meet Him once again. The master dwells now in absolute space and His miserable son is left behind in the mire of samsara. When I see the myriad flowers blooming in the meadows, I remember the sight of my true Guru, then I could see Him in person, inspired. Now, I can’t. As I think of Him over and over again, the Master’s presence fills my Heart. As I listen to the cuckoo’s gentle call, I remember hearing the true guru’s voice, the satguru’s voice, so deep and sonorous. Then, I could listen to His melodious speech. Now I can’t. I think of Him over and over again and the Master’s presence fills my heart. As I see the rising sun spreading radiance all around, I remember the Satguru’s wisdom and compassion. Then, He tenderly cared for me. Now that time is gone. As I think of Him over and over again, the Master’s presence fills my heart. I remember going to see Him, having been away for months or years, the warmth of His welcoming smile comes back to my mind. No matter in what direction I go, I think of the Master. No matter in what solitary place I stay, I think of the Master. No matter what signs I see, I think of the Master. Always. And in all times I think of my true Guru. As I sang this plaintive song, the cloud continued to swell until it took the form of a heap of jewels. At the top, in a tent of five colored rainbow lights, my true Guru appeared performing a graceful dance, His hands in the gesture of protection. He was more resplendent than ever, peerless in loving kindness. He smiled radiantly and spoke these words in a voice like Brahma’s, ‘Noble son, you who are like my heart, do not despair. Listen to your father’s words. We, father and son, who came together by the power of past prayers, are inseparable in the state of luminous absolute nature. Son, from now on, let the length of your practice be the length of your life. Wander from place to place in solitary mountain retreats. By practicing austerities, may you help all fortunate Beings. Don’t be sad. Look at the mind that feels sadness. The Guru is not other than the mind. It is the mind that remembers the Guru. It is the mind into which the Guru dissolves. Remain in uncontrived nature of mind, the Absolute. With airy and graceful movements, as though dancing, He rose Higher and Higher until He vanished like a rainbow into the sky. The clouds, too, disappeared and dissolved in space and my grief dissolved along with them. I remained for a long while in the serene state beyond thought.”

“Don’t be sad. Look at the mind that feels sadness. The guru is not other than the mind. It is the mind that remembers the Guru. It is the mind into which the Guru dissolves. “

So…

I once asked Siddhi Ma, who was Maharajji’s great devotee, there’s this ongoing issue of whether it’s all grace or whether it’s all effort, personal effort, and how the two relate. I said, “Ma, what’s the deal?” She said, “It’s all grace, but you have to act like it isn’t.”  Yup.

The understanding that it’s all done, nothing ever happened, nothing’s ever gonna happen, finished. Finished. But we don’t know that. So, we have to act and do our stuff, our performing. He doesn’t like practice.

Bob: When I met my Guru, my root Guru was not the Dalai Lama, actually. My root Guru is Geshe Wangyal, who was a Kalmyk Mongolian and He was very proud of the fact that although He was Mongolian, He was European.

KD: European?

Bob: Because Kalymykia is on the West of the Euro Mountains.

Bob: It’s in the North of the Black Sea and Caspian, North of the Caucasus. And the Golden Horde settled there, you know, centuries ago, many centuries ago. Seven, eight, centuries ago and He, His teacher was a Buryat Mongol from Lake Baikal who helped Him escape from there at the time of the Russian Revolution and got Him to Tibet and He spent 30 years there and passed all the, did whatever, you know, then He left there way ahead of the, in the 40’s, even the 30’s He left there. He knew what was coming in Tibet and He lived in China and everywhere, you know. He came here in the 50’s and I had just been one year going to India and met many Sufi Masters. I met Swamis. I met Christian monks in Greece at Mount Athos and I was looking for a Guru. And, and I had, I did meet some Tibetans finally in India, in Delhi, and was about to, I had a job. I would have been in this school where, a young Lama school where Trungpa was studying and all those different Lamas. But then my father died in New York. My physical father. So, I came back to New York for two weeks for the funeral with a return ticket to Delhi because I had left the U.S. definitively. But then, two days or three days before returning, I saw a sign in a Zen Center in the City about some Lama who had a monastery in New Jersey, you know, and I’m a Manhattan New Yorker. New Jersey? Some Lama in New Jersey down near, you know, Bruce Springsteen’s area in the pine barrens and He was looking for an English Teacher. He had some young Lamas there, this kind of thing. So, I thought, well, I’ll go there and maybe they’ll want to send a package because I’ve been traveling in Asia for a year as a fakir, as a penniless beggar and so I’ll go say “hello” there, they’ll give me contacts back in Delhi. I had a job already in Dalhousie in the school. So I was going back there. So, when I met this man, when I got to the place, I, and a friend of mine drove me because at the time I was a complete fakir, still, in America. I had baggy Afghani pants. I had a weird pants. I didn’t wear my false eye. You know? I just had the socket.

KD: Oh, Jesus.

Bob: And I had long hair. I was like, you know, I was seeking. I used to look at the sun, actually, with the eye, actually. With the one eye I had left, I looked at the sun. I was really in that ascetic thing, like imitating Buddha foolishly. And so there, when we got to this, we looked all over for this place and couldn’t find it, but finally, one little tract house next to a Russian Orthodox Church in this place. They had a little deer and a wheel of dharma painted on plywood over the door.  So we were, “Ah, that must be it.” But then I was terrified. I said, “Let’s go! We’re not going in there!” He said, “What? I’ve been driving you all over.” This guy was like some dropout from Yale or something. “I’ve been driving all over and now you say, ‘Let’s go, we’ve found the place?’ What’s the matter with you?’” I said, “My Guru’s in there. There’s some powerful person there. I’m still smoking beedies. I’m not going in. I’ll come back later. Let’s leave, leave, leave.” I was panicked. I was completely inside out. I was totally freaked out.

KD: Wow.

Bob: And then these young Lamas came toddling out of the door and down to the little fence and the kind of yard that you have in that kind of house. And they were like, “Come in.” He got out and I was, “No, no I’m not going.” And then I was embarrassed so then I went in. So, then we go in and we’re sitting in this like, living room of this little house and there’s a Buddha over in the corner, some books, Tibetan books and we sit down. I’m so nervous and I think there’s some guy on a dragon in the back room, right? Like the Lama of All Time, or something. I couldn’t believe it, I was so terrified. Speechless. And this little guy comes in with like a kimono, not wearing a Tibetan robe or anything and he sits down next to my friend, between my friend, between him and me and he says, “What do you guys want? What are you doing here?” He says, or something, and they’re talking, you know, and “Oh, I see,” he says. And then he moves over here in front of a plate glass window, this little guy, and I paid no attention to him, I thought he was the secretary or the sweeper. He was nothing, the power was in the back room. So, I was not paying attention. Then, He sits over there with the window behind Him and then I realized, “Oh, whoops this is the guy,” you know.  And then He says, “What do you want?” he said. And I’d been bullshitting my way through Sufi fakirs and swamis and “I want to get enlightened” and yeah yeah yeah, so and then I said, “Well, Maybe…” finally I came out with, “I’m sort of looking for the higher self,” you know. And then He says, He says, “Oh,” He says, “Oh, you’ll never manage that,” He said. He said, He said, “You couldn’t have even come from New York City to here unless your friend had driven you. The way you look, they would have arrested you.” He said, “You look like crazy boy,” He said. He said, “What are you doing? You know, Higher Self? That’s a difficult path.” You know? He goes on a little bit and then He says, “I’ve been looking for years. I didn’t find it, “ He goes.

KD: He said, “I’ve been looking for years and I didn’t find it”?

Bob: Yeah, “I didn’t find it.  You can’t ever, you can’t even go from New York to New Jersey,” He said. And so this goes on, you know, and then finally He, you know, He had pity on me and He said, “Well, you know what? I’ll tell you what,” He said, “See those books over there?” And I said, “Yeah.” I didn’t even know what a Tibetan book really was. I’d seen a few. But I’d just started my quest in India. And I said, “Yeah, yeah, ok.” And He said, “I didn’t find anything myself,” He said, just like ordinary but “I’ve been reading those for many years,“ He said and “I have a feeling, if you got to where you could read them, you might find something,” you know, but “You know, you’re going back to India and you have your ticket,” you know, and He did extract it from my story and so, “That’s ok, but you know, when you get there, find books like that and learn to read them,” and something like that and then that was sort of the end of the interview and then He brought out a piece of Sera, whatever it is, pie, you know, and tea. And He sent us off to leave, you know. So, then, I was like, “I’m not leaving. I’m staying here.   I want to read those books,” you know. “I’m going to learn from you.”

“No, no, you have a ticket. You have to go.”

“No, no I’m not leaving.”

“You have to. You can’t stay here. This is a monastery,” He said.

“Well, ok, all right. I’m going to go. I’ll be back in two days.”

And so then, I’m backing off down the stairs, these concrete stairs. He’s standing on top of the stairs, and my friend says to me, “Come on, let’s go. What’s the matter with you?”

And I said, and I’m saying, “I’m coming back. I’m coming right back,” I said, I was shouting there. And he says to me, “What’s so special about him? What do you, why don’t you go back to India? And the Dalai Lama, you know?” he said. And I said, “No, no no, that’s my teacher,” I said to him. He said, “Well, what made you think so?” And I said, “Well, because I can trust him. Because He’s not there.” But I didn’t even know what that meant. But that was right.

KD: Right, yeah.

Bob: In the sense that He had no agenda for me and therefore, He could help me. Do you know what I mean? And the day after tomorrow, I’m back, shaved, jeans, t-shirt, you know, like brushed, eye patch.

KD: Thank God. Praise the Lord.

Bob: Praise the Lord. And then He found me there. He found me a place to stay with some Mongolian family in this little refuge colony created by Tolstoy’s grand daughter, you know, saved those Kalnyks from the British who were sending them back to Stalin after the war, you know, from Europe. And anyway, but He had come from Tibet and met them there. So, then, you know, He started reading me the… you know, He was the guru? No. No. “You can learn to read Tibetan,” you know. And then He read me Nagarjuna’s book and every Tibetan letter was like gold. It was like, it would flow right into my heart, you know when He would read. But He kept skipping the meditations, actually. He was so like that. But He was so kind. Really, He was kind. He was. Later when I met Nena, you know, He really helped us a lot, actually. He really did. He and Nena, you know, at one point when we were having difficulty in our relationship, I looked at her, you know, and she was having a mental vision of Him. And they had like, what we call a heart meld. And she talked to, He talked to her when she was like four, when she was a little child in China. And He said, “You need to like make a connection with that little boy over there.” And then, when I looked at her, her blue eye turned brown, turned into His eye and then somehow there was this thing happened, you know, so He was with us. He’s been with us all the time. Psychics say He’s in our house all the time, like that Shabkar. Finally, we went to Kalmykia where’s a national hero because they think, it’s correct, He helped bring the Dalai Lama first to America. He got Him out. He got the Visa. He helped Him get the Visa to America. And somebody gave us a portrait of Him, a very beautiful portrait of Him, so we keep that at the house. Anyway, Geshe Wangyal. And amazing man. Really amazing. Like that Shabkar hit it there. Really hit it.

KD: Right, I know.

Bob: He really did. And He always used to say, like Shabkar did, “You’re my heart. I’m in your heart.” You know? “But you have to do the work,” you know? And then He told me, He told me several times that He would show up to me as a student at the same age that I was and He was and He said, but He said, I think He said, “In that life, I’m going to be a Jewish princess.”

KD: He said that?

Bob: He did. He said that.

KD: Ok, tell that story again. Who showed up when?

Bob: Well, I met him when I was like 21 and He was 61.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: And you know, from previous lives, that Shabkar thing made me think of that. I’m sorry to tell my story. I apologize. But the point is, He made me think of that. And then He said He would do that, then He didn’t show up here, I thought. I had a lot of students, you know. But He didn’t show up, I thought. I was looking at the different Jewish princesses who did show up and then there’s this, there’s this young student, one student of mine who’s Australian, a nice young man, and who’s lived with us a few years recently, and he couldn’t leave because of this complicated immigration story, until he had a certain thing because otherwise he couldn’t come back and so he worked with us. And then he met, at Menla, a Mongolian Kalymk girl who was that age and who, and they fell in love in a sweat lodge and they got married and all this. She was an American citizen but she was born in Kalmykia, in Russia. And so, you know, I told this story to her grandmother once, they were in our house and the grandmother said, “Well, what do you mean He didn’t show up?” The old Kalmyk grandmother. And I said, well, “I didn’t see a student like that.”   And she said, “Well, what about Delia?” she said. Her granddaughter. And I said, “What do you mean, Delia? He said a Jewish princess, He said.” Well, “Delia’s Jewish” she said. I said, “No, she’s Mongolian.” She says, “My husband was Russian Jewish.” It’s the grandmother. So Delia was a Jewish Kalmyk.

KD: Oh, my God.

Bob: She was Jewish Mongolian. And then I said, “Yeah, but she’s 25, you know, and Jay’s, and she’s not really my student. He’s my student.” She said, “Yeah, but she took your class at Columbia when she was 21 and it completely changed her life,” she said. And, “But she never talked to me,” I said. “Well, she’s shy.” And then Delia’s having none of it.

KD: Right.

Bob: “That’s my grandmother. Don’t listen to that.” And she’s completely not into it. So, anyway, in way, He did, I think, He fulfilled it but then they had to go to Australia because of this immigration crap. So, they’re in Australia. But that’s ok. That’s all right. They’re studying with my student. She’s, I think that might have been it, but I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe there’s some other Jewish princess who studied with me and ran away after that. Broke the tradition. 61-21. Leapfrogging…

KD: Yeah, there aren’t a lot of Mongolian Jewish princesses. There aren’t a lot of Mongolian Jewish princess.

Bob: Kalmyk Mongol, they’re a special kind. Doorbot, from the Doorbot Nation. The Doorbots are a particular one. And He was born in a place called Tsagaan Boloh, White Spring in the middle of this marvelous steppe north of the Black Sea. That Stalin ruined of course, ecologically. Growing too much meat for the Red Army. Anyway, never mind, that’s the story. So, you and Guruji, you know, that’s what I really, I’m so sad I never met Guruji because of certain complications but I met, I feel I meet Him when I meet you, I really do. I really feel l, I don’t necessarily feel that with Ram Das. I love Ram Das, but I feel I meet Ram Das when I meet Ram Das. But, and Doctor Richard is also there.

KD: Well, you have a history with him.

Bob: But you, you really, I don’t know. But you don’t think so. I know that. I know. That’s why you’re so moved by that poem. Well, Delia and I just don’t want to, you know, get into it.

The post Ep. 53 | Devotional Poetry of Shabkar and Remembering Geshe Wangyal appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD May 21, 2020

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.

“Nobody’s testing you, nobody’s judging you and nobody’s keeping score. Do what makes you feel good.” – Krishna Das

So, the repetition of the name. People always ask me, you know, what do these names mean?

What does your name mean? It means “you.” You, as you are known by other people in this world and mostly by yourself, too. I’m me. But these names come from within us and they were brought out into this world by great beings who realized the truth, realized real love, were liberated, are free from suffering and stayed in this world, that came to this world to help us find a way to be free from suffering.

So, these names come from within us and the real meaning of these names is our own true nature. Just like you are Frank and there’s Frankness in everything you do, and you call out “Frank, Frank, Frank,” and its just, “Yeah, Frank,” you feel really Frankie.

So, when we call out “Ram Ram Ram” or any one of these names, there is a response, an awareness opens up within us.  Most likely, most of us, including myself, aren’t able to actually recognize that awareness at this point, recognize that place within, even though it’s always here. There is nowhere else it could be except here, but we’re not here. Well, we are here, but we don’t recognize that.

So, through this practice gradually, but inevitably that place within us is uncovered. It’s not something we get from doing the practice. It is something we uncover within ourselves through the ripening process that we call spiritual practice.

“Jai Jai Ramakrishna Hari” doesn’t have anything to do with the Saint who lived in India in the 1800s. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Ramakrishna Hari is a form of Krishna, a form of Vishnu that is a murti, a form of God that lives in a temple in Southern India in Pandharpur. And it’s a very unusual form. Not only do people see it as Krishna, but some people also see it as Ram. They had that direct experience and the great saints who created that temple and created a culture around that around that temple, they came up, this mantra was revealed to them, Rama Krishna Hari. Hari, not Hare, but Hari, Rama Krishna Hari. So, it’s a beautiful mantra.

Every repetition of one of these names is a seed, a seed that we are planting within ourselves in the garden of our hearts. And those seeds will grow just like a tiny little seed can have a huge Oak tree inside of it, the potential inside of it, so does every repetition of one of these names have that same Shakti, that same potential to manifest God.

So, since every thought and action is karma, when we’re doing this, one thing is we’re not creating other karmas. And they say that the repetition of the name is totally sattvic, totally pure, that there’s no negative aspect to it at all. It can’t be negative. There can’t be any negative reactions or karmas that are created from the repetition of the name.

So, since you have to do something, cause we’re all very busy, why don’t we plant the seeds that will develop and grow into what we’d like to experience in our lives, which is happiness, joy, peace, truth, reality.

So, you repeat these names, you do this practice, you don’t have to have any intellectual understanding of the meaning of the names. It’s not required. You can have that. Yes. All of these names have stories out of which they’ve sprung here on this planet, in this world. Kali, Durga, Krishna, Shiva, Ram Hanuman, Ganesh, all these beings have incredible storylines that they, that the name has emerged from, that we became aware of these names, but the real meaning of the names is the true nature of those beings, also, which is liberation. In the Shiva Stuti from the Ramacharitamanasa, “Namaa miisha mishaana-nirvaana rupam.” “I bow to the Lord of the North, Shiva, whose very nature is liberation, is Nirvana.” That’s what he is. He’s not like a guy like you and me. He is liberation. Shiva is liberation. So, and we evoke that. We move towards that. We manifest that. We recognize that within us.

So, let’s take some questions and stuff, see what’s going on in our mind.

Q: I get the whole chanting the name thing…

Really? Next question.

But does chanting generalizations, such as “Hari Om” have the same amount of effect?

I don’t know what you mean by generalizations. “Hari Om” is a powerful mantra. It’s a name of God. Not only is “Om” the name of everything, it’s the word. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and all that. That’s the name. That’s Om. The first sound creation starting the first vibration. Om. Everything is included in that. Hari Om. Powerful. So, I don’t know what you mean by generalization

Q: If in our devotional chanting practice, we use some of your tunes to chant divine names other than the ones you wrote them for, do you mind if we do that?

As long as I don’t hear it, it’s fine. Yeah. Yeah. Knock yourself out. It doesn’t matter. Okay.

Q: How do I maintain my daily practice? At times it becomes a burden, like I just have to get my meditation done. I usually ended up quitting till suffering reminds me to start again.

Well, ain’t that the truth? Yeah. You know, don’t do it. You don’t have to. Nobody’s making you do that. If you don’t feel, if you don’t have a feeling for it, you know, screw it. Watch TV. But you’ll need it when the shit hits the fan and it’s always hitting the fan. We just don’t recognize it.

But until you have that understanding yourself, or you’ve experienced that the immediacy of the need to calm your ass down and find out who you are, nobody, you can’t, it’s fine.  Be you. You have to do it your way, whatever that is. But if you start to pay attention, you recognize that the tendencies of your mind, in this case, either tamas, which is like inertia, you don’t want to get out of that emotion, you don’t want to get out of the groove you’re in, or rajas, which means you’re running too fast. You can’t, you can’t be bothered to slow down. And so, you’re stuck in one or one of those or both. And unfortunately, that’s the way we spend most of our time. So, in order to cultivate releasing ourselves from those prisons of programmed behavior, we have to exert some effort, but you don’t have to do that.

Nobody’s making you do that. If you don’t feel the need, don’t do it. When you feel the need, you will do it. That’s it. Next.

It’s not, nobody’s testing you, nobody’s judging you and nobody’s keeping score. Do what makes you feel good. And as time, you’ll, you might recognize that what you thought made you feel good wasn’t really making you feel good. So, but that’s something only you can recognize. This is not… we’re not doing this so somebody can pat us on the head and say, “what good little boys and girls.” This is our lives. This is our day. This is how we go through our day. If we’re at ease with that, fine. Next. Nobody can say anything. Period.

Do what you like. Find out what it is that life means to you. Find out who you are. That’s all.

Q: is there a spiritual difference between mental or inner chanting and verbal chanting? Does one benefit more than another?

You know, depending on who you ask you’ll get a million answers to the same question. I think any practice you do is a good thing, period. Sometimes you’re not in a position to make sound with your voice of chanting, but that doesn’t mean the chant can’t be going on internally. So ultimately, if you sing outwardly, it benefits everybody who hears it, but you don’t want to be doing that for people who don’t give a shit. They’ll beat you up, you know? You don’t want to lay trips on people.  But in a group where we’re singing out loud, that’s benefiting everybody and it’s creating vibrations in this outer world that are helpful, planting seeds that are helpful for everyone who hears it.

But at the same time, even when we’re singing outwardly, there’s an inner correlation going on. If you weren’t singing inwardly, you couldn’t sing outwardly. It comes from within. The intention, the thought, the creation, of your paying attention to what you want to do, that all comes from within. So ultimately there’s no difference and there’s a difference too. It just depends. One’s not better than another, as far as I can tell.

Singing out loud gives you more to hang on to in terms of trying to pay attention. Because you’re breathing. There’s sound, which you’re hearing. Maybe you’re playing an instrument. So, you’re paying attention to that. There’s more things to hang your attention on, which is good and useful at the beginning, the first 50 or a hundred years. After that, maybe the thing will be going on inside of us.

Q: How does one differentiate between submission and surrender?

Well, you know, on some level, I suppose they’re very similar, but on other levels, I suppose you can make a case that there’s a difference. But it doesn’t mean that, there’s always a difference, but it’s, for instance, submission usually means submitting your will to the will of another, giving up your will, to be, well, on the lowest level, controlled by another person. Submission. You submit to somebody else’s will, or you submit to what’s happening in a situation. Surrender is more internal. Surrender actually, you get more when you surrender.

Real surrender, first of all, happens only by grace. It isn’t an act of will. You’re not submitting. You’re not saying, “Oh, I surrender. Oh Lord.” You haven’t. You might think you have, you might want to, but surrender happens when we become very ripe and it happens by grace. It doesn’t happen through personal will. However, we can use our personal will to. move in that direction, to offer our love all, offer our attention, offer our service, and offer our understanding. But when surrender happens, you’ve become the whole universe. And a true guru doesn’t want submission. They want surrender. They want to merge. They want you to merge with them and become one. In submission, there’s still two. There’s what you’re submitting to. But once again, it might not mean that to everybody, but that’s one way of looking at it. On one level, certainly there, the argument could be made that submission also means surrender and in some situations that could be true.

Q: Was it hard for me as a Jew to embrace Hinduism?

First of all, I’m about as Jewish as the Pope. And second of all, I haven’t embraced Hinduism. I’m not a Hindu, I’m a devotee the of my Guru. I bow to all manifestations of the divine. I have no problem with that. I’m not… I’m all inclusive. I don’t, I don’t push anything away because I don’t have to.

He said, “Sab ek.” All one.

So that means, fine. It’s all good. I don’t identify as a Hindu, nor did I ever identify as a Jew. Culturally, this body came from a Jewish family, but I don’t know that this body… I don’t know if I was Jewish in my last birth. I don’t know if I’ll be Jewish in my next birth because I was born into a Jewish family this time.

It wasn’t a religious family. Nobody had any belief in God. Nobody had any idea of, of understanding what this is all about. So, I never got any deep religious teaching as Jewish teaching. in later years, I’ve come across the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman, the great Siddhas and saints of the Jewish religion that I know about, that I read about. And I find they’re all the same.

So, it’s just not something that ever came up for me at all. I follow the love as best I can, and where there’s love, that’s where I want to be. Whether, no matter what religion, no matter what culture, it makes no difference to me. If the love is there, I’m there.

Q: Hello. Just got here. Does it matter if you’re singing, if one is singing a chant in a language that one doesn’t understand, and what if you understand the meaning?

Well, we talked about this a little earlier.

On some level, there’s a difference between conceptual understanding and intuitive understanding. Conceptual understanding, intellectual understanding is fine, but it’s something you’re going to have to let go of to enter into your secret heart, because the heart is deeper than the level of thought. So, if this, the intellectual understanding of the chants, or this or that helps you to pay attention helps your life become better, fine. No problem. But from my point of view, it hasn’t been something that I’ve found to be of ultimate importance. so far. I’ve been singing the Hanuman Chalisa for 50 years, or close to that, and I always knew what it meant, basically, but when I was singing it, I wasn’t paying attention to the intellectual meaning of the words. I knew that I was singing it to Maharajji, that I was offering him that chant. I was singing it more as mantra rather than bhajan. Now, bhajans are songs about the deities or what the deity’s done or what this saint has done and stuff like that. There’s a story. In Christianity, it would be like Jesus met the woman at the well, et cetera, or “lighthouse shine your light on me,” stuff like that. Great. Powerful. Inspiring. But still on the level of conceptuality, which is fine. Now, when I sing the Chalisa, I find that the meaning of the words is coming up into my mind naturally without me trying to hold onto it. So, when I’m paying attention now, it’s become a little bit more inclusive. It’s not like… I don’t know how to say it. It’s not like, the insight, the understanding is coming from the outside in. It’s like, as I’m singing, I’m knowing what I’m singing in a different way than previously.

I just heard a story about, way back, we were in Vrindavan and we had, when a friend was with us and his name was Ram Dass, not Baba Ram Dass.  We called him Sadhu Ram Dass. And he had been a lot of time in India and spoke perfect Hindi. And I just heard this story that, one day we sang the Hanuman Chalisa to Maharajji and he turned to this guy and he said, “Translate this so these people can understand what the hell they’re talking about.” Something like that.

So that night he sat up and he wrote a whole English version of the Chalisa, which is very nice. So yeah, but for me, all of these chants, they kind of slide in, I think, it feels to me, deeper than the intellectual level.

I go into the space of presence, of being, of love and it doesn’t, it doesn’t activate this. This is not important. What has more gravitas is the presence that I feel of Maharajji, of the love, of the being. So, but whatever you, you know, whatever works for you is fine.

Q: Do you think the days of legitimate Sages is passing?

No, of course not. They have to be here. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any chance for this world to develop the way that it has to. Remember, it goes up and down, up and down. They say there’s big cycles, the yugas, ages, the different ages. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about that.

Q: Do I think I would recognize Krishna if he were to address me personally?

Only if he wanted me to.

Q: Do you ever feel like you want to meet unkindness with unkindness? Especially when the person is really making life difficult?

Absolutely. That’s why difficult people are so good for us. They show us where we’re stuck and until we can see where we’re stuck, we can’t let it go.

There’s a story about an old Tibetan Lama who was going on a pilgrimage, and he had to take somebody with him to help with the bags and stuff, do the cooking. And he picked this guy from the monastery who was so difficult, he was such a jerk, did everything wrong, was crazy. And they all asked him, “Why did you do that? Why are you taking this guy with you?”

He said, “Because he teaches me patience.”

If you are committed to becoming free, if we are committed to becoming free, then we have to learn to appreciate the teaching that those difficult people give to us.

When I was doing my first few Metta meditation courses with Sharon Salzberg, you go through a cycle. First, you offer yourself this loving kindness, this friendship. “May I be safe, May I be happy, May I Have health and have ease of heart,” right?  And you offer yourself those phrases.

And then, after that you go to what they call the benefactor, somebody in your life who’s always been good to you, always been on your side. So, you bring them to mind and you offer them these phrases. “May you be safe, May you be happy, May you have health, May you live at ease of heart,” right?  And you just keep going. And then they say, “Okay, now go back to yourself.”

So, you go back to yourself. And then, a day or so later, they say, “Okay, now bring the enemy to mind,” that person in your life was just a Supreme pain in the ass, who was always fucking things up for you, who’s always criticizing, was never, always on your case, always a pain. So, I would, you know, I think it’s not, it’s not easy, so I’d say, “May you be safe, may be happy, you son of a bitch, so you leave me alone. may be….”

You know, it took years. And it’s still a great practice because it happens all the time.

So, the other thing is, if we look carefully, we can usually see the thing that we don’t like in another person is something we don’t like in ourselves also. There’s so many levels of all this. And they all have to be released as time goes on, as the path moves along.

Q: Reading so much about Maharajji lately, and I’m wondering why did he hit people? Was it always a lesson? It seems like no one thought of it as a bad experience.

So that’s the deal. Nobody thought of it as a bad experience. One time, I was sitting with him in back of the temple in the evening, and this fellow who lived across the street from the temple, a long-time devotee of Maharajji comes in in the evening to have Darshan, and it had been a very sweet time. Very easy. Sweet, rich. The sun was setting and the flowers, the Jasmine were just releasing, the night queen, rakhi rani was releasing this fragrance. It was just so beautiful. And this guy comes to the gate in the back of the temple, starts walking down the path to Maharajji and Maharajji sees him and he sits up like this and he starts screaming at the guy.

That guy, he would have run away if he could, but it was too late. So, he had to keep coming and he comes and he pranams to Maharajji, and Maharajji pounds him on the back, like this, “Go, go, go get out!”

The minute he was gone, Maharajji went, “Hee hee.”

So, the story was, this guy was, had like, 12 kids, was so poor and he couldn’t feed his family. So, he lived right across the street from the temple. So, Maharajji created a job for him. He knew the people who, you know, devotees of his were in the bus company, the state run bus company. So, he created a job for the guy that when a bus came by, this guy would make a check on a piece of paper. And at the end of the week, he would send the paper off to the bus office and he would get paid a certain amount of rupees for doing that every day, because he couldn’t feed his family. But the problem was this, that the minute he got paid and he had gotten paid that day, he went out and bought, spent all the money on hashish, on charas, hash, to smoke. And so once again, another month would go by, and Maharajji would have to feed his whole family. And this went on month after month after month. So, he thought a couple of punches in the back would be a good thing.

You know, this is a big question and there’s no one answer. It’s a very difficult concept for us. And it’s called Lila. “Lila” means play or drama. And what they say is that one that, that a person with limited understanding, like ourselves, cannot understand the lila or play of a Saint, of a realized being, or one of the gods or the deities, so to speak, because these beings have no personal motivation anymore. They’re not looking to get off. I’m talking about realized beings, not pretend gurus, not want-to-be teachers, not anything. I’m talking about real gurus. Satgurus. They don’t have anything they need anymore. They’re only here to help us and their only motivation for any action is compassion for us.

Now that’s way above our pay grade. We cannot conceive of, quote unquote, desireless motivated action, because we don’t, all our actions are motivated by some kind of desire, to grab onto or push away. That’s what we do. So, it’s, it’s a slippery slope if you approach it intellectually, because it might look very reasonable from the outside that this guru is doing something that hurts this person. It might look like that, but it’s a question of, unfortunately, it’s a question of faith, the faith that you have in that particular being, and that faith is an intuitive understanding. It’s not blind faith. Blind faith means that  you don’t want to see it, and if you see it, you’re not going to deal with it.

That’s not useful. If you saw it, you have to deal with it.

Real faith is an intuitive knowing.  It’s just, it’s more real than whatever you could think about something. It’s a very difficult situation for Westerners. And there are a lot of charlatans, quote, unquote, another question in there, a lot of wannabe gurus, a lot of people who are posing as gurus for their own satisfaction, for money or fame or whatever, and there’s really no way to know.

You only, all you can do is trust your heart about the situation. If it’s not for you, it’s not for you. If it’s for you, it’s for you. But until it’s not for you, all you can do is learn to trust yourself. That’s why I always say that the whole path is nothing but learning to trust our inner being, our own intuition. And as we become freer inside, as we become less afraid, as we become less desire motivated in our actions, selfish, motivation, things will loosen up in there a little bit. And we can allow for the possibility that we might not be able to understand something here, but it feels okay in there. And yes, I know, it could be total bullshit. But only, you know, only I know. What’s real for you is real for you. What’s real for me is real for me. There’s no general thing you can say.

Q: What Buddhist teachers do I have on my altar here?

I have a lot of them.

The Dalai Lama, Mingyur Rinpoche, Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, over here is the whole Buddhist side of the family, the previous Karmapa, the present Karmapa, Tulku Urgyen, Lama Khenpo, Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, who I spent some time with. I love these beings. I love their teachings. I love their presence. I love their beings and I like to have them around.

The post Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD May 21, 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 52 Reincarnation, Sci-Fi Buddhism and Devotion

“He encouraged us to love everyone, serve everyone and remember God, which is to repeat the Names of God. Japa. Ram Nam. Yeah. I always wanted Him to tell me what to do, you know? Give me some like, practice, some mantra. Some “this” that I could do, you know? But He was never, He never encouraged us to do spiritual practice for the sake of our own spiritual benefit, so to speak. He said, “Think about others.” And really, to tell you the truth, I didn’t get it, you know? “What is He talking about? What do you mean, think about others? What about me?” It takes a while to get with the program. Really, it does.” – Krishna Das

Q: You said something about good health is…

KD: Hard to find?

Q: Yeah, that’s true. The joy of your, all of your cells living in harmony, something along those lines, I didn’t get it down right.

Bob: Yes, yes. That’s right.

Q: That’s it?

Bob: Yes, your life force, your health, is joy and bliss in your system.

Q: Ok.

Bob: It’s the nature of reality in your system, exerting itself in your system. This is the new orientation we’re cultivating is that reality is joy.

Q: Right.

Bob: Love is joy. Because love means, the wish for the happiness of the Beloved is what “love” means in these traditions and how can it wish to have happiness for the Beloved if it doesn’t have happiness itself? Right? In other words, ok?

Q: Without making this, you know, a story rather than a question, this has been a lot, my husband has stage 4 lung cancer and he has gone past his expiration date. He’s supposed to be dead now. But he gets out there and he walks the dog every day and then he goes, he rides the exercise bike for 70 minutes and it makes him happy and he comes home happy, and the doctors are saying, “Well, it’s your physical health that’s keeping you alive.” And that one statement just kind of like, whoa, it’s not just that, it’s the attitude. And thank you all.

Bob: Ok.

Q: Could you just say a few more sentences about what I asked you during the break? When we were talking about, you know, going through the transformation of this life to the next life and I know in Buddhism that you can come back as everybody’s mother, or you can come back as a flea or you can come back as a preta…

Bob: Yes

Q: And my thought is if you’re being reborn in the human realm, you’re here already having some compassion so it would appear to me that you would want to, people would naturally continue in a higher state. So how do people fall back so they’re in that cyclical of going down again?

Bob: Well, I think the traditional religious interpretations about that tend somewhat, Oh, that’s really interfering with your head. Ok, we have to get that a little bit away, that’s terrible. Ok. So, they tend to overemphasize the danger of deteriorating in one’s embodiment and, which connects to, which is, I think they overdo that, I think. And this connects to the fact that they so much appreciate the evolutionary achievement of becoming human because it’s really extraordinary in the way that… Buddhist biologists would see, for example, how you would move from being a tigress or a lioness towards some less violent embodiment, would be that lioness that was waiting, chasing the herd of antelopes and saw a really juicy slow-moving pregnant one, really juicy, and sort of all, like, puffed up from being pregnant, and then had a subliminal sense of identification because of having had pups herself and then decided to let it go and swerved and jumped on a stringy old disgusting hobbling old much less delicious one, but enough to feed herself and her family. So how many tigresses, lionesses would have such an impulse, such an empathetic impulse based on not having watched nature movies on PBS? And so that kind of thing, that then teaches, leads one to want to evolve into a more gentle level of Being that, actually as a lioness, you would think some weird hairless, furless, two-fangless, clawless animal like a human who can’t even go on all fours might be a bring-down for like, a wild predator, you know? So, they consider that to be, those transitions to be so difficult, to rise toward more gentleness an embodiment. They consider the human being very gentle. That they now want to emphasize the human, like, the danger of falling back and how hard it would be to get back. But I think they overdo it, because I think that the non-enlightened person who takes rebirth based on being driven by instinct, the human being, only the very rare one is going to fall in love with the female rhinocerous and want to enter her womb, I think. That would be an unusual one. Or to enter a beetle’s egg, they would have had to really identify with their Volkswagon in their life to feel attracted to a female beetle’s, a dung beetle’s egg sack or whatever it would be. So, I think they would tend to be attracted toward a human, you know? And, I think that’s more like it, you know? Even the one who’s still the victim and driven by lust, I think they’d lust for what they’re used to thinking is attractive. So, let’s hope that’s the case.

What? We have to use our imagination, you know, to realize that we do life in a sci-fi world. We really do. In the Buddhist Sutras, when people would, when the Buddha would give teachings in the Mahayana Sutras, there was usually a parking problem because Beings would come from other Universes by mental projections in their subtle body forms and they would sometimes come in giant towers of Bodhi Sattvas in some of the more elaborate sutras. And then they’d have to park these towers around, you know, and then they would be attending.

KD: I was a parking attendant.

Bob: You were parking where?

KD: I was the parking attendant at one of those.

Bob: You might have been. And so that the idea of life on other planets, to us, you know, this is such a huge thing. Carl Sagan is out there. There’s big antennas down Chile sending out Beatles music and waiting to hear, like, back some Mozart, you know, someplace like Aldabra or something. It’s like the idea that we’re the only ones in this huge thing. We’re a tiny little peripheral little thing, you know. It the Vimalakirti Sutra, people get hungry at lunchtime, or before lunchtime, the free lunch people especially got hungry because in the afternoon they can’t eat. And He sent out for takeout at the incense Buddha’s Universe beyond as many other universes as grains of sand in 62 Ganges River Beds. He sends out an emanation Bodhi Sattva for takeout. And He comes back and brings back a bunch of incense rice and then he feeds thousands of people.

KD: Was it vegetarian?

Bob: It’s very very sci-fi. That’s what I’m trying to say.

KD: Organic?

Bob: It was organic. Hell yes. So, that’s the Indian imagination. It’s amazing, you know? Because they weren’t all being beaten up all the time, you know. They were allowed to have fantasies, you know. Ok.

KD: So, let’s order takeout now. This is our order. We’re putting in our order right now.

Bob: Ok.

KD: We’re putting in our order.

Bob: Ok. Absolutely. With mantra. That’s the way you put in an order. Very good.

KD: Ok. So, ashtanga yoga, eight-limbed yoga, right? Maharajji used to say that the Westerners were only qualified for the five-limbed yoga, which is gup, ghoomne, khaana, pina, and sona. Gup is gossiping. Goomne is wandering around. Khaana is eating. Pina is drinking. Sona is sleeping. This is what we were qualified for. And He said, “You know, it’s better to love everybody  than to try to figure it out.” So, that’s what I come back to, really. You know? And many times He would say to the Westerners, and to all of us, to all of His devotees, “Ram Nam Karna Se Sab Pura Ho Jata.” From repeating these Names of God, everything is accomplished. Everything is brought to fulness and completion. And the implication being that, through this practice, and also, Hanuman is a very unusual Being in many ways and there’s Sanskrit sloka that I don’t remember, but I remember the meaning and it said that, “Not only does Hanuman bestow liberation, but He makes it possible for us on the way to satisfy the desires that we need to satisfy in order to get along with our work.” It’s not a renunciate path in any way, shape or form, in terms of the traditional monkey-monk path. The monkey-monk path. And so, yeah.

He encouraged us to love everyone, serve everyone and remember God, which is to repeat the Names of God. Japa. Ram Nam. Yeah. I always wanted Him to tell me what to do, you know? Give me some like, practice, some mantra. Some “this” that I could do, you know? But He was never, He never encouraged us to do spiritual practice for the sake of our own spiritual benefit, so to speak. He said, “Think about others.” And really, to tell you the truth, I didn’t get it, you know? “What is He talking about? What do you mean, think about others? What about me?” It takes a while to get with the program. Really, it does. And the tradition that Bob is so steeped in, of compassion, the Bodhi Sattva path, it’s all about that. You know. There’s only one of us in the whole universe and until all of us are happy then, since the “we” are not fully happy on one level, on the other level, a true Bodhi Sattva has found that happiness and they stay here for our sake. Their only agenda is compassion. They don’t have any, there’s nothing they need any more other than our happiness. Yeah.

We talk about all these techniques. I remember Mr. Tiwari, who was one of Maharajji’s great devotees, he was a great yogi and he was incredible. And he was totally in the world. He was a school teacher and then he became the head master of a very prestigious school. I would go stay with their family for long periods of time and I would sleep in the same bed as he and Mrs. Tiwari would go sleep with the kids and Mr. Tiwari would get up at like 3:30 in the morning, he’d go pee, come back into the bed, sit up and he’d go… and that was it for like three or four hours until tea time. He’d be just… I would wake up at 3:30, go pee, get back into bed, go back to sleep. Not once in 30 years did he ever say to me, you know, “don’t you think you should meditate?” Not once. It was like, you know… I kick myself now. I could have said, “Baba, how do you do that?” You know? I remember, and I’ve told this story before, but I had heard part of a prayer once with the words, “Narayani Namostute” I bow to the Goddess. I bow to Narayani. I bow to you, Narayani. And, so I asked Him if He’d ever heard this prayer. “Oh yes.” I said, “Really?” “Oh, yes.” “Would you teach it to me.” “Ok.” So, we sat down and He started to recite the prayer and I was trying to write it down as he was, he was going slow and I was writing, and he just kind of started speeding up and his eyes were closed and it was, it went on for about 15 minutes. It was a long prayer and he knew it all by heart. And by the end, I mean, he was just, at the end he was just “Om Narayani! Om Narayani! Om!” (stops abruptly) He went into samahdi. He just left. And tears, he wasn’t breathing. You understand? Not breathing. And tears were streaming down his cheeks. It really pissed me off. I mean, I couldn’t get a taste of this to save my miserable life and he couldn’t stay out of it long enough to teach me one miserable prayer. So, then Mrs. Tiwari comes into the living room to get the tea cups. We were drinking tea, I think. And I said, “Ma, look. What… when’s he going to come back?” And then she picked up the tea cups, she just smiled at me and said, “Don’t know.” Went back into the kitchen, you know? Leaving me with this crying corpse. But he wasn’t, you understand, he was not trying, do you get that? He was just, he just got, he just, the love was so strong that he just disappeared into it, or appeared into it, depending on how you look at it. He wasn’t trying to go anywhere. He wasn’t trying to go into samahdi. And, of course, I can’t say, from his point of view, what his experience was but I definitely saw that, you know? The purity of that love, the intensity of that love just carried him so deep within. So, how do we, how does that happen, you know? For us? It’s a long way from Mickey Mouse to Ram. We grow up with that, you know, believing in nothing, basically, you know. It’s really interesting. We’re programmed right from day one that “me” is the only thing important and that there’s just essentially nothing really to find. Nothing’s possible. You know, we’ve got to scrounge out whatever little pleasure we can in life and then that’s it, boom, you’re dead. So, to transform all those programs, to pull the energy out of those programs so we can learn to feed our hearts is a big thing.

It was funny, when I was with Tsoknyi Rinpoche at His retreat and He had asked me to sing at this retreat where He was going to teach about devotion for the first time, He was talking about, He started to talk about His Guru. The minute He started to talk about His Guru, He started to cry. He couldn’t not cry. He couldn’t hold the tears back and He would say, you know, “I could never take my eyes off my Guru. I wanted to be with Him every…” and then He would look at the people and then He said, “But not you, not with me.” He said, “Don’t do that with me.”

Bob: Well, I think devotion comes from gratitude. From the Guru teaching, sharing His awareness in some way through words, imperfectly as words do, and then where, when one has a new vision of the world and one sees that exemplified in the Guru, then there’s a feeling of gratitude toward the Guru and then great devotion arises from that, I think, basically. I think that although there’s a whole thing called the “reliance on the Guru” and devotion, initially respect and service to the Guru are considered important, but the most important way of expressing devotion is to realize the teaching that the Guru gives and to embody it in your own life. The Guru, precisely what your Rinpoche there said, “Not to me, don’t do that” sort of thing, the idea that just sort of going gaga eyed at the Guru is going to get you there is not actually it. That’s just, even, the zen thing, you know, if you meet a Buddha in the road, kill Him. The idea meaning if you think that the Guru represents everything that you want to be and therefore solidified your sense of not being that, then the Guru, the relationship of the Guru is not helping you. And “kill him” just simply means, it doesn’t mean “harm some person you meet.” It means, don’t reify or deify the Guru, because what He wants you to do is to embody yourself as that same thing, you know? Like, actually, my original Guru, Geshe Wangyal, used to always say when He would teach me or He would scold me or whatever it was, He would always say, “this is not just for you, because you, I want you to be, through you to be helping many people. You are supposed to do something for many other people,” type of thing. He would constantly harp on that point. And then, if you do get some glimpse of the more beautiful world or the beauty of the world that is there that you somehow, when it’s that kind of beauty that you see and when you see it, you realize it was always there right in front of you but you didn’t notice it, you didn’t embrace it, you didn’t let go of whatever your idea was to really let it make it new and surprise you, you know, be a miraculous event to you. And when you did that and that would be so, you would feel so delighted and you would feel so grateful that someone had helped you open that door within yourself, that you would then of course be devoted to that person. Very, very much so. But again, even your devotion is most best expressed by your helping others in that same way, in some way, you know? Really.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: And there’s one other thing that’s kind of interesting which is that thing about sort of a dance practice kind of thing. The Dalai Lama, when He does a big initiation, a grand initiation of some kind, He often says at some point, He has, there’s like a preliminary, you know prerequisite or preliminary teaching that He gives and then at different points, especially after He finishes that or even after finishing the whole thing He says, “Ha ha,” He says, “I tricked you. I tricked you all,” He said. Because you wouldn’t have come here for this preliminary teaching. You only came because of the initiation. But you might not even be able to use that. That might be too difficult for you. But what was really helpful to you was the preliminary. But you wouldn’t have come to study the preliminary. You only come because you want the big initiation. “I’m going to be like blah blah blah blah blah. I’m going to be like that, you know, like dancing Shiva or something.” Oh, yes, we all want to be Dancing Shiva. Oh, yes.

KD: Yeah, we used to, in the old days in India… in India in the old days, we would always try to go to those, the Wangs, the real, you know, the big teachings.

Bob: I know. They are very magical.

KD: They are.

Bob: They’re really, you really feel something is really happening. You get like a Boing.

KD: And then you go kick the dog.

Bob: No. What?

KD: And then you go kick the dog.

Bob: Well, yeah, people do. People do. Some people do.

KD: Some people.

Bob: But not necessarily. Not everyone. Anyway, that’s the thing. So, yes the Guru, you know, they say that the Guru, in Tantra especially… actually, in regular Buddhism, the Guru role is diminished on purpose by Buddha and the teacher is called Kalyana Mittra and “Mittra” means “friend” and “kalyana” means a “virtue” or “goodness”, you know, the “goodness friend” and so the idea is that the patriarchal father figure in the family, which is the model, a little bit in India, of the Guru as the authority father, and the word “guru” even meaning “the heavy”. This is actually a little bit discouraged, because they don’t want that kind of devotion of dependency like a child to a parent, necessarily. That’s not helpful to the person from the Buddhist point of view, where the person has to a little bit rebel about authority to bring out their own insight, actually. But then in tantra, it reconnects a little bit, because tantra is a very advanced and therefore at that point, the person, what is necessary is something to bridge the gap between one’s concept of one’s self as an ordinary person, which becomes an excuse at that point, like “I’m torn, I can’t do this or I can’t practice that or I can’t do the other,” and the gap is bridged in the person of the Guru. And so they say things like, well, “The ten thousand Buddhas of the Golden era are nothing to me compared to the Guru.” And there’s a famous story about Marpa, the teacher of Milarepa, when He, at one point He was looking for His Guru, Naropa, a Great Siddha, a Great Adept, Naropa. And He found Him, finally, on His second trip to India or something and He found Him somewhere in some jungle on some mountain and there was Naropa standing there, you know, in His loin cloth, you know, like a typical sadhu siddha guy and then next to Him was a giant Hevajra, male female dancing in a ring of fire. It looks a little bit like Shiva Nataraj but as a female connected around Him. Multiple heads and arms and things like that. Like, really, like wow.

KD: What do you mean, “next to him?” A murti or the real thing?

Bob: Right next to him. Standing there. A great Hevajra. So, then, and Naropa says to Marpa, “Well, who do you bow to? Me or the yidam? The Ishta Devata.

KD: The Ishta Devata

Bob: The chosen devata. He said, “I see you all the time, man. I’m going to bow to the dancing shiva here, whoa.” Great mistake. Big mistake. As He’s bowing, the form the Shiva withdraws back into a pore on the body of the siddha. You know, the Guru, everything is in the Guru, you know. And even there was once where Milarepa, my favorite one was Milarepa and Retchungma… and Milarepa was, met Retchungma, who’d been doing the, and He met lots of Gurus in India and He had some special books, you know, and He was coming back and He was like, and then when He saw Milarepa, who was always naked, He had a little white sheet, you know. Not Donald Trump’s followers, white sheet, but just a little white skirt He would occasionally wear and then He was looking at Him like “Oh my Tibetan Guru’s kind of funky,” like, “Geeze I was down in India and met some of the real guys,” you know, “and He was a little bit proud, you know. So, then Mila, He says, “oh great.” Mila realized He was a little proud. So then Mila and He are walking across a plain. He takes Him out where there’s no shelter and then Mila conjures a thunder storm, and the thunder storm soaks all His books and all of them. And soaks Him, Retchungma. Meanwhile, Milarepa’s quite dry and then He disappears when the storm comes, Milarepa does. And Retchungma goes “Mila Mila where are you? Guruji where did you go?” And then He hears this little voice. “I’m down here. Come on in. It’s dry here.” And then He looks down and then Milarepa has miniaturized Himself and He’s inside an old yak horn that’s lying in the ground. And He’s sitting in there all dry. “Come on in,” you know? “Oh, you can’t miniaturize yourself? Oh, no. They didn’t teach you that in India? That’s ok, we’ll dry you out.” So then the storm is over, then they go over and Milarepa makes a little fire with twigs and things, and He says, “Listen, you go get some water and we’ll make tea and meanwhile we’ll make a fire here and we’ll dry out your books and stuff.” So then He goes to get the water and then on the way he sees a herd of goats. At first, it’s just a couple. And then they, they mate and then they produce more goats and then they mate, produce more goats, and he has this vision of like, all these goats, like a huge herd, he becomes fascinated with this. It’s like a nature movie. Like goats multiplying instantly.

KD: Discovery Channel.

Bob: And so, He gets lost there and stays there for some time. And then He goes and gets the water and comes back. When He comes back, Mila is cheerfully burning the books. “What? You’ve burned my books?” He’s so mad, you know.

“Well, I didn’t mean to burn them, “ Milarepa said. “I was just drying them out.” And then, “You brought some weird books. Not very good. Polluting types. Some of them are ok. I looked at some. But those are no good so I’m just relieving you of those.” And He just became furious, you know. And then there’s a long sequence of things where Mila keeps performing these miracles and He says, “Oh, you had a book on this and that tantra? Well here, I have that tantra.” And then He goes like this and then He looks in and His chest becomes transparent and He sees the mandala of that deity in His heart chakra. And the deities are all in there in miniature and they’re playing music and they’re chanting Ram Ram or I don’t know what, Buddha Buddha or Mani Padme Hung, or something. And He sees it in His Guru’s heart and says “I don’t care. That’s a trick.” And finally he has like, He has mandalas in every chakra up and down his body and His body is transformed there. He still doesn’t reconcile himself. “You burned my books.” He’s really pissed off. So, finally, you know, Milarepa says, “Well, Ok, I’m sorry. “ You know, and He flies away and He turns Himself into a vulture and flies away. Milarepa does. “I don’t care you’re a vulture. Get out of here. You’ve burned my book.” And then He leaves and then suddenly, He has a change of heart. He repents and then He throws Himself off a cliff. He’s so upset. Reminds me of you in the stream. He’s so upset because He was mad at His guru, and then He flings Himself off the cliff and then He lands. There’s a little terrace right below, about one inch below. And clunk, He lands on the terrace. And then suddenly, Milarepa, there are five Milarepa’s right in front of Him, who produced this place to catch him and going “Nah nah you couldn’t even kill yourself.” He said, so finally, “Ok, ok, I’m sorry,” you know. It goes on like that, you know. That’s my favorite. It really is outstanding. Another time He said, “Oh, books? You don’t need books. Here.” And then He sticks out His tongue and a stream of Sanskrit and Tibetan letters come flowing out of His tongue and they form themselves into all texts all around. Like a huge dome filled with text. So he says, “You have all the books right in your heart.” “Oh, that’s a trick. You’re just… You’ve burned my books, you bastard.” Completely gets mad.

The post Ep. 52 | Reincarnation, Sci-Fi Buddhism and Devotion appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD May 16, 2020

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.

“It would be good to try to find a way to relax. I know that sounds very prosaic, but it’s a very big thing. And that means releasing thoughts, feelings, imaginations about the future. It means releasing a lot of the negativity and betrayals and viciousness of our growing up from the past and allowing yourself to be here just a little bit, you know,… you’re not going anywhere. And certainly, in this this particular situation with the virus, we’re not going anywhere anyway. So… it’s a good time to recognize how clearly you see the things that are floating around in your awareness. “ – Krishna Das

Good morning. It’s getting hot out here in New York. I don’t know where you all are, but it’s hot here.

Oh, something…

Nina: So, Krishna Das, actually I have one question. I’ll just get it in here while people raise their hands. Last night, on talk with David Nichtern, KD spoke about what a real guru is. Is it possible to go deeper into this topic, especially how to cultivate ability to have a knowing that comes from the heart rather than thinking that comes from the mind? Or as Carl Jung, as per the Carl Jung quote, “Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.” *******

Well, you know, we have to deal with reality, which means we have to deal with where we are at and these ideas if of perfect this or perfect that, that’s not what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with a big mess of stuff inside of ourselves. We’re dealing with, we can’t find the ground, we don’t know who we are, we don’t know where we’re going. Our feelings are, are at odds with each other, with, with each all the time.

You know, one has to begin to quiet the mind a little bit, or at least begin to pay attention to all the nonsense in our heads. If you don’t pay attention to it, we can never release it. We’re not going anywhere. You know, there’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing to achieve. We shouldn’t see this as an ambitious enterprise, you know? We’re trying to find out who we are. We’re trying to experience a deeper reality within us. And it’s all within us. The guru is within our true nature. The self is within. In fact, they say guru, God and self are not different. They are the same.

So, the real guru is not outside of us, even though he or she might appear in a body at some point if we need that and if we’re ready for that, and if that is what’s going to be best for us. You know, you’ve got to understand, a real guru has no personal agenda whatsoever. They’re only here because we don’t know anything about anything. And they’re here out of compassion for us. And also, they’re here out of the recognition that we are one, we are all parts of one being, little fragments of light that haven’t found their way back home. So, a real guru is available to us to help us find our way home.

You can’t make that happen. You can’t make yourself come home. You can only allow yourself to come home. And that’s, to do that is to learn to trust your heart, and little by little, yyou do experience the difference between thinking, thinking and knowing. Knowing usually comes as a, as a, just a very simple knowing.

Sometimes it’s like an epiphany where we’re like, you know, it’s like a thunderbolt, but other times it’s just all of a sudden, you’d be going through your day and you’ll recognize some reality. Some truth will pop up in your consciousness. And this, this all happens because it’s a natural process, you know, and how we can help that natural process is to do some is to, is to start some regular practice, to find some way to allow the mind, to settle, allow the thoughts to settle.

So, obviously if we’re allowing those thoughts to settle, we can’t be pushing them away. We can’t be trying to crush them. We can simply be releasing them. And once we start paying attention, then we see, you know, what it’s like inside our heads, which is sometimes not very pretty. So yeah, it’s a question of, of recognizing what this is all about.

So, the knowing, and it’s also a question of learning how to trust ourselves. When I started singing with people, there was nobody for me to ask how to do this. You know, I just had to do what I felt I wanted to do and I needed to do, and obviously that’s become my major practice and it’s, a lot of people seem to get some benefit from that, too. So that’s a great thing. But it came from me having a need to do that for myself and trusting my intuition about what I should be doing and how to do what I was doing.

When I first started singing with people, you know, I sang the chants that I had learned when I was living in India, but as time went on, my more natural Western kind of shape just emerged and the music changed and I felt much more comfortable and at ease and in sharing the practice because I wasn’t, I wasn’t singing from the memory of what I used to sing. I was singing from what was coming through me now. And I had to trust that. I didn’t have anybody to… I did have a lot of people to encourage me, but still, there was nobody to really ask about, “How do you do this?”

So, it’s the same. How do you live your life? Only you know. And if we listen, sensitively enough, with sincerity and wholeheartedness, we can, we can find a way to live that works for us in this world. And by extension, that will work for other people as well.

And guru is… some people talk about the “guru principle.” That makes it a little bit impersonal. It’s a very personal, because it’s you. It’s us. It’s our true being. It’s what lives within us that’s who we really are. So, there’s nowhere to go other than within, cause no one to see other than ourselves.

And then, but what that feels like, oh, you’ll find out. Nobody can tell you because your life will get lit up in its own way. And that’s the beauty of all these practices. Everybody’s path is their life. And each person has to live their life. Nobody else’s life. So…

Q: Namaste, Krishna Das.

Namaste.

Thank you so much. Your love is just, it’s blown my heart away and I’m a big fan. Look, I’m even wearing a shirt just like you, but this is my husband’s shirt. We have more fans in the house that want to say hi to you. My husband…

“My husband,” what a funny name that is

So, we are fans and we don’t have really any questions because your music has burned all our questions. There’s so much love. There’s so much truth and so much energy that’s really extinguished everything, but I really wanted to meet you in person. And I was telling my husband the other day that I really want to meet KD  and he was like, “Okay, okay.” And this afternoon he bought this ticket. He was like, “Oh no, actually, no, the show is not like…” and I don’t know, I’m not into so much for online stuff. So, I don’t really have any questions though, if I’m wasting everyone’s time… but I really wanted to…  

No you’re not and in fact, I want to refer to the question that was just asked. All the things you say that you feel when we chat together, that is the guru. That love, that energy, that feeling of at-homeness, the feeling of goodness in it, that is the Guru, and that is, that is Neem Karoli Baba, that is my Guru transmitting. But that is the Guru, tthose feelings, which are deeper than our normal foam on top of the ocean, kind of, that is, the deeper feelings, and those feelings that would lead us to the depths of our own true nature. So that’s wonderful.

It’s beautiful. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. You’ve really lit up our lives and Maharajji has really lit up our lives.

So, thank you. Very good. Thank you.

Q: Hello? Can you hear me?

Hi.

Yeah. Hi and thank you. I’m just also so grateful for this, for these opportunities to meet you here and on the internet. It’s really nice to be able to do that. Also, I’m coming from Copenhagen, so it’s…

Oh great, one of my favorite cities. I love it.

Yeah.  And I just feel like also, just continuing on what you just said and what you just talked with the other girl about, feeling the Guru, because I have, sometimes when you talk about, you know, how the girl never lets go, once he, you know, at the moment he takes your hand and he never lets go, you might forget about it, but he will never, he will never let go. It just touched me so deeply when you’re talking about that. So that’s also, you know, it just makes sense for me and then when you talk about the, that that is the Guru, that feeling is the guru. So just want to share that, but I have a question which is about effort and how, you know, how do we balance effort in our sadhana? Because that’s something that I struggle with sometimes, you know, because some effort is needed in order to, you know, let go and to keep coming back to our center and to keep our hearts open as we can, but it’s, but sometimes I feel that I’m pushing myself too hard in that process, you know. So, because I get very….  about it all and the feelings, and also wanting to know it all right away, you know, and, but I also feel that it’s that longing and that, you know, striving for the answers and for the, for the understanding that makes me do my practice, you know?

So, it helps me get that, you know, get that glimpse of that, that beauty inside. And, but it’s also, you know, how to balance that, because sometimes it can feel that I get too intense into, you know, go too intense into it, so it can be, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that’s your job. Finding what’s right for you. You have to find a way to live in the world in a good way. Your practice, you know, as you do these practices, as you learn more about the spiritual path, so to speak, your life changes and the way you think about things also changes. So, a lot of the things you just said are things, are ideas that you have that will change over time.  They will soften. They’ll deepen. You might, they might change completely to another type of understanding of what you need to be doing, but it’s your life and you have to live it and you can live it. That’s the good news and the bad news, you know. You have to do it. So, a certain amount of effort is needed to overcome the inertia of the emotions and, and the not wanting to really wake up, you know, to, to do some practice.

But if you’re trying too hard, then, you know, you give yourself a headache, you know? And you have to find what works for you, and you’re the only one who knows. Nobody can tell you. I could say, “Meditate 20 minutes on Monday, 22 minutes on Wednesday.” But that’s just bullshit. You have to figure it out because you’re you, and you have to find out what works for you, and that’s the good news.  You can do that. That’s the whole path… is figuring out what works for you. There’s not another path, it’s not a question of doing it right or wrong. It’s a question of being you and what does that mean in terms of how you go through your day?

So, effort is one way of looking at it, but intention is another way of looking at it. You know, your intention is not to understand this and understand that and figure it all out. Your intention is to be happy and to live in love. That’s the intention. So how are you, how is that going to happen? By cranking yourself up and getting here? No, I don’t think so. So, you have to figure out what works for you. So, you… and the practice itself clarifies as time goes on what you really want, what the longing that you have is. So, it’s all good. Just keep breathing. That’s the main thing.

Thank you.

Take care.

Q: Going off of what the last question was about, too, I feel like I’m pretty good at figuring out what works for myself and I was watching one of the online satsangs that, you know, Krishna Das, you were doing this past month, and when you were talking about how, when you think of Maharajji, he is there and that’s literally true and something inside me clicked from that day, and it was like, there was nothing to accept or convert, or it was just there and it just is, and even now it is, and I’m, I’m fine with going where I need to go. I’m just having a lot of struggles with family and with roles with my parents. They are, I come from a Pakistani Muslim family and it’s Ramadan. And when I talk to my parents, I feel like they’re trying to convert me. And I don’t know how to navigate our spiritual boundaries. It’s very difficult.

Yeah. Well, there’s no boundaries in spirit. And you can say, “Yes, yes, yes,” to your parents and smile and let them know how much you love them, and you can feel their caring and love, but you don’t have to buy the whole program. They don’t have to know that. You don’t have anything to prove to anybody.

You can let them be who they are, and you can be who you are. Reacting to it is your problem, not theirs. And holding onto what you think is right for you, that’s your program, not theirs. So, they can’t hurt you. You’re only hurting yourself with your reactions and your fear. And the whole thing about boundaries is fear driven, you know, so have more confidence in yourself. Relax. Nothing can hurt you, and let them, you know, do what they ask you to do. How has it hurt you? God’s everywhere. They don’t have to know, you don’t have to prove to them that you’re not getting affected by this and that. You just have to let them know that you love them and you don’t need to give them anything to fight about. That’s not healthy for you or them.

And Maharajji said that while your parents are alive, there is no greater puja, no greater Seva than serving your parents. So how do you serve your parents if you can’t really… you let them know that they are loved and that you’re fine and “yes, yes, yes, all that’s all true, how wonderful.”

And then you go home, and you do some crazy tantric practice, you know. But you don’t, it’s, you know, there’s no reason to throw anything back in their face. And if you find yourself doing that and you notice that, that’s a really, that’s good because those are your issues at this point in your life and, and practice is about letting go of that stuff.

So, they’re showing you a lot about yourself, which some probably, some of it, you probably don’t like very much, which is why you want to set boundaries, but there’s the boundaries, when there’s love there’s no need for boundaries, but with our parents, it’s not always love. There’s a lot of hard stuff going on. There’s a lot of, a lot of difficult stuff that we, that happened to us growing up and that they’re transmitting from their own childhood and on and on. So, you know, it’s a question of having, developing more confidence in yourself, but that’s not something that comes right away. It’s not a button you push.

It’s something that comes from dealing with life in the best way you can, as time goes on. You make lots of mistakes. There’s a lot of things you wish you hadn’t done. Same thing with my parents. There’s a lot of things I wish I hadn’t done, but I did, you know, but as we got older, things got a lot easier and you know, so, you can keep secrets. There’s no problem keeping some kinds of secrets because if you come out like, “Oh, you just talked to Krishna Das.”

“Krishna Das!?”

So, you can keep those kinds of secrets because there’s no problem with that. There’s no reason to hurt them with your reality. You know, that’s, that’s not right.

Thank you.

And yeah. Wish them all, you know, just send them love and kindness and caring and be their beautiful child. And they’ll be happy. And that’s your job, without giving yourself away. You don’t have to give yourself away, but you can certainly give them what they need from you. What’s the problem? And if there is a problem, then you have, that’s good, then you have to deal with it and find out what it is. You can’t hide from yourself. There’s no way to hide. Everything comes out sooner or later. So, keep your eyes open and see where, see where those buttons are and then try to disconnect them with love.

Thank you.

Q: Krishna Das, here’s the situation. I’m going to speak the question because she’s not fluent in English.  She said, hold on, “My son likes to go for meditation retreats. How can I stop him?”

But hold on. So I asked her how old he is and what is he doing and so forth. And she said, “He’s 22 years old. He goes to Myanmar for Vipassana retreat. I want to stop him because he is young and I have only one son and he doesn’t want to get married.”

Well, you know, first of all, the type of meditation that he’s going to is a very good meditation. It’s not a cult. It’s not anything to worry about on that level. It’s a very good practice, a very simple practice, and it’s not dangerous in any way.

So, and he’s 22. I don’t think you need to worry about what he says he wants and what he doesn’t want at this point.

I think probably his ideas about things will change as he gets a little older, and anything can happen. And, you know, your job is not to worry, you know, you’re driving yourself crazy for… because that’s your, that’s your program. That’s what, that’s what you’re doing to yourself. And that’s not helping the situation in any way, and by worrying and pressuring him, you’re only creating a very, more difficulties to overcome.

I understand how important it is to you that he marries and has a family. But what can you do? You know, he’s a young man. You can’t control him. And even if you wanted to, you can’t control them. And I do know a little bit about Indian culture. I know how important the marriage situation, family situation is, but it seems to me, you’re caring more about yourself than your son.

it’s a difficult situation. No question, but what’s the best way to try to resolve it? You can’t, he’s too young, he’s too old to be manipulated and all you’ll do is create more negativity and backlash.

When I was leaving America to go to India in 1970, I was never, in my mind, I was never coming back to America. I gave everything away, sold everything I had, never coming back. But I didn’t tell my mother that. I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell my father.  You want to be a friend to your son, you know. You don’t want to be somebody who he can’t turn to when he needs you. I don’t know what more to say.

She said, her daughter is actually typing in English. “The answer is very good. Thank you a lot. I’m so grateful.”

Thank you.

Q: Yeah, so I was just going to ask, we’ll say that I’ve been really chanting the “Jai Jai Rama Krishna Hare,” which you sang recently, a lot.

It’s actually, “Hari.” Hari. Ramakrishna Hari.

Ok. Sorry.

That’s okay. You know, that’s a very particular murti that’s in Pandarpur. It’s Vitthale, Krishna standing on the rock, and he’s supposed to be a manifestation of Ram and Krishna. So that’s why it’s Rama Krishna Hari.  Hari is Vishnu. It’s both forms of Vishnu.

Thank you. I love that. And that’s helped me a lot with, you know, the other stuff that I’ve been thinking about, but I wanted, I don’t want to ask about that today, but I wanted to say, like, I woke up from a dream, after a dream saying  “Sab ek…”

“Sab ek…chit?”

And I looked on Google translate, and it said, I think it’s wrongb but it said, “Why are you?”

“Sab ek” is “all one.” And “chit” is consciousness. I don’t know really what that last word is. But “sab ek” means “all one” and “chit” is “consciousness,” you know, awareness, pure, pure awareness. So “satchidananda,” that “chit”.

Okay. So, the question of like, “Why are you?” like, what do you think? Like if you were to ask yourself, “why are you?” because you know, Yogananda, I read, He said, “the purpose of life is to love God.” So, I guess that’s his, “why are you?”

Well, that’s his why, but I don’t know what my “why” is. I’m not even asking. I don’t want to know why. I just want to know what. And what to do and how to do it. Why, you know, why is beyond us. “Why” is all the karmas from millions of lifetimes manifesting right now. Why? That’s why, but we don’t know what those are.

You know, in the Rg Veda, there’s the creation hymn. It’s the oldest hymn in the Rg Veda. And it goes on and on and says, “in the beginning there was this and then this and this and this and this and this and this.” And it goes on for pages. And at the end it says, and you know, “Why, how, why is all this? Why did this happen? Only he in highest heaven knows. Or maybe he doesn’t.”

it actually says that in the creation hymn. So if he doesn’t know, what the fuck are we going to do? Stop thinking about it, Goddammit.

 I’ll try and stop, but I can’t promise.

Q: I’m estranged from my adult daughter and I’m really having trouble trying to find the spiritual lesson in that. And if you could just give me some words, that would be great.

I don’t know what words to give you. It must be very painful. There must be reasons why she feels the way she does, and you probably know all of them. I think forgiveness is a big thing, forgiving yourself and forgiving her and hopefully, dissipating whatever anger or hurt or fear or shame or guilt there might be lingering around in your heart. It would be good to try to release all that stuff and make your heart available. And maybe she can come back, back to see you in some way, but there’s no guarantee of that.

The only guarantee is that if you don’t clean your heart of all those things, you will suffer. So that’s your work. You know, I don’t know what it’s, this is not, you know, I have no idea what’s really going on there, but certainly your work has to be to find a way to unfold your own heart, regardless of the way the world responds to that. And in this case, your world might be your daughter. You can’t control her. All you can do is try to work on your own stuff and hope, if you want to hope, that if, if you really can open your heart and make it a place where she could come in, maybe she will. I don’t know, but certainly there’s no way to control another person and make another person do anything. So, we have to take responsibility for our own feelings and our responsibility for being co-creators of this moment, which involves her being estranged from you.

Yeah. I’m just having trouble with accepting it and trying to find peace in my own way without being so distraught every day.

Yeah. Well, you know, it’s not that unusual, to tell you the truth. I hear a lot of stories like that. There are a lot of children who close off to their parents at some point for one reason or another. And they’re doing it out of their pain and you’re also creating the situation out of your pain. So once again, all you can do is try to take care of your end of it and recognize the situation. It’s not a question of, when you say “accept” something, it doesn’t mean that all of a sudden, you’re going to feel good. That doesn’t happen. But when you live with the situation as it is, then you recognize what you can do on your side. If it changes, that would be wonderful. But if it doesn’t, at least you’ve done your part in coming towards the middle, which is all you can do. And part of that is going to be, you’re going to have to accept that this is the way it is at this moment. And then you can start to release some of your emotions about it, and you can then move closer to the middle so that if she’s floating around somewhere in that middle, you make the possibility of meeting. But that’s not, it’s not our job to control other people. We can’t. Obviously we can barely take care of ourselves.

So, do what you can do and you can pray, you know, just pray, not to anything particular or anyone just, just tell the universe, you know, “Please help me. I want my daughter back and I’ll do everything I can to make that happen.”

Okay.

Q: Hi, KD. How are you today? Hi, so great to see you again. I really look forward to this time. I just, I always feel so overwhelmed with emotion when I hear you speak and just watching the way people interact with you and how you answer the questions.

That bad, huh?

Well, I just, it’s just so sweet. It’s like, you’re so sweet and it just touches my heart so much. It kind of, it’s like what she was talking about, the very first girl that spoke to you. And I often cry when I chant as like, I hear your voice and the, the way you chant is so heartfelt and I’m crying right now. It’s just so overwhelming. And, so yes, I just wondered, like, it feels like it’s Maharajji’s energy coming through and I want to know what maybe what your experience is of tears, of crying when you’re chanting, or maybe what that is for me. I mean, maybe you don’t know what it is for me, but just the whole emotional piece, you know?

So many things. You know, chanting is a very powerful practice. It works in mysterious ways. There’s so many things that have to get released and allowed to leave us, whether negative things, unhappy things, sad things, all kinds of things.

Also, tears can be, basically, you know, when you come into the presence of that love, what else can you do except cry? I mean, it’s just too great. It’s too big. It’s too big a thing. It’s like, that’s my only option is just to let it out. I can’t do anything but cry.

So, but once again, it’s not necessarily about that only, you know, just keep singing. This is a practice, so you’re getting some tears. You’re having a nice little emotional moment. That’s great. Keep going, you know, enjoy it. Keep singing, because you can always let go and go deeper. Ultimately, these practices are going to make you one with the universe, recognize your unity with the whole universe and everybody and everything in it.

So, you can always let go and enjoy the tears, if they’re enjoyable. If they’re not enjoyable, enjoy not enjoying them. Keep singing. Keep chanting. Don’t stop.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Q: Thank you for having me, you know, when I first heard that there was going to be an online, I kind of, haven’t been doing a lot of this, although I’ve been super grateful for all of the bhakti people who’ve been offering these online programs. So, thank you. But really, I just wanted to reach out to everyone on this call and just say how much I miss being with everybody at the live events and hugging them and chanting and just being together, and Krishna Das, you’re a conduit for the power and the love that we all share together. And I just, I just miss you all and that’s all. And thank you for opening your hearts on this call and showing your faces and having the courage to speak up. It feels almost more intimate than some of the live events that you’ve done. So, I just wanted to say, “blessings to everyone and thank you.”

Q:  Okay. So, I know Ram Dass’s first meeting Maharajji and how he described a divine moment or a kind of “burning bush” moment. I personally would love to touch Baba’s feet and experience something magical and believe all the things that I’ve read, but obviously I will never get to meet Neem Karoli Baba.

How do you know?

My teacher told me… well, physically.

How do you know?

My teacher told me to touch my own feet because  I’m my own guru. I was talking about the physical presence because he left in ‘73.

It looks that way. You never know.

Okay.

Don’t be so sure.

So, I’ve been told that if you think of him, you know, he’s there.

Absolutely.

And I was going to ask you, can you describe having…

He said that. “When you think of me, I’m there.

That’s what he said. So that must be true. So, you don’t see him.

Can you describe having your own “burning bush” moment with Maharajji? And how important was his physical presence for you?

For me, his physical presence was ultimately important. At least that’s how it looks to me. How it looks to him? I have no idea. Whether it was, in his eyes, important for me to be there or not. The point was, I was there. So, whether it was important or not, that’s what it was. And of course, in my mind it was very important, because it proved to me the reality of real love, which I didn’t have any clue about really beforehand.

So, the Guru is not outside of you though, you know? Where do you experience all this? Within. So, whatever it takes, Guru will do whatever he has or she has to do to get you to look inside and find the reality inside. And in my case, he had to show up, I guess. We’ll see if what he did was successful or not. Hard to know, but I didn’t have a burning bush moment. I had a burning life moment.   My whole life burnt down and, and there I was. I was going to live in India for the rest of my life. Then he sent me back to America and he said, “You have attachment you have to work out, go there.”

He didn’t even say, “You have to work it out.  He said, “You have attachment there. You go. You have to go.”

So, I didn’t know what he was talking about, but now 50 years later, you know, or 48 years later, everything that happened to me, all the states of mind I went through, all the horrors, all the joys, all the sadness, all the everything, all the tortures that I went through, that’s what he was talking about. All that was within me. It had to come out of my karmic body, my causal body. It had to come out and it wasn’t going to come out if I stayed in India. So, he sent me home. So, it’s an ongoing relationship and it’s a relationship that gets deeper and deeper. If we want to have those kinds of experiences, we have to, we have to surrender to the path. We have to look at ourselves. We have to clean our hearts. We have to purify our hearts and wait for grace to manifest for us. But we have a lot of work to do to clean our hearts. We’re all full of so much selfishness and so much greed and shame and fear and guilt and attachment that, you know, this is our work, cleaning the mirror of our hearts. That we can do that work is actually already proof that grace is at work for us, but we still have to go through the motions with the right intention, otherwise, you know, you don’t clean the mirror, all you see is dust when you look at it. So that’s the deal.

Q: So, thank you for what you are. And I have a question about, I would like to ask you, in your experience, is there a way, a way to overcome fear.  To be afraid?   

To overcome fear?

Yes. I wonder if you know a way to overcome fear.

Well, that’s a big question because you have to determine what it is you’re afraid of. You know, people say, “I’m afraid of God,” but that can’t be true because you don’t know what God is. So, you can’t be afraid of God. You might be afraid of letting go because you’re afraid of all the different emotions within, and they’re very powerful feelings. So, I can’t really say. I don’t know. Okay. Fear is something that arises sometimes. If you’re doing practice regularly, every time you do practice, you’re training yourself to let go of whatever arises, whether it’s fear or any kind of memories, or things like that. Your only job is to let go and come back to the chanting or to the meditative practice.

But it’s something you have to train, you know, just like you’re writing, you’re writing now. You had to learn how to write. You had to practice. So, it’s the same with spiritual practice. It’s training. And it has to be regular if you’re going to actually learn how to do it. And so, if you’re in, if you’ve trained yourself to allow the mind to rest a little bit, and then some, then you notice that you’re, you’ve been thinking about something, remembering something, then you let go and you come back. You let go and you come back. That’s training.

So, when something big arises, like fear or a big cloud comes over you, a part of you knows just to let go. Now it may not be easy if it’s a big, strong thing, but it’s a question of developing over time. And also, it can be very useful to try to examine what you’re afraid of.

Where is that fear coming from? You know? Is it coming from an experience you had in the past? Is it coming like, some part of your body, sometimes you can deal with these situations on a very simple level, like a mindfulness level, simple, not easy, where you’re just mindful of the fears in your stomach. So you sit with it, you see, you just be with it. And if you’re aware of something like fear, then you recognize that you are different than the feeling. It doesn’t, it hasn’t destroyed you. It hasn’t killed you. If you’re aware of it, feeling it, even though it’s very intense, there’s still, you’re there. So, at that point, you, you remember to be more present with yourself and you notice the feeling can be an object of awareness and it’s no longer the whole thing. You’re aware of it. And in that way, negative emotions can be very powerful teachers for us because they grab us and they force us to experience very intensely, that feeling.

So, once we get used to this idea and this, the practice of letting go, everything that arises is something just to be let go of. Everything. Until there’s no more letting go. And then you’ve become the whole universe and you’re blissfully happy and living in reality and disgustingly blissful. So, there’s many ways to work with it.

And you know, I would recommend a book by a wonderful Tibetan Lama. It’s called “The Joy of…” What’s it called? “The joy of living”? Nina? Mingyur Rinpoche. “The Joy of Living.” And he discussed, he had, as a child, he was a reincarnated Lama of a very high Lama. And so, from the moment, time he was a child, he was put on a pedestal in front of so many people, and he used to have panic attacks, complete total panic attacks, but he learned to use those panic attacks to awaken.  There it is. Look at that. Very good book, very good book.

So, there’s many ways to deal with this and all these practices that we do, they’re training us to overcome these limitations and these experiences. So, everything you do in a practice can help you.

Thank you.

Yeah, you’re welcome.

Q: Good evening everybody. I’m from Germany and good evening, Krishna Das. It’s good to see you again. So, I joined two concerts in Germany, in Berlin and Hamburg. Yeah. I’m so glad to be here again today. And so, I would like to ask you if you have a huge learning, but as weeks through this pandemic, or maybe would you say that there are lessons that we have to learn or we should learn from this pandemic?

Well, we will learn. When you’re dropped into the ocean, you either you sink or you learn how to swim, there’s no option. So, we will learn if we have the desire to overcome adversity, which we all have that desire. We will learn how to, how to maintain a good state of mind through any kind of adversity. That’s the point of spiritual practice, and this situation, along with everything else that it is creating, is creating the need to do that very strongly because we’re locked in our houses and we don’t have a lot of our usual escapes. So, we’re faced with our own bullshit a lot more of the time. So, we have to learn how to deal with it and we will, otherwise we won’t.

So, it’s a question of how, what we want. So, it’s a good time to try to do some more practice and read some good books about this and get to know what the path is about. And you know, also recognize that there’s not a lot you can do about it. There’s no button to push to make this go away. So, you do the best you can in your circumstances. You’re not running your country. You’re not running any country. You’re not running the state. You’re not running the town. You’re in your house alone. So, the main thing you have to deal with is your state of mind. And that will allow you to be more open to whatever arises. And it’ll also allow you to be in a position to help in the best way you can, when that moment arises.

So, in the meantime, you know, but don’t get too intense about it. If the intensity and the anxiety is very defeating, self-defeating. Our job is to keep letting go and relaxing and being, making our hearts available. That’s what we have to do with, you know, if you, if next week you get to be elected the president of Germany, you will have other things to do, but right now you have yourself to take care of and everyone and everything that comes into your awareness. Next week there might be more people coming in. So, and you want to be able to help the best you can. So, you have to overcome the anxiety and the fear and et cetera, et cetera, and take responsibility for your state of mind as best you can, without beating yourself up. Cause that’s, that’s just more bullshit. So, take it easy. Find a way to, you know, let your mind come to a little bit of rest. Breathe, keep breathing, take it easy and keep releasing the anxiety that sneaks up on us from all sides. And when you talk to other people, just notice where they’re at. Like, sometimes I’ll talk to somebody and they start talking politics to me, you know? And I just, you know, I just change the subject because I don’t know anything about politics. I know about chanting. You want to talk about politics, talk to somebody else, you know?

So that kind of thing. Be, try to be true to yourself. You know, don’t let everybody’s anxiety seep into you. And if it does, recognize it and release it, you know? You know, you have that power, but it’s something that has to develop.

Thank you so much.

Q: Krishna Das, I just want to insert a little question that was actually asked a long time ago, but it’s related to what Fabian was asking. And you just mentioned, you said we have to exercise our letting-go muscle. She wants to know how would you recommend that you can do that.  Can you give some instructions?

Chant.

What else can I say? Sing, chant, repeat the name. The Name will help you with everything. Sing by yourself, sing quietly, sing in your mind. When you’re chanting, you can’t be worrying. So, you have to overcome the tendency to allow your mind to eat you alive by letting, letting a practice into your life. When you’re singing and chanting, your whole job is to release the anxiety and the fear, and that is the exercising of that letting go muscle, so to speak. So do practice. Do some chanting. Chanting will help you. Practice will help you. And the chanting practice will help you. Chant along with the CDs chant by yourself, chant in the shower, chant in the bathtub, chant in the kitchen, chant in the living room, chance standing on your head chant, whenever you can chant, because when you’re doing that, you’re not worrying, you’re doing something else. You’ve added another vector into the moment and that vector exists to allow you to let go of all the negative emotions.

Q: Hi from Australia. It’s getting cold here. It’s getting to be autumn, winter. So nice to hear it’s getting warm over there where you are. Yeah, I met you last year in Fremantle and Perth. A bit about myself; I like dancing. I like painting , I like watching standup comedy, especially Garry Shandling.

I love Gary Shandling.

I wanted to say that when I was 28, I found a guru and I went to India and I had a great time. And then like, sort of, 10 years ago, I deeply went into addiction and I gave myself a hard time because my life was falling apart and I judged myself.

I said, “How can I go into addiction?”

And it’s like a behavioral addiction. And I can’t go into the detail here at this moment in this forum. But yeah, it was just like, I had a guru on my, you know, I still have a guru and I’ve got the great creativity. I’ve got the painting, I’ve got the dancing. And so why do I have to go back into that?

And then I started some 12-step program. And again, my critical mind was judging the program. They’re talking about God, I’m not into God. And so, I was like, ripping the program to pieces. Although I know this 12-step program would help me. So, I just notice a lot of judgment in me about myself. And then now going back to the painting or stand-up comedy and all this, this really helps me to be in the moment.

Maybe.

But, you know, I don’t know. I mean, I’m critical mind is really making it hard for me to, to progress somehow or to be natural or to be relaxed.

Well, it’s all part of you not wanting to really be here. You know, the, the intellectual, evaluative, judgmental mind is what’s keeping you stuck. You’re also addicted to your thoughts. You actually believe what you think, and that is your way of hurting yourself because you’re not allowing your heart to blossom and to open up.

So, you’re going to keep doing that to yourself until you’re tired of it enough to stop. There’s no way, there’s no other way, no answer for that. You’ve got to find, it’s got to be, you’ve got to say, “Fuck this. I’m just gonna, I can’t believe this bullshit anymore. My heart is dry as a desert. And if I don’t figure out a way to get some water in there, I’ll die.”

It has to be real to you. It’s not real now. You’re hardly alive. You know, you just keep beating yourself up and then beating yourself with beating yourself up again. And then you beat yourself up for beating yourself up.

It’s all programmed behavior. It’s all emotional issues that are unresolved in your, in your being. So, if you don’t look at those issues, they’re going to keep beating you up. And as far as addiction, there’s only one way to stop: stop. Next. Never do it again, ever, not even in your wildest dreams, will you ever do that addictive behavior again.

That’s how you stop. There’s no other way. “Well, I’ll do it on Fridays only. For the rest of the week, I’ll be cool. But on Fridays, I’m going to party.”

That’s not going to work either. You have to stop totally. And you have to find the strength to stop, which means you have to recognize that it’s only you that is, that is soiling your awareness and soiling your life. Everything that happened to you is now carried within you and all those programmed behaviors, all those stories that you tell yourself about yourself, that you believe immediately, those are the things that are killing you. And right now, they’re winning.

So, it’s up to you. You have to say, “Fuck this,” you know, “enough of this.”

And nobody can do it, except you. The reason you go to a 12-step program, which are very useful, because you surrounded, we’re surrounded with people who are going through the same thing that we’re going through, but you’re too proud to surrender to that. You’re too proud to see yourself as somebody who needs help. And so, you suffer from pride as well. And that’s a big, a big thing to surrender to that. Whether it’s God or yourself or the program, all those other human beings who are suffering in that room, you’re too proud to be, to be a human being with them. So, good luck.

Thank you.

Really. Good luck. I wish all the best for you.

Thank you so much. And thank you everybody who was able to speak before me, because I had only the courage to speak up because of other people speaking before me. Thank you so much.

Q: I wanted to ask about purification in relation to charting practice because I just, I literally just sort of discovered, I just discovered you.

Who am I? Tell me.

I dunno.

So, I’ve been meditating for, in the Tibetan tradition, for a long time. And I was feeling like I needed something more devotional. And so, I found, somehow found my way to, to your work through Sally Kempton. And when I first heard the “Sri Ram Jai Ram,” it sort of stopped me in my tracks, actually. And I thought it was, I think I’ll start chanting it. So, I’ve been working with some of the videos and things that you have. One of the things that I found was that it makes me feel fantastic. And, but then afterwards, I’m getting, I believe I’m getting a purification coming up, in a sense, that I’m getting material from the past few hours afterwards coming up. I’m not unfamiliar with the whole idea that that would happen, but I’m surprised how powerful it was, to be honest. And I just wonder if that experience of it.

Well, obviously, if something powerful happened to you when you heard the chant, that’s a big thing. That doesn’t happen for everyone quite that way. So, it sounds like you have a very strong connection to, karmic connection to that, to the chanting.

I’m kind of surprised. I’m quite surprised.

Yeah. Well, it works like that. But once again, it, anyway, so it does shake things up with you. It rattles things. Definitely. And but once again, don’t forget that the intention of doing the practice is whatever arises, you let go. So just because you stopped chanting doesn’t mean you have to stop letting go. You’re stuck chanting. And so, then when, as these things arise, you’re allowing them to eat you up and that’s not necessary. They all also are objects of awareness, which you can release the minute you notice that they’re catching you.

So, when you’re chanting you can enjoy the practice and it can bring wonderful feelings. But it is a spiritual practice. So, as you’re moving in, you’re kind of brushing against the walls of your heart, which is releasing the stuff that you’re, that you’re experiencing when you stop chanting. But if you had the opportunity, once you notice these things arising, why don’t you just sit down, sit down again for a couple of minutes and start the chant going again, but not to push that stuff away. You don’t want to push anything away. You just want to release. So if you start to chant, going in a simple, easy way, not like, you know, let it just, you know, and then allow yourself to kind of land again in the chant and release those things as they arise.

And the whole path is about releasing those, those Karmic impressions, whether they’re from this life or another life, it doesn’t really matter.

Yeah, I’ve experienced these things coming up after powerful meditation sessions. It’s like the light draws out some of the dark and then you just have to let it go. But I hadn’t, I haven’t really got any experience with chanting, and I suppose I was just thinking, is this the same process?

Absolutely.

Yeah. The only thing that is kind of interesting, because some of your songs are so, chants are so catchy, particularly the one I mentioned, that it’s incredible how it just runs in the back of your mind.

That’s good.

Like day and night.

It’s running everywhere all the time but we’re just not aware of it.

It’s a completely new field for me.

Well, it’s not, you’ll find that it doesn’t, it’s no different than any other practice if you approach it in a certain way. There’s a, within us, there’s that space that is filled with the silence, which is reality. And that silence expresses itself in the form of sounds. And some of those sounds are called the Divine Names, they call them in India. So, you’re becoming aware of that place in you where that’s always going on. So, all you have to do is keep a little part of yourself just with that, regard and whatever arises, let it go and stay, you know, but it has to be done, it should be done, with an ease. It shouldn’t be like this holding onto it. Okay? Just easy, you know, just, “Ah, hi. Okay? Like that.

When it first happened, it slightly annoyed me, actually, because I thought, “No, I’ve got, I can’t get, this is stuck now.” And then I thought, you know, like an annoying, not an annoying tune, but just, you know, but then I thought, “Well, hang on, aren’t you supposed to have this running anyway?  So, I might as well just accept it.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Just live your life and allow this presence within you to arise, you know. It’s awareness. It’s purity of being, and it’s always there, but we’re not aware of it. So, you become more aware of it at times, less aware of it at others. It’s all good.

Thank you.

Yeah. Nice to meet you.

Q: I don’t know if you remember me, but I used to always wear a flower in my hair. And so I did that. And then a couple of years ago at Bhakti Fest, I was the one that said I didn’t really want to be a Barbara Streisand where I find love late in life, but and we laughed and you said you’re done with dating actresses.

So, I’m trembling and I’m gonna, anyways, so, it is what it is. So, I know, hang in there with me… I know that I’m allowed to be too much or take too much space on stage or in the bedroom, right? Like, I have a catalystic nature. I don’t do it on purpose. I’m not trying to. And I also know that I’m 49 and this is a really special year for me. I just graduated from my five-year scheduled midlife crisis, and I feel like I was ready to debut myself again when the quarantine hit, which is great. Because I feel like it’s just more dress rehearsal for life. What’s coming up is, so I had a Kundalini awakening about 17 years ago and I did not know that’s what it was. I just knew it was another weird thing that was happening to me because that’s what my life has been like. I didn’t know for about eight years that that’s what it was. Somebody named it. And I was like, “oh my God, I get it.”

And then there was a period of years of people saying they could help me, but almost every facilitator either was afraid of me or rejected me or wanted to get into my pants and massage my Yoni because that would somehow enlighten me. It’s just been a long journey and coming back home to my childhood place where my family is, I thought I could heal that and I couldn’t quite heal it. They are very Christian and when I mentioned Kundalini or anything, they like to just say it’s demonic.

So, I’m very aware that I’m a sister from another planet or another something or other, and the final frontier for me has been the psychological aspect of not believing all that bullshit and letting it be okay that I might be somewhat alone, even though I’m not alone with spirit.

So, my question earlier, it started out different than what it is now. And to top all that off, since I’m just giving you the whole picture, my mom was very disturbed, so it’s just been a journey. And I realized, red’s always been my favorite color and it’s your assigned color or whatever you call it. So, I guess I haven’t chanted in a long time and it took me years to get back to yoga because every time I would do something, it would trigger symptoms that were, sometimes made me dysfunctional in the “make rent and do things.” I’m so much stronger now. And I’ve been feeling such a call to come back to chanting and such. And I’m just grateful I’m on the call right now. I’m not sure what my question is anymore. It’s just strange being, I don’t want to sound like I’m being sorry for myself or a victim. It’s just strange being so different all the time. And I think I’m finally starting to understand it. And I, I think that’s, I don’t know. I’m just curious.

Well, first of all, it seems like you’re on the same planet as the rest of us, mostly.

I’m here, but I don’t feel from here.

Well that that’s, that’s your program. That’s okay. And yeah, it would be good to try to find a way to relax. I know that sounds very prosaic, but it’s a very big thing. And that means releasing thoughts, feelings, imaginations about the future. It means releasing a lot of the negativity and betrayals and viciousness of our growing up from the past and allowing yourself to be here just a little bit, you know, just now without any… you’re not going anywhere. And certainly in this this particular situation the virus, we’re not going anywhere anyway. So, it’s a good time to recognize how much… it’s a good time to recognize how clearly you see the things that are floating around in your awareness. So, what you just need to kind of do is to just relax and allow those things to exist without pushing them away or trying to kill them or trying to, you know, and as far as your parents, you know, that’s very difficult.

You know, as far as I know, Maharajji used to talk to us about Jesus and we used to go like, “What the fuck? We’re in a Hanuman temple with this little Baba wrapped up in a blanket and he’s talking to us about Jesus?”

But when he talked about Jesus, oh my goodness, what a feeling. How much love and peace and space and beauty and depth of feeling. It was so amazing. And when he said that we should meditate like Christ. So, we asked him, “How does Christ meditate?”

He said, “He lost himself in love. He lost himself in love. He’s one with all beings. He never died. No one understands.” He lost himself in love.

So, you know, when you’re with your parents, be a good little Christian girl. Give them what they want. Why not? Why do you have to hurt them? If you are hurting them it’s because you’re trying to get them back for hurting you. And that’s not the best thing to be doing for yourself.

It’s actually so I, I don’t speak with my mother and I do speak with my dad and it doesn’t come up. He doesn’t try to hurt me. Ironically, it’s my older sister that sort of is in charge of the family and has that charge and wants control and I just let her have that.

Wish her well, and don’t believe a word she says.

But you know what? I keep finding this good little Christian girl inside of me.

That’s fear.

And I know they’re wrong.

No, you don’t. You don’t know.  You hope they’re wrong  but you don’t know yet because you don’t trust yourself yet.

Oh yeah.

There’s fear in there.  That fear is a program from your childhood. That’s how the church controls people.

I’m going to burn in hell for eternity, even though I know that’s not true.

But you don’t know that’s not true. You hope it’s not true.

Oh, God. That’s horrible. Yes. It’s true that I’m still hoping it’s not true.

It’s not true. Don’t worry. It’s not true. But you don’t know that yet.

Oh God. That’s horrible.

Yeah. No, it’s not. It’s wonderful.

I’m putting that in my stand-up comedy.

Okay. So, you know, Pete Holmes? You know who he is? He grew up as a born-again, Christian, he and his wife. And he’s a, he’s a stand-up comedian now. Check him out.

He deals a lot with that stuff too. He talks about that sometimes.

So, like I said, take this time to let your heart find a little rest, recognize that there’s fear in there. If you don’t recognize it, you won’t be able to let it go, if you don’t recognize it, it pushes you around. It’s a shadow that pushes you around from behind, which is what it’s been doing your whole life. So, you have to let it go and you will, but you have to see that and let your heart unwind. Just breathe. Be yourself, open up, relax, take it easy. Feel the pain and feel the fear. And then let it go again and again and again, and little by little it’ll leave you alone.

I believe you. I believe that. And I’m so glad I got on this call because I stupidly reached out to someone that said they could handle helping me. And they basically literally said, nobody else needs this kind of support. You’re too much. You’re taking too much space. And I was like, okay. Thank you. I, you know, that reflection has been done, but you’re not afraid of it. And I feel like I can find my sweet spot and I appreciate that so much.

Good. Well, keep letting go. When you sing, when you chant, chant with an ease of heart, don’t try to kill yourself with it. Don’t try to beat yourself up with it. Just relax. Take it easy.

You can relate.

Of course, I can relate.

I can feel it. Yeah. Okay.

Take care. Bye-bye

Q: Hi KD.

Oh, hey, how are you?

Hi, I’m good. How are you? Not much. I have a question. I was listening in last week and because of my work at Auschwitz for 20 years, where I first met you, I’ve been working with forgiveness a lot in my life. My dad was the only survivor of his whole family. And for me to forgive in the greater sense, forgive Germans, is, it’s a big deal, and I’ve gotten there on little wisps of occasion. I mean, I can forgive someone for spilling coffee on my brand new whatever, you know,

It depends what that whatever is, you know?

Yeah. Even if it’s like my favorite shawl or my, my antique book or whatever, you know, but to forgive somebody for killing a lot of people who were all in my family, and last week you said, and I wrote it down because it really was meaningful to me, you said cultivate forgiveness. And if you can’t forgive, recognize and do the best you can. Remember saying that?

Not really. It sounds like me. So let me, let me tell you something that happened to me in Auschwitz, one of the many things that happened.

At some point, I recognized that if I had been born in Germany at that time to a family of Nazis and brought up with that belief system, there was no way you could prove to me that I wouldn’t do just what they did. There was nothing in me that was innately any better than anyone of those people, but because of my karmas and my good luck so far, I didn’t get brought up in a belief system that caused so much suffering.

So, it’s not that I can forgive those people. It’s not even my job to forgive, because they’re going to pay for those karmic actions, regardless. There’s no way around that. Karma is, what’s the word. It, it doesn’t get erased for millions and millions of lifetimes. It’s always there. Sooner or later, you will live out the results of your own actions in one form or another.

So, and that doesn’t make me happy that they’re going to suffer at one point in my life. It might have, but it doesn’t now because I recognize that they are victims just in their own way. Because they will deal with this. They will burn in fucking help for this. There’s no question about it. And they will suffer in the same way that they made other people suffer.

So forgiveness is not my job, but recognizing the situation as my job as best I can. And that takes some of the energy of those of that out of the, out of the balloon, you know, it deflates the balloon a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. The thing was that I used to walk the first few days, my first time there, I was walking around and it was so beautiful at that point in November, the trees were all multicolored. The grass was green, the sun was shining and I, I, I was screaming at the sun. How dare you shine on this place you out.

Can you, I don’t want, you know, like, like this. And then once again, at one point I went, it’s your nature to shine on everything and everyone exactly the same. That’s a tough one. I’m not the son. I can’t do that, but that’s what the sun. And that’s, what’s called unconditional love. And that’s what we’re aspiring to, not for our own sakes only, but for the sake of everyone who needs warmth, which is every being in the universe, so

powerful. And Bernie forced me to go. I had no intention of coming.

Yeah. So yeah, I know forgiveness is not, we’re not, it’s not our job to forgive. It’s

forgiveness will arise. I believe from recognition of the situation, which is this poor kid is born in the fucking family of Nazis. What is he going to do? He has no option. He is actually taught. This is the way the world is. Why would he doubt that? Right. Like we don’t doubt our experience. We don’t doubt.

Oh, I’m very liberally minded believing in rights of everybody. We don’t doubt that that’s, what’s real. And we think it’s even better than other things. So did they, so that’s hard. And it’s just an ongoing process of coming back and recognizing that we’re all, we’re all working out our stuff the best we can and know, and some people.

Go around creating more and more climbers for themselves. Negative karma and, and it’s hard. It’s very hard. Many many, many years ago I was working as a psychotherapist before I met Bernie. And I think he did. But I had a client once whose father sexually abused her for many years. From being a very young girl until her, her adolescents really.

And when she first came in, her whole goal was to forgive her father. And after months and months and months of sessions where this was the goal. At one point I sat there and I, and I, I don’t know where it came from, but I said maybe even job is not to forgive. Maybe it’s to heal and maybe you can heal without forgiving.

I don’t know where that came from, but her body just relaxed. Yeah. Her whole energy shifted. And I thought, oh, I’m onto something. Maybe just those same people. Can I make an appointment? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s why I’m calling you and asking you a question,

but, you know, but then, you know, everything that I read the goal is about forgiveness. I mean, I got it with this woman that I’m not forgiving was the healing place for her. I don’t think forgiveness is an act of will. That’s that’s forgiveness is a recognition of reality. I think ultimately, oh, and the reality is that all our actions come out of our own karmic imperative, some very negative, some very positive, but all of them are programmed behavior.

And the only vote we get is how we deal with each moment that arises. And for most of us, it’s just knee jerk reactions. But through practice, we are hoping to get a vote to not w actually be present in the moment and, and not just, you know, have that re knee jerk reaction. So forgiveness arises like, you know, like, nevermind, but it just arises.

And it arises naturally because when, when you’re in love, when you recognize that we’re all part of the same beacon, but actually it’s not here, you recognize that it comes from within then, you know, would you be mad at your foot? You know, you know, is it hard to forgive your foot for when your trip, you know, you’re, it’s a part of you, so all right.

Do better next time. So yeah. Forgiveness is not an act of egoistic will it’s it’s it’s a fruit of recognition of the way things are. I think that’s beautiful. Yeah. Oh, thank you, Katie. You’re welcome. Nice to see you. Good to see you too. Take good care. You know, I, I just also want to say it’s amazing what an intimate tool this huh.

It’s really very touching. Yeah. And it’s great to see everybody’s faces were in a big group in an auditorium. I can’t, you can’t really see people’s faces when they’re crying. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye

so, Gabriel was not able to get his audio working, so he wanted to know his question was about actually Dr. Larry brilliant. And the questions were, do you know him? Did he meet Maharaji? Did Maharaji give him a special blessing to eradicate smallpox? Maharaji yes. You should read his book, which is called sometimes.

Brilliant. Yeah, there, it is definitely read his book. Gabriel. It’s an incredible great book. And it talks about he, he goes over the whole, the whole history of how it happened. He was just a hippie, you know, he was the doctor who came to America to India with the hog farm. He was the hog farm doctor and.

One of the hog farmers and his wife was with Maharaji and she, she got him to come and he stayed and anyway, it’s an incredible story. Yes, he was Maharaji Maharaji said to him, smallpox will be eradicated because of the dedicated work of, of of the healthcare workers, dedicated Seva. And he had him hap make that happen.

There is Gabriel.

Hi.

Hi.

So, it’s an incredible book and it’s a great read. He’s a good writer.

What do you think, what do you think Maharajji would say about today’s epidemic or pandemic and or how would he look at this? And I mean, I’m really conflicted between the stay-at-home orders. I understand why it’s important, but then I think about all the people that suffered with smallpox and you know, that pain that went through. And I’m just wondering what Maharajji’s words would be, I wonder if you could channel that. And I just, I just read the book, Larry Brilliant, Sometimes Brilliant,  amazing book, and I noticed that. Maharajji had these different effects on different people. He took the strengths of people he met and he kind of like intuitively knew like, “KD, you want to be a rock star? You go chant,” type of thing.

He didn’t say it. But that’s what you got out of it. “Ram Dass, you’re a professor, a teacher, go teach” and, and his thing. And then with Larry being a doctor to do so much good, and all of you have done so much incredible good work for humanity today. There’s definitely a connection with Maharajji there that is amazing. And so, I’m just wondering what, how do, how do we look at this pandemic in Maharajji’s eyes, if you could channel that, because it’s difficult.

That’s above my pay grade.

I always ask you those questions.

But you know, we don’t understand what these situations really are. We don’t understand why they arise and all we can do is the best we can and trying to heal people and protect people from the disease. But you know, in India, smallpox was actually a form of Kali, the goddess Kali, because she’s a manifestation of the destructive aspects of nature, but not… destruction and then reconstruction, so to speak. So, one of those destructive aspects is disease, and there’s a form of Kali called Shitala Devi, which is a form of smallpox actually.

And if you read in the book, you read that there were certain villages that they went to where they would not allow vaccination because they worshiped the goddess. And so, what they would do, the doctors did, is they left the village and at night they’d creep back in the village and they raided the head man of the village. They held him down and inoculated him, and then he sat up and said, “Well, this must be the goddess as well. Now everybody get inoculated.”

So, we see it as a purely physical situation, but it’s also, in a sense, like a negative entity in a sense, like a demonic entity. And so, there are many ways to deal with that. That’s why the Lamas, that’s why all the saints are doing so many prayers right now, to regenerate Bodhi Chitta, kindness and compassion and positive vibes to allow a change to happen in the world.

Whereas the doctors go ahead and do their thing, whether it’ll be successful or not isn’t always up to them. The success of those situations might come from a deeper level. So, prayers and puja and practice at this time, it’s very beneficial for everybody in the world.

I also believe that’s true about prayer and puja, and I saw something on Facebook where somebody posted that same idea of this entity. And if everybody around the world at 11:00 AM, and then at 11:00 PM, if they’re up, just did a prayer and meditation about healing, that it would travel around the earth and it would help.

Without a doubt, thought helps or hurts depending on what it is. And those group meditations, who knows? Maybe they are very helpful, it’s better than going and robbing banks and getting COVID from the safe deposit boxes.

So, you stay in touch with Larry then?

Yeah.

He’s a good guy. I’ve seen some of his videos on YouTube. He’s got some good things to say. so thank you for your time.

Sure.

Q: Can you talk about Sita? Mata Sita?

Well, just like fire and its heat are not really separate things, so is Ram and Sita. Sita is the goddess. You know, there’s a lot of misunderstanding about Sita in the west. A lot of people project their misunderstanding onto the Lila of Sita and Ram. “Lila” means “play” or “drama,” so to speak, and the drama of Rama and Sita and Lakshman and Hanuman, et cetera, that was a drama played out by the positive forces of the universe to destroy the negativity in the form of a demon named Ravana.

So, in the story, there’s a lot of things that are misunderstood by people. It’s a long story, but anyways, Sita is the goddess and She and Ram, as Ram says to her, “The secret, the secret of our love, the depth of our love is known to my heart alone.”

So, it’s only God that knows reality. Of course, that God lives within us, but we’re not aware of it, but that is so.

There’s another version of the Ramayana called the Adhyatma Ramayana, and there’s this part where Rama and Sita and everyone, they’re back in Ayodhya, in the kingdom where Ram became king after destroying Ravana, and they’re sitting around and Ram says to Sita, He said, “Here’s Hanuman, perfect in every way. He’s completed all these tasks. Do you think he’s ready for the truth? I think he’s ready for the truth. What do you think?”

And Sita says, “Yeah, I think so.”

So, then Ram says, “Okay, Devi, tell him what’s happening.”

So, then Sita begins to tell Hanuman the reality of how things work.

She said, “This whole Lila, this whole show, Ram being born, me being born, being exiled from the kingdom, wandering in the jungle, me being kidnapped, finding me, killing the demon, liberating me, all this… I’m the one who did all that.”

Sita said that. “It’s my show. I did this show. I’m the goddess. I’m the Shakti. I did this. Ram, He does nothing. He never comes or goes. He’s beyond the beyond. I’m doing everything.”

So, it’s very far out, very far out. So, you know, Sita Ram and Radhe Shyam, the male and the female are really like fire and its heat. They’re not different. They appear different, but that’s just our minds.

And yes, in the story, at one point at the end of the story Ram asks Sita, She has to go into the fire. The fire has to bear witness to her purity because she was in this demon’s house for a very long time. And someone, some of the people in his kingdom said, “Well, she can’t, you know, who knows, we can’t, we don’t know if she’s pure anymore.”

So Ram says to Sita, “Go into the fire and prove your purity.”

He knows she’s pure, but actually in an earlier part of the story… Ram and Sita were only alone two times in the whole Ramayana. Once was when they were married. And the second time was while they were wandering in the jungle. Lakshman went out to hunt and Ram and Sita, they were alone. Ram sent Lakshman away. And then he says to Sita,  “Hey, guess what? Look, I’m about to do a big thing here. There’s about to be a big show here. You have to disappear. You can’t be here because it’s going to be horrible.”

So Sita leaves. Her leaves her. She goes away leaving only her body and an Apsara, a heavenly goddess comes in and takes over her body. So, Sita is actually never even kidnapped. Only her body was kidnapped by Ravana. And then when Ram asks her to enter into the fire, that’s when the real Sita comes back and the goddess, the Apsara leaves, but people don’t understand that.

And they think Ram is a bastard. He has Her going into the fire. It’s not like that. This is called Lila. Human beings cannot understand Lila. Period. It’s just beyond the conception of the intellectual mind. Lila is the play of God, what the universe does to purify itself and clean up the suffering and negativity, and it takes very, very different forms. Krishna had his Lila. Ram had his Lila. The other avatars and great saints have their Lilas. Human beings cannot understand Lila. So, it’s very misleading to look at Lila as if it’s, as if we understand that, as if it’s what it actually looks like to us.

So, that was probably more than most people can actually make sense of. But that’s the story.

Q: Hi. I wanted to ask you, Sharon’s been teaching a lot about patience right now and…

Q: We’re all patients with somebody, some doctor.

I’m curious what you have to say about cultivating patience.

Well, it’s a nice to have it, you know, and especially with oneself. We’re very impatient with ourselves. Because we’re always judging ourselves. We live in that whole world where we’re always evaluating everything we do and how other people are treating us and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, patience is a wonderful thing.

But it’s something you don’t do with your own will, like forgiveness. It’s something that arises from practice, so to speak. It arises from the recognition of what the path is about and what we want out of life. You can’t make yourself patient, but when you practice and you train yourself to let go of all kinds of anxiety and fear and that kind of stuff, then you become more spacious and you allow things to be as they are and that’s patience.

So, it’s not something you do. It’s something that arises as a fruit of real practice. It’s a fruit of that. So that’s like, you know, it’s not something you do with your personal will. You can cultivate the four immeasurables, you know, kindness, compassion, equanimity, and joy, but you don’t create them with your will. You cultivate them with your will. They arise as the seeds that you plant through your practice?

No practice. No seeds. No grow.

Thank you, Love.

Okay. So, I think Jenny, did you have a follow-up question?

Q: Hi. I just I just wanted to ask about the, the mantra, Baba Hanuman, because I’m, I’ve been really drawn to it for awhile. It’s what brought me to you and to this practice and it really, it just brings me so much joy and peace. And I was wondering, how do you experience that? Do you have more affinity to different mantras?

Well, you do, so that’s good. Follow that, trust that, get into it or whatever. You know, that’s all of them, you know, sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. But for me, you know, all the names bring me to the same place. And that doesn’t mean that one doesn’t bring me more easily than another necessarily at certain times, but you know, it’s all good. But trust your heart, go with that. Immerse yourself in it. Don’t stop, you know, all the time, just keep going.

All right. Well, wonderful to be with you all, really. And let me just read you one poem as we go. It’sa poem from Rumi and translated by Coleman Barks.

One night a man was crying,

Namaste.

The post Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD May 16, 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 51 Guru

“Any yogi or yogini who develops ability to concentrate and become mindful, pushing that mindfulness to deeper and deeper levels, discovers the Realm of Infinite Love, the Realm of Infinite or Immense Love, Immense Compassion, Immense Joy and Immense Equanimity within themselves. So, they have all the heavens in themselves.” – Robert Thurman

Bob: I was just kind of thinking of like, “Where’s my Guru?” You know? “I need a Guru. I want to get serious now, so I want a Guru.” So, people feel that way.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: And that’s good that they feel that way because, in one sense, it is a good thing to think that there’s some way of being that is higher than the way one habitually is and that someone exemplifies that and that person can maybe help one develop dimensions in themself, that there are, that will be new for them, that will be greater how they habitually think of themself as. So, you know, when you said, apart from yourself, but then what you found through the inspiration of your teacher was dimensions in yourself that you didn’t know that were there because your habitual thing was to think of yourself as not having those dimensions. Right? Like, you know, someone asked me earlier about the four immeasurables, as they’re called, which I decided to translate now as “immensities.”

KD: Immensities?

Bob: Yeah, because “immense” means “immeasurable” you know, but it’s a more nice word, you know? “Immeasurable” sounds kind of like, “Oh gosh, I couldn’t swallow it,” or something whereas an immensity is an immensity. So, immense love, immense compassion, immense joy and immense equanimity and those are in Indian cosmology, they are four ways of carving up the layers of the heaven of the pure form. And the Gods Brahma and others dwell in the highest level of equanimity, one, which can also be subdivided into sixteen different levels of heavens and the highest one is called Akanishta.

KD: Akanishta.

Bob: “Not smaller than anything else.” That literally means, “Akanishta.” “Not lesser than anything.” And, that’s where Brahma hangs and the big deities there, all those deities in the form realm have no gender differentiation. They’re all, they’re not exactly hermaphroditic, but they have male and female elements and they don’t have, you know, differentiated genitalia, for example. They don’t have ordinary like desire realm bodies. That’s why it’s called the Realm of Pure Form. And then it’s taught to people in terms of like, cosmology, like, there’s these heavens there. But any yogi or yogini who develops ability to concentrate and become mindful, pushing that mindfulness to deeper and deeper levels, discovers the Realm of Infinite Love, the Realm of Infinite or Immense Love, Immense Compassion, Immense Joy and Immense Equanimity within themselves. So, they have all the heavens in themselves. Not necessarily, it’s not like chakras. It’s like mental mind states and especially if they are, you know, not grasping at the pleasure of those Realms, because when you feel immense love, you feel blissful yourself, of course. You wouldn’t have immense love if you didn’t feel already blissful that you want, that the bliss wants to overflow, where you want to love everybody, you’re capable of loving everybody because you’re feeling so filled with bliss. So, the bliss itself isn’t you, but by letting go of it you want to send it to everyone. Right? So, you find all those heavenly planes in yourself. The Being that is unfortunate in that view is the one who wants to stay and grasp that state and then they become reborn as a deity of that realm, actually. They leave their meat puppet body. They get stuck in some heavenly plane or another. And then once you’re in a heavenly plane then you’re sort of complaining about the other immigrants to your heavenly plane. And you’re like, “Oh, there’s some yogis came from America, and all those American yogis are so annoying. They’re really, they wish they were back in the desire realm.” Like, whatever. So, the thing is, all of these realms and nirvana are within each of us. Each of you, each of us and then you know, you find in there immense love and you’re feeling blissful and then immense compassion comes when your bliss and love bumps into people’s resistance and their misery and their feeling of “not enough”, they want more. And then you feel compassion and then you console yourself but for the fact that even this immense love that you feel doesn’t necessarily kindle them because of their paranoid boundary-ing of themselves, but then you see that even underneath, underlying that they have the bliss and joy so then you feel the joy about the joy that they do have. And finally, the equanimity is where you become equal with them. And you know, it’s like a ladder that, when you go up to the higher rungs, the lower rungs go with you. You don’t leave behind the love and the compassion and joy, the equanimity is with all of that. You know? So, those are all in one’s self. Everyone has that ability, whether or not they have a technique or whatever. Everyone has that ability. Every single person has that. That’s what you discover. That’s what, that’s your voice, I think, comes from that. Doesn’t it?

KD: Yeah.

Bob: yeah? Yeah, you let it go? You’re about to say some thing, negational thing? I can tell. Which is good. Never mind. I don’t want to just praise you. That’s terrible. So, the thing about the Guru, and the other thing is that every Guru like Maharajji, Geshe Wongyal… actually, they say in Tibetan, my teacher once told me, He said, “Whenever you say my name, you should say… (in Tibetan) I call, I mention Him by Name for a specific purpose.” Because they say, it’s unkind to mention your Guru’s name just kind of casually, because mentioning the Name, you know, kind of, it doesn’t agitate them but it sort of brings them present, you know? But what I’m trying to say is, they’re all still here.  They don’t leave. There’s this idea, and in Theravada Buddhism, there’s that lying down Buddha, but that’s just, He’s just showing leaving the body to teach impermanence to people who need that teaching. And actually, it’s amazing, for a hundred years have mistranslated parinirvana in English as “final nirvana”.

KD: Oh, yeah.

Bob: For a hundred years, since it’s been translated. But “pari” does not mean final. “Pari” means “total.” So, it means that when you leave more anchor in yourself in the previous body you had before or something like the body you had before you reached Buddhahood, you’re just giving a teaching and you’re being more present in your, what they call “Reality Body” which is everybody. So, you’re more manifestly everywhere, in other words. Right? So you are the nirvana in everybody else as well, if you follow me by that. You’re more, you have more access. You’re less focused on being, responding to people seeing you in your previous course body. So, so you don’t, you should never feel you don’t have a guru. And once you realize that the Guru is everywhere and never dies, the true, the really good Guru never leaves a person who needs a Guru. Absolutely not. They’re not the Lone Ranger who leaves town after getting the bad guys. You’re the one who’s going to get the bad guys and the Guru’s always there with you to help you. That’s really key.

KD: Aren’t we the bad guys?

Bob: What’s that?

KD: Aren’t we the bad guys?

Bob: Well, yeah. We have… the bad guy is our side that doesn’t let us see that we’re good guys. We’re not really the bad guys.

KD: That’s right.

Bob: Look at you, agreeing with me.

KD: You’re the good guys, for sure. I’m not so sure about me.

Bob: You’re not bad. You went to the dining hall with your socks on, but that’s not that bad. They were clean socks. The socks were clean.

KD: Not only did I go into the dining hall with my socks, but when the woman tried to stop me, I like, showed her my card. “Do you know who I am?” I didn’t say that, but I said, “See the name on there?”

Bob: You did then you ran away.

KD: You’re stopping me from going in the dining hall?

Bob: You ran away and I was point guard for me.

KD: You were point guard.

Bob: I blocked a tackler. I did. I did.

KD: You know, Maharajji used to say that when you think of Me, I am there. He said that. “Whenever you think of Me, I am there.”

Bob: That’s right.

KD: Of course. And I always say to people, “The great Beings are here. We’re the ones who aren’t here.” You know? Get here and we’ll be with them. We’ll know we’re with them. We’re the ones who aren’t present. We’re lost in our thoughts, our emotions, our stuff. Let’s get here. And, He also said, “Once I take hold of your hand, I never let go. Even when, not if, even when you let go of mine.” So, these, this is a real Being. This is a real Guru. This is what it’s like.

Bob: That’s right.

KD: And we’re all part of that love just because we are. We don’t need a reason. We are a part of that love.

Bob: Well, there’s a very important Indian concept, which I think the Buddhists might emphasize a bit more, but it’s in all of Indian traditions called “beginningless-ness”

KD: Beginning?

Bob: Beginningless-ness. Lack of “beginning”

KD: Lack of Beginning.

Bob: So that is to say, universe, multiverse, whatever you want to call it, kalpas. There’s no first Beginning. The idea that there was a first Beginning of anything is ridiculous. Obviously, something begins from something else. In relativity there’s no sort of, nothing, no something can ever come from nothing and so therefore there’s no coming out of nothing. Even monotheism that says “God created the universe out of nothing.” Well, God was there, He’s not nothing. You know? They just don’t want to say that the universe is God because that would make people too casual and relaxed and they wouldn’t pay dues and put a lot of money in the Sunday church pot. So, they act like, “Oh yeah, He made it out of nothing and it’s nothing and you’re nothing.” And they get all like, ridiculous. But, Swiss people did that. Calvin and people. So, the point is, Beginningless is a powerful concept because you’re Beginningless. Everyone is Beginningless. We have always existed. We have been everything. Once you’re past is infinite, we all have shady pasts. We also have luminous pasts. We’ve all done every bad thing and every good thing but we’re, on the moment we’re on an upward trend because we’re human and we’re a little backward because we were born in this Western barbarian land, brandishing nuclear weapons over everybody on the planet, and weird technologies and Facebook and I don’t know, whatever. And weird politicians. But the point is, we’re on an upward trend, but Beginningless means we can identify with everyone. There’s a bunch of modern Buddhists who are like, “Oh, I’m not going to teach former and future life, that’s old fashioned. We don’t want that. Oh, no, We’re modern. We’re scientific. We’re Americans. And so, we don’t teach that stuff.” Yeah, it’s just your mood, you know? You’re in hell when you don’t have your fix, you know? Or you know, you haven’t, you know, whatever. So, they don’t want to teach that and they think that you can, enlightenment just means, I don’t know, driving in your Tesla and it isn’t. The thing is, it’s very important, Beginninglessness. When poor Buddha, under, every version of Buddha’s life, He’s under that tree and He wants nirvana, right? And He’s on the edge of Nirvana and He’s going to finally relax. He’s going to eat some food. He tooks a bath. He cut His hair. Some lady brought Him some divine yogurt with rice and honey and it was really cool and His ascetic friends, they ran away.

KD: Yeah, His five disciples left.

Bob: And so, and He’s about to do Nirvana, but what does He do first? He suddenly becomes, He remembers infinite previous lives of Himself. Then He remembers infinite previous lives of everybody else.

KD: Really?

Bob: So, suddenly, here we are, ok? And we can stand each other because we’re just here for the weekend and you don’t have to be bothered by me or Baba KD forever. No, you can go back and you can watch a soap opera and the evening news and stuff and have a nice time in your house and we’re watching Chinese soap operas, actually, we particularly like them. And they’re very excellent, actually. You should really get into them. Korean ones, too. And so, we have only certain limited in moment, but to mention, if you suddenly had a vision and you wanted Nirvana, you thought you’d be floating in space, and feeling bliss, and like, Gods and Goddesses and whatever and suddenly, you were on a memory trip, smriti, a memory trip, where you were beginninglessly alive in every form. You’d been Mr. and Mrs. Dinosaur with everybody. You had eaten everybody. They’d eaten you infinite times. You were subtly all entangled with everyone forever from Beginninglessly. You can’t say “no” because there’s no limit. You’re totally entangled and engaged with everybody. That’s why everybody has to be happy otherwise they’ll bug you.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: And you’ll mess up your happiness. So, Buddha remembered infinite previous lives, everybody else’s previous life that means, everybody else had been His Jewish mother endless times. And He’d been their mother endless times and neither one wanted to do it again. And so He then quickly attained Nirvana thank goodness. But those two events, those two wisdoms, what they call them, or knowledges are right there in the thing. So, Maharajji, when you showed up at Maharajji’s, maybe He didn’t say it to you, He said, “Oh, there he is again.”

KD: What He did say is, He said, “They’re good boys. They come from good families.”

Bob: Really?

KD: And we thought, “What? What is He talking about? Maybe He isn’t…”

Bob: Really, He said that?

KD: Yeah, He said that.

Bob: Because that’s a big Buddhist expression, you know? “Kulaputra” they call it. And everybody says, “Good boy” or “good girl.” That’s an expression they say to the lay people. They say “kulaputra.” “Kula duhita.” And a good family is a family of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas and enlightened Beings.

KD: Maybe He wasn’t perfect.

Bob: What? No, I think so. Definitely. But the point is, He already knew you’d been His relative many many times.  We’ve all been like that. You know, that’s the meditation of compassion. You meditate, every single person that you know, including the male ones, they’ve all been your mother many times. And it’s so much a part of Tibetan culture and I think it was of India culture prior to the last eight hundred years, they say… they can hardly say “all beings” without saying “all the old Mother Beings.” So, the Mother Being means, it doesn’t mean, like the bad slang we have…

KD: Well, they have that in India, too.

Bob: It means they’ve been my mother. They are mothers, everyone. Even the men. And therefore I owe them, what, because a mother is a form of love within ordinary Beings even, biologically it lives for the child and definitely and there we can say they’re bad mothers, but any mother who carried that child to term and then went through the thing that people can not imagine, talk about suffering, you know, giving birth, that particular labor which is usually unpaid. How much an hour do you think it’s worth? Should it be a hundred thousand an hour? I think so. When I was in the room, once in a while, I was like, telling that doctor, I’ll take the spinal block if she doesn’t. Just from the empathetic, you know, connections that go on. So, everyone’s, every being has done that for you, so then you meditate that, and then you feel that kind of sentimentality and you will weep. You reach the level of that compassion meditation where you feel tears of gratitude to all beings who have been your mother many, many times and Buddha must have felt that under that tree. Because He saw them. He saw them, He was their mother, too. But that’s not, we don’t want to emphasize all that probably.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: So, this is our, this is the interconnection of the Guru and I’ve launched into this because people worry about, “Where’s my Guru?” What’s the nature of Guru? We decided one of the topics this afternoon was the relationship of the Guru and the Guru is… I like the Tibetan translation of Guru. I have to say something in praise of Tibet and the Dalai Lama would expect me to, which is, it didn’t translate it by a literal, in Sanskrit “Guru” means “heavy”, literally like a “heavy weight”, like “heavyweight” a guru means. But of course it means a person who’s a teacher and is an authority figure kind of thing. But the Tibetans didn’t translate it with the word for “heavy,” they translated it as “lama” and “lama” means, is a translation of the Sanskrit word which means “you can’t get past it.” So that’s holding your hand, even you let go, He’s right here with you holding your hand right now. Even though your hand is next to your foot, He’s still holding it.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: Even with your socks on.

KD: My what?

Bob: Even when you’re sneaking in with your…

KD: My coffee cup?

Bob: Socks.

KD: Socks on. Oh, with my socks on.

Bob: I’m sorry.

KD: He drew me into, it wasn’t me. He pulled me into the room. I had nothing to do with it.

Bob: He did. He didn’t have time. So, ok does everyone feel Guru’d now? So, the Tibetans translated it like this Being that you can’t get past. So, I like to say, instead of like, a high authority above you, it’s a tar baby. You know? Once you encounter it, you’re stuck to it. And you can never, it never leaves you. Isn’t that nice? Actually, George Lucas used to frustrate me. Because I wanted him to make movies about, you know, Gurus and Milarepa and the Buddhist tradition and he always used to tell me, “Oh that’s too far out. That’s too far out. I’m dealing with the ordinary American public. I can’t do that.” I said, “What is this Obi Wan Kenobi showing up in his light body after he dies? Excuse me, George? You’re so ordinary? What’s that? I want you to do that with these other…” “Oh, no I can’t do that…” But I always think of Obi Wan. Remember, Obi Wan? The jedi shows up? So, Maharajji is like that, Geshe Wongyal, which I mention His name for a purpose, He’s like that. All of them are like that. So, just don’t worry.  The Gurus are around. And there’s a Beginningless infinite numbers of Gurus.

KD: And Guru is not necessarily have to be in a physical body.

Bob: And you know, there’s some devotion. You should practice well and more importantly, perform well. I’m more into performance than practice. You know, the people who practice, they practice and practice and then they get up and they throw a rock at you if you’ve made a noise, do you know what I mean? That’s not performing.

KD: I don’t see any rocks.

Bob: So, I’m saying, you know, if you’re devoted to enlightened beings, to the Gurus, to Krishna, Rama, to Vishnu, to whoever it is, then you should do everything you do to the best of your ability that you can because your guru feels, from the guru’s side, the Guru feels there’s no difference between Her and You or Him and You, depending on what kind of Guru it was, He or She was, and therefore, they have to suffer being less, your being less than you can be. Because they feel one with you. The true teacher is totally empathetic, actually. There’s a whole thing about empathy fatigue and that compassion doesn’t mean really be empathetic, that’s a bunch of B.S. and I don’t mean “Buddhist Studies.” The real Guru is a hundred percent empathetic and compassionate and they’re not exhausted by it because their bliss energy is so powerful. And they don’t recoil from it. “Oh, no you’re going to be compassion, don’t be too compassionate.” That’s nonsense.

KD: Yeah. That’s what Chogyam Trungpa used to call “Idiot Compassion.”

Bob: Hm?

KD: Trungpa used to call it “Idiot compassion”

Bob: Right. Guru is not afraid to have idiot compassion. There’s another Milarepa story where His sister was quite poor because Milarepa and His sister were disinherited by an evil uncle after His father died, and He did bad things to get revenge before He became a Saint. And then He became a practitioner and then He became enlightened, luckily. But He did really bad things first. Anyway, when His sister found Him and He had become fully enlightened and a great teacher, but still had a limited sangha because He stayed up on a mountain and He didn’t have a big temple and lots of people around, you know, He was like, He was a real sadhu like the one with the money, but He was really real. So, she said, “I’m sick of you, brother dear. I have to go around to the markets and trade and I’m poor and I only have one yeak and etcetera and you could be a great Guru and you could have a beautiful monastery and your relative could be in the back room living comfortably. And I want you to get busy. And the reason people, you don’t have a big following is because you’re naked all the time and it’s embarrassing for people. And so, here is a beautiful yak wool maroon robe, beautiful, and I want you, I know you know how to sew, so I want you to make yourself beautiful lama robes and buy some paraphernalia, you know, like a little crown, some brocade vest and you know, some real Guru stuff, you know? And some ritual implements and then you’re going to have a following because you’re really smart and you’re really enlightened. And I’m going to go do that, ok? So you behave yourself. Make some robes and I’ll be back.” So, then she comes back in a few days and as she’s coming up towards His cave up in the mountain, bringing up some new supplies for His Lama equipment. He jumps out from behind a rock as she comes on the path and He goes, “TaDa!” And she passes out with anger. She faints and why? He has a jockstrap on, first of all. He made a little jockstrap for Himself. And then He has not gloves, but finger sheathes and toe sheathes, not socks, but toe sheathes. So, twenty little bits for toes and fingers and a very jaunty cap and otherwise, He’s start naked. And He goes, “Tada!” And She’s like, “Aaah” and she passes out. And then He carries up and puts her on a little couch and He wakes her up and she says, “You idiot, not only you didn’t make a robe but you ruined this beautiful yak cloth that I gave you. What’s the matter with you?” You know? And He said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, Peta dear.” He said, “You know, I didn’t really mean to do anything. I’m so sorry. I knew that your real problem was that you were embarrassed by my thing hanging there, you know, my male member. So, I just wanted to take a little corner off and make a little sheath, a little jockstrap for it, so I wouldn’t embarrass you anymore. I’ve no intention of wearing robes and becoming a big city Guru. I have no intention,” he said. “I never would.” And He sings a beautiful song about His monastery and His vassal, and His golden ornament and His brocade vest and everything are all sort of mind, you know, “My compassion is this, and My insight is that, and My wisdom is the other.” You know, just beautiful, beautiful poetic song He sings. Really, it was. And then He said, “But I got carried away. I got into your idea that I was embarrassing that I had this thing hanging there, so I covered it, but then once I covered it, my fingers began to look obscene to me so I started covering the fingers then the toes, Oh My God. And then I knit the cap on my head, it’s just pure fashion.” That’s behaving like an idiot, right? That’s idiot compassion.

KD: That’s so great.

Bob: She finally calmed down and she settled that that’s what He was. He did have, He still has followers. Millions of them in Tibet over centuries, you know. Milarepa. And He’s even… I learned about Milarepa originally from Henry Miller.

KD: Oh?

Bob: He said Milarepa was like the St. Francis of the Tibetan Buddhists, you know, and He was really great. And he, even Henry Miller loved Milarepa.

KD: Far out.

Bob: Some Indian sadhus think that He was, who went to Kailash, they think He was Shiva, actually, because He was always naked because He had this inner fire, you know? And He was… So, that’s why He didn’t wear clothes because He was always so hot, you know with this inner chanda. What they call “chanda”, you know, fire. So that’s the Guru topic. Anything else on the Guru topic? But we didn’t do the mantra one you wanted to discuss.

KD: We can do it.

Bob: The Name.

KD: We can talk about that, yeah. The repetition of the Name and the use of Mantra and the invocation aspect of all that.

Bob: Yes.

KD: For me, it’s very simple…

Bob: You’re so lucky, singing like that. I really love it. No, really. It’s a wonderful thing, singing. It really is.

KD: Yeah, it is.

Bob: It lifts everyone. It’s like, really great.

KD: It lifts me, too.

Bob: You never tried that, that Tibetan thing.

KD: I did.

Bob: You could do that.

KD: Especially in the morning.

Bob: Can you do that?

KD: In the morning I can, yeah.

Bob: Do you know the story of that? One Lama in Lhasa, in the tantric college, He was meditating late at night and then He, suddenly this shaft opened in the Earth in front of where He was meditating, His meditating seat, and He saw down to Yama, you know in the underworld, and Yama and He had like, a conversation and then the Yama voice, the voice of Yama, sort of was given to Him by Yama. That’s that Ommmm.  That deep thing. So their conversation was like that. Then they made it, they used it in chants after that. So it’s kind of the voice of Yama.

KD: Yama is death.

Bob: Because you know, Yama is the India God of Death and He has a Buffalo head and death is considered very enlivening to reflect upon it. It’s a very valuable thing for spiritual practitioners to think about. It’s not a morose or gloomy or morbid thing. It’s a very very enlivening and wonderful thing to think about. It really brings you to life, actually. It really does. And actually, I think we all should be praying for Baba Ram Das, actually. Shouldn’t we? We should dedicate… do you have a chant for him we could do?

KD: Yeah, we could do?

Bob: Where did the musicians go? You want to do an unplugged thing or is it that time? Almost time? We have a few minutes.

KD: They’re here. We just have to wake them up.

Bob: What? We have a few minutes. Do you have something we can all chant together for Ram Das?

KD: They’re here. Anything we chant, we can chant to Ram Das. Doesn’t matter what it is.

Bob: Would you like to do that? Thank you.

KD: Sure. They really are waking up.

Bob: Do people know that Ram Das… A lot of you, how many of you love Ram Das? See look at that. So, he’s, you know, having some physical difficulty now and he, he’s on the edge you know? So, I think it’s really good we hold him in prayer. Not that he will go, even if he leaves the meat puppet, he’ll be more present. Actually, that’d be great, he’ll be back at Harvard. I love it.

KD: I think that’s one place he won’t go.

Bob: That’s where I first met him. When he was Dr. Richard I met him there. He helped a lot of people there. Actually, he did. Once you don’t need a ticket and you don’t need to go through TSA, you can be everywhere.

Sadhu Stories

Bob: Until he wants to kill himself.

KD: That reminds me of this story. One time, a wandering sadhu came to Kainchi and came to see Maharajji and he, he was, he didn’t have much stuff. He had like, a pot, a water pot, and just a couple of shawls or something. And he sits down in front of Maharajji and he says, “We’re really disappointed in you.” He says to Maharajji, “What is all these temples and all these people serving you and all this stuff. What is all this opulence? What is all this?” And Maharajji said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Hey, can you give me ten rupees?” And the guy says, he gets very uptight. “No, no come on. You have, you have hidden in your lungi over there around the left side hanging there in the thing there, there’s, you have some money. Give it to me. Give it to me.” So the sadhu takes it. “Give me it. Give me it.” He takes his pouch of money. He drops it in the fire. All the money. And the guy flipped out. And he said, “What have you done? This was my retirement money. I have nothing and I’ve saved for years.” And Maharajji said, “Oh, what happened? Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” And He takes these long tongs and He reaches into the fire and He pulls out brand new one hundred rupee notes.

Bob: Oh, really?

KD: And hands them to the sadhu like this. One by one. The sadhu just starts weeping, you know?

Bob: Really? That’s so cool.

KD: Yeah, there’s another story like that. You know, everyone who came to Maharajji, in order to approach, for most of the beings who approached Maharajji, you always had to give something up. You had to let go of something in order to really… So one time, Maharajji was walking in the street in Vrindavan. This is a long time ago, even, maybe in the 50s. And He’s walking down the street and coming the other way is this jungly sadhu with the long jutta hair and the ashes, a really fierce guy. And they see each other and they go, “Oh.” And they run to each other and they hug and they jump around and they’re dancing and they say, “Oh, it’s so great to see you after so long!” “Oh, yes, it’s been so many years!” “This is so great!” And it turns out they had spent much time in the mountains many many years before, you know, doing sadhana together. So, they enjoy their company for a little while and then Maharajji says to the sadhu, “Ok, brother, now you should go now. I have to go.” And the sadhu says, “What are you talking about? After all these years we meet? I’m not going to leave you. I’m going to stay with you.” He said, “Oh, no. You don’t understand. I’m only with householders and worldly people now. You don’t, it’s not good for you. You don’t want to hang out with me. Really.” “I don’t care what you say. I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving you.” “Ok.”

So, they began to walk from Vrindavan to Mathura, which is about 18 kilometers and it’s the middle of the summer. It’s about 120 degrees. The middle of the day. And in those days, there was nothing. Now, it’s like, built-up. But in those days it was like desert. So, they’re walking. And in the distance, and Maharajji told this to Mr. Tiwari who told me. He said, “We were dying of thirst.” And in the distance they see a well and they go running towards the well and they get to the well. There’s a woman there getting from the well and Maharajji gets there first and He puts His hands out, and says, “Pour water for me.” So, the lady pours the water from the bucket into His hands and He’s drinking, you know, like this. And then, the sadhu arrives and he puts out his gourd pot, right? And the woman pours water into the pot and as she’s pouring, Maharajji starts chatting her up, because that’s what He does. He talks to everybody, 24-7, 365, all day long. So He says, “Who are you? What’s your name? Where are you from? What’s your village? What’s your caste?” Because that’s what they ask. In those days, they would, they needed to know who they were talking to, for whatever reason. So, the woman says she’s from this village, she says her name and she’s an untouchable. So, when the sadhu hears that, he takes the pot and he smashes it on the ground and he looks at Maharajji. “What have you done? Look at this? This was my only possession. I need this to wash and to do things in. Now, it’s become impure because of this woman who poured water in it.” And Maharajji’s going, “What? What? What happened? What happened? What’s happened? Oh, I thought you were a sadhu. I thought you were a sadhu. What is caste for a sadhu?” And the guy realizes what happened and Maharajji said, “He washed my feet with his tears and went off to finish his work. He went back to the mountains.”

Beautiful story.

For Maharajji, everybody was His near and His dear. Everyone. And in order to stay in that space, you couldn’t hold on to your stuff. It had to go. Whatever it was. It had to go. And He warned, and Maharajji’s so soft hearted, also, He warned the sadhu. He said, “No, you don’t want to be with me.” Right? “It’s not good for you. I’m only with householders. You don’t want to be with me.” He was, but the sadhu took it the wrong way. He thought, “No problem.” But Maharajji was warning him, if you hang out here it’s going to hurt. So, in order to go through that door, you’ve got to leave, you know, your stuff at home. You’ve got to leave your home. Your home and your me-ness. You’ve got to leave that. So…

The post Ep. 51 | Guru appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD May 14, 2020

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.

“Listen, everybody’s doing the best they can. Period. Even you’re doing the best you can. Why dwell in judging other people? It makes you cranky and we’re all cranky enough, you know? Let it go. Let other people be who they are. You find your own way to live in this world in a good way. Don’t worry about other people and other things. Find what works for you and get it together. Don’t spend time worrying about whether other people are this or that, or whether they’re real or not real, or whether this is really spiritual. Who gives a shit? How do you get through your day in a good way? That’s all you need to care about.” – Krishna Das

So, I’ve repeated this many times before, but it’s worth repeating many times. Maharajji said to us over and over, “From the repetition of these names, the repetition of these names, of God, everything is accomplished. Everything is brought to fullness and completion.”

It’s a very powerful statement. There’s so many techniques out there. So many traditions, so many lineages and they all lead to the same place, but this is what, this is my lineage. This is, this is my guru, my lineage. This is what he taught us. This is, this is not something I got from books or heard from other people. This is direct transmission. Through the repetition of these names, everything, all our karmas are ripened. What we need comes to us. What’s not useful to us leaves us. Everything is brought to fullness and completion. So, this is my main practice. Although I do many other things, this is my main practice. And I’m sharing that with you. And I hope that it benefits you in some way like it benefits me. And it’s a practice that will go deeper and deeper and deeper the more you do it. And it cleans the mirror of our hearts so that what we see in the outside world and in ourselves and in our lives, that changes from within, the way we live in our daily life, the way we live inside of our lives, inside of our heads, inside of our hearts. This changes as time goes on as we ripen through the practice of the repetition of the name.

And I’ve been doing this for over 50 years.  Basically, I still think I’m the same schmuck I always thought I was, but I think it a hell of a lot less of the time, less often. As time goes on, we spend less and less in negative States of mind. And we don’t notice that. Because we’re not in those negative states of mind. So, we don’t notice that we’re not in, usually, because the evaluator, that mechanism that puts us down, that evaluates us, that judges us, which is our own stuff, that doesn’t work quite as often and so intensely. And we become less and less involved with, with thinking about ourselves all the time, with trying to hold on to stuff we want, to try to push away stuff we don’t want. We become much more open and at ease with ourselves and with whatever comes to us in life. And this is from the repetition of the name.

So, you know, he didn’t, he didn’t give a lot of generalized teachings. He didn’t give lectures. He didn’t write books. When he asked, we asked him, “How do we find God?”

He said to “serve people.”

We went, “What? What about, you know, Kundalini?”

He said “feed people.” That’s how you raise Kundalini.

“Love everyone, serve everyone, remember God.” These are the things he said to us. And over the years, the deeper and deeper and deeper meanings of that, those simple phrases are opened up within as time goes on.

All right. Some questions.

Q: Wondering if setting mantras to melody, which changes pitch and vibration frequency changes a mantra’s effectiveness positively or negatively. Are melody key choices… based on it?

Absolutely not. When you change melodies and change the key, perhaps it helps us pay more attention because it’s a new melody or a new key, but it has no, the only thing that impacts the effect of the mantra is how much attention you pay, how wholeheartedly you do the practice and what is your intention for doing the practice? What’s your ultimate intention? And how sincere are you in the practice? Are you, where do you want? What do you really want? That’s all. The melodies are just different flavored syrups. That’s all.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about Swami Chidhananda? I tried to meet him three times in India, but my wish never came true.

Well, he’s no longer in the body, as you know. He was a very, very, very good Swami. He was very pure hearted. He, I’m in no position to judge him, but I’m just repeating what I understood from the people who know. He was greatly respected, greatly revered. He was very, very open-hearted and when his guru, Swami Shivananda left the body, they wanted him to take over the leadership of the Shivananda Ashram and the Divine Life Society. But he wanted to go off and wander. He wanted to get away and go off to the jungle, but he was asked to stay and take care of the Ashram and foundation. And Maharajji, who loved him very much, encouraged him to stay and become the President of the Divine Life Society and serve people rather than go off to the jungle by himself.

Maharajji loved him very much. I know that. And he was very, he loved Maharajji very much. And did I tell you that story? I told it last night. In 1969. I’m not sure if I had met Ram Dass or  not yet, but I used to go hear lectures by Swami Satchidananda in New York and one, one spring or summer, he was upstate at the ashram, and, for the weekend, and he was giving some kind of program. So, I went one day, and he was giving a lecture and sitting next to him was this very austere looking Swami, Indian Swami, who I had no idea who it was. And He sat there, like very, you know, like this while Swami Satchidananda was talking. And then when Swami Satchidananda used to finish his lectures, he used to go, “Hari Om” like this. Right? So, he finished talking and I was waiting for the Hari Om, but instead I heard “Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram.”

I had my eyes closed and my whole body just, it was like electricity, a million volts running through me. It was unbelievable. I guess, you know, I couldn’t believe it. And that other Swami was singing and he sang for a little while and then he stopped and then everybody dispersed and I didn’t know anybody there, so I never found out who it was.

Three years later, living up in the mountains in India, I’m living in the temple with Maharaji and one day a car pulls up outside the temple and three or four or five of these swamis come across the bridge into the temple. And they go right into Maharajji’s room. So, they obviously knew him, and they went right into his room. And in a few minutes I heard “Sri Ram Jai Ram”… The same Sri Ram Jai Ram. And it turns out it was Swami Chidhananda and he used to sing for Maharajji all the time. Maharajji loved it. And so, he used to sing for him. And when I first heard that Sri Ram in America three years before, from Swami Chidananda, he had already been singing to Maharajji. He already knew Maharajji. And so, I got the juice from that, their connection, even then, before I even knew of Maharajji. So that was super cool.

Q: You’ve talked about suffering and how to deal with it. But what about the suffering we personally cause? It’s so hard to live with the suffering I personally caused to so many.

Well, first of all, did you do that on purpose? Did you do that consciously? Were you out to hurt people? No, probably not. And even if you were your feelings that created that, that, that created your actions that you say created suffering for others, they came out of your own pain. We hurt people out of our own pain, and our pain, you could say was caused by other people as well; the way we grew up, the culture we grew up with, the way we reacted and acted with our friends and acquaintances, the way our teachers treated us. So many things went into us, feeling a certain way about ourselves, and out of that pain that we have, other people are also hurt.

So, you can see yourself also as a victim and as a perpetrator, or you can see yourself as somebody who’s trying to figure it out and release the suffering within yourself. And it’s the same with the people that you say you hurt. They’re also a part of your karmic situation. Why are you going to take responsibility for all of this completely?

You have also been programmed and you’re also programming others. So, you get free of your programs and then see how you feel about shit. So, we we’re just so ready to judge ourselves and give ourselves absolutely no breaks whatsoever. And your self-hatred is doubling up on everything and making it more hard for yourself.

Find out why you’re in pain. Find out what, what created your suffering. Start to work with that. Start to let it go. Start to open up. Start to forgive yourself, start to forgive others. Everybody’s included in all this. So do the work on yourself and that will help everybody that you’re involved with; past, present and future.

This is all ego. “I did this, I did that. I did this.” Nobody does anything. We’re all reacting blindly. Everything we do is a knee jerk reaction. Very few of us make conscious decisions to do anything. All our decisions are based on so many factors and most of it comes out of the shadows, our own shadows. So, let’s get rid of some of those shadows, find out who we are, and then we’ll see if we’re really to blame or who’s to blame or what blame is in the first place. There really is no blame, even though we need to take responsibility for our actions. That doesn’t mean we have to beat ourselves up for our actions. We need to clean our rooms, clean our hearts and get on with our lives.

Q: Are there any practices you know to help trauma and healing?

Every practice I know is to help trauma and healing. We all have so much trauma. Many of us have very severe traumas. Some of us not so severe. But the trauma of being caught in a physical body in the first place is unbelievable. We think it’s perfectly natural because that’s all we know. But from another point of view, this is really heavy, just being identified with our bodies, which we all are. And yet there are many different practices for trauma, many ways that we can help heal ourselves and others. And you should look, you should look about, do some research into that. I’m not an expert on the specific practices, but chanting certainly helps anything you want to do, any way you want to heal. Chanting helps that as well.

Q: How do we overcome selfishness in this culture which encourages it and especially considering it as one of the main impediments on the path?

Just do your work. Do your sadhana. Do your practice and try to be good hearted in your daily life and your daily reactions and work with people, interactions with people. And spiritual practice is what gives us the strength to be good hearted and kind and aware and not so selfish all the time.

Q: Recently I mentioned an experience I had long ago in London with Swami Muktananda resulting in out of the body experience. Could I speak to what that experience may have meant to you?

Nothing. In the long run, absolutely nothing. Zero. It was like going to a movie except that it happened inside my head. To tell you the truth, yeah, it was, it was exciting, but, so what? Did it help me be a better person? No, not that I can tell. What helps me be a better person is remembering the love that I experience with my Guru, that I found in my own heart, that I find everywhere I look, as I find that in myself.

Experiences come and go. Big deal. I’ve heard about this Swami, that Swami, and all the disciples going to meditations, they bounce up and down. I spent almost two and a half years with Maharajji and nothing happened like that. What happened was love, love, and more love and more love and more love.  That was it.

I don’t mind the experiences, but it’s not about that. Those experiences don’t help you necessarily thin out your ego and thin out your fascination with yourself. In fact, they tend to encourage that and make it bigger. And then we, then we have that motivation for practices, to have more experience like that. So, take a drug. What the fuck? Are you going to sit around and meditate for 20 years? You want an experience? Take a drug. It’s not going to help you very much. Sometimes experiences can help free us from certain illusions or certain identifications with ourselves, but it usually doesn’t last. What lasts is who you truly are already and who you always will be, which is Sat-chit-ananda. Love, truth, awareness, reality, and bliss that doesn’t come and go, because you are that.

Q: Could I explain the meaning of karma?

If I knew it, I would explain it, but I don’t. Basically, it’s the idea of cause and effect. Every action we create, every action we perform has a reaction. If we push things away, they come towards us. If we reach for things, they… if we act out of selfishness, selfishness increases.  They call it the law of cause and effect, that every effect, every action is a cause of future actions and future effects. So, if we want to plant seeds of joy and happiness and love, if we want those things, then we have to plant those seeds. Seeds of selfishness, seeds of shame and grief and self-centeredness and anger, those are actions that cause more of that. And they say that not only is the…  karma is not blind, is not fate. Karma is the reason we can be free because our own actions will create that freedom for us. As we choose to do the right action and good action and harmonious actions and act in a good way in the world, that’s planting seeds that will create openness and finally liberation or merging with God, finding real love.

So, karma is not fate that can’t be changed. Karma is actually the key to freedom. By doing spiritual practice, by recognizing the causes of our suffering and trying to remove those causes, we are creating the future that we want for ourselves and others. So, it’s the key to freedom.

Q: What do I think of the health and wellness craze surrounding us? Goop, Dan Harris…

I know Dan.

Headspace, etc., the commodification of spirituality…

Listen, everybody’s doing the best they can. Period. Even you’re doing the best you can. Why dwell in judging other people? It makes you cranky and we’re all cranky enough, you know? Let it go. Let other people be who they are. You find your own way to live in this world in a good way. Don’t worry about other people and other things. Find what works for you and get it together. Don’t spend time worrying about whether other people are this or that, or whether they’re real or not real, or whether this is really spiritual. Who gives a shit? How do you get through your day in a good way? That’s all you need to care about.

Q: One of my yoga teachers often says, “Follow what feels good to you in your life and on the mat.”  But what about when what feels good is fueled by some trauma? How can this be what one should do?

You know, I’ve often said that for me, the whole path comes down to learning to trust one’s self. If we don’t trust ourselves, then the changes that happen within, we won’t pay attention. We won’t accept those changes. We won’t honor the inner growth.

Everything we do is a program, is programmed response. Some is trauma. Some is this, some is that, some is this. Everything we do as humans is basically reacting to our previous actions and things that happen to us in our lives before, so, almost everything. And so is the longing to be free. That is also a reaction to being in pain. If your hand is in fire, you will have the longing to remove it from the fire.

So, trauma or whatever kind of programming we have, we have to find a way to release that trauma, and to release that, those knee jerk reactions that come from that. So, you have to pay attention, you know, you have to listen to your heart.

Yeah. So, let’s say some of the things you do come from your traumatic experiences, reactions to that. Yeah, okay. But if you’re paying attention, if you’re doing practice, if you’re learning to listen to your intuition or your deeper feelings, you will notice what’s happening. Or someone will slap you in the face with what’s happening and then you’ll go, “Oh.”

So the idea is to keep your eyes open, pay attention to what’s going on. And when you see yourself reacting and you recognize that what you’re doing is a reaction, a fearful reaction or a defense mechanism, then you can start to let go of it, but you have to notice it first. Otherwise, it keeps going, going, going. So that’s a very good question and it really describes all of us to some degree or other. We are all in this world victimized by the culture that we were born into. This culture does not believe that there’s any way to be free of suffering. All we believe in, in this culture, is the more pleasure we get, the better. The less pain we get, the better. We have to hold onto the stuff that gets us off and push away the stuff that hurts us. Those methods won’t work very well. We, this culture doesn’t believe in a love that isn’t based on selfishness, and real love is not based on selfishness. It’s based on the true self, who we really are.

So, yes, listen to yourself and pay attention to what you’re doing. See what you’re doing. Nobody has to tell you. Keep your eyes open. It will dawn on you that what you’re doing is a result of this and that. And then you can begin to release it. How do we get the strength to release it? From practice, from the repetition of the name, from watching the breath, from mindfulness, from mantra meditation, all these different practices. They give us the strength to release the knee jerk reactions, to release the negativity that we hold in ourselves, even in our being.

Q: How karma from the past life is fair when we don’t remember our past lives and what is the best way to heal our past karma?

Well, same, same. You’re here now. Pay attention. You don’t know if you were born before. You have no proof of that. You have no idea of past lives. All you know is what’s in your life right now. So, transform that into beauty. Transform that shame into openness. Transform that guilt into love and forgiveness. See what’s in your life now. It doesn’t matter where it came from really, but if you have to see what it is, that’s there now. And then you could say, “Oh yes, well, this is my karma,” but you know, we don’t even know what that means.

Let’s just deal with the stuff that’s in front of our face and not make up big stories about it. It’s hard enough. So…

Q: Where do I go in the silence at the end of my chant?

I don’t go anywhere. Where do you go?

I’m here. Aren’t you?

Whoops. I was just going to answer something and it went somewhere. Maharajji just said to eat simply and purely. He didn’t really, he didn’t talk about diet and that kind of stuff. He himself ate very little. He ate mostly squash, loki squash like,  squash, simple, very little spices and maybe some milk.

So, but he ate  very simply and, you know, we didn’t really, it’s like Jesus said, it’s not what you put into a mouth. It’s what comes out of the mouth that’s important. So that’s the main thing.

Q: Why is it that in these times we cannot see, there are no saints like Maharajji present in form.

Because they don’t want you to see. If you were supposed to see, you would see. These great beings are always here. We’re are the ones who aren’t here. So, let’s get here first and then maybe we’ll see something.

Q: I see you have a photo of Haidakhan Baba behind me. Did Maharaji ever talk about him?

Maharajji didn’t talk about him to the Westerners. I mean, but the Indian people, you know, when he first arrived in the mountains, Maharajji first showed up in the mountains and started meeting people. Earlier on he had lived in the jungles and he would come out every once in a while, but, and play with children. Like that’s when Tiwari met him, when he was a school kid. Maharaji took his lunch. So, Tiwari slapped him. Maharajji slapped him back and their whole lives, they spent together.

But he would run away when adults came and go back into the jungle. But after some years, He started to meet adult people. And the first place he went, the first house he went to, we understand, in the Hills, was the house of a woman who was called the Old Lady of Bhumiadar. And we met her back in the seventies when we were the first time we were in India. She was a young girl. And her parents were devotees of Haidakhan Baba.  That’s a photo of Haidakhan Baba there. I think you can see, I don’t know. He was a very great Saint. A very great Siddha.

And so Maharajji went to that house to eat and he met this this young girl, this young girl had now become a woman and it was her house. She said that she was one of the last people to see the old Haidakhan Baba before he disappeared. She said they were way up in the mountains and he took her and they were walking and she was holding his hand as they walked around by the side of the river.

And he said to her, this, she was an eight year-old girl. He said to her, “Okay. You stay here and don’t open your eyes until I tell you.”

So, she closes her eyes and after some time she says, “Baba, are you there? Can I open my eyes?”

And there was no answer. So, she opened her eyes. She found herself on the other side of the river. And then after that, Haidakhan Baba wasn’t seen again. And some people say he went up to Tibet. Some people say he took Jal Samahdi, water samahdi, immersed his body in the river and left the body. Nobody knows.

But who knows? There’s, you know, you can’t understand the play of these Great Beings. And also, so then Maharaji went to, the first time he went to KK’s house, he walks in, he comes in the house and KK’s father comes to meet him. KK’s father was a disciple of Haidakhan Baba. And now this is like many, many years later.

So, Maharajji looks at KK’s father and said, “Take me to the room where Haidakhan used to stay.”

So, KK’s father was shocked because nobody knew Haidakhan Baba used to come to their house and stay in this room for months at a time. And nobody would know where he was and they would feed him, but he would just stay locked in the room. So, Maharaji and KK’s father went to the room. And when they got in the room, Maharajji looks at his father, KK’s father and said, “Are you still doing the mantra that Haidakhan gave to you?”

And nobody knew that he even got a mantra. So, there was some belief that Maharajji, Neem Karoli Baba, was the reincarnation of the old Haidakhan Baba, but no one knows for sure.

Q: Well, here’s that question again. You know, Why can’t we meet the saints in this time?

Back in, you know, while Maharajji was in the body, one of his Indian devotees came to him and said, Baba, “I wish there was a King like Janaka.”

You know, in the Indian tradition, King Janaka was what they call a Raja, Rishi, a King, but an enlightened being, a Saint, and he lived as a King, but he was also enlightened.

So, he said, “Baba, I wish there was a King like Janaka who could help the world.”

Maharajji just said, “There is a King much greater than Janaka.”

Digest that like I have to digest that.

Q: Tell him my first meeting with Maharajji…

Well, honestly, I met Maharajji the day I met Ram Dass. When I walked into the room where Ram Dass was sitting, without a word being spoken, without eye contact, something happened inside of me. And I knew that whatever it was I was looking for, whatever it was I was longing for was in the world. It could be found. And that was the deal. And that was, that moment changed my life. And I later realized, of course, that what I had felt was Maharajji’s presence for the first time. And so, after a year and a half, then I went to India. And I met Maharajji for the first time.

It was so unusual for a while, because I had been feeling Him everywhere in America, everywhere all the time. He was huge, like the sky. And then I met the body and I went, wait a minute. How does all that fit inside this little body? It took a while to kind of move into this new form of Maharajji, that physical presence, which you know, it was new for me at the time. Of course, I got totally attached to that. So, when he left the body, it was very hard for me.

Q: I’m a 16 year old and my dad’s a pilot for the Southwest airlines. He’s going through a nervous breakdown, worrying he’s going to lose his job. How do I separate his anxiety, but provide empathy?

That’s the whole, that’s it. How do we, how do we remain present with people who are suffering without allowing it to destroy our peace of mind, but still being available for them and present with them, not holding back. It’s a very deep question and you know, it’s not easy. You have to keep kind of calming yourself down and seeing that you’re getting caught in it. And you have to let yourself feel without fear of the feelings. You can feel what your father is feeling, but it’s not your feelings. So, you can still be, you can still be kind to the feelings and you can extend loving kindness and an openness to that being who’s suffering without it destroying your, you know, someone once asked the Dalai Lama, “Your holiness, are you happy?”

So, he said, “Well, I guess you could say I’ve had a hard life. I was discovered as a tulku of the previous Dalai Lama. I was taken from my parents and raised in the monastery. I had to take over the reins of my country as a teenager and deal with the Chinese, and then I had to escape. And now I’m living as a refugee in India and I’ve had to watch as millions of my Tibetan people were slaughtered by the Chinese. The Chinese have taken everything from me. Am I going to let them take my happiness?”

So, we feel guilty if we’re okay and our close ones are not okay, but that’s all right. It’s okay to be okay. And that allows you to be more kind and more present, and allow what your father to go through what he has to go through, and just support him with much love and kindness as you can. And the reason we do practice is so that we have a way to deal with those intense negative emotions, like the anxiety about money and losing the job and how am I going to take care of my family? Well, is the anxiety helping you take care of your family? No. It’s creating physical problems, mental problems, everything else. So, we need to find a way to let go of those kinds of anxieties and still be engaged fully in the world. That’s what spiritual practice allows us to do.

So, it’s a very good question.

Q: Somebody wants to know if I’ve ever got public criticism of my, whatever I do. And how do I respond to them?

Well, I get pissed off, of course, but you know, one time one of the CDs came out and there was a review on Amazon, one of the first reviews of the CD, and it said “This guy, Krishna Das sounds like a frog that’s being sodomized underwater.”

I love that. So, I wrote back to the guy and said, “What kind of frog was that?”

And David NIchtern, who plays guitar with me, a great meditation teacher, and he wrote to the guy and said, “Well, how do you know what that sounds like?”

You know, everybody’s allowed to have their feelings. You can’t make anybody happy and you can’t please everyone all the time. You can just, I just do the best I can. If people like it, good. If they don’t like it, what can I do? As long as I’m doing the best I can and being as sincere as I can be and as honest and open, what more can I do? If somebody doesn’t like it? Good. I mean, what can…? Enjoy. Go somewhere else.

Q: What was the purpose of jao-ing?

“Jao” means go away. And like I’ve said many times, Maharajji used to say “go away” was his mantra.

And she says, what’s the purpose of jao-ing? Was it, was it really to help people? And for what reason?

Well, it would be foolish for me to try to give a reason for anything Maharajji did. However, he once said, “I don’t let people stay here because attachment grows both ways.”

He was saying that he also gets attached because so much love. And so, because he is a Saint, he can easily break that attachment and send someone away. And since the point is not to be attached to him physically, but to find the love within, he wouldn’t want us, he wouldn’t want people to become attached to his physical presence unnecessarily. If they needed that, they would be allowed to stay for a while.

But basically, he didn’t let people stay for long,

You know, one time a young man came from Lucknow. We were up in the mountains in Kainchi. He took a bus and a train, and then he couldn’t find a bus to Kainchi so he walked all the way to Kainchi. It’s about, you know, a couple of hours walk, and he gets in and he sees Maharajji and says, “Baba, my grandfather, who was your great old devotee, he’s sick and he’s dying, he’s suffering so much. Please send your blessings.”

So, Maharajji takes a banana and gives it to him and said, “Go home, mash up this banana and, and give him a little bit to eat and everything will be okay.”

So, the boy goes back on the train and the bus, the walking, blah, blah, blah. He gets home. He mashes up the banana. He goes to his grandfather, puts a little in his mouth.

He leaves the body.

He couldn’t let go, I guess, the grandfather, he couldn’t release. He couldn’t let go. He couldn’t die at peace. So, when he got that little piece of prasad, boom, he let go.

So, to see the way, to see things the way a great being sees it is impossible for us. All we have is our own narrow little point of view. They see everything. They know everything. And they do, whatever a real saint does can only be with one motivation, that’s to relieve suffering. So that’s what a real guru does.

The post Special Edition Conversations With KD May 14, 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 50 Sadhus, and Nirvana in Samsara

“For Maharajji, everybody was His near and His dear. Everyone. And in order to stay in that space, you couldn’t hold on to your stuff. It had to go.” – Krishna Das

KD: That reminds me of this story. One time, a wandering sadhu came to Kainchi and came to see Maharajji and he, he was, he didn’t have much stuff. He had like, a pot, a water pot, and just a couple of shawls or something. And he sits down in front of Maharajji and he says, “We’re really disappointed in you.” He says to Maharajji, “What is all these temples and all these people serving you and all this stuff. What is all this opulence? What is all this?” And Maharajji said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. Hey, can you give me ten rupees?” And the guy says, he gets very uptight. “No, no come on. You have, you have hidden in your lungi over there around the left side hanging there in the thing there, there’s, you have some money. Give it to me. Give it to me.” So the sadhu takes it. “Give me it. Give me it.” He takes his pouch of money. He drops it in the fire. All the money. And the guy flipped out. And he said, “What have you done? This was my retirement money. I have nothing and I’ve saved for years.” And Maharajji said, “Oh, what happened? Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” And He takes these long tongs and He reaches into the fire and He pulls out brand new one hundred rupee notes.

Bob: Oh, really?

KD: And hands them to the sadhu like this. One by one. The sadhu just starts weeping, you know?

Bob: Really? That’s so cool.

KD: Yeah, there’s another story like that. You know, everyone who came to Maharajji, in order to approach, for most of the beings who approached Maharajji, you always had to give something up. You had to let go of something in order to really… So one time, Maharajji was walking in the street in Vrindavan. This is a long time ago, even, maybe in the 50s. And He’s walking down the street and coming the other way is this jungly sadhu with the long jutta hair and the ashes, a really fierce guy. And they see each other and they go, “Oh.” And they run to each other and they hug and they jump around and they’re dancing and they say, “Oh, it’s so great to see you after so long!” “Oh, yes, it’s been so many years!” “This is so great!” And it turns out they had spent much time in the mountains many, many years before, you know, doing sadhana together. So, they enjoy their company for a little while and then Maharajji says to the sadhu, “Ok, brother, now you should go now. I have to go.” And the sadhu says, “What are you talking about? After all these years we meet? I’m not going to leave you. I’m going to stay with you.” He said, “Oh, no. You don’t understand. I’m only with householders and worldly people now. You don’t, it’s not good for you. You don’t want to hang out with me. Really.” “I don’t care what you say. I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving you.” “Ok.”

So, they began to walk from Vrindavan to Mathura, which is about 18 kilometers and it’s the middle of the summer. It’s about 120 degrees. The middle of the day. And in those days, there was nothing. Now, it’s like, built-up. But in those days it was like desert. So, they’re walking. And in the distance, and Maharajji told this to Mr. Tiwari who told me. He said, “We were dying of thirst.” And in the distance, they see a well and they go running towards the well and they get to the well. There’s a woman there getting from the well and Maharajji gets there first and He puts His hands out, and says, “Pour water for me.” So, the lady pours the water from the bucket into His hands and He’s drinking, you know, like this. And then, the sadhu arrives and he puts out his gourd pot, right? And the woman pours water into the pot and as she’s pouring, Maharajji starts chatting her up, because that’s what He does. He talks to everybody, 24-7, 365, all day long. So He says, “Who are you? What’s your name? Where are you from? What’s your village? What’s your caste?” Because that’s what they ask. In those days, they would, they needed to know who they were talking to, for whatever reason. So, the woman says she’s from this village, she says her name and she’s an untouchable. So, when the sadhu hears that, he takes the pot and he smashes it on the ground and he looks at Maharajji. “What have you done? Look at this? This was my only possession. I need this to wash and to do things in. Now, it’s become impure because of this woman who poured water in it.” And Maharajji’s going, “What? What? What happened? What happened? What’s happened? Oh, I thought you were a sadhu. I thought you were a sadhu. What is caste for a sadhu?” And the guy realizes what happened and Maharajji said, “He washed my feet with his tears and went off to finish his work. He went back to the mountains.”

Beautiful story.

For Maharajji, everybody was His near and His dear. Everyone. And in order to stay in that space, you couldn’t hold on to your stuff. It had to go. Whatever it was. It had to go. And He warned, and Maharajji’s so soft hearted, also, He warned the sadhu. He said, “No, you don’t want to be with me.” Right? “It’s not good for you. I’m only with householders. You don’t want to be with me.” He was, but the sadhu took it the wrong way. He thought, “No problem.” But Maharajji was warning him, if you hang out here it’s going to hurt. So, in order to go through that door, you’ve got to leave, you know, your stuff at home. You’ve got to leave your home. Your home and your me-ness. You’ve got to leave that. So…

Bob: Finding the nirvana in the samsara.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: That’s the non-dual greatness of the great teachers.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: So that’s why in Sri Lanka, my mind was so blown by that sutra that I read this morning. When after, you know, I skipped over the, When you do mindfulness on mental objects and you go through all these different things and then when you do the four noble truths, you do mindfulness on the truth of suffering. And truth of suffering, you see every pleasure, possible pleasure, you’re mindful of the fact that it’s called the suffering of change, because it doesn’t last. So, you know, then, that’s sort of the usual, that’s what people assume is the usual thing and that’s very much the dualistic Buddhist thing, where they think nirvana is some state of leaving town, you know? Samahdi that’s outside the world. You know, you go way off. And but then when you come to mindfulness of the truth of nirvana, the third noble truth of nirvana, of happiness, of joy, of freedom from suffering, he says, “Where is it?” And He doesn’t say it’s off planet, it’s off the universe, It’s on another plane. He says, “It’s right there in every pleasurable sensation.” And then He lists all sense pleasures, all the body itself, everything that has gone before, He lists that. The pleasurable sensation, everywhere in the ordinary interaction of everything is where nirvana is. And so what that does, there’s two treatments of pleasure, one where it’s the suffering of change and one where it’s nirvana, and what’s the difference? Of course, it’s so simple and obvious, the differences, the one that’s suffering of change, it changes because when you grasp at it, and you say, “This is mine. Oh, I want that pleasure,” and then you create more and then you crush it. And it’s changing because you destroy it. But the actual pleasure of when you let it happen and you let go of it and give it away and that to me, that’s what I learned in this weekend so far. That’s devotion. That’s your devotion yoga, which is where you’re happy in the presence of Rama. Rama is there, here. When you chant “Rama” He is here. “Krishna” is here. They’re not off someplace. They are, and especially when you invoke the Name that evokes them and there’s no limit. “Vishnu” means… “Vishnu” is translated in Tibetan as “Kabjuk”. “Kabjuk” means, “pervasively present,” “all pervading,” “omnipresent,” and you know, any deity worth His salt, definitely any Buddha, is everywhere. They are everything. So therefore, you say the Name and then they pay attention, but they’re there anyway, even if you don’t say the Name. But especially when you say the Name. But the point is, the Bhakti thing means you give away your pleasure. At the last Carnegie concert, I wanted to tell the people, when you enjoy something, when it blows you away, the key is you offer it at the same time. In other words, instead of grabbing it and swallowing it down and “I got some pleasure,” you know? You think of everyone else, you open your heart and let it flow through you to everyone. So that’s your Bhakti thing. And it goes to Buddha and it goes to God. If you think of God as that omnipresent, loving power that surrounds everything and wants to see it all do well and wants to take care of it and so forth, That’s what it is. I know, I thought I knew one Abrahamic Holy person myself, just lately there’s one thing he used to say and it, I used to kind of like it but now it disturbs me because he was talking about someone who was very pious about God, you know, another fellow, Abrahamist, and then he said, “I don’t know you’re right about God,” he said to him, because he was trying to make something powerful and immediate and he had his own vision, this guy and he said, “Why, God’ll just as soon kill you as look at you.” He said that. Because, you know, Yahweh, gets like, you know, thunderbolts, you know, there are notions of God where it’s like a thunderbolt happens, you know? Things like that. You know, you know the funny story in the midrash about Yahweh when he got mad at Moses? You know? Maybe I won’t… I’m not going to tell that story, never mind. I won’t tell it. But I’m just saying, you know, that’s not nice.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: You know? The divine, if they are really Divine, then they love… They should be love… They should be capable of loving everybody.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: They shouldn’t be condemning them and doing stuff like that. That’s like somebody else’s idea. Some imperfect thing, you know? You know?

KD: Yeah.

Bob: So, that’s too bad. That’s what I didn’t like as a child in church. I didn’t like the idea of the fierce nasty deity. Even the fierce deities in Hinduism and Buddhism, they’re fierce against ignorance, hatred, greed, jealousy, arrogance. They’re not fierce, actually. They’re just showing that form. So, like, fierce compassion. Tough love, you know. A mother’s ferocity to protect her child.

KD: Yeah, that’s what it is, yeah. Yeah, one time..

Bob: I’m sorry, but so just coming back, so Maharajji’s attainment was present in the ordinary things with the ordinary people and it wasn’t some sort of sacred weird thing off a mountain necessarily, I mean, it wasn’t not that. They loved each other. He liked the guy. But then He realized the guy was kind of stuck.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: You know, like the guy who’s meditated for years and years and goes in and someone steps on his toe and he gets upset, you know in the marketplace. There’s many stories like that. That’s non-duality.

KD: Yeah. The temple where, where Maharajji stayed at Kainchi is now called, they had to build a new bridge and rebuild the entrance to the temple and they wrote, “Now it’s the Sri Sri Neem Karoli Baba Temple and Ashram.” But that’s not what Maharajji called it. When it was originally built, it was called the “Sri Advait Sankata Mochin Hanuman Mandir”.

Bob: Ok. Advait, yes.

KD: “Advait” means “non-dual.”

Bob: Yes.

KD: It means, “only one.” “All one.” So, the non-dual sankata mochin, the destroyer of suffering Hanuman temple. Non-dual. It’s not, it’s that all inclusiveness, the all one-ness of it all. That’s what He called it. But then the next level is the worship of Him as a form, which, that’s what devotees do. But that’s not what He called it. And when someone would come to Him and say, “Oh, Baba, can you heal me,” He said, “No, I can’t do anything, you go pray to Hanuman.” And what would Hanuman say? “I can’t do anything, you have to pray to Ram” you know? So.

I was sitting once with Maharajji and I almost laughed out loud because I was sitting there and I realized, I had been thinking that enlightenment would be something else, somewhere else, something else other than me. Right? And then I saw, how could that be? You know? I’m here. I’ll always be here. And I realized that came out of my own self-hatred or self-loathing and identification with my stuff, my programs. That love is right here, always. But we don’t let it in because we’ve been trained not to let it in. That’s how I was trained. You know? And most of you were probably trained the same way. Even though you’re not from Long Island, all of you. You might as well be. So, that’s the thing, you know? That’s why, yeah. And when we think of others, we can’t be obsessing about ourselves. It’s so simple but it seems so non-intuitive actually, but it is.

The post Ep. 50 | Sadhus, and Nirvana in Samsara appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD May 9, 2020

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.

“These are all the names of what lives within us as who we are. Already. It’s not something else. It’s not somewhere else. It’s within us. All these names lead to the same place. They’re the names of the same place. All these so-called deities are forms of our own true nature… whatever you sing is fine. It doesn’t make any difference. Sing what you’d like. If you think about it, you’re not doing it. So, I would just do it.” – Krishna Das

Hey everybody.

Let’s welcome each other to our minds.

Let’s, let’s all close our eyes for a minute.  So, now we’re united in the space of the heart. This is where we always are together with all beings. It’s just as if we’re sitting in one room together. This room happens to be earth at this moment. Just be with the breath. Take a few deep, long, deep breaths. Let the body relax. All that tension we carry around, bouncing off the walls of our homes, just let it go.

Sharon Salzberg and I once were doing a workshop in LA and we had such a nice time. So, at the end, I said “Wouldn’t it be great if we could all live together?” And then I laughed. I said, “Well, that’s what we’re doing. That’s earth.”

Earth is our home at this point. It just didn’t give us a user manual. We’re having to figure that out.

So, this time that we… we’re so apparently disconnected from everything is… can be very useful, and it is useful, even if we’re suffering and with all the difficulty. It’s going to change the way we sit in ourselves. It has to, regardless of what we think about it, and make us much more aware of our own stuff and everybody else’s stuff, but also aware that we need to care about other people, too, in this world, not just our close friends and family, but everything anyone on this planet does affects everybody. And at some point the amount of toxicity causes suffering for everyone. The main toxicity is the selfishness and the self-centeredness that we carry within us.

So, all the practices that we do are all about one thing, and that’s to release us from the prison of egoistic self-centered actions and considerations. So, there are two paths to that. One is the path of, you could say “devotion” or “loving kindness, caring,” and the other path is a path of jnana or wisdom, which they say it’s more difficult to follow because of our attachment to our bodies. But really there’s only one path and that path is each of our lives. And within that life that we’re living, we need to find a way to become good human beings. And it’s only from following the path of Dharma, the spiritual path, that we can become good human beings, whatever that means to each of us.  Our motivations begin to come from kindness and compassion. Our caring about other people increases, so our obsession with ourselves decreases and how we feel and “How am I, how am I now? How am I now? How am I now?” All day long. You know, the movie of “me.”

So how do we free ourselves from this prison of me-ness, of ego, of the belief that we are separate from everybody, and it’s around that sense of separateness that all our suffering revolves. When that planet of “me” dissolves, there’s nothing for the suffering to revolve around, to orbit around. It goes and find somebody else to bother.

So, let’s take some questions and then we’ll just see how the day goes.

Q: Thank you so much for this and for everything you’re doing right now, it’s so wonderful and so nourishing. You tell a story in “Flow of Grace” and in “Chants of a Lifetime” about visiting a Saint at an ashram who said you need to develop willpower. You talk about how he let you see that you were kind of crippling yourself and preventing yourself from jumping 100% into life and then you go on to say that developing that will power was one of the things that allowed you to begin to sing with people. That speaks to me so much because I really need to develop that will power. So how do I go about it?

Well, the first step is recognizing what the situation really is, and then you just have to apply yourself. When that Yogi told me that it was such a shock, because I didn’t see myself that way. So, when I saw myself, when he showed me what he was seeing inside of me it was, it was a revelation and a shock to my system, also. And that was just… it’s… When you see through something, that’s when you know something, then you know, and then the rest of your life aligns itself with that, knowing it’s not like there’s any one thing to do or not to do, but then from that point on, you have a different sense of direction and, and your life begins to align itself with that direction.

You know, teachers give techniques and there are so many techniques and so many ways to, to calm the mind and purify the heart. But the reality is that it’s our lives that are our path. And there’s not like a spiritual path somewhere else. It’s not like you’re walking here and oh, now that you found this spiritual path, you’ll be walking on the other side of the street, you know? And only wearing white clothes and only talking to people, you know?

So, it’s not like that, you know.  You are the path, and when you understand something or have an insight into your own stuff, then  the root of that stuff is essentially cut. And then you just take the time for the tree to fall. So, you just, because you, you’ll start living your life in a different way.

What he said to me, wasn’t new either. I, you know, I had, before I left, before I went to India, Ram Dass and I and others were up at the Lama Foundation in New Mexico for the winter. And we did a lot of singing and meditating and whatever the hell we thought we were doing, and one time… we heard about this guy, this New York artist who had gone to India and learned how to meditate and had moved out to New Mexico and was living just down the mountain from the Lama Foundation. So, we, a few of us went down to see him. Wow. He knows how to meditate, you know, and we spent the afternoon with him talking and I didn’t say anything. I was just listening and hanging out and kind of in the back. And so, I was the last one to leave, leave the room. And as I was walking out the door, he grabbed my arm and he said to me, “You have to find out why it is you, you can’t give yourself a hundred percent to whatever you’re doing.”

And, you know, I can still feel his hand. That was so amazing. It was so true of me, especially at that time. And even now. The ability to give yourself a hundred percent to whatever you’re doing is like, almost like becoming God, you know. Who can do that in a conscious way? Not in like watching a movie where you’re totally gone but being present and really being there.

So, when I first heard chanting in India, all the lights went on for me. And I thought, ah, I could do this, you know, this, I want to do this. And that’s how I started chanting, really, because I recognize that this was, this was one thing I could do. If I couldn’t do anything else in life, I could do this.

So, it’s that kind of thing, you know. Your life has already has everything in it that you need, and you already are everything you need to be. We just have to recognize what that is. You know? And it’s a done deal. It’s just you know, we’ve been shot out of the cannon. We just haven’t hit the ground yet.

Namaste.

Thank you.

Q: Hello. I have a question. Can you please tell us how did Maharajji send you home and how was that?

Oh, well, you’re looking at it. That’s how it is. You know, I had been in India two and a half years already. He kept me there. He allowed me to stay and arranged my visas for me, actually.

And It’s funny. I was just thinking about this. So, there were… he had disappeared. Okay? It was like early December, 1972. And he had disappeared. Nobody knew where he was. So, a friend of mine and I, we went to Delhi and I think we were staying at a devotee’s house and this devotee, he was a very close devotee of Maharaji, Mr. Barman.  And somehow or other, we got a feeling that Mr. Barman had gone somewhere with Maharajji. So, we kind of leaned on his driver, who I met after 50 years a couple of years ago when I went to Japan, he’s living there now. So he said, I can’t tell you where Maharajji has gone, but, but I’ll tell you when Mr. Berman has gone.” And he said, “He’s gone down to Bombay. And he’s he stays at this hotel called the Nataraj hotel.”

So, me and my friend, we got on a plane. She had some money, luckily. I was broke always in India. So, we got on a plane and we went down to Bombay and we went to this hotel, and we sat in the lobby of the hotel all day. And in the evening, Mr. Barman comes in and he sees us, and he says, “Krishna Das, Draupadi, what are you doing here?”

And we said, “Mr. Barman, we heard Maharajji’s in Bombay.”

He said “Really? Maharajji’s in Bombay? Oh my God. Well, come up to my room, order some food, relax. I have to go out on some business. And when I come back, we’ll try to find him.”

So I was, I went, “Oh, if he doesn’t know where he is, how are we going to ever find him?”

And I was like, suicidal, you know, “What are we going to do now? We’ll never find him. Where is he?”

So, we were up in the room and a couple of hours later, there’s a bang on the door. The door opens. And in walks Maharajji. He had just lied to us, of course. He knew where he was. He was with him. So, from that day on for two weeks almost, I think it was close to two weeks, maybe 10 days, every day, we’d spend many hours with Maharajji every day.

So, I’ll tell you the whole story. So Draupadi, who is a wonderful devotee of Maharajji, and I, we were sharing a hotel room and I was celibate those days, and I had been celibate for almost two years in India, and sharing a room with a, with a beautiful woman was kind of getting to me. So, one day I said to Maharajji, in Hindi, I said, “Maharajji,” so nobody, so Draupadi wouldn’t know what I was saying, I said, “Maharajji, you know, every once in a while lust comes.”

So, he said, he looks at Draupadi, “Draupadi, get him his own room.”

Right?

Oh, there’s a dog. Who’s that?

So, I had my own room. It was so great, you know? However, I just realized this a couple of days ago… So, shortly after that, Maharajji sent me back up to Dada’s house and he left India and Draupadi went away, and then I later found out that Draupadi had gone with Maharajji, and they had gone on tour of South India with other devotees. If I hadn’t have said that, about getting horny, I would have been on that tour with them. But that’s what happened. So, the reason I tell you that, so then Maharajji sent me to Dada’s house and he told me he would meet me there, and I waited for like a month or more, and he never showed up.

So, then I decided to go. Oh no, no, sorry. Here’s what happened. So, before we left Bombay, one day, we were sitting with Maharajji all day and he looks at me and he says, “You go back to New York, you go back to America. You have attachment there.”

And I was just like, “What? I’m just learning Hindi.”

Too bad, you have to go.

So, he told me to leave when my visa was up, which was at the beginning of March. So, all through January and February, I was in Allahabad. And then just before March, I heard he was in Vrindavan and I went there and, now he wouldn’t see the Westerners, because there were these, the local visa guy was trying to get bribes from him, you know, to, to help the westerners stay. He wanted bribes. So, Maharajji got pissed off and he wouldn’t let the Westerners come in to see him. And this went on for like a couple of weeks. I think.

And then finally, one day we were sitting, and it was the day that I had to leave for Delhi to catch a plane back to America. All of a sudden, he let the Westerners in. So, we rushed in to him. Everybody’s crying and laughing and happy. And I was freaked out because I didn’t know what I was going to do in America. I’ve been in India for two and a half years. I spoke English like this, “Hello? Yes. Now coming, now going. Yes. Very good. Thank you.”

And I’d been walking around in a red dress and barefoot, you know. I don’t think that’s gonna fly in New York. So, I’m sitting there in front of Him and I’m saying to myself, “I have to ask him what to do in America.” Right?

And but then the other part of me was saying, “How dare you? Don’t be so… you should have faith. What’s wrong with you? Just go, everything will be okay. What do you mean everything’s going to be okay?”

I don’t know, what am I going to do in America? I was freaked. You know? So finally, I blurted out, I said, “Baba, how can I serve you in America?”

And he went, ah, it was like he bit a pickle, you know, it was like, eh, what a horrible, what a totally self-centered question. I really wasn’t thinking about him at all. I was worried about me. So, He looks at me and He says, He says, “Just do what you want.”

Now I had been celibate for almost two and a half years. I knew what I wanted to do. And he knew what I wanted to do. So, my mind just stopped and I thought, how could, how could doing what I want to do be serving him? And he just laughed and he looked at me, “So how will you serve me?”

And he laughed and then it was time to go.

So, I got up and I walked across the courtyard and I bowed down to him from across the courtyard, the last time I saw him physically, so far. And I heard in my mind my own voice speaking, but it wasn’t me speaking, but it was my voice. And it said, “I’ll sing to you in America.”

I didn’t say that. I heard it. I’ll sing to you in America. And I thought, Oh, okay. And then I left. And that’s what’s been happening.

So yeah. You know, at the time I thought, what did he mean? He said, “I have to go back to America. I have attachment there.” I had left everything. I sold my car, my guitar, my record collection. I gave my jeans away. I had a couple of boxes of stuff in my mother’s basement, but I had left for good. I was never coming back. I didn’t know what he meant. Now, if I look at my life, the last, how many years? 49 years? How many years? No, no. From ‘73 to what? ‘83 ‘93, 2003, ’13… 47 years.

Everything that’s happened to me, my whole life, everything in it, that’s what he was talking about. These were the karmas that were inside of me that had to come out. It wasn’t enough, me sitting in India and avoiding my life. These karmas had to be, they had to work out. They had to come out, they had to be lived out. Well, that’s what he meant.

And the question was how to live through your life, how to actually live it in the best way possible. You know? And that’s what’s taken all these years to figure out. How to get through the day in the best way, being kind to myself and kind to others as best I can. You know, we think that there’s some other place to go, you know? We think we want to be in some blissful state where we’ll always be happy and everything will always be wonderful.

You know, it just doesn’t work like that. That state is already within us. It’s not something we get. It’s something we uncover by living in a good way and by doing some practice to help that happen. It’s not about trying to hold on to one state and avoid the things we don’t like. It’s not possible. We have to open and allow light to come to us and we have to get the strength to deal with all the, the unprocessed karmas, all the stuff in our hearts, all the hurts, all the betrayals, all the broken-hearted moments. We have to live with that. We have to open to that and we have to, we have to learn to love that, too, and that part of ourselves, because if we don’t, it’s ourselves, we are hurting ourselves. So, it’s all about that.

And the reason I wanted to stay in India, because I hated myself and I wanted to be somebody else, and being Krishna Das in India at that time was being somebody else. There was no, I was no longer the guy who grew up in New York, but that couldn’t last, you know? And in fact, you know, I was so, I had so much energy. I almost walked around like a robot because the energy couldn’t go through me. There was so much blockage. There was so much tension and fear in my heart. So, I had to live through all this stuff in order to see that clearly and to let go of it and continually try to find a good way to live that makes me happy, also.

So yeah, so really all the practices that we do, yoga and meditation, chanting, it’s all about feeding our own hearts in a way that allow us to, to really be here in a good way and be happy, because our nature is happy. Our true nature is just fine inside, but we’ve, it’s been covered up by a lot of shit and a lot of painful experiences.

And we all share that, all of us. So, the spiritual path is about learning how to… not transform, that’s the wrong word, but to release all that stuff over and over again. Release it, come back, release it, release it, release the fear, release the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves that we believe about ourselves.

“Oh, I’m not enough. I’m no good.” You know, “I’m this, I’m that.”

All the things we tell ourselves, we torture ourselves with that stuff and we never, we never questioned why we believe that stuff. It’s so natural to us to have those feelings. So that’s why, when you, when you chant or you meditate or something, you bring in that object, your object of concentration, the thing you’re supposed to be paying attention to, say the mantra, and then after a minute or two, you notice you haven’t been paying any attention.

So, you come back and then you notice again. So, you come back. And that trains us, little by little, to be more here and more present with ourselves, because we start to notice how we go through the whole day, completely lost in thought or thinking about the future, the past. What do I want? What I don’t want, what I don’t have, what I have… all that stuff.

So, it’s just a question of slowing down and learning to give ourselves a break. Keep coming back. That gives the heart strength.

All right. Thank you. Take care.

Q: I’m happy to see you.  I’ve been following you around for a number of years here and there.

Oh, that was you.

Yeah. I’ve been around. And I spread what I’ve learned from you and from Ram Dass to anybody else that will listen, just about love. Just be love. You are love, you know. I recently got a terminal cancer diagnosis and I probably have 12, 18 months, something like that, but just, yeah, it is what it is.

But I realized that my focus is becoming “How do I prepare myself to leave my body? What is left for me to need to do?” And then, you know, how do I stand on the edge of the bed post and leap?

Well, you know, they say the worst thing… in India, they say the worst thing that can happen to you is a sudden death. And the mantra that they, that you, that is said, as you take charanamrita from the temples, you know, take the blessings from the temple, is to protect you from sudden death. I forget the whole mantra, but it’s something like,

kala mruthyu haranam , sarva vyadhi nivaranam, samastha papa kshaya karam , Vishnu padodakam… something, something, something, something…

You take the water from the feet of the Lord to protect you against sudden death. Because at that point you have no chance to prepare. It’s like when you’re in one room and then you’re in another room, you don’t know where you are.

So there’s good news and bad news, you know? So, you have time to, to come to terms with everything, you know, and recognize what can be done, what can’t be done. You have time to take care of all the worldly stuff that you might want to take care of, to visit with people that you would like to say hello and goodbye to.

I had a close friend, very close friend and, but I hadn’t seen him in years. And all of a sudden, he called me out of the blue and he said, “Hey, do you want to have dinner?”

I said, “Yeah, sure.”

So, he and his wife came and we went out to dinner and at the end of the dinner, he looks at me and he said, “So, are we, okay? I see. Yeah. Why? No, I’m just checking to make sure everything’s good with us.”  You know? “I love you.”

“And I, yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. Well, good. No problem.”

Because over the years we had many different issues, so he just was… and then two months later he died and I realized, that’s why he did that, you know? He wanted…. And I heard from other people later that he had gone around and just checked in with everybody, “How are we doing? Are we okay? Anything, you know, anything left over? You know, any, any emotion, you know, anything you want to talk about?”

So, that’s a good thing to do.

And then, of course the other, another thing is forgiveness. Cultivate forgiveness, you know. And anybody who comes up into your mind that you’d like to stick a poker up their ass, forgive.

Yeah. And it’s like, I remember in the, the metta practice, the loving kindness practice, the first time I did it with Sharon at IMS, you have to, at one point, offer these phrases of caring and kindness to your enemy. They call it “the enemy”. And I would say, “May you be safe. You son of a bitch. May be happy so you don’t fuck me up anymore. May you be at peace so you can leave me the fuck alone.”

That was the best I could do at the time. But it was a beginning. Yeah. Yeah. But still that’s very important. And if you can’t forgive, that’s okay, too. Don’t force it, but recognize what, recognize the situation. Right? You know, don’t try to make it all all right. That’s not what you’re trying to do. Some things you can’t make all right. That’s okay. But you can be with the fact that they’re not all right. And you can, you can still offer that forgiveness, the whole, without trying to manipulate it. You’re not, you’re not trying to manipulate things. Okay.

You’re just trying to be with them, give them space to breathe and you know, would I, you know, having spent so much time with Ram Dass in this period of his life, and especially in the few days before he died, he was so at ease, so at ease, so ready to just release and let go. And so happy, you know, so much love. Because really, there’s nobody in this world that doesn’t die. So, and they say that we’ve all done this a million times. So, the best way to, to move from this room to that room is with ease of heart, and really keep releasing anxiety and fear, and just recognize you’ve done the best you can, and you’re still doing the best you can, and you’ll continue to do the best you can. And if you feel close to Maharajji, talk to him, He’ll meet you. You won’t have to go alone. You don’t go alone. Nobody goes alone. Everybody gets greeted by somebody and he’ll be right there.

Thank you.

Okay. God bless. Take good care.

Q:  Ram Ram. How are you? Nice to hear that. Could we talk about letting go and surrender?

Nah, just do it.

Practices.

Yeah. You know, I think until you try to do a practice, you don’t recognize how, how gone we are all the time. You know, when you try to sit down and look at your breath or repeat some mantra or count backwards from one, from a hundred to one, you don’t experience how completely, out of, what can… it’s impossible for us to do anything like that.  You know?

I mean, so, surrender is, is not just the goal, but it’s also the path. It’s just like devotion. It’s not only the path, but it’s the goal itself to live in that space, that open space. When you’re surrendered, you have no problems. All problems are the Lord’s problems. None of them are your problems. And when you surrender, your surrender happens because you realize your inability to do anything, to save yourself. You recognize how, you know, when I, when, once again, when I hurt my knee in India and I came to Maharajji, I thought I was going to go to the hospital. So, I was going to tell him I wouldn’t be there for darshan and, and he didn’t send me away. We weren’t supposed to be there until four in the afternoon, but this was early morning. So, I was sitting there, and I limped in. I could hardly walk. Raghu helped me walk in. And I sat down.

He didn’t say anything like, “Why did you come early? And what’s wrong with you?”

Nothing. He just sat there for a few minutes. Then he gets up and he and he takes Gurudatt Sharma’s hand and he walks to the back of the temple and the further away he got from where I was sitting, He started to lean on Gurudatt and like walk like this, you know? And I thought, “He could hardly, it looks like he can’t even walk. Oh shit. He’s taking on the karma of my knee.”

The minute I thought that, the second I thought that, he turned around and ran back to the tucket, He plops down and pats me on the head. And he said, “You thought I was in pain? You wanted to help me?” You know? “Good boy.”

So we just sat there. Then finally the other Westerners arrived, then Larry and Girija came and Girija was sitting there and Maharajji reached into her jhola and pulls out her Bible and he opens it, apparently at random, just opened it. And he said, “Read this.”

Okay. So, I read it. And it’s from St. Paul letters to the Corinthians. And it says, “In order to save me from being elevated by the abundance of revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the side, and I asked the Lord three times to remove it from me. And the Lord said, ‘my grace is made perfect in your weakness.’”

My grace is made perfect in your weakness.

The fact that God is doing everything becomes apparent to us when we recognize how little we can do except to recognize that and surrender, let go again and again.

So, not too long ago, Ram Dass and I were sitting together and I remembered that story. I was telling it to him and he said, “Yeah, we’re proof of that.”

So, I made two t-shirts, one for me and one for him that said, “Proof.”

So, what does that mean? “My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in your weakness.”

So recently, Parvati found this quote and sent it to Rameshwar Das who’s working on the new book. And I’m going to read it to you, to everyone. This is Ram Dass. I don’t know when he wrote this, but he writes this.

“I now accept that his grace is sufficient for me. I need nothing more. Though I have no powers, no great visions or astral contacts, no super energy which frees from sleep, nor am I yet purged of all worldly desires, yet his grace is sufficient, for I am coming to know the power of love. My strength is made perfect in in your weakness.”

That’s the quote.

“I am coming to suspect that I have been seeking and expecting the wrong sign and that who we are to become, we already are. But the humbleness of the sign of the spirit leads us to overlook it. I think in my Western desire mind, I have wanted great powers to heal and impress those who are impressed by power, that the spirit exists to impress myself. But as faith grows, I’ve come to see that power attracts power and love attracts love, and I’m blessed enough to transcend the need for power. Then I should become love and know only love in all whom I might meet. That is heaven on earth.  That’s the truth.”

All we can do is keep offering ourselves to that love, the love that we long for, the love that we believe unconsciously we’ll find somewhere else, but that love is already here within us. And when we see it within us, we see it everywhere and in everyone, and as Ram Dass got closer and closer to leaving the body, he became more and more radiant, more and more full of that love.

Q: Thank you so much for all you’re doing. Really, really, it’s been a lifesaver in this whole crisis, so thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Yeah, for me too.

So, I love your, especially on Thursday and the, the Devi rave at the end there, which was such a, a special piece. My question is, when you were, so when you came back from India and you had your karmas that you referred to earlier, how did you pull yourself out of the suffering and the pain after you got back from India? Did you do spiritual practices during that period, or only when you had tried everything else? How did you pull yourself out from, from the suffering and the pain?

I didn’t.

Okay.

There’s still suffering. There’s still pain.

Specifically from the addiction issues and some of those types of things that many people are struggling with right now in our world…

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah. You know, all the blessings I had received in all those years, I still hated myself so much and tortured myself. I lived in like a very dark state of mind most of the time. Life was very difficult and it was not easy for me to be me and I don’t know how I lived through all that stuff, but I did. And at some point, you know, I recognized, I had an epiphany in my room in New York, and I realized that if I did not sing with people, I would never clean out those dark corners in my own heart. And I recognized that it was only those shadows that were causing me suffering. So, at that point, I hadn’t been singing hardly at all, really, a little bit here and there, but not, not wholeheartedly, really. So, it was just a question of, you know, beginning to see that it was all coming from inside of me. Nobody could do it except me, so I’d better do it. And for me, that was, the chanting practice was, was the main practice. But even so, that was all grace, that was all the grace, Maharajji’s grace that it came, that all that happened, you know?

And it was my desire to be free of the pain that allowed it to happen, you could say. Because you need, if you want something enough, you can do it. You can get it. But it’s this the stuff with, with addiction is that there’s so many conflicting desires in the soup, and we have no way to calm ourselves down to release those desires, release those identifications, release those negative emotions. So, we go from one to the other, to the other, and then we get a little break when, you know…  we don’t have any leverage to let go of those things. So, the leverage comes from practice and from getting in touch with what you really want in life and going for it.

And as I say that, we go back to the question before. “My grace is sufficient for you. My strength,” the strength of your own inner self, “is made perfect” in the fact that your ego can’t do anything to help itself.

Like Ramana Maharshi said, “Asking the mind to destroy the mind, or the ego to destroy the ego, is like asking the thief to be the policeman. There’ll be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.”

But one has to go deeper than that to be, and the going deeper, that is the grace. Recognizing that on this level we can’t do very much to help ourselves, but by going deeper and turning within, we can achieve anything we want.

And in terms of the addiction issues and those kinds of things it’s very, one of the most important things is to have a sangha or a satsang, a group of people that you can open up with, that you can listen to and be heard by, and share the path with people who are trying to do the same thing. And that’s the power of satsang or sangha.. That’s very important. The company you keep. If you’re going to hang out with people shooting heroin 24-7-365, you know, it’s, if there’s any part of you that wants to do that, you’ll be doing it. So, you have to take yourself out of those situations and give yourself a chance to breathe. And that comes from inner strength, from listening to your own inner heart. And that heart is full of grace as it is. And so, when we turn to that, we tune into the grace, which gives us strength. It’s not the ego itself, so to speak, but it’s, it’s a deeper part of us.

And you need a lot of help. I had lots of help. I had people who loved me and cared for me. And even though I was a total asshole, they seemed to love me. I don’t know why they did. They do.

Thank you.

Yeah. Take care,

Q: I feel like you’ve been answering my questions all afternoon, but I’m going to ask and it’s it’s about pain. I started a meditation practice because I didn’t like my own mind.

Right.

And then everything came up and in that meditation, everything came up and I was so surprised. And so what happened is, as trauma material came up, it got very deeply embedded in the body. And this is about 10 years ago and it’s still there and it’s, it’s painful. It’s very tight tissues, you know, kind of a chronic pain syndrome, so that I can sleep, walking, sitting, lying down, everything is painful. The pain never leaves. So, this is the thorn in the side and…

Sounds like a whole thornbush.

Yeah, and I’m as I keep trying to work with it and not be defeated by it, I think so much of the people who face tremendous physical pain. I think of Ram Dass. I’m just astounded by these people because I have a lot of pain, bodily pain. And so, I just wanted to hear you speak about your experiences with those people. I’m just astounded that they could do it, you know, or what, what were they doing? How did they work through it? How did they not get trapped? And when this leaves, then I can do this, but there, you’re in it. That’s what it is. I’m just so curious.

Well, in some sense, it’s because they surrendered to it completely. They weren’t trying to, they gave up wishing that it wasn’t there and hoping for a different future, not to say they didn’t. Ram Dass had massage, he had, you know, he had bodywork, all this stuff he had, but it wasn’t, he wasn’t trying to make something happen. Inside, he had surrendered to the situation and was dealing with it all the time, letting go and expanding through it. You’re getting caught in that contraction.

Right. The contraction, which seems to grab my attention. I have a very wonderful therapist and we’re working through it. I think to me, you know, I hear, I hear letting go, letting go.

Are you aware of your pain right this second?

Yes. I was just talking. Yeah. Yeah. It’s there, but as you’re talking, I think your mind is not on it at that very second. It comes back to it.

Yeah. It’s more dual it’s there and then also I’ve been working. It’s not like it’s taken over my life.

Well, that’s, that’s very, that’s a great accomplishment. So, you just have to recognize that. There’s a lot that goes on around pain. I’m not an expert on this. There are people who really know how to deal with this stuff by the way and you can seek those people out, who, they really know how to deal, how to work with this kind of issue. But you’ll see if you notice that a lot of the times you’re just more stuck in, like, “It’ll always be like this. I never going to get over it. This is it…” Oh, it, you know, that kind of thinking. And that adds, that adds like a slap in the face to the pain, you know?

I think so, because I noticed that I kept saying to myself, “I can’t stand this,” but it’s been years. I’ve already stood it.

And recognize that strength that you have. That’s extraordinary. Yeah, really. If I stubbed my toe in the morning, it’s over for the day. I’m finished.

I do think that that is part of it. Instead of getting rid of something, it’s like building some other, recognizing some other capacity.

Yeah. You know, one time Mrs. Tiwari had terrible… my Indian mother and father, she had terrible diabetes. Terrible. And she couldn’t take insulin for it because as a good Indian wife… Mr. Tiwari had been told to be a fruitarian by Maharaji, so he gave up all grains and stuff like that, so she also did, and because she didn’t eat certain foods, she wasn’t able to do insulin. So, her blood sugar was like…

So, she had neuropathy, she had hands of stone and feet of stone, you know, and one time she was lying there, writhing in pain. And I just said, “Ma, are you okay?”

And she looked at me. She said, “Machine broken. Inside, ok.”

I’m just amazed by that. That is so inspiring. That is, I used to be depressed by stories like that because I’d be like, well, they can do it and I can’t, now I’m more just amazed.

But you’re doing it already. You are. It hasn’t killed you. It hasn’t destroyed you. It hasn’t stopped you from living. You’re doing it. You can probably go deeper.

You know, I went with the, up to this place called Chitrakoot with the Tiwaris. It’s a place where Ram and Sita and Lakshman live when they were exiled from the kingdom. And there’s an incredible mountain. What’s it called? Kamadgiri, I’ll look it up. Big mountain. And there’s like hundreds of these steps, each one is like a foot high, up to walk, up to the top of the mountain. So, me and Mr. Tiwari and Mrs. Tiwari, we were walking, and Mrs. Tiwari, she, she went up that mountain, like it was sliding downhill. She left us in the dust and we like, looked at each other. “What?”

You know, she had this ability to overcome with her inner strength. Because this was a very Holy place. And she, she entered this, you know, she got into a very open, juicy hearted space and that strength from her heart carried her right up the mountain, even though her body was broken. It’s amazing. So, yeah, there’s… it won’t always be like this, like it is right this second. Every second is new. And the more your mind, the subtler your awareness gets, you notice you really, it changes the way you live in your body. It changes the way you inhabit the body and what you feel and how you feel what you feel.

So there’s a lot that you can do to, to affect the way that you exist in the body, a tremendous amount that you can do.

I think it has made me see that my body is a story. You know, we think of a story as a mental thing?  My body believes some hope, believes something about the world or how people are in the world. That is not true in an absolute sense, but that’s very helpful to hear about these… hear about Ram Dass, hear about people who really need these things and without it having to go away, without it having to go away. That’s what’s amazing to me, without it… Ram Dass was not cured of his stroke.

No, no, not at all.

So anyways, I just wanted to get another little… Thank you so much.

Okay. All the best

Q:  First of all, a lot of us were supposed to be in Maui last week with you and even though we’re missing that, it’s nice to have all of the virtual meetings with you and it’s been such a, such a pleasure. And thank you so much for doing that for all of us, for one thing.

And the other thing is I really enjoy like the beginning when you do like the Hanuman prayer or whatever it is, and the end when you do your, “We’re trying to live in a good way,” and, and all that, it’s kind of like, to me, it feels like a little bit of a guided meditation.

Do you have any like, longer (versions) of those meditations? Are you planning to do any of those in any way? I know it’s not really your thing. I know chanting is your thing, but I’m just wondering.

The short answer is probably not, no. I don’t think I do. You never know, but yeah, I don’t think of it in that way, so there wouldn’t be more of that coming, but you never know.

Yeah. I mean it’s, yeah, it isn’t a sense of visualization or meditation. Yeah. In some way, sure.

Okay. Well, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, be well, I can hear the ocean. I hear the ocean in the distance. Good.

Bye. Bye.

Q: Hello, I have a question. You talk about these big Gurus, these grandmasters that you have met that have already left the body. And my question is, is there still those kind of Gurus left, there are still in their bodies?

On one hand, those Gurus were never in their bodies. They only look that way to us. They were never identified with their bodies at all. Like we do. So, it’s, it’s like, you can’t really talk about it like that, but yes, there always are masters on the planet. They’re always available and they’re always doing just what they have to be doing all the time. We’re always, and we have, each of us has a lineage that we’ve been a part of for lifetimes. We all have a Guru, but most of us don’t see that outside of us at this point. Yeah, so the saints are always here and when we’re supposed to meet them, we meet them. They’re running the show. We’re not, but that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t be actively, you know, doing what we can do to overcome our limitations and open ourselves up because the real guru is always within us as our true nature, as our own soul. They know that. We don’t. That’s the only difference. It’s a big difference, but it’s the only difference.

So, all we have to do is, if we found our own true nature, then we we’d be one with every being in the universe, including all the great masters, but it’s not up to us to find them. They find us when we need to be found. So, if that’s not happening the way we think it should happen, well, what are we going to do?

No? Stop living?

“That’s it. I’m off the path. I’m only watching TV from now on that’s it, Goodbye.”

Try it. You know, that won’t work either. So, we’re always where we are and who we are. And we want to be as open as we can. We want to be free of our limitations. We want to dance. We want to have fun. We want to have joy in life, so we better work on it because that’s our job.

And you live in New Zealand for Christ’s sake. What was that beach I went to with the black sand? Oh my God. So beautiful. My favorite place.

I’m actually stuck in isolation here because I’m from here originally.

That’s a great place to be right now.

How long do you have to be in isolation?

We’re getting a press conference today, later in the afternoon. So right now we’ve been in isolation for six weeks already. Maybe we’ll be free to move this week, which will be exciting.

Where are you, in Auckland?

No, I’m one and a half hours from Auckland in the Coromandel Peninsula. It’s a town called Themes.

Wow. Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I hope you get out of the house.

Thank you.

All right. Anything else?

That was all I had today.

Okay. Take good care.

Q: I actually didn’t expect to, you know, get to speak cause I, yeah. Okay. Hi. I am a huge fan…

You don’t look that huge.

I’m tiny. I actually think, I have a lot of things to ask because there are a lot of things I would like to know. But living as a tiny Yogi, I sometimes get a lot of epiphanies on my path and sometimes it’s a little confusing between the mind and what the universe is saying. So, the balance between the two becomes a little difficult. Sometimes I feel it’s my head telling me things and not the universe, because I do feel like I understand a certain sense of energies, but sometimes I get, I don’t want to be cocky about it and be like, “I know it”. But you know, it’s just a little difficult to find that balance. So, is there something that you would, you know, advice?

Well, do what you want.

That’s there, but you, you know, I think that’s true. Sometimes it feels like maybe it’s not right. Maybe I’m just overthinking it. Maybe I’m getting too into it. My parents get scared. They’re worried I might just go off somewhere and meditate for hours, make it sound like it’s a bad thing.

Do what you want. I think it comes down to that. You have to find out what you want, what you want inside, what you really want. Don’t… your thoughts, your understandings of the universe…

Do what you want. Find out what you want. Do it, go for it. Don’t look for messages. It’s all bullshit. That’s your mind interpreting things according to its own subjective version. Listen to yourself. Listen to yourself. Calm your ass down. Listen to yourself, calm down, find out what you want and be that person be that way. Do that. Go for that.

Because if you really get a message from the universe, you will know. You know? You’ll be on your back, on your face, on the floor. So don’t worry about that. All this is thought stuff. I want you to feel, feel, feel who you are, feel what you are, find out what you… and then, then you’ll begin to see how you stop yourself from doing what you want. Then you’ll be able to get rid of something. All the things that you stop you from being who you are and what you really want.

You know, I’m very, I’m very dull and, and insensitive. I don’t get messages from anybody, but I follow my heart. I started singing because I knew that’s what I had to do. Right. I didn’t need messages from outer space.

But did you question it?

No. Why would I question it? It’s what I wanted.

Oh, wait a second. You mean you’re not supposed to want what you want?

It sometimes, you know, gets a little… there’s too many thoughts sometimes.

Well, you know, there’s a lot going on between your ears, but don’t listen.

That’s true.

Feel. Feel. Slow down and feel.

I mean, that’s something that is a process as well, I’m learning it as I go. So, I’m trying to find that balance between life and the spiritual space. I don’t know.

There’s no balance.

Is it always chaos?

On one level, yeah, sure. But on another level, it’s all fine. The chaos is in your mind, in the way you see the world. That’s your subjective programs, only. Feel. Get out of your head and feel.

Thank you. I will definitely try doing that more.

Yeah. I mean, love lives within you already as who you really are. So, you’re not gonna find anything outside that’s going to be that, that’s going to be you, who you really are. It’s all within you already. And if you don’t trust yourself, if you don’t let yourself follow your heart and go through life in the best way that you can for you, where will you find yourself?

It’s inside of you already. It’s you looking out of your eyes right now.

You don’t cry too much, you’ll break your glasses.

They’re big glasses.

Take care of yourself. Okay. Be good to yourself. Okay.

Thank you much.

Bye-bye.

Q: Hey there, Krishna Das. I’m just curious if you ever encountered Maynard Ferguson.

No, I never met Maynard. Ram Dass knew him well in the old days, of course. He used to live at Millbrook with them too, taking an acid all the time and playing trumpet. But did he play trumpet or flugelhorn?

Flugelhorn and trumpet, but he also lived in and taught in India for a while.

Oh, I didn’t know that.

And I think there was, I think because of that connection, I was just curious. Thank you so much for all you do.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Q: So, my question is about, kind of, children. And I think one is the concern when, when you have spoken over these past weeks about the finding your own Dharma and surrender and allowing life to give you the path and you see happiness around and see love around, I think my concern is, as parents, we tend to set a path for our kids, and sometimes, my concern is, by trying to do that, maybe you kind of derail them from what their own path is. You try to kind of set them into specific schools. You try to guide them through, but kind of the concern sometimes comes to the point of, if she supposed to listen to her heart, how can I help her and not kind of, impose my own goals and aims into her?

Well, if you want your children to listen to their hearts, then you should listen to your heart. And then they’ll figure out, they’ll know what that means. You know, children, my theory, I’ve never heard this from anybody else, I don’t think, but my theory is that we absorb how our parents see themselves and then we learn to see ourselves that way. We don’t see ourselves necessarily the way our parents see us. We see ourselves the way our parents saw themselves. So, the best thing you can do for your kids is to work on yourself, of course. For anybody, that’s the best thing you can do. And then from that work on yourself, you extend to others the best you can do. You can give what you can give. You know, each, every being comes in with their own particular karmic load and they’re going to have to live out their own lives. And the best thing we can do is make sure that they know that they’re loved regardless of our own bullshit. We love them. You know?

And then just try to do the best we can to help them find the strength to live a good life for themselves. You know, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. And especially in these days, it’s very obvious. Nobody knows what’s going on. So, you know, the way we treat our children, the way we see our children that has, they, they absorb our own, our stuff, you know? And a lot of times you might look at your kids and you say, where did they get that stuff from? And then go, “Oh, I recognize that.”

So yeah. You know, set a good example rather than try to teach. Trying to teach kids is, you know, the first thing they’re going to do is go the other way. But if you set an example of openness and love and caring, then whatever they do, they’ll feel at ease, they’ll learn to feel at ease within themselves. That’s the best. I think that’s a great thing we can give our children, to feel okay about themselves, but how can we do that if we don’t ourselves?

So, in some ways more of us in the world now are dealing with these issues in a, on the path, so to speak. Whereas when our parents, you know, they didn’t have any, they weren’t, they, they weren’t exposed to the path and they didn’t know about a path. They had no idea what might be possible. We might be beginning to have an idea of what’s possible in life.

And, you know, if we let our kids know that, then regardless of where their stuff takes them, they might have that knowing within themselves, too. But you know, I’m not an expert in anything. And this is one area that, you know…

My daughter taught me a lot, you know. I remember one time I came into the room and I was walking through the kitchen and she was sitting in the kitchen and I saw there were dishes in the sink, and I know she was supposed to have done them. And I was in a really bad mood. And I said, “There’s dishes in the sink!”

And she looked up at me like, you know, like, “Who are you?”

You know, she didn’t take it personally at all. She was just like, “Is there something wrong with you?”

It was great. So, kids know a lot more than they know. They know. So, they see us when we don’t know we’re being seen. And so, it’s good to honor that part of them too, you know, that they know a lot.

And remember, it’s not your responsibility to live their lives. You just do the best you can for them and with them. But they have their own lives to live, just like we do. You know?

And when I went away to India and I thought I was never coming back, I didn’t tell my parents that. Yeah, gone. You know?

And then when my mother was gonna come to India, I said something, she called me on the phone, long story, but she said, “I want to come to India.”

I said something to her that if my daughter said that to me, I would lock her in a closet. I said… She said she wants to come down. I said, “I have to ask my guru.”

She went, “What? What do you mean?”

“I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye.”

You know, so, and of course Maharajji, I already knew she was coming. He told me that that morning before, So, so good luck.

Q: I’m so excited to be able to speak to you on a one. It’s such a blessing. I came to hear you at the San Francisco satsang, I think about five years ago. And it was amazing. It was the best thing. I was on a date, but I’m no longer together with that person, but that was the deal.

Okay. That’s good. So you can join my band. I see you play guitar.

That’s my partner’s. I try. Okay. So, I yeah, yeah. I, over the years I suffered from really great anxiety and I’ve been doing meditation for a long time, well, TM for quite a long time now, and I I’ve been chanting a lot, like since I’ve been listening to you, I’ve been chanting a lot over the last… actually since lockdown and I’ve been really focused on it, and I’m finding that the chanting, late last night when I went to bed, it was really loud in my head. Like I was laying there trying to fall asleep and it was just really loud, over and over and over. And I was like, Oh my goodness. Like, I don’t, I don’t want to feel anxious about it. So, I kind of breathe and try to relax into it and just trusted it’s going in my head for whatever reason, but I wondered, I wondered if, if, because I don’t want it to have detrimental effect. I want it to, obviously I hear myself, I want, but I’m, I’m thinking, I guess I’m wondering when you first started chanting a lot, did you have that experience and did it feel overwhelming sometimes in your, in your mind?

First of all It’s in your mind that the chanting is really going on in the first place. If it wasn’t going on in your mind, it wouldn’t be coming out of your mouth, so just because you close your mouth doesn’t mean that the chant is going to stop. In fact, they say there’s a, a level where the chants, all these chants are always going on and as we access that level and enter into it, our, we get absorbed into it. It allows us to release the anxieties and the fears and the thoughts and everything.

So yeah, the thing about falling asleep also, is many of us have a lot of anxiety about falling asleep when we can’t sleep, and it never occurred to us, why don’t we just sit up and meditate for a while? As soon as you sit up and meditate, you’ll fall over on your face sleeping. So, but we lie there and we’re like, ah, yeah, I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep. You know,  yeah, just sit up. Cause you want to fall asleep, just sit up and say, “Okay, now we’ll meditate.”

You’ll be asleep in two seconds.

But the whole idea of the chanting, of course, again and again, is when you release whatever you’re thinking or feeling and come back to the chant again and again and again and again and again, and it gives you, you develop the ability to do that and it starts to happen automatically over time.

So, anything you’re feeling, fear, anxiety, et cetera, et cetera, becomes something to let go of. So, you even said you didn’t want it to be… what’d you say, detrimental or something? There’s one thing in this universe that’s a hundred percent sattvic and pure and positive, it’s the name of God. You know, your ego might panic a little bit because you, “What will happen if I do this? What will happen? And it’s too strong…”

Too strong for what? Just let go. You know? Because it’s your own name you’re chanting. It’s not something else. It’s the name of who you really are. So you have nothing to fear except fear itself, so to speak. There’s no, that’s just another passing emotion, which sooner or later you get to recognize. So, you can let go and come back.

But the sleep thing, I know a lot of people have a lot of anxiety. And sometimes when I wake up in the night, I can’t fall asleep.  You get a little tense, you try and try to fall asleep, sit up, watch TV, you know, play your partner’s guitar. Turn on the amp at 3 in the morning. No problem. You get back into bed.

So. Keep repeating the name. That’s all. As much as possible in whatever situation. It doesn’t have to be out loud. Your lips don’t have to move. They can or not, but, and sooner or later, you’re, sooner or later, the part of you, that’s always reacting and interacting with stuff, that part of you just thins out and you’re sitting more deeply in yourself. You’re sitting in the Name. And it goes on and you’re at ease. So just keep letting go. That’s, that’s the main, that’s the, that’s the instruction and keep coming back to the chant and it doesn’t have to be out loud. Sing. Lie in bed and imagine you’re singing with millions of people, because you

But nothing bad can come from chanting.

This friend of mine once wrote to me and she said she and her husband were getting divorced. I said, “Why?”

She said, “Well, you know, He’s he’s really not into your chanting.”

I said, “Yeah. So?”

“Well, you know, I play it all around the house. It’s in the kitchen, the living room, in the bathroom, the bedroom, the hallway, the garage.” And it’s one of those speaker systems that played it.

I said, “Turn it the fuck off and save your marriage. What’s wrong with you?”

So, they’re still married. So, if you want to get rid of him, start playing the chants all day in the house on the sound system. But if not, keep it inside.

I think he’s getting quite into actually and won’t admit it. I think he is. I have one more question if you don’t mind, is that okay?

Okay.

I wanted to, I just wanted to ask you what, when you were named Krishna Das, how did, how did that come about, that particular name and how did it feel to you?

It felt horrible. You know, we were, Maharajji is Hanuman and we were immersing ourselves in this, in the Ramayana and the Ramcharitmanasa, the story of Rama. And it was in a Hanuman temple and everybody had Das names, you know, which is, Hanuman was the servant… Ram Dass, this Das and that Das you know? So, Maharajji had taken the keys to Ram Dass’s car away and given them to me and he said, “You’re the driver. And Ram Dass is a Saint. He has to go on the public transportation, but you’re the driver. You have to drive the car.”

So, for some long period, like six months, my name was Driver, you know? So, I had written in my diary that morning, “Well, I guess I’ll always be ‘driver.’”

I wanted an Indian name like all the other people. So that morning I get to the temple and I get called into the room and Maharajji looks at me. He says, “Arjun Nay, Krishna, Nay, Krishna Das.”

I said, “Krishna Das? What about Ram? What is the story here?” You know?

And he laughed. He said, “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Hanumanji served Krishna too.”

So that’s how I got my name.

Thank you so much.

Thanks so much. And I look forward to starting the course with you on Wednesday.

Wonderful, very good. Take care.

Q: So, I want to tell you, I love you. I’m gonna tell you why I love you. And then I want to ask you a question.

All right. Skip the first two. Thank you.

No, no, I can’t because it does, it hinges on the other ones. Well, I guess it doesn’t really. So, I just noticed the other day that we’re a lot of, like, in a way, except… So, it’s weird. Like I met Ram Dass when I was 20-something. My version was in paper, right? “Be Here Now.” And that was kind of cool. Totally, my mind exploded, so like, when you say your heart exploded, when you knew that what you were looking for existed, when you met him.

I knew that too, but instead of going off to India and try, cause I didn’t realize that Maharajji, I mean, this is much later, it was like 1990 something when, when I discovered him, but I was in the same kind of state. And then instead of running over to India to try to figure out if this person was still around or whatever, which I don’t know if it said, you know, in the books or whatever, I was raising my son cause it was, I was young, you know, I was young father.

And so then I, I got busy doing that, raising him and then I let it go for a long, long time until I had like a midlife crisis. Eventually my son had signed a lease when he was 23. And at that time, I figured what was the point of me being here in the, in the, you know, being married and everything. So, I left my wife and that was really crazy. So, but that led me to you actually.

I started seeing a younger girl and, which ended up being a disaster, but not all of it was a disaster because she took me to Kashi Ashram in Sebastian, Florida, where I met, I saw the big statue of Maharajji was there and I didn’t know what it was, but my, my heart exploded on like, like an atom bomb, where I’m having some visions of him in my car and things like this.

And I eventually left her, but not before, cause I wanted to know more. It was before I, before I found you, because I wanted the soundtrack to whatever this was that I was experiencing. And I, I didn’t even realize when I went to Kashi that I was, that it was Maharajji that was that, that I was even looking at in the, in the murti there. And so, I ended up finding the soundtrack, which was you. And then from there, I I’ve listened to all your podcasts. It’s been amazing, like, so, so thank you. And it’s been, like it’s really beautiful what you have done, because now I’m back with my wife. I chant every day. I bought a harmonium. I sing along. I do all these things. It’s, you have made such an incredible impact on my life for just the last three years or so that this has happened. My question is this, do you, do you have any ties with Kashi at all? Like, do you know who Ma is?

Yeah, I was with her when she first got started seeing people, but I left that situation long before, long ago. Yeah.

Yeah. I read her book that just came out, “How God Found Me.”  And I was like, wow. I knew that there was a connection there, but I didn’t realize what level. And that was, that was curious to me. And then I was thinking like, if you ever came down, I would love to know if you come down because I would love to see you in person.

So, yeah, I haven’t been, I was there once not too long ago to visit a friend who was dying, but I don’t go there very often.

I just want to just say thank you. And I love you for everything that you have done for me. It’s, I can’t express it in words, how grateful I am, and you don’t even know me, but I hope everybody gets this from you because its beautiful.

Thank you. Take care.

Q: Hi, can you hear me?

I can hear you. I can’t see you.

No. It’s really early in the morning in Australia and I am not fit to be seen. And I’m also whispering so many early in the morning. I’m whispering so my neighbors don’t hear. Oh, okay. Yeah.

They’ll catch us together.

Thank you so much for your service Krishna Das, it’s meant in a lot, and I don’t know, I have a soup of thoughts and emotions, and I’m hoping a question kind of makes itself clear. I guess, you know, Maharajji grabbed me a couple of years ago and it was a big shock because, you know, I was raised Jewish, in fact, so the idea of a guru was, you know, went up against the conditioning a lot and it was a big shock, but I, you know, felt this just, you know, these kind of supernatural big experiences. And yeah, my spiritual path started getting pretty crazy and lots of, really out-there experiences that I wasn’t looking for, really big explosive spurts, spiritual experiences that disrupted my life more, you know, it was like, like I was on acid when I wasn’t, you know and, and I got into some unwittingly, very dangerous situations around some very dangerous spiritual people. And I understand that you may have had some similar experiences, people that use their siddhis to manipulate me. And I, you know, someone, I was, I was in a chanting group and someone in that group, I won’t go into too much, but I was assaulted, you know, and stalked for a long time. And the, and the sangha responded just terribly, you know, people, you know, people just said, well, we can’t believe you. We don’t know if it’s true or not. You know, it was this very regressive kind of response. And I’ve had a lot of really frightening spiritual experiences too, which I wasn’t looking for. You know? I’ve been on this path to save my life, basically, you know, I had a drug addiction that was really, really taking me out 10 years ago. So, you know, it was like, this has never been a hobby for me, the spiritual path. It’s always been my lifeline. There’s no option, you know? And I found in a lot of this, I feel more separate, ironically, you know, a lot of, a lot of the issues, like I am a better person. I’m more honest, I have more integrity and I’ve never felt more separate from the world, really, including all the sanghas that I’ve been to, you know? And then, you know, there’s this feeling so separate because my life is so devoted to knowing God and to knowing the truth and it alienated a lot of the people that I’d known in my life, you know, because it was, I was on this path. It was just so different. And then I found, I don’t know how to be in the world. You know? A lot of my interest in the world dropped away. Not that I don’t have desire of course, too, it’s just that I haven’t, I haven’t been able to meet that, that edge, you know, that intersection of spirit and matter. I, in a way, in a way I’ve done better in the world of spirit than I have in the world of matter, you know?

But it’s been, you know, it’s been such a difficult journey. Ram Dass said to me, I spoke to him. I was lucky enough to speak to him. And he said, “That is a very difficult incarnation.” And you know, it’s, I think on the back of that, I lost faith in Maharajji, you know I actually got very angry at Maharajji that under his auspices, so many horrific things had happened.

And let me say that the horrific things that happened really mirrored a lot of the childhood experiences too. And I don’t say I don’t have any responsibility for, you know, on some level I must’ve known people were not, you know, I assume that there was some acting out of the past, but you know, I’ve been so furious at Maharajji and still he’s on my puja table, still he’s everywhere, but it’s like, I lost, I started feeling like God was punishing me, you know? And I realized this is a sort of an issue that humanity has, but I haven’t known how, what does, what does faith mean and how to reconcile with Maharajji? And I turned away for a while. You know, I still would pray to him, but I wouldn’t, you know, ask him anything because I felt like, “You led me down the garden path. How could you?”

At times I felt like maybe he was giving me the grace of teaching me how to love God in a world where God has so many faces, including the face of darkness. But I have been lost. And I don’t know who to ask because you know, the idea of an astral guru who’s, you know, again, I know the guru’s inside, but you know, Maharajji made himself known. Anyway, I’m rambling, but I think you get the, there’s a question in there in that soup somewhere.

I guess so. As far as Maharajji goes, He’s said this many times, He said,  “Once I take hold of your hand, I never let go. Even when you let go of mine.”

So, there’s no question of whether you’re angry at him or mad at him or, we always let go of his hand. That’s what we do, but he never lets go of us. So, he’s within us. And also he was in a body for awhile. But it’s within us that we feel that, who he is, it’s not outside of us. And it’s you who are making distinction between spirit and matter, or the world and the spiritual world and the daily world. That’s your mind, that’s your, that’s your thing there. You need more love. That’s all. You need to find that love inside of you and you need to allow your heart to embrace everyone and everything little by little, but first you have to find it in yourself a little bit, and it’s not an emotion, it’s not a passing fancy, it’s not a particular state of mind. It’s the interconnectedness of all of us, regardless of who we think we are, our souls are one. And when we move towards that place we start to release our traumas and our, our subjective versions of what’s going on. And yes, there are a lot of hungry people out there and many of them are gurus, so-called Gurus. It’s okay. They have to pay for that. You don’t. All of us will bear the fruit of our karmas. It’s not up to us to judge others. It’s only up to us to do the best we can to live in a good way. Nothing else matters, what other people do. And so some, some surrender is required, you know, relaxing of your heart. And you can’t look for answers. There are no answers. There’s only letting go and that, too. Let go. You owe it to yourself, not to anyone else, to find that love within you. It’s not a thing. It’s who you are. It’s what… It’s where we’re at home within ourselves.

Did you find that, I found the longer I’ve been on the path, which is sort of between 10 and 20 years now, that I’m getting kind of to the more, the core wounds, which is, it’s gotten a little bit harder in that sense. And, you know, as the layers kind of have been peeled off and so, you know, getting to who I am, it’s like walking through those years in a way.

Once again, let go. And find a way to let go. If you need to talk to people, if you need to do counseling or therapy, if you need to do… whatever you have to do to get the strength to release that stuff. You don’t have to understand it. You don’t have to digest it. You need to release it. And it’s no, and there will always be shadows that arise and are our only option in the long run is to release those things.

But sometimes it’s hard to, to do that. So, some daily practice of releasing is very important. And releasing doesn’t mean pushing away. It doesn’t mean trying to understand. It doesn’t mean reading about it. It doesn’t mean reliving it. It means releasing. Period. So, whatever it is you’re thinking, whatever story you’re telling yourself about what your life is or what it isn’t, and you can still let go of that. And when you can’t let go anymore, you will be love, reality, truth, being, the self, the one, Buddha nature. But until that moment, you can let go.

Yeah. And I’m guessing it’s not the job of the guru to stop.

The job of the guru is to allow us to live, to survive our karmas, which they do. You still have to live through them. Ram Dass had to live through that stroke.

Yeah.

It was the grace of Maharaji that allowed him to overcome all the negative aspects of the stroke and turn it into the path for him, which he did. There’s nobody to blame for our own states of mind except ourselves. And even that you can’t do it, because all of that is also fruition of karmas coming into this moment. Let go again and again and again. Breathe, relax, take it easy, let go and find out how you can become kind to yourself.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Q: Hey KD, thank you so much for your time today. You know, I know Maharajji has been a good part of your life and I just want to say thank you for being you, because you have really shifted my life and in very very profound ways. So, thank you for being you.

Thank you. I tried to be other people, but I failed.

I understand that. So, my question is, I guess in yoga philosophy, we’re like in the Kali Yuga, right? And here we are in this very unprecedented time. And you know, a lot of masters have said chanting can be one of the best practices when we’re in these dark or challenging times as you’ve been talking about this whole Chai and Chat. I guess, in your opinion, there seems to be a lot of confusion in spiritual circles. Like some people think, “Okay, we’re coming out of the Kali Yuga. We’re going into this Aquarian age where things are going to be bright and shiny, but also as a kirtan singer myself, I’m curious about like any special deities, particular mantras that you are finding helpful, especially right now, you know? I know it’s all one like this, right? All one, all one. But yeah. You know, like Durga has a certain energy. Shiva has a certain energy. The Gayatri has energy.

I don’t feel that way. These are all the names of love. These are all the names of what lives within us as who we are. Okay. Already. It’s not something else. It’s not somewhere else. It’s within us. All these names lead to the same place. They’re the names of the same place. All these so-called deities are forms of our own true nature. You could, whatever you sing is fine. It doesn’t make any difference. Sing what you’d like. If you think about it, you’re not doing it. So, I would just do it.

Okay. I know. Cause Jordan calls it my squeeze box. He says, bring the squeeze box.

Yeah, I really, I don’t, I don’t know what I’m doing. I follow my heart, but it seems to be semi useful. So, I keep doing it.

And how about the Kali Yuga?

How about it? What a fun, what a fun ride.

Do you feel we’re at the end?

How the fuck do I know? I can’t find the bathroom in the middle of the night. How am I going to find the end of the Kali Yuga.

Certain scriptures say certain things.

You ain’t going to, neither one of us are going to be here when, and if it actually ends, right?

Okay. Some people say it’s ending now.

Yeah. Well maybe it’s already over. Who knows? Nobody knows. And the people who know, they don’t say. So, let’s put it that way.  It’s not necessary. That’s just, that’s just fear mongering or an attempt to control your own trip and manipulate your emotions. Just fucking live. Do what you have to do to be a good person, treat other people the way you want to be treated and the Kali Yuga will take care of itself.

And I’ll second what Jordan said. I created a watch party from one of your kirtans online. People found you that don’t even know you. So…

When they, when they find out who I am, tell them to tell me.

Q: Hi. Hi. How’s it going?

Good.

Thank you so much for everything. It’s been really fantastic.

Wonderful. It’s been really gracious with all you guys and hey, you know, it’s an honor and a privilege to be able to give back and yeah, I’m looking forward to taking the course and so is another friend of mine. She’s on here too. And it’s a privilege to be able to give back during this time to you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks for doing what you guys do. So, so yeah, so my question was let’s see, let me take a breath here. I’m a little excited. I get a little ahead of myself. The caffeine caught up with me.

All right. Drink more. It’s good for you. You get a point where it’s just mellows out.

I was scared to drink more than I had.

After the nervous breakdown it slows down.

So, my question is, have you ever sang the Gayatri mantra music to a melody?

I might’ve sung it a few times, but I don’t really know it very well.

It’s not something that we were exposed to in India when I was there. I mean, we knew about it. We know about it. And I, a lot of people do sing it and it’s supposed to be one of the big time mantras. But like I said, it wasn’t something that came to us naturally in our time in India through whatever we were doing. So, it’s not something I do very often. It’s  lovely. I mean, it’s a great mantra, obviously. Very powerful.

Yeah. I keep thinking it would sound really good with the percussion and…

I’m sure. Who did I hear did it? Maybe Deva and Mitten do a version of it that’s very nice. I’m not sure.

Q: Thank you for doing everything that you do here. Well, I don’t have really any question of my own. I just want to hear a little bit about Hanumanji. If you could tell one or two sentences that would make me happy. I don’t need anything else.

Hanumanji is…

Maharajji used to say, “Who is Hanuman?”

And we’d give him all the, you know, the stock answers, or the Son of the Wind, the servant of Ram, all that.  And he’d say “Nay, Hanumanji is the Ram Kisvas.” He’d say, “Hanuman is the breath of Ram.”

The breath of Ram. He said, “He’s not a monkey. He’s the breath of Ram.”

And a very powerful statement, you know, in the gospels, the word used for “Holy spirit” in the gospels is the word for “breath.” And it became, in his “Holy breath.” It was translated later as “spirit” because of the, who knows why, but there was the issues of the, the church wanting to control people’s spirituality and take it out of the body and make it just, you know, somewhere else so they could sell it and own people. But that’s not what Jesus was talking about. Holy breath. And Maharajji said, “Hanuman, Krishna and Christ are the same. All the same.”

The breath of God. The breath is what brings life. It’s the connection that keeps us alive and keeps our souls alive. So, Hanuman is that. And being that, that breath removes obstacles and allows us to find out our true nature and, you know… the temple, the Maharaji made up in the mountains, Kainchi was originally what is called now, Shri Neem, Karoli Baba Temple… Hanuman Temple and Ashrams, but that’s not what he called it. You see, they had to rebuild the arch and the bridge over the river because they were falling down. And when they rebuilt it, they called it that. He called it the Shri Advaita… that’s the secret, “Advaita,” the nondual destroyer of suffering. Nondual. All one. This is where Maharajji lived. This is who he is. The nondual destroyer of suffering.

When Ram asks Hanumanji, how do you see me? He says, “Well, when I’m identified with the body, I serve you. When, if I’m identified with this with the,” I think He said, “mind” or the “soul”… “You  are the whole and I am a part. But when I know the truth, you and I are one.”

So, Hanumanji is free. Sri Hanumanji lives all the time. He is present in all. Maharajji said, “Hanuman is present in all ages and all times.”

Q: My question is about letting go. You have discussed this quite a bit. So, right now I’m in a situation where my relationship has ended and part of me knows that it is over. And part of me is clinging upon things that things might work out, things might work out and I’m realizing that it is with everything that I am attached to, not just in relationship. So, I want to know like, what is it that might make it easier for me to let it go and surrender to it?

Welcome to the club. Human, the Human Being club. You know, I don’t know if that’s the right question. What would make it easier for me? I don’t know if that’s the right question. I think probably what I would ask myself is, “What is it that I’m, why am I clinging? What am I clinging to? And why? What am I, what do I get from the relationship that I feel I don’t have? What do I get from the relationship that I feel I need that I, what do I feel, what am I missing in myself that I think I’m getting from a relationship?”

You know, my Indian father, Mr. Tiwari, was a great Yogi, married, family, world, you know, very involved in the world, headmaster of a big school, you know? So, one time I was telling him all about this woman that I was very much in love with, and he listened very patiently. And then when I’d finished going on and on and on, he finally says to me, “My boy, relationships are business. Do your business. Enjoy. But love?” He said, “Love is lasts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

Love is our true being. Love is our heart. Love is our soul. We can learn a lot from relationships about ourselves, because it’s business. It’s give and take. And I hated him for saying that. I didn’t talk to him for like, days. I was so pissed off. I mean, “What the fuck? He compares my relationship to business? What do you mean by that?” You know?

But finally I got with the program, you know, and I understood what he was saying.

You know, we’re human beings. We need relationships. We’re in relationship to everything. Some things we get involved with for lots of reasons. So, really we need to ask ourselves what do I get from that? Why am I wanting that? And also, you know, being honest with ourselves that we do want this. So what, but what is it about it that I want and why do I want it so badly? Why do I feel, you know, listen, you’re looking at a guy who had two nervous breakdowns because of relationships. I mean, totally out to fucking lunch, hallucinating, out of my mind, ready to kill myself. So, I’m talking from experience. So, it’s big time stuff. It’s really big time stuff. So, take it seriously. The whole process of being in, being out, of wanting, of not getting, all that stuff, take it seriously, but also recognize what it does to you. Why, how does this have the power to hurt me so much? What is that hole I’m trying to fill up in my heart with the stuff and when I’m not getting it, I’m in a panic? And when I have it, I would have to hold on to it? You can’t do either. You can’t hold on or you can’t let go. So, it’s just a very painful place.

It’s snowing. Is it snowing where you are?

Wow. Big snow storm here in upstate New York. Yeah, so be patient with yourself, okay? Really. Give yourself a break. If it works out, it works out. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. What we’re here to learn is how to be good to ourselves. And that’s the hardest part. We’re so uncomfortable with our feelings and looking at ourselves and seeing our stuff, but it’s okay. It’s all okay. Everything you’re feeling is, it’s not wrong. It might hurt, but it won’t always hurt.

Well, it is like there are things that I regret. Like I have always this thing going on, like if I would have done this, it would have been different. If I would have done this, it would have been different… like I’m living in the past, trying to..

Well, you know, have you thought, I don’t know what state your relationship’s in, but communication’s not a bad idea.

Yeah. I tried to talk and tried to talk to my parents and everything…

Write a letter, email, send a telegram, have flowers delivered, do whatever you feel you have to do to accomplish what you want. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. But at least you’ve given it your best shot. And next time maybe you won’t to do the same shit, you know? But if you think there’s a possibility, even if there’s no possibility, you can apologize too, and that will help your own heart. And on the other hand, it takes two to tango. So, whatever you’ve brought to the relationship, she’s also brought her stuff. Whatever you were reacting at, she was also reacting.

So, all you can do is take responsibility for your own feelings. And it’s never a bad idea to apologize for any pain you’ve caused. Period. Without wanting anything in return. Just apologize is good and to forgive for any pain that was given. That’s the best I can do.

All right. Be well.

It is snowing its ass off here. This is unbelievable. Oh, wow. Okay.

Q: Nice to kind of virtually meet you. I was just wondering, I’ve got two questions, the first one is, if you’re dedicated to your practice, will you come back and remember quicker?

Where are you going?

Every time I get lost, I come back. I get lost. I remember. When I get lost, I go, “Why is it taking me so long to come back and remember?”

That’s also a thought. You’re still lost. “Back” is when you’re not thinking, when you’re aware of your thoughts and not thinking then. And the changes, the real changes happen under the radar. We can’t be caught in evaluating how we’re doing on the path. It’s not useful because it’s all bullshit. It’s like, it’s like being on a rowboat, going down a river and thinking that the bank of the river is moving because we feel still, but it’s not like that.

So, those useless thoughts, they are not real. They’re not accurate. They have no reality at all. There’s just more stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, which we love to hear. We love to hear ourselves thinking about ourselves all the time. That’s what we do.

But I’m not very good about being disciplined. Welcome to the club. Who gives a shit? Just be yourself.

Okay.

And when you do practice, give it your best shot.

Yeah, I do. And then, then the other question I wanted to ask is, because I love Maharajji and I’ve read all the stories, but sometimes I hear the stories where he got really angry with people, and I was just wondering, is that tough love where he felt that was the best thing, you think, for that person at the time? Like to put them out?

No question about it. There was a guy who lived in Kainchi, in the village, actually from whom the land for the temple was bought. His name was Purnanand, and he had, at the time, I think he had 10 children or 12 children, and he had no job and he smoked hash all the time. So, Maharaji created a job for him, which was, every time one of the public buses came from the nearby town on the way to the next town, He would make a check on a piece of paper. “Bus came.” And for that, he was paid a certain amount of money.

Yeah.

So, one day Purnanand comes to the temple and Maharajji’s, we’re just sitting with Maharajji. It’s very easy, sweet time of the evening, very calm, and the minute He sees Purnanand, He sits up like this and it’s just watches him like this. And He starts screaming at him and Purnanand starts shaking, but it’s too late. He can’t back away. He can’t go away. So, he has to come forward to Maharajji and he puts his head down like this and Maharajji starts pounding him on the back with His fist, you know? Hitting him again like this and then Purnanand runs away. The minute he’s gone, Maharajji goes like this and he laughed.

We later found out he had just gotten paid for the month from the job that Maharajji created for him. And he had just spent all the money on a month’s worth of hashish to smoke and again, for another month, Maharajji is going to have to feed his whole family, which he’s been doing every month for years. So, for that, he got a little beating on the back because he’s an asshole, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love him.

So, he didn’t put him out of his heart?

Of course not. And he kept feeding his family and he kept, the guy kept on buying the hash. There was no, you know… and he did what had to be done for everyone’s… You know, these great beings, they only have one motivation: doing what has to be the best thing that has to be done for everyone they come in contact with. They’re not here for themselves. They’ve already made it. They’ve become the whole universe. They’re living in ecstasy and love and truth and being. They don’t want anything. They have everything. They’re only here out of compassion for us idiots who don’t know anything. Everything they do, everything a real Saint does, a Bodhi Sattva does, is for the benefit of all beings and everyone in front of them.

So, we can say that for whatever reason, Maharajji, he demonstrated that anger for that period, for that few minutes, you could, I suppose you could say that he was removing some negative karma from the guy, from the fact that from his own behaviors, you know, from essentially taking the money and not feeding his family and all this stuff, who knows. But it was rare, but Maharaji said, you know, “Never throw anybody out of your heart.”

But I think it is very helpful to watch that because if you’re not good with boundaries and putting people who aren’t so good for you, if you don’t put them out of your heart, but you do…

Exactly. Yeah, for sure. No question. Usually, we need to learn to take care of ourselves and do what’s best for us and then we can also extend that to others and do what’s best for everybody we meet.

Just back in the balance.

Yeah. Well, it’s all about learning to take care of ourselves, which is what we never were taught to do. Our parents didn’t know what that meant, you know, for the most part, right? They just lived their lives bouncing off of this and that, prisoners of their own emotions, their own worries, their own fears, and suffering and trying to get this and trying to get that. So, nobody trained us do that, but that’s what spiritual life is about; learning how to take care of ourselves and extending that care, too. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Take care.

Q: My question is, I’ve been practicing and I do yoga and all of these things, and I’m a recovering addict. And I find myself getting wrapped up in a lot of anxiety, anger, like, you know, Monday comes and I’m really good and I’m real patient and tolerant. And then as the week wears on it seems to wear down to, you know, very barely. And I’m just curious, like how do I keep that up? You know? How do I keep my patience and my tolerance up? Because, you know, I’ve noticed I’m really good in big crisis situations, but it’s like the little things in life get me, you know, really irritate me. So, I’d like to kind of, know how to, I guess, alleviate that please.

Well, once again, asking the, the mind to destroy the mind or to cure the mind, blah, blah, blah, it’s like asking the thief to be the policeman. You can’t fix it on the level that exists. You can only recognize it and let go again and again. In other words, you’re getting caught reacting to what you think is your call, your anxiety, which is already a reaction of some kind. And also, it’s probably, it’s one of those, the contributing factors to the fact that you self, you self-medicated for yourself so intensely for a period of time, not because there’s a serious wave of this you always feel underneath that pushes you around.

So, you’re always kind of positioning yourself to deal with that. But the best way to deal with it is to be aware of it and notice it, what, how you’re positioning yourself in relation to that and see how it, like, it’s always there. “Oh, okay. Showing up like this now, ah, showing up like this.” So, and letting go again and again. By noticing, you’re already not caught, even if you’re still feeling it, you’re not completely submerged in it when you notice it.

So, so when you do your practice, don’t try to have any particular type of experience. Okay? Don’t try to feel good. Don’t try to push this stuff away and create a little safe place for you. There’s no safe place except who you are already. So yeah, as you sit there or do what you do, sing, meditate, watch your breath, be with whatever comes and keep releasing.  When you get caught, release, let go. Release, get caught, release. Really that’s the deal. And by the, by training yourself to recognize and let go, you’ll find that that will happen automatically in situations off the mat, so to speak. It’s a learned response that you train yourself in. So, like something will start to happen and you’ll see it. And then you let go. The letting go, it’s not pushing it away. It’s not holding onto something else. It’s releasing. And when you release you’re automatically back for a millisecond and then you’re gone again. So, but that’s why we do practice because in that little period of practice, whatever it is, five, 10, 15, 20 minutes, whatever it is that you do, you’re working on that letting go muscle. And that muscle will continue to function and get stronger and stronger as time goes on. But the real changes happen off the radar, under the radar. You can’t sit around and evaluate, “How am I doing?”

Because when we’re really at ease we’re not like, noticing, necessarily. We only notice when we’re really fucked up. But what happens is, we feel bad less of the time, but we don’t notice it. We spend less and less time in negative States of mind. That’s one of the fruits of practice, but you don’t notice that otherwise you’re not. “Oh wow. I’m spending less and less time in negative States of mind.”

Pride is a negative state of mind.  So, forget it, you know. That’s why the real changes happen under the radar. And you just do your practice, live your life and, you know, treat other people the way you want to be treated, and you will not have a problem in the world. It’s not easy because some people are assholes. That doesn’t mean you can’t treat them the way you want to be treated. That takes strength, courage, and real dedication to the path and being who you really are. So, it can be done. And you’re doing it. Don’t sit around evaluating and then making up a story about, it’s not good enough and I’m fucking up, and it happens like this. Well who knows how it happens? Who gives a shit how it happens. Live. That’s all. Every minute is new. Don’t worry.

Q:  I just wanted to say thank you. You’ve been important in my life these last, well, I still think of the nineties as recent, but recent decades. And I really appreciate it. You doing what you do, I think, it makes it easier for us to do what we do. And it works. And now you’re going to teach me to play harmonium, and I really had to take that instead of the class coming up. But I just, I really appreciate you and thank you so much for what you do.

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Q: KD, it’s such a, such a pleasure to be here to see you. It’s been a long time. The last time I saw you perform live was in San Francisco 13 years ago, probably. Yeah. Prior to that, about 15 years ago, I was having monkey dreams. Nightmares of monkeys, and at that time, my friend, our mutual friend, Laura Farrow. I don’t know if you remember her from the Bay area, she was moving towards the end of her time in her body.

Yeah.

And I went to sit with her after you had been there to visit with her. And I had never been in her home. We’d been in a lot of other places together, but never her home. And when I entered her house and I walked up the stairs, and on either side of that hallway, pictures of Maharajji and Hanuman, a monkey God? I had no idea of him. And I’m like, is this a house of horror? So, as those days went on and she left her body, and her Memorial was planned and the venue kept getting moved someplace larger and larger and larger. You weren’t able to come, but you sent. Yeah. You, you sent somebody to perform the Hanuman Chalisa, I had, I had never heard it, but as I sat there with hundreds of people who loved her, and the majority loved Maharajji, I knew I knew the words and all of a sudden those monkey dreams started to make sense. And it was through that, that I found my way to this path and Maharajji and you and I really don’t have a question. I just wanted to express my gratitude.

Thank you. Okay. Laura was beautiful. She was just a beautiful being. Yeah,

That’s all. I love you. And I thank you.

Q: So first thank you for this. And also thanks to Nina. Nice to see you. Well, I love your stories from Maharajji, so I would like you to share with us, in India, was living with him.

Well, you know, when I, for the first year and a half or so we, we didn’t live in the temple. We stayed nearby and we’d go see him. We’d go to the temple in the morning and then we’d see him usually in the mornings and then they would feed us and we would take a nap. And then the afternoon we’d see him again early evening before we had to get on the bus to go back to Nainital, to the towns. We didn’t spend a lot of physical time with him, really, considering at that point. But all, but it was only, it was like sunbathing. There’s only so much sun you can take before you start to burn. So, he gave us just enough and then sent us away and then came back. You know, it was, he played with us a lot. He turned us away and then, yeah, it was interesting. You know, he would send people, send us all the way and then, people who weren’t really into it, would like, go find other things to do. And then he’d let us come back. And Siddhi Ma said to us once that he tested the Westerners really intensely. And I never thought of it like that, because there wasn’t anywhere I was going, except wherever he was, you know, so, but there were people who were not so into it, so they would just find other places to go on.

He didn’t teach. We just hung out with him. You know, he’d laugh. He talked to us a little bit here and there and throw food around and just talk to the Indian people. He was just hanging out, you know, it wasn’t all these things, and teachings that he gave were over years of hanging out with Him, you know, a little bit here, a little bit there, but he wasn’t a teacher. He was a Siddha and he was somebody, He’d change you from the inside out. He didn’t have to teach you anything. He just, he did it, all the changes. He’d change your karmas, He changed your whole life from the inside out. And that was fine with us. You know, all we wanted to do is sing to Him and hang out with Him. That’s all we wanted.

So, did you feel all the time his divine presence or that were like days, like you felt like you weren’t filled with that? Let’s say, a normal person.

I will never use the word “divine” because it was… divine is almost like far away, you know, high up above. It was just funky hanging out in this incredible intense, loving presence, loving space. It was love, real love, right there. Love all the time. Laughing, joking, loving giving fruit. It’s just… Our hearts just exploded, you know? And they kept exploding and we were just exactly where we wanted to be. It was no higher than thou kind of thing, you know? More Holy than thou. It was very simple, totally right here on earth. Very, very, he loves us as we are. He didn’t ask us to do anything. He didn’t try to change us. He didn’t want us, he didn’t need us to be anything else. He loves us as we are because he made us this way. So why should he bother changing where he already did?

Yeah. Okay. That’s it. Thank you. Yeah.

All right. You take care, huh?

Nice to see you.

Q: I’m grateful that your gifts have been shared to the universe. My heart has been opened and I’m grateful, so my biggest takeaway from today is, there will be lots of investigations and never an arrest. And that was powerful for me. So thank you.

Yeah. That’s because we can’t think ourselves out of a prison that’s made of thought.

Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been rolling around, and a lot of grief work and it, it’s all, it’s all tied together about getting out of your own way and allowing your ego to melt. And my mantra is, lead with your heart, lead with my heart, and that’s how I want to present myself to the universe. And so, I’m, I’ll leave you with that. And I thank you. And I sing your songs and chant. “My Foolish Heart” is my favorite at the moment.

That’s a good one.

I love that one. And Saraswati is another. Thank you. Great. So thank you. And I’m so grateful to be part of this. Thank you so much.

Q: Hi, Krishna Das. How are you? Good. I’m in Ireland. Yeah, I am. Yeah, I, I I saw you in Dublin a few months ago.

Cool, cool.

And myself, my wife, Teresa, and we actually love this. It was just such a trip to see you and to chant with you and dance with you. And we such good fun. The two of us, we were like two chant-y bunnies just, just having such fun. And so, it’s, it’s, it’s such a great privilege to speak to you. Thank you so much. My wife asked me a question tonight. She said, yeah, she said, ‘What are you going to ask? What are you going to ask Krishna Das?’

And the first question that came into my mind was what was, what was Baba’s smile like?

It was like the whole, the sun shining full-blast in your heart. You know, it was so beautiful. It was, he smiled, he laughed. He was so… He was everything. He could be so joyful and then he’d be like, gone for a second and come back. You know, it was amazing. But when he, He was so sweet to us all the time, you know, very kind.

Yeah. He, he has sweetness and love, you know, and like I wanted to see you for, to see you chant for so long. And when you came to Dublin, it was just really a privilege, a real honor.

Now, seeing you live now, even what’s happened in the world, it’s even better, you know. It’s the grace of Baba and you know Baba cracked my heart open in Kainchi in 2015. And he’s a great, he’s a gorgeous being and you know, withoutl him, I wouldn’t be here. And so it’s lovely to be in your presence and to hear your chanting and thank you very much, brother. Thank you very much.

And thanks for answering the simple question.   

Okay. So I guess that’s it for today. Hmm.

We’re always together under the umbrella of love, wherever we go.

Just to remember, that’s all we have to do.

So, take good care of yourselves and I’ll try to take care of myself.

The post Special Edition Conversations With KD May 9, 2020 appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 49 | How KD Met Robert Thurman

“It was a wild time. There were a lot of… the Westerners in India, everybody would go to see teachers, different teachers and then when the seasons changed, all these different people would meet in the cities on their way somewhere else and exchange information and this kind of stuff and then you would go off in a different direction and it was an incredible amount of beautiful seeds were planted in those days. It was amazing, just amazing.” – Krishna Das

KD: She said, I should introduce Bob. Bob and I met because both of our photos are on the wall at the post office. Most wanted. You know? And actually, I first met Bob and Nena on the ridge in Almora in 1971. Right?

Bob: Yes.

KD: 1971. Ram Das and I and a few others were on our way up further into the mountains and somehow, we didn’t have phones, we didn’t have iphones… how did we?

Bob: Well, it was by accident.

KD: It was by accident. Oh. By accident.

Bob: We were there in our van. We had a Volkswagon van at the time and these two kids in the car and we were there shopping, you know, coming down from Crank’s Ridge where we lived without Lama Govinda and you guys were there on your way to…

KD: Our way to Kausani.

Bob: That’s right, Kausani. Where you were having a retreat and there we all met. That was really fun.

KD: Yeah. I spent a rainy season up there.

Bob: You guys were all wearing white.

KD: White, my ass.

Bob: You were like, so pure. We were like, amazed at how pure you were.

KD: I wore white for maybe one minute.

Bob: And we had this car on this thing and there were a lot of hippies there at the time. And so we were actually the local ambulance. Whenever things would go wrong, we’d drive them to the hospital in Nainital.

KD: Yeah, right.

Bob: And I think that was not one of those

KD: Right, right. It was a wild time. There were a lot of… the Westerners in India, everybody would go to see teachers, different teachers and then when the seasons changed, all these different people would meet in the cities on their way somewhere else and exchange information and this kind of stuff and then you would go off in a different direction and it was an incredible amount of beautiful seeds were planted in those days. It was amazing, just amazing. “You saw who? Oh, wow. Yeah, ok. I think I’ll go over there. Ok, yeah. I’m going to go see that one and this one.” It was amazing. Yeah, and great times. And the first waves of Tibetans were coming out of Tibet at that time. Maybe not the first wave, but a very large amount of Tibetans were coming out for the first time and it was incredible. I was in Bodhgaya at that time and I remember Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa just walking down the road from Gaya, you know? It was amazing. Such a wonderful, wonderful time. So, Bob is, Bob is one of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s closest and oldest disciples, especially Western disciples. He’s know His Holiness for so many years and he’s a master of all the different schools of philosophy and when he talks, it’s, what comes, it just comes through, I mean there’s no, I don’t think he’s editing at all. It’s just pouring through and it comes from such a beautiful space. It’s extraordinary. So, I know that you’ll really appreciate that this weekend.

Bob: Well, that’s very kind of you, KD but…

KD: It’s a loving kindness weekend.

Bob: One time I introduced the Dalai Lama at Sanders Theater at Harvard when He first came to America and I gave a big thing about Avalokiteshvara and a thousand arms.

KD: Yeah, yeah.

Bob: I gave a huge thing like that, then He came out, you know, and people were applauding, you know, how after you introduce somebody and He walked and as He walked by me He paused, you know, we shook hands and He said, “Don’t over-introduce me. Don’t over-introduce me,” he said. “Don’t over-introduce me because I might disgrace you.”

All right. So, I remember that time very vividly. Actually, also at that time, the Bangladesh atrocities were going on and Russia and China were having a war and Richard Nixon locked up a lot of people in Washington Stadium. Alan Ginsburg showed up and it was like, it was kind of world crisis time, almost like now. You know, because Nixon was riding high at that time, ’71. And somehow in that place, you didn’t feel that and you felt completely like you were on the ancient pilgrimage road to Mount Kailash was what it was, so you really felt Shiva and Uma and Nanda Devi Mountain and Trishul Mountain, the Shiva and Uma Mountains were the highest mountains in India were there and a beautiful place that was, really amazing. And there was KD but more recently, I re-met KD and what I particularly love about KD is his devotion to Maharajji, to Neem Karoli Baba, and that’s what we really share is devotion to the Guru. My Guru at the time was an old Mongolian and I remember a dream that I had in that house in Almora around the same time I met you, KD, where I was mad at my Guru and I was telling Him like, “What is this about,” you know, “the Buddhas having all these emanations.” You know, in the Mahayana they have the idea of what’s called the emanation body where all these Bodhisattvas go to help all the Beings as, you know, as much as they need to, need help. I said, “Where are they? Why aren’t they in Bangladesh. All these terrible things are going on in Bangladesh. And war, it looks like war is going to break out all over the place.” And He didn’t say anything. He was sitting on a stone kind of altar thing that was in the yard outside this house I was renting. And then He just got bigger and bigger and bigger and He looked very serious and grim but He never, He never answered my challenge and my complaint, you know. Like, where’s the love of all these enlightened beings, you know? How ineffective is it, you know. And He just got bigger and bigger. Finally, I was like a little angry flea, like bellowing and He was blotting out all the mountains in the dream, you know. Then I woke up and I wasn’t at all satisfied. So then actually later, actually later, back in Amherst, Baba Ram Das came back not very long after that, the next year or the following year and He told the story at a talk at Smith College where he said, he said to Maharajji, like, “What is this, Maharajji? This is horrible. All the stuff that’s going on there.” And Maharajji said to Him, “Don’t you see, it’s all perfect?” And then, Ram Das said, “Well, yeah, it’s perfect, but it stinks,” he said. So, I remember that. That’s where I really got to love Baba Ram Das, actually. Because actually, I knew him many years before, since the 50s in Cambridge at Harvard when he was Doctor Richard Alpert. I knew him from that time. So, you know, I didn’t really, that’s when I first got, that’s when I first got the whole Baba Ram Das thing and a little bit of a taste of the Neem Karoli Baba thing, but in a way I didn’t really feel the real power of the love of Neem Karoli Baba until I met you.

KD: Aha.

Bob: And until you talked about it. And you, you know it just comes tumbling out of your heart. You’ve given me all this tumbling out of everything, everything. But tumbling out of your heart has been the presence of Neem Karoli Baba and the idea of “love everybody” you know? And right, speak the truth. He told Baba Ram Das, right? Speak the truth.

KD: Love everyone and tell the truth.

Bob: And love everyone, right?

KD: Ram Das said, “The truth is, I don’t love everyone.”

Bob: That’s what he said?

KD: He said, yeah.

Bob: I know, I know and so, but you know, he does, I think he does now. I think then he…

KD: Yeah I think he’s finally worked his way through all of humanity. Yeah.

Bob: He’s been working on it. But I think we have to acknowledge that it’s something truly amazing to have a super stroke like he had and to deal with a body that is really painful that he’s dealing with, very fragile also. He could depart what he calls the meat puppet. And the meat puppet, what he calls this, he could depart at any time. And yet he considers that a gift of his guru. He considers that, dealing with that, having to depend on others, and then this is the key thing, I think, and I think for me, it’s a theme for the weekend and maybe it’s out of left field, but for me, a key theme for this workshop and working together with you is, you know, we are loved, all of us. So, therefore nothing that happens to us is not something coming out of love from someone. Love in Indian, either Buddhist or Hindu idea, is not just the eros part, but it doesn’t exclude it which is the beautiful thing about India, as you know. Eros and Agape, you know, in the West. But there it’s kind of merged a little bit in India. But love means the wish for the happiness of the Beloved. And everyone wants to be loved, right? Don’t we all? Anybody doesn’t like being loved? But actually we have a hard time receiving love. I myself will say that I’m one of those, you know? It’s very difficult to receive it. So, Neem Karoli Baba definitely seems to have loved everyone. Buddha loves everyone. Avalokiteshvara loves everyone. Krishna loves everyone. Etcetera. So, do we all feel loved? And when we really do, does it make us happy? Does it cheer us up? And how cheery are we? That’s sort of my theme, ok? That’s a theme, I think, of the weekend.

KD: I’ll tell how cheery I am. I’ll tell you how cheery I am.

Bob: How cheery are you?

KD: Before, when you said, “immeasurable love,” I thought you said, “Miserable love.” That’s how cheery I am, goddammit.

Bob: In this culture, you know, for people raised in Judaism and in Protestantism, you’re only safe if you’re miserable.

KD: Only what?

Bob: Safe. You’re not safe unless you’re miserable. So, whenever I get carried away in a talk in any American audience, I always pause here and there to assure the people that I’m more miserable than they are, actually. Although I can sort of cheer up in order to sort of advocate it.

KD: Yes.

Bob: Actually, of course, I’m miserable.

KD: Of course.

Bob: And so that makes them feel a little better.

KD: That’s where we really meet, I think. We meet in our miserableness.

Bob: What?

KD: We meet deeply in our miserableness.

Bob: I think we do.

KD: I think so.

Bob: We do.

KD: Just so you know. I just want you to feel and understand, you’re not doing anything wrong when you’re miserable. So be happy.

Bob: That’s right. You know I’ve been, I’ve been studying a little bit about mindfulness. I was just in Sri Lanka and so, in honor of Sharon, actually, who, Sharon is so wonderful. She comes to our little retreat place across the river called Menla. A little, it’s my tiny little place. But she comes every year a number of times, always. We work together for 20 years now and so in her honor, I’ve been reading the mindfulness sutra, you know, the Theravada Sutra, right? And, then I’ve been studying a little bit, the mindfulness movement. But then one thing I noticed is when people say they’re doing mindfulness and you see pictures of them, you know, often in these corporations, they look like this. And so, they look like, if you’re really mindful then you should feel miserable. But I discovered in the mindfulness sutra, that’s not the case. That actually, the mindfulness sutra, not only do you focus on the first noble truth of suffering in Buddhism, that everyone wrongly thinks is the whole thing about Buddhism, but the third noble truth, which is the truth of freedom from suffering, happiness, actually, that means “nirvana,” you know? But again, Buddha, even it seems like Buddha wasn’t Jewish and He wasn’t Protestant but He emphasized that truth of suffering to be safe. Even in India. Even in India. He didn’t emphasize the nirvana. He just said nirvana, you know, is freedom from suffering. He didn’t mention right off, freedom from suffering is bliss.

KD: Yeah.

Bob: You know. Because bliss is always dangerous, right?

KD: Yeah.

Bob: Ok. Well, that’s all. That’s all.

KD: You know, speaking about the four noble truths.

Bob: Yes.

KD: My beloved friend, Bernie Glassman, who recently left the body,

Bob: Yes, he did.

KD: He used to speak of the four noble opinions.

Bob: Four noble what?

KD: Opinions.

Bob: The four noble opinions?

KD: Yes.

Bob: That’s ok.

KD: Because he said, if it’s a truth, there’s nothing to discuss. You can’t…

Bob: I know. Facts. I like to call them facts.

KD:  Yeah, but if it’s an opinion, you can really, you know, talk about it and work it out.

Bob: That’s very zen.

KD: Yeah. Well, he was a zen master. What are you going to do?

Bob: Anyway, one other thing, also. You know, Krishna Das can always shut me. Two people in the world can, Krishna Das and my wife.

KD: And I would never do it.

Bob: She’s a little more effective than you, actually.

KD: Much more, yes. Much more practice.

Bob: But in relation to the weekend theme that I also want to make Tara, the Goddess Tara, who, the Bodhisattva / Goddess Tara, who, there’s a big painting, She’s sitting there in a big painting on the wall in the dining room in the middle of a round thing at one end of the dining room, at this end of the dining room. And she is considered, in Buddhism, to be the incarnation of the miraculous power of all Buddhas. And Avalokiteshvara, Her male counterpart, is the incarnation of compassion of all Buddhas but compassion is not effective without Her miraculous power and there’s a legend, there are different legends about Her and I will tell more about them in the time to come, but one of them is where He weeps because out of His compassion He wants Beings to get better and He knows they just don’t get better. They insist on causing themselves and others suffering all the time. And so, He weeps and then two tears are transformed into two Taras and they tell Him not to weep. Naturally, he’s weeping, because he’s just a guy, and guys can’t really get that much done.  Actually, they can have a good intention but they’re not that effective you know? They’re really not.  And they bluster a lot, but they don’t really get much done and they said, but you know, “We’re the shaktis, we have the power to accomplish something and we’ll take care of it. So, no need to weep, you know? Stop blubbering, in other words.

KD: Yeah. No blubbering.

Bob: And also, Tara relates to that in the Buddhist world.

KD: Beautiful.

Bob: That’s me.

The post Ep. 49 | How KD Met Robert Thurman appeared first on Krishna Das.