Ep. 00 ~ Keeping up with daily sadhana and practice

In this episode Krishna Das discusses keeping up with our daily practices (sadhana) despite distractions and hurry in our daily lives.

Transcription:

Q: Thank you so much, I had a question about the hanuman chalisa and anything you could say about your journey with that, what your teacher said about it and how your experiences have gone of chanting Hanuman’s name?

KD: Well, Maharajji said that every word of the Hanuman Chalisa is Mahamantra. So, the whole thing is the Name, repetitions of the Names, which He considered to be the practice that we were qualified to do.

When we asked Him, “How do we find God?” he said, “Serve people.” “How do we raise Kundalini?” He said, “Feed people.”

“Love everyone, Serve everyone and Remember God.” That was basically what He told us. What He told other people, we have no idea, but that’s what he told us. But pretty much it was like that, He was mostly with householders that we know.  And He was part of every family and He was involved in all the decisions in the family and the children, angry at their parents, and the parents fighting. You know, all things, He was just involved in all of it all the time. And he helped these people live good lives and he blessed them and many times He helped them overcome tremendous obstacles and healed them and healed the sick and raised the dead. The whole schpeel. That’s what He did. Very much in the world.

There’s a beautiful story about, one day He was walking down the street in Vrindavan in the middle of the summer.  It was like 120 degrees in the middle of the day and coming in the other direction was this sadhu, you know, with the hair and the ashes and they saw each other and they ran, jumped around, and they hugged and they jumped around and danced and they were just like, completely, they were so happy to see each other and this sadhu says, “Baba, I can’t believe we’re meeting after 40 years. I haven’t seen You since we were in the mountains together.” And everybody was so happy. They were so happy. And they hung around for a few minutes and then Maharajji says, “Ok, brother, I have to go now. So, you go and I’ll go this way. You go that way.” And the sadhu says, “I’m not leaving you, after all this time I’ve found You. I can’t go now.” He said, “No, no. You don’t understand. You don’t want to hang out with Me. I’m always around householders. I’m with worldly people all the time. It’s not good for you.  It’s not good for you. You don’t even know Me. Don’t come with Me.” He said, “There’s no way I’m leaving you, Baba.” And they argued about it. Finally, Mahrajji says, “Ok.” And they took off and they started walking to Mathura, which is 18 kilometers away in the middle of the day. In those days there was just a desert between Vrindavan and Mathura. So, they were literally dying of thirst and in the distance, they saw a well and they start running to this well, right? And Mahrajji gets there first and there’s a woman getting water from the well, whatever you call that, with a bucket. And Maharajji runs up and He puts His hands out like this, and He says, “Ma, pour water for me to drink.” Right? So she pours water and He’s drinking like this and now the sadhu arrives and he puts out his gourd cup and the woman pours water and starts to pour water in it and while she’s pouring water, Maharajji starts chatting her up because He chatted everybody up 24-7 365 and He says, “Where are you from, Ma? What’s your village? What’s your caste?” Turns out she’s an untouchable. When the sadhu heard that, he completely flipped out. He takes his gourd and he furiously smashes it down on the ground and he starts screaming to Maharajji, “What have you done? Look what you’ve done? You’ve gotten me into this and this and this was my only thing, I needed this for everything and now it’s become impure and I can’t use it anymore. How could you do this?