Ep. 27 | Spiritual Experiences, Auschwitz and Bernie Glassman

Call and Response Ep. 27 Spiritual Experiences, Auschwitz and Bernie Glassman

Recently I’ve been having a draw to learn or feel more of my tradition and the ancestors and who’s come before me, and what moved me that I saw online was when you were in the barracks in Auschwitz, (you) sat down and sang to the children. My parents survived the holocaust. Their people did not. And when you sang and I experienced that video, I felt you were singing to and for me. I don’t know if that’s what your intent was but if you want to speak to that, please do because I want to know your experience and by way of request, if you want to sing that for our children, please do, Krishna Das.

“I had a great friend named Bernie Glassman who’s a Zen Roshi, who had many deep enlightenment experiences and finally realized that the only thing keeping him and others out of that place was his own fear. So, he began to move towards the places where he had the most fear and where culturally in the world there was a lot of fear. So, one of those places was Auschwitz. And he began going to Auschwitz every year and bringing people to bear witness to the suffering. It wasn’t to just to go and suffer, but it was to bear witness and that’s a practice, to bear witness. And the idea was, in order to bear witness to something, one has to look at it and see it and in order to see it, one has to drop one’s ideas about it. And be with it. To see it clearly, one has to drop one’s stuff.” – Krishna Das

Go ahead.

Q: Jai Ma. Thank you Krishna Das, for being here. I’m just wondering, when you were the pujari of the Durga temple in India, did you have any experiences where you really felt the presence of the Mother.

KD: No.

Q: No?

KD: Of course not. What do you think I am?

Q: You have all of these amazing other experiences that you talk about. I’m sure there’s something.

KD: Like what?

Q: I don’t know. Anything.

KD: Experiences come and go. At my age, I forget them anyway. It doesn’t make any difference But they change you. That’s all. They do their work and then they go. You don’t have to hold onto them. In fact, holding on to them is just destroying them anyhow. Just making a big thing about nothing. If you have some experience that is in some way more opening for you, to try to cling to it and keep it is closing you down right away. Live. All these things pour into you like streams into the ocean. You don’t hold onto the stream. You’re the ocean. It’s not important. It’s not important at all. It’s ok. You can enjoy. But if you’re trying to cling to something, you won’t enjoy it for long because it’s gone already. So just be with it. The more fully you can be with everything, every minute, you know, but we think, we think something has to happen. Somebody’s going to push a button and change everything, you know?

I remember, I was sitting with Maharajji once and I’d taken, washed in the afternoon because I was working in the morning, singing in the morning, so I put on my clean clothes and I went to sit in front of Maharajji and I laughed. At one point, I just laughed because I saw in my mind, I recognized that I thought that enlightenment would be someplace where I wouldn’t be. Why? Because I hated myself. So, there’s no possibility of me being in Enlightenmentland. Right? Because I hated myself. And then I laughed because I saw there was never any place I wasn’t going to be. It was a big thing. It was a big experience. So, experiences come and go and they may help us open our hearts more, but to cling to the experience itself or try to get it back or try to manufacture other experiences means you’re not here in the first place.

Maharajji and all great saints are Love. They don’t love you. They’re not busy loving. They are Love. And so are you.

If you’re busy loving then you’re not Love. You’re doing something. Once I was very much in love with somebody, right?