Graveyard Talks With Sacinandana Swami

SPECIAL EDITION – Call and Response Podcast – Graveyard Talks With Sacinandana Swami

Sacinandana Swami was born in Germany to an affluent family and, for 42 years, has been a practicing monk in the bhakti tradition. Over the years, he has significantly contributed to the way modern practitioners of bhakti engage in contemplation and meditation. He is a well regarded teacher of spiritual music and spends time teaching and leading retreats throughout Europe and Asia. His love and passion for the life he has lived has been motivated by his desire to help other people grow just as he felt he grew and learned more about his own unique purpose in life, dharma.

“It’s only through the opening of the intuitive understanding that one can make space for this kind of non-judgmental unconditional understanding, you know? It’s just like the sun. It shines on everything all the time. Everything. It doesn’t measure, evaluate, judge and see who’s worthy of sunlight. It’s just, it’s its nature and it’s the nature of these great beings. It’s the nature of God, of the Lord, of the Divine to be that Love.” – Krishna Das

KD: So, I’m here with my good friend, Sacinandana Swami: in Germany. I’ve been on tour and we are continuing what we call our Graveyard Talks. So, how many years ago was it, in Munich? We went for a walk.

SACINANDANA SWAMI: I think it was about ten years at least and we were talking, we were so much into the discussions that I noted at one stage, “Your program is already starting. It has started.” And then you said to me, “Don’t worry, let’s finish this. The program cannot start without me.”

KD: Yeah, yeah. We were looking… we looked for a place to sit down and we found this beautiful little quiet graveyard with a nice bench and we sat there and spoke and here we are today in another graveyard in Germany outside of Berlin.

SACINANDANA SWAMI: Something that comes to my mind is that time moves in cycles. We were then on a graveyard. We are now in a graveyard, and maybe one of us will be on a graveyard again somewhere.

KD: Fairly soon, you know. In a different way, yeah.

SACINANDANA SWAMI: In a different way. And it’s the question for me is, “What do we consider of the best use of our time in this human life that is really worthwhile to invest and might even outlive the graveyard on which we are eventually, where we are landing?”

KD: You know, I always talk with people about the importance of spiritual practice, but I’ve come to believe that the reason we do spiritual practice is to become good human beings, be people that are kind and compassionate and aware of other people’s suffering and pain and just naturally want to do what they can to help that situation. It takes tremendous strength to break the habit of only thinking about one’s self all the time, and thinking that, and even unconsciously believing that, that what “I think” and what “I feel” is the most important thing in the universe, and not seeing other people. It takes a tremendous amount of work on one’s self to, to even become aware that other people, they’re in their own worlds as well, and if we can’t help ourselves, how can we help anybody else?

SACINANDANA SWAMI: Yeah yeah. And the funny thing is that sometimes who are even trying to escape and help themselves by taking to a spiritual path still remain self-centered.

KD: Yeah.

SACINANDANA SWAMI: We have some dramatic sounds in the back.

KD: Yeah. Thunder. It’s amazing.

SACINANDANA SWAMI: We get to some good subjects and nature gets her drumsticks out and does a thunder roll.  Yes, I remember last year I was walking around a sacred mountain, the Govardhan Mountain in Vrindavan and I passed two people, pilgrims who were discussing in Bengali the three essential teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, a Saintly personality, and they said, “Yes, Chaitanya bolo, ‘One should attain taste in the Divine Name,