Call and Response Ep. 64 Consciousness, Spiritual Names, Vipasana Q: When you sing other lineages’ Names like “Tara” or “Jesus on the Mainline” like how do you integrate that with all the other Names that you got from the Vedic tradition? “My parents were about as Jewish as the Pope. So, but still, I didn’t know much about Jesus and then I get to India and He looks at us and says, ‘Hanuman, Krishna and Christ are the same.’ Terrific. Who wants to hear that?  I’m in India. You know? But He started talking to us about Jesus and whoa, it was powerful. Really powerful. I have to say, it was more powerful than the way He spoke about Hanuman, Krishna and Ram.” – Krishna Das Q: Namaste. KD: Hi. Q: Hi. Yesterday you were saying that all the mantras are love. KD: All the what? Q: All the mantras are essentially love. KD: Yeah. Q: And today you were talking about how we get what we need. And I kind of have this theory that I’ve been running with that certain mantras just come to me and I’ve been thinking maybe it’s my Guru sending me what I need and I just wondered if that happened to you or what you kind of thought about that. KD: I never thought about it. But if that thought works for you and that helps you do your practice more sincerely and more completely, that’s a good thing. But ultimately, it’s another thought. Some thoughts are helpful because they help us let go and they help us enter more deeply into our self, and some thoughts aren’t helpful. Q: Hello. You spoke about the heart connection to consciousness. Could you touch a little more on that. Just, you said it’s not heart chakra but it’s a different connection? KD: No. Because I don’t know. I was repeating what I read that Ramana Maharshi said, who was one of the great saints that ever lived. So, whatever He said is cool. So, that’s what He said. He said there’s this consciousness is always present and there’s a spot in the body that we kind of, like a little… that fills up the body with the consciousness. When we leave the body, the body’s just inert. There’s no consciousness in the body itself. It’s just flesh and bone and blood and pus and all that stuff. Q: Could I ask you anything that you have taken from that for your life? KD: You could ask whatever. Ask. Q: From that insight that He gave you? KD: No. I mean, I don’t think about that stuff. I thought, “That’s true.” And that’s about as far as I went with it. Q: Thank you. KD: Ok. _________ Q: I have a question around, in certain moment you were given the name “Krishna Das.” KD: Yeah. Q: But you were born “Jeffrey.” KD: Yeah. So… Q: Sometimes I struggle with this thing about the spiritual Names. And I think to myself, “What happens when the spiritual Name is not just given, but you embody it.” Can you share a little bit about that? KD: It’s just more stuff to deal with. My real name was “Driver.” For a year, Maharajji called me “Driver” because He took Ram Das’s keys away to the van and He gave them to me. “Driver.” Then I was going to kill myself because He didn’t give me a Name. So, finally He gave me a Name. He said, “Arjun. Krishna. Nay. Krishna Das.” I said, “Krishna Das? I’m a Hanuman guy. What’s that stuff?” And He just laughed. He said, “Don’t worry. Hanuman served Krishna, too.”  It didn’t change me at all. It just gave me pride which was hard to get rid of. You want a Name? Q: No. And about singing other lineages, where you have sung, “Tara” or “Jesus on the Mainline…” When you sing other lineages’ Names like “Tara” or “Jesus on the Mainline” like how do you integrate that with all the other Names that you got from the vedic tradition? KD: I like it. I sing what I like. Right? What’s the big deal? If I don’t like it, I don’t sing it. A Name is a Name is a Name. Right? Different traditions, same God. Big deal. You know? Come on. Argue. Come on. Come on. What do you think? Q: No, I think it’s true. KD: You know, Maharajji talked to us about Jesus. Listen, I’m Jewish from Long Island. My parents were about as Jewish as the Pope. So, but still, I didn’t know much about Jesus and then I get to India and He looks at us and says, “Hanuman, Krishna and Christ are the same.” Terrific. Who wants to hear that?  I’m in India. You know? But He started talking to us about Jesus and whoa, it was powerful. Really powerful. I have to say, it was more powerful than the way He spoke about Hanuman, Krishna and Ram. For us, He Himself would just like, you could see how intense it was for Him to talk about Jesus. “He never died. He felt no pain on the cross. He loved everyone. He loved the people who nailed Him to the cross. He tried to die but He couldn’t. He became immortal.  Why? Because He never thought of Himself. Thoughts of “Me” never arose in that Being. Why would they arise? There’s only God in there. There’s no “Me” anymore.” So powerful and deep. Q: I like Jesus on the Mainline. KD: Yeah, there’s a lot of songs I like that I sing.   Q: I was wondering if you’d ever practiced Vipasana meditation. KD: If I did Vipasana? Sure. I did five or six ten-day courses in a row in Bodhgaya in 1970-71. And I’ve done other, you know, since then I’ve done a few courses. Q: Were you already into kirtan chanting? KD: You know, somewhat. Not that much at the time. Not yet. That kind of started…when we started… not so much at that moment during those courses. I had just got to India and then after a couple of months, Maharajji sent us away and disappeared and then we went to Bodhgaya for a few months and then after that we found Him again. You know, the bus story? You know the story of the bus? You don’t know the story of the bus? So, we were all, it was a break between like, the fifth and the sixth ten-day course. There was like a day and a half between the courses and this guy arrived in a huge beautiful Mercedes bus that he had driven across from Europe to India. And he offered. He said, “Anybody who wants to go back to Delhi, I’ll give you a ride in the bus.” So, we were pretty much, me and the other folks… Ram Das had shown up and done a few of the courses and the other Westerners who had come to see Maharajji were there, so we had decided, it’s time to leave, let’s go find Maharajji. So, and Sharon was there and she still can tell you how she felt as she watched that bus drive away. Anywhow. So, we took off and we’re on the way to Delhi and one of the guys in the group said that he had been to the Mela in Allahabad. A Mela is a festival that happens every year in different places in India and it’s a gathering of pilgrims and spiritual aspirants and yogis and teachers and all those people. And there’s… one of the places it happens is in Allahabad at the Sangham where the Ganga, the Ganges and the Yamuna and the Heavenly River, the Saraswati, comes together. “Sangha” means “together.” Coming together. So, we were going to pass within a few miles of that on the way to Delhi, so it was a big discussion about whether we should just go right to Delhi, which was the Ram Das group, or whether we should go visit the Sangham and see what was going on there, sounds cool. That was my group and almost everybody else, other than Ram Das. Ram Das just wanted to get to Delhi and that was it. “We’re going to Delhi, we’re going to find Maharajji. That’s all we’re going to do.” But there was a lot of discussion about it, for hours. So, finally it was decided that we’ll just go. We’ll see it. Boom. Then we’ll turn around. Then we’ll head to Delhi so we could make it by nightfall. That was the idea. So, the bus pulls into this area where there had been maybe ten million people up until about two days before. Now, everybody was gone. There was hardly anybody there. Ten million, that was forty years ago. Now there’s 20 or 25 million at those festivals. They call them “Melas.” “Kumbh Mela.” “Ardh Mela.” “Magh Mela”. So, the bus pulls into this, the Mela grounds, which is absolutely deserted. Nobody. A dog. I remember there was a dog running across that thing. So, we pulled into this big vast place where there’s nobody. A vast field. So, the bus starts making this big turn, maybe this way and so Danny said, “Well, you know, there’s a Hanuman temple over there in the corner. Why don’t we go have darshan of the temple, see the temple, and then we’ll head back to Delhi.” Ok. So, the bus comes around this way and it’s at the edge of the field and there’s like a path at the edge of the field and the bus is going this way and who’s walking the other way? Maharajji. And He’s holding somebody’s hand and He’s walking and the bus passed Him and one guy just happened to see Him. And they said, “Wait, there’s Maharajji!” And the bus and we all went running off the bus and everybody’s weeping and crying and so then Maharajji said, “Ok, everybody get back on the bus and follow us.” He hops in a little rickshaw with Dada, this man with Him and this huge big silver Mercedes bus follows this little cycle rickshaw all through the streets of this little village and the rickshaw stops in front of a house and Maharajji and Dada go inside. We didn’t know Dada yet. They go inside and the bus stops and we get off the bus and we’re like, “What do we do now?” We’re looking around. And the woman comes out and says, “Come in. Come in. Come in and take your food.” And we said, “Food? There’s like 27 of us. What do you mean, food?” “Well, when Maharajji woke up this morning, He told us to prepare food for 27 people. That you would be coming later.” So, who decided that we should go see the Mela spot? We had… it seemed like we were making a decision, to us. There was a lot of discussion. There was anger and there was a lot of emotion, you know. Ram Das. “I want to find Maharajji. I want to get to Delhi.” I mean, it was intense. Then finally, “All right, all right, all right, we’ll just go by there and then we’ll take off.” We thought we did that. How could that… how did we do it if eight hours earlier He said to prepare food for 27 people? That was 26 people plus the driver. This was happening every day. All day. All right. That’s it. Thank you. The post Ep. 64 | Consciousness, Spiritual Names, Vipasana appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 64 Consciousness, Spiritual Names, Vipasana Q: When you sing other lineages’ Names like “Tara” or “Jesus on the Mainline” like how do you integrate that with all the other Names that you got from the Vedic tradition? “My parents were about as Jewish as the Pope. So, but still, I didn’t know much about Jesus and then I get to India and He looks at us and says, ‘Hanuman, Krishna and Christ are the same.’ Terrific. Who wants to hear that?  I’m in India. You know? But He started talking to us about Jesus and whoa, it was powerful. Really powerful. I have to say, it was more powerful than the way He spoke about Hanuman, Krishna and Ram.” – Krishna Das Q: Namaste. KD: Hi. Q: Hi. Yesterday you were saying that all the mantras are love. KD: All the what? Q: All the mantras are essentially love. KD: Yeah. Q: And today you were talking about how we get what we need. And I kind of have this theory that I’ve been running with that certain mantras just come to me and I’ve been thinking maybe it’s my Guru sending me what I need and I just wondered if that happened to you or what you kind of thought about that. KD: I never thought about it. But if that thought works for you and that helps you do your practice more sincerely and more completely, that’s a good thing. But ultimately, it’s another thought. Some thoughts are helpful because they help us let go and they help us enter more deeply into our self, and some thoughts aren’t helpful. Q: Hello. You spoke about the heart connection to consciousness. Could you touch a little more on that. Just, you said it’s not heart chakra but it’s a different connection? KD: No. Because I don’t know. I was repeating what I read that Ramana Maharshi said, who was one of the great saints that ever lived. So, whatever He said is cool. So, that’s what He said. He said there’s this consciousness is always present and there’s a spot in the body that we kind of, like a little… that fills up the body with the consciousness. When we leave the body, the body’s just inert. There’s no consciousness in the body itself. It’s just flesh and bone and blood and pus and all that stuff. Q: Could I ask you anything that you have taken from that for your life? KD: You could ask whatever. Ask. Q: From that insight that He gave you? KD: No. I mean, I don’t think about that stuff. I thought, “That’s true.” And that’s about as far as I went with it. Q: Thank you. KD: Ok. _________ Q: I have a question around, in certain moment you were given the name “Krishna Das.” KD: Yeah. Q: But you were born “Jeffrey.” KD: Yeah. So… Q: Sometimes I struggle with this thing about the spiritual Names. And I think to myself, “What happens when the spiritual Name is not just given, but you embody it.” Can you share a little bit about that? KD: It’s just more stuff to deal with. My real name was “Driver.” For a year, Maharajji called me “Driver” because He took Ram Das’s keys away to the van and He gave them to me. “Driver.” Then I was going to kill myself because He didn’t give me a Name. So, finally He gave me a Name. He said, “Arjun. Krishna. Nay. Krishna Das.” I said, “Krishna Das? I’m a Hanuman guy. What’s that stuff?” And He just laughed. He said, “Don’t worry. Hanuman served Krishna, too.”  It didn’t change me at all. It just gave me pride which was hard to get rid of. You want a Name? Q: No. And about singing other lineages, where you have sung, “Tara” or “Jesus on the Mainline…” When you sing other lineages’ Names like “Tara” or “Jesus on the Mainline” like how do you integrate that with all the other Names that you got from the vedic tradition? KD: I like it. I sing what I like. Right? What’s the big deal? If I don’t like it, I don’t sing it. A Name is a Name is a Name. Right? Different traditions, same God. Big deal. You know? Come on. Argue. Come on. Come on. What do you think? Q: No, I think it’s true. KD: You know, Maharajji talked to us about Jesus. Listen, I’m Jewish from Long Island. My parents were about as Jewish as the Pope. So, but still, I didn’t know much about Jesus and then I get to India and He looks at us and says, “Hanuman, Krishna and Christ are the same.” Terrific. Who wants to hear that?  I’m in India. You know? But He started talking to us about Jesus and whoa, it was powerful. Really powerful. I have to say, it was more powerful than the way He spoke about Hanuman, Krishna and Ram. For us, He Himself would just like, you could see how intense it was for Him to talk about Jesus. “He never died. He felt no pain on the cross. He loved everyone. He loved the people who nailed Him to the cross. He tried to die but He couldn’t. He became immortal.  Why? Because He never thought of Himself. Thoughts of “Me” never arose in that Being. Why would they arise? There’s only God in there. There’s no “Me” anymore.” So powerful and deep. Q: I like Jesus on the Mainline. KD: Yeah, there’s a lot of songs I like that I sing. Q: I was wondering if you’d ever practiced Vipasana meditation. KD: If I did Vipasana? Sure. I did five or six ten-day courses in a row in Bodhgaya in 1970-71. And I’ve done other, you know, since then I’ve done a few courses. Q: Were you already into kirtan chanting? KD: You know, somewhat. Not that much at the time. Not yet. That kind of started…when we started… not so much at that moment during those courses. I had just got to India and then after a couple of months, Maharajji sent us away and disappeared and then we went to Bodhgaya for a few months and then after that we found Him again. You know, the bus story? You know the story of the bus? You don’t know the story of the bus? So, we were all, it was a break between like, the fifth and the sixth ten-day course. There was like a day and a half between the courses and this guy arrived in a huge beautiful Mercedes bus that he had driven across from Europe to India. And he offered. He said, “Anybody who wants to go back to Delhi, I’ll give you a ride in the bus.” So, we were pretty much, me and the other folks… Ram Das had shown up and done a few of the courses and the other Westerners who had come to see Maharajji were there, so we had decided, it’s time to leave, let’s go find Maharajji. So, and Sharon was there and she still can tell you how she felt as she watched that bus drive away. Anywhow. So, we took off and we’re on the way to Delhi and one of the guys in the group said that he had been to the Mela in Allahabad. A Mela is a festival that happens every year in different places in India and it’s a gathering of pilgrims and spiritual aspirants and yogis and teachers and all those people. And there’s… one of the places it happens is in Allahabad at the Sangham where the Ganga, the Ganges and the Yamuna and the Heavenly River, the Saraswati, comes together. “Sangha” means “together.” Coming together. So, we were going to pass within a few miles of that on the way to Delhi, so it was a big discussion about whether we should just go right to Delhi, which was the Ram Das group, or whether we should go visit the Sangham and see what was going on there, sounds cool. That was my group and almost everybody else, other than Ram Das. Ram Das just wanted to get to Delhi and that was it. “We’re going to Delhi, we’re going to find Maharajji. That’s all we’re going to do.” But there was a lot of discussion about it, for hours. So, finally it was decided that we’ll just go. We’ll see it. Boom. Then we’ll turn around. Then we’ll head to Delhi so we could make it by nightfall. That was the idea. So, the bus pulls into this area where there had been maybe ten million people up until about two days before. Now, everybody was gone. There was hardly anybody there. Ten million, that was forty years ago. Now there’s 20 or 25 million at those festivals. They call them “Melas.” “Kumbh Mela.” “Ardh Mela.” “Magh Mela”. So, the bus pulls into this, the Mela grounds, which is absolutely deserted. Nobody. A dog. I remember there was a dog running across that thing. So, we pulled into this big vast place where there’s nobody. A vast field. So, the bus starts making this big turn, maybe this way and so Danny said, “Well, you know, there’s a Hanuman temple over there in the corner. Why don’t we go have darshan of the temple, see the temple, and then we’ll head back to Delhi.” Ok. So, the bus comes around this way and it’s at the edge of the field and there’s like a path at the edge of the field and the bus is going this way and who’s walking the other way? Maharajji. And He’s holding somebody’s hand and He’s walking and the bus passed Him and one guy just happened to see Him. And they said, “Wait, there’s Maharajji!” And the bus and we all went running off the bus and everybody’s weeping and crying and so then Maharajji said, “Ok, everybody get back on the bus and follow us.” He hops in a little rickshaw with Dada, this man with Him and this huge big silver Mercedes bus follows this little cycle rickshaw all through the streets of this little village and the rickshaw stops in front of a house and Maharajji and Dada go inside. We didn’t know Dada yet. They go inside and the bus stops and we get off the bus and we’re like, “What do we do now?” We’re looking around. And the woman comes out and says, “Come in. Come in. Come in and take your food.” And we said, “Food? There’s like 27 of us. What do you mean, food?” “Well, when Maharajji woke up this morning, He told us to prepare food for 27 people. That you would be coming later.” So, who decided that we should go see the Mela spot? We had… it seemed like we were making a decision, to us. There was a lot of discussion. There was anger and there was a lot of emotion, you know. Ram Das. “I want to find Maharajji. I want to get to Delhi.” I mean, it was intense. Then finally, “All right, all right, all right, we’ll just go by there and then we’ll take off.” We thought we did that. How could that… how did we do it if eight hours earlier He said to prepare food for 27 people? That was 26 people plus the driver. This was happening every day. All day. All right. That’s it. Thank you. The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-64-consciousness-spiritual-names-vipasana/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 64 | Consciousness, Spiritual Names, Vipasana</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 64 | Consciousness, Spiritual Names, Vipasana

Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD August 15 2020

Call and Response Ep. 63 Hanuman, How Chanting Heals Q: Can you tell us a story about Hanuman? Any story.  “There are certain things that we need that, that Being that is Hanuman allows us to realize in our lives to get what we want. Why shouldn’t we have what we want? God is not your mother telling you, “You can’t have that.” That’s a program. We have desires based on our karmas and many of those desires are good for us to fulfill. Some of them are not. Hanuman boosts up the ones that are positive and removes the ones that are negative.” – Krishna Das Q: Can you tell us a story about Hanuman? Any story. KD: What’s that? Q: Tell us a story about Hanuman. Any story. KD: Well, stories you can read in books. For us, when we got to India, we noticed that Maharajji’s devotees considered to be Hanuman in the body. Considered Him to be a manifestation of Hanuman.  When we talk about these things, it’s very difficult to talk about these things correctly. And even Maharajji used to say, “They say Hanuman’s a monkey.” Hanuman is the flow of grace in the universe. It’s the flow of connection between the individual soul and the supreme soul. The nature of those two supposed things is not different. The Atma is not different than the Paramatma in its quality, except that it’s limited to an individual reflection. For instance, the moon is reflected in many different lakes and pools. It’s exactly the same moon. It’s exactly the same reflection. But it’s limited in some way. That’s the soul. The personal individual soul. And a lake is like a mirror. It reflects the light of the moon, which itself is a mirror reflecting the light of the sun. So, if that lake is covered with leaves and stuff, you can’t see any moon in the lake. Hanuman is what removes those leaves. That dirt on the mirror of the heart. It’s the flow of love, the flow of grace. Hanuman is considered to be the remover of obstacles, the destroyer of problems and suffering. And also, the bestower of the very things we need to get on with our lives. There’s a sloka in Sanskrit which I don’t remember, but it said, “Not only does Hanuman bestow liberation by uniting the Atma with the Paramatma or removing… and he does that by removing the dust on the mirror, not only does He do that, but He also makes it possible for us to satisfy the desires that we have that need to be satisfied.” We’re hungry people. We’re hungry beings. We need to eat. We need to sleep. We need to do a bunch of things. Which I won’t talk about here. And if we don’t do those things, we’re frustrated, and we don’t, our energy doesn’t flow. So, there are certain things that we need that, that Being that is Hanuman allows us to realize in our lives to get what we want. Why shouldn’t we have what we want? God is not your mother telling you, “You can’t have that.” That’s a program. We have desires based on our karmas and many of those desires are good for us to fulfill. Some of them are not. Hanuman boosts up the ones that are positive and removes the ones that are negative. That’s what they say. Here’s a story you won’t like. It’s from the Valmiki Ramayana. There’s many different versions of the story of Ram, which is called the Ramayana. So, in the Valmiki, which is the original, Seetha, Rama’s wife, was stolen by the demon Ravana. Seetha is the individual soul. Ram is the Supreme soul. Ravana is the ego. So, He steals the shakti. But He can’t mate with it, because He’s cursed. That if He tries to mate with a woman who doesn’t want Him, His heads will explode. He had ten heads. Every one of them will explode. So, He has to kind of seduce the soul into falling in love with Him, which is impossible. So, anyway, at some point in the story, Hanuman goes, all the monkeys go out to try to find Seetha and Hanuman jumps over the ocean and He gets to Ravana’s kingdom and He’s cruising around looking for Seetha. And one of the places He winds up looking is in Ravana, the Demon’s harem. He had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women there. So, Hanuman has to go look. So, He’s going, looking around, and He’s seeing all these women asleep at night, you know, naked and drunk and everything and Ravana’s lying there and He’s looking around and all of a sudden, He flips out and He says, “Oh, my God. This is sin. I’ve sinned. I’ve been looking at these women like this. How could I do that? This is terrible. What am I going to do?” And He really starts to completely flip out. And then, He says, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I’m not doing this out of any kind of lust or anything. I’m trying to serve Ram by finding Seetha. So, there’s no way there’s any bad karma for this.” And He chills Himself out. He had to talk Himself down. Just like us. You know, like, you get stuck in something and you think, oh, this is terrible. You have to talk yourself down sometimes. You have to say, “Ok, would you chill out please. Hello. Are you in there? Listen to me. It’s ok.” So, That was interesting, the first time I read that. Because I, in different versions of the Ramayana, that doubt that Hanuman had temporarily would never be written about. So, it was very cool. I’ll think of something else. Hold on. After finding Seetha, Hanuman comes back and all the monkeys go to see Ram and tell Him the good news. And the king of monkeys tells Rama, “Oh Lord, it was Hanuman who jumped over the ocean and found Seetha and now has come back to tell us.” So, Ram reaches down and He embraces Hanuman. He tries to lift Him up, but Hanuman was so absorbed in love that wouldn’t, couldn’t rise. And Ram says, “The debt I owe to you, I can never repay.” And Hanuman says, “Just let me remain ever your servant and ever to serve the love that You are.” There’s a beautiful, beautiful song that, in Hindi they’re called bhajans, and the line that’s repeated over and over, and it tells the story of when the war’s over and the demons are killed and Seetha’s freed and everybody comes back to the kingdom, Ayodhya and Bharat, who is Ram’s brother, who has been taking care of the kingdom while Ram has been away, He comes out to meet Him and He sees this monkey and He says, “Oh, Lord, what’s this monkey doing here?” And then Ram says, “Oh, Brother Bharat, we can never repay the debt we owe to this monkey.” And each verse describes one of the things that Hanuman did, and again, it ends with the phrase, “Oh, Brother Bharat, we can never repay the debt owe owe to this monkey.” “He jumped across the ocean. He killed the demons. He found Seetha. And not once, not for one second, did pride arise in His mind. Not for one second did He think, ‘I am doing this.’” He was living in the Reality that God is the doer. We live in the Reality that we are the doers. Good luck. Hanuman was not fooled by the ego. He had transcended all of that. And so, He never thought, “I’m doing this. Look what I’ve done.” He jumped over the ocean. He did all these things and not for one second did He ever think that He was the doer. He saw Reality, which is that everything is done within that universal Presence which is God. And one of the last lines of the song, which was written by Tulsidas, He says, Tulsidas says, “I’m telling you this story in the very words that came from the Lord’s mouth. In the very words that Ram spoke. This is what I’m telling you.” It’s just a beautiful bhajan. When I first read the Tulsidas Ramayana, which is the devotional telling of the story, it completely rewired my brain. We are wired for romantic love, for physical love, for love between two people. But when you read these books, you enter into a different field of Being. You enter into a different type of love, a love that is not personal. It’s universal. It’s everywhere all the time. It’s not self-centered. It’s not about “me.” And it’s not about, it transcends that “me-ness.” It blows it out of the fucking sky. It just destroys that separateness. It’s a different kind of love.  Maybe it’s the same love but not limited just like the reflection of the moon is limited by a lake or a pool. It’s the whole thing and we come into contact with that through these stories and when I read Tulsidas Ramayana, which is called the Ramacharitamanasa, the Lake of the Stories of Ram, and every chapter is a descent deeper into that lake. It rewired me. I had no idea that this existed like this. And it was mind-blowing. And then I went to India where everybody I met lived in that world, or so many of the people I met. It was amazing. That lives within us once again as what’s really in there already. And when we look for love in our daily lives, we’re really looking for that. But it’s the looking that counts. It’s the seeking that counts. So, somebody was asking about something. One of the things that Siddhi Ma said to me, I said to Her, “Ma, is it all grace? Or is it personal effort?” This is a big thing. They write millions of books about this. I was saying, you know, “If it’s already done, then what do I have to do? I just have to be here, right? I don’t have to do anything. Or, do I have to really make it happen?” She said, “It’s all grace. But you have to act like it isn’t.” That’s so great. It is a done deal. We are in time. So, there’s now, then there’s later, then there’s later. We’re into this, we’re into that. If time, if we were now living in the now, which, it’s always “now” if you think about it. When is it now? It’s now. Tomorrow, if you ask the same question, it’s now. It’s always now. But we live in a different level where time passes. On that level, we have to do practice. On the other level, nothing to do, you know, where’d it go. But we’re not living on that level. We’re living within that level, but we don’t experience that. We still suffer. We still don’t have what we want. So, that’s why we have to do some practice. It’s all grace. It’s raining everywhere. Suzuki Roshi said, “Come walk with me in the rain, but don’t rush. Don’t hurry. It’s raining everywhere.” And if we want to catch some of those raindrops, we have to cup our hands. That’s practice. You don’t cup, you don’t get anything to drink. The changes happen off the radar. We don’t notice. Just naturally you’re drawn to different things and you’re not drawn to other things. Places you used to go, things you used to do… the interest drops. You don’t notice that. But little by little, you wind up living in negativity less of the time. You spend less and less time in negative states of mind. But how could you notice that? Because it’s not like… it’s the “you”, the part of you that’s negative that’s not there, you don’t notice that, but as time goes on, you can look back and you can see a little bit, “Well, you know, my life isn’t as tortured as it was. I don’t spend so much time moping around.” It’s a really big thing.   Q: Hi KD: Hi Q: How does chanting heal like, the deep trauma, PTSD, stuff, like generational, all that, that you were talking about? KD: All that stuff, you could say is dust on the mirror of the heart. When you look and when you look out at the world, what you see is your version of that world. Certain things are scary. Certain things aren’t. Certain things are attractive. Certain things aren’t. Etcetera. You’re like, “This is good. This is bad. This is tasty. This is not. This is ugly. This is beautiful.” We’re seeing our version of everything. As we practice, as we do, as we chant, for instance, the knee-jerk reaction that glues us to our feelings and thoughts has loosened up, little by little. And I say, “knee-jerk,” because you don’t get a vote. You just, we see it the way we see it. And that’s it. We’re in it. So, as time goes on… for instance, it’s as if you were born with… let’s say you’re born at night, ok? And it’s like, a night that lasts for 30 years. So, you’re born and you grow up in the dark, and everything is kind of murky and not distinct and you see things and you just assume that’s the way it is, right? Why wouldn’t you? Right? That’s the way you were born. That’s the way things are. But then, all of a sudden, the sun starts to rise. And just a little light comes into the sky and things look different. And the sun keeps rising and things look different. Trees that looked like scary demons just look like trees. Things change. That’s how practice changes things from the inside out. What we actually see, think and feel starts to change. Our subjective version is thinned out little by little. Of course, we come up sometimes against some big boulders of stuff and that may take more techniques to lighten them up, to loosen that glue up. So, anything we do in therapy, counts, like practice, anything that we do that loosens up the tightness of the way we see everything and believe everything we see. You have no doubt. I have no doubt that when I look around, this is the world. This is my world. Right? I look at you and I see your hair. I see the way you hold your head. I see the tenor of your voice. I get a lot of information from that, but I interpret that information. That’s who she is. She’s a person that… blah blah blah. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you think. But I’m stupid enough to think that I know who you are. Just because I see you a particular way.  And we all do that. It’s not stupid. It’s just the way we are. So, through practice, we become more receptive to information in a way and not so evaluative about everything, immediately. And so, and I’m talking about, so-called internal emotions, too. Like trauma and things like that. Damage. Same. Because that’s not, that’s also outside of our true nature, so to speak. It’s within our true nature, but it’s, it’s a thing, it’s a program. So, everything you do, every time you plant a seed of letting go or of coming back, that strengthens your inner heart and it loosens up the hold that those programs have over us. How’s that? Q: Thank you. KD: Ok. And it may be that as you develop, as you mature, as you ripen, you’re able to deal with that trauma differently. It’s not like it’ll just go away, you know? But all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, but little by little, you’re able to work with it in a different way. You’re not so threatened by it. You’re not so hurt by it immediately. So, you have a little more space in there where you can allow that to kind of rise up and then hopefully just vaporize as time goes on. But we need all the help we can get. That much is for sure.   The post Ep. 63 | Hanuman, How Chanting Heals appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 63 Hanuman, How Chanting Heals Q: Can you tell us a story about Hanuman? Any story. “There are certain things that we need that, that Being that is Hanuman allows us to realize in our lives to get what we want. Why shouldn’t we have what we want? God is not your mother telling you, “You can’t have that.” That’s a program. We have desires based on our karmas and many of those desires are good for us to fulfill. Some of them are not. Hanuman boosts up the ones that are positive and removes the ones that are negative.” – Krishna Das Q: Can you tell us a story about Hanuman? Any story. KD: What’s that? Q: Tell us a story about Hanuman. Any story. KD: Well, stories you can read in books. For us, when we got to India, we noticed that Maharajji’s devotees considered to be Hanuman in the body. Considered Him to be a manifestation of Hanuman.  When we talk about these things, it’s very difficult to talk about these things correctly. And even Maharajji used to say, “They say Hanuman’s a monkey.” Hanuman is the flow of grace in the universe. It’s the flow of connection between the individual soul and the supreme soul. The nature of those two supposed things is not different. The Atma is not different than the Paramatma in its quality, except that it’s limited to an individual reflection. For instance, the moon is reflected in many different lakes and pools. It’s exactly the same moon. It’s exactly the same reflection. But it’s limited in some way. That’s the soul. The personal individual soul. And a lake is like a mirror. It reflects the light of the moon, which itself is a mirror reflecting the light of the sun. So, if that lake is covered with leaves and stuff, you can’t see any moon in the lake. Hanuman is what removes those leaves. That dirt on the mirror of the heart. It’s the flow of love, the flow of grace. Hanuman is considered to be the remover of obstacles, the destroyer of problems and suffering. And also, the bestower of the very things we need to get on with our lives. There’s a sloka in Sanskrit which I don’t remember, but it said, “Not only does Hanuman bestow liberation by uniting the Atma with the Paramatma or removing… and he does that by removing the dust on the mirror, not only does He do that, but He also makes it possible for us to satisfy the desires that we have that need to be satisfied.” We’re hungry people. We’re hungry beings. We need to eat. We need to sleep. We need to do a bunch of things. Which I won’t talk about here. And if we don’t do those things, we’re frustrated, and we don’t, our energy doesn’t flow. So, there are certain things that we need that, that Being that is Hanuman allows us to realize in our lives to get what we want. Why shouldn’t we have what we want? God is not your mother telling you, “You can’t have that.” That’s a program. We have desires based on our karmas and many of those desires are good for us to fulfill. Some of them are not. Hanuman boosts up the ones that are positive and removes the ones that are negative. That’s what they say. Here’s a story you won’t like. It’s from the Valmiki Ramayana. There’s many different versions of the story of Ram, which is called the Ramayana. So, in the Valmiki, which is the original, Seetha, Rama’s wife, was stolen by the demon Ravana. Seetha is the individual soul. Ram is the Supreme soul. Ravana is the ego. So, He steals the shakti. But He can’t mate with it, because He’s cursed. That if He tries to mate with a woman who doesn’t want Him, His heads will explode. He had ten heads. Every one of them will explode. So, He has to kind of seduce the soul into falling in love with Him, which is impossible. So, anyway, at some point in the story, Hanuman goes, all the monkeys go out to try to find Seetha and Hanuman jumps over the ocean and He gets to Ravana’s kingdom and He’s cruising around looking for Seetha. And one of the places He winds up looking is in Ravana, the Demon’s harem. He had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women there. So, Hanuman has to go look. So, He’s going, looking around, and He’s seeing all these women asleep at night, you know, naked and drunk and everything and Ravana’s lying there and He’s looking around and all of a sudden, He flips out and He says, “Oh, my God. This is sin. I’ve sinned. I’ve been looking at these women like this. How could I do that? This is terrible. What am I going to do?” And He really starts to completely flip out. And then, He says, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I’m not doing this out of any kind of lust or anything. I’m trying to serve Ram by finding Seetha. So, there’s no way there’s any bad karma for this.” And He chills Himself out. He had to talk Himself down. Just like us. You know, like, you get stuck in something and you think, oh, this is terrible. You have to talk yourself down sometimes. You have to say, “Ok, would you chill out please. Hello. Are you in there? Listen to me. It’s ok.” So, That was interesting, the first time I read that. Because I, in different versions of the Ramayana, that doubt that Hanuman had temporarily would never be written about. So, it was very cool. I’ll think of something else. Hold on. After finding Seetha, Hanuman comes back and all the monkeys go to see Ram and tell Him the good news. And the king of monkeys tells Rama, “Oh Lord, it was Hanuman who jumped over the ocean and found Seetha and now has come back to tell us.” So, Ram reaches down and He embraces Hanuman. He tries to lift Him up, but Hanuman was so absorbed in love that wouldn’t, couldn’t rise. And Ram says, “The debt I owe to you, I can never repay.” And Hanuman says, “Just let me remain ever your servant and ever to serve the love that You are.” There’s a beautiful, beautiful song that, in Hindi they’re called bhajans, and the line that’s repeated over and over, and it tells the story of when the war’s over and the demons are killed and Seetha’s freed and everybody comes back to the kingdom, Ayodhya and Bharat, who is Ram’s brother, who has been taking care of the kingdom while Ram has been away, He comes out to meet Him and He sees this monkey and He says, “Oh, Lord, what’s this monkey doing here?” And then Ram says, “Oh, Brother Bharat, we can never repay the debt we owe to this monkey.” And each verse describes one of the things that Hanuman did, and again, it ends with the phrase, “Oh, Brother Bharat, we can never repay the debt owe owe to this monkey.” “He jumped across the ocean. He killed the demons. He found Seetha. And not once, not for one second, did pride arise in His mind. Not for one second did He think, ‘I am doing this.’” He was living in the Reality that God is the doer. We live in the Reality that we are the doers. Good luck. Hanuman was not fooled by the ego. He had transcended all of that. And so, He never thought, “I’m doing this. Look what I’ve done.” He jumped over the ocean. He did all these things and not for one second did He ever think that He was the doer. He saw Reality, which is that everything is done within that universal Presence which is God. And one of the last lines of the song, which was written by Tulsidas, He says, Tulsidas says, “I’m telling you this story in the very words that came from the Lord’s mouth. In the very words that Ram spoke. This is what I’m telling you.” It’s just a beautiful bhajan. When I first read the Tulsidas Ramayana, which is the devotional telling of the story, it completely rewired my brain. We are wired for romantic love, for physical love, for love between two people. But when you read these books, you enter into a different field of Being. You enter into a different type of love, a love that is not personal. It’s universal. It’s everywhere all the time. It’s not self-centered. It’s not about “me.” And it’s not about, it transcends that “me-ness.” It blows it out of the fucking sky. It just destroys that separateness. It’s a different kind of love.  Maybe it’s the same love but not limited just like the reflection of the moon is limited by a lake or a pool. It’s the whole thing and we come into contact with that through these stories and when I read Tulsidas Ramayana, which is called the Ramacharitamanasa, the Lake of the Stories of Ram, and every chapter is a descent deeper into that lake. It rewired me. I had no idea that this existed like this. And it was mind-blowing. And then I went to India where everybody I met lived in that world, or so many of the people I met. It was amazing. That lives within us once again as what’s really in there already. And when we look for love in our daily lives, we’re really looking for that. But it’s the looking that counts. It’s the seeking that counts. So, somebody was asking about something. One of the things that Siddhi Ma said to me, I said to Her, “Ma, is it all grace? Or is it personal effort?” This is a big thing. They write millions of books about this. I was saying, you know, “If it’s already done, then what do I have to do? I just have to be here, right? I don’t have to do anything. Or, do I have to really make it happen?” She said, “It’s all grace. But you have to act like it isn’t.” That’s so great. It is a done deal. We are in time. So, there’s now, then there’s later, then there’s later. We’re into this, we’re into that. If time, if we were now living in the now, which, it’s always “now” if you think about it. When is it now? It’s now. Tomorrow, if you ask the same question, it’s now. It’s always now. But we live in a different level where time passes. On that level, we have to do practice. On the other level, nothing to do, you know, where’d it go. But we’re not living on that level. We’re living within that level, but we don’t experience that. We still suffer. We still don’t have what we want. So, that’s why we have to do some practice. It’s all grace. It’s raining everywhere. Suzuki Roshi said, “Come walk with me in the rain, but don’t rush. Don’t hurry. It’s raining everywhere.” And if we want to catch some of those raindrops, we have to cup our hands. That’s practice. You don’t cup, you don’t get anything to drink. The changes happen off the radar. We don’t notice. Just naturally you’re drawn to different things and you’re not drawn to other things. Places you used to go, things you used to do… the interest drops. You don’t notice that. But little by little, you wind up living in negativity less of the time. You spend less and less time in negative states of mind. But how could you notice that? Because it’s not like… it’s the “you”, the part of you that’s negative that’s not there, you don’t notice that, but as time goes on, you can look back and you can see a little bit, “Well, you know, my life isn’t as tortured as it was. I don’t spend so much time moping around.” It’s a really big thing. Q: Hi KD: Hi Q: How does chanting heal like, the deep trauma, PTSD, stuff, like generational, all that, that you were talking about? KD: All that stuff, you could say is dust on the mirror of the heart. When you look and when you look out at the world, what you see is your version of that world. Certain things are scary. Certain things aren’t. Certain things are attractive. Certain things aren’t. Etcetera. You’re like, “This is good. This is bad. This is tasty. This is not. This is ugly. This is beautiful.” We’re seeing our version of everything. As we practice, as we do, as we chant, for instance, the knee-jerk reaction that glues us to our feelings and thoughts has loosened up, little by little. And I say, “knee-jerk,” because you don’t get a vote. You just, we see it the way we see it. And that’s it. We’re in it. So, as time goes on… for instance, it’s as if you were born with… let’s say you’re born at night, ok? And it’s like, a night that lasts for 30 years. So, you’re born and you grow up in the dark, and everything is kind of murky and not distinct and you see things and you just assume that’s the way it is, right? Why wouldn’t you? Right? That’s the way you were born. That’s the way things are. But then, all of a sudden, the sun starts to rise. And just a little light comes into the sky and things look different. And the sun keeps rising and things look different. Trees that looked like scary demons just look like trees. Things change. That’s how practice changes things from the inside out. What we actually see, think and feel starts to change. Our subjective version is thinned out little by little. Of course, we come up sometimes against some big boulders of stuff and that may take more techniques to lighten them up, to loosen that glue up. So, anything we do in therapy, counts, like practice, anything that we do that loosens up the tightness of the way we see everything and believe everything we see. You have no doubt. I have no doubt that when I look around, this is the world. This is my world. Right? I look at you and I see your hair. I see the way you hold your head. I see the tenor of your voice. I get a lot of information from that, but I interpret that information. That’s who she is. She’s a person that… blah blah blah. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you think. But I’m stupid enough to think that I know who you are. Just because I see you a particular way.  And we all do that. It’s not stupid. It’s just the way we are. So, through practice, we become more receptive to information in a way and not so evaluative about everything, immediately. And so, and I’m talking about, so-called internal emotions, too. Like trauma and things like that. Damage. Same. Because that’s not, that’s also outside of our true nature, so to speak. It’s within our true nature, but it’s, it’s a thing, it’s a program. So, everything you do, every time you plant a seed of letting go or of coming back, that strengthens your inner heart and it loosens up the hold that those programs have over us. How’s that? Q: Thank you. KD: Ok. And it may be that as you develop, as you mature, as you ripen, you’re able to deal with that trauma differently. It’s not like it’ll just go away, you know? But all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, but little by little, you’re able to work with it in a different way. You’re not so threatened by it. You’re not so hurt by it immediately. So, you have a little more space in there where you can allow that to kind of rise up and then hopefully just vaporize as time goes on. But we need all the help we can get. That much is for sure. The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-63-hanuman-how-chanting-heals/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 63 | Hanuman, How Chanting Heals</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 63 | Hanuman, How Chanting Heals

Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD August 1 2020

Call and Response Ep. 62 The Spiritual Heart, Addiction, Longing Q: I was curious to hear about your experience with your sobriety… “If I had to fight with my desire for drugs, I would have lost. That’s the deal. That’s the way I was made. If it had been up to me, every day to fight that desire, I couldn’t have done it. I just, you know, I’m being honest with you. So, I have such respect and honor so much the people who really do have to work with that every day and do work with it. Whether they’re successful every day or not. It’s a fierce battle for survival. And it’s very difficult. And truly, I don’t think anybody can do it on their own. I think if a person is doing it, it’s coming out of some kind of spiritual strength, inner strength which is not ego-based. Which is not based in the separate self, it’s based in the real self and that real self, your own self, your own true nature, is strengthening you to fight that battle.” – Krishna Das KD: Anybody? Q: Over here. KD: Hi. Q: Hi. There’s some talk in quantum physics community or whatever, for really some years now, maybe 10, 15, 20 years that consciousness is non-local and we are more like satellite dishes and it’s about, you know, your thoughts or absence thereof would be more about tuning into different channels, so to speak, almost like the radio. Like you get tuned to the channel of love or you know, or you could get caught in some just train of thought that is just in the vicinity or just happens to, you know, tune or something and then you could choose to maybe change it if you’re able. I don’t know. Have you heard anything about that? I was just curious if that resonates or anything like that. KD: Well, Ramana Maharshi who was one of the greatest saints that ever lived, said that, like you say, “Consciousness is everywhere all the time,” but there’s one spot in the body where we connect to it. It’s called the hridayam or the spiritual heart. But it’s not the heart chakra, He says. It’s on the other side, He says. I don’t say because I don’t know. So, that’s what He said. And there’s like a little kind of thing that connects us to the universal consciousness and that, the seed of that consciousness is here and when the body dies then that connection, obviously, dies with it. The body is no longer connected to consciousness. It’s just what it usually is, as in, inert. The light goes off. The light was not in there. It wasn’t coming from the body. It was coming from the connection to the light, so to speak. That’s what He says. Q: That’s beautiful. KD: And He says, “That’s the seat of the Self.” That’s where the Atma, the connection to the Paramatma, the Supreme Being, the individual connection is there through that spot. Q: Beautiful. Thank you. KD: Yeah. There’s one over here. Why are you sitting out there?   Q: Hi. I asked you a couple questions yesterday. KD: Good because I don’t remember. Q: It’s ok. I gave you a high five on the beach… and I, instead of asking you about that, I asked you other questions and it was just kind of, I was curious to hear about your experience with your sobriety and like, the longevity you have there, like that, and your relationship to… KD: I don’t think of myself as sober. Q: Ok. Yeah, I just want to hear it because I’m going to be coming up on 12 years. KD: Yeah. Good. Q: And I don’t really… my relationship with it has changed over the years. In the beginning I was like, proud of it, and now it’s just become part of my lifestyle and I just thought I’d ask you KD: Sure. When I say, “I don’t think of myself as sober,” it’s not, in other words, it’s not a way I identify myself, in that way. But, in fact, I am sober. Very sober. Sober and boring. For many years. And sometime in the 80’s I was strung out on freebase cocaine for about a year and a half and I was going down. There was no possibility I was going to make it. And my Indian father, Mr. Tiwari, he came to America to visit Maharajji’s devotees here and he first came to Canada and I flew to New York from California where I was living and I stayed up all night smoking freebase and in the morning I got on a plane to go and see him up in Canada. And when I walked into the room, he was sitting on the other side of the room with his back towards the door, ok? So, I walked into the room and I kind of went… and I really, I was starting to back out of the room. I don’t know why. But I just felt this like, and I just started to back out of the room. And he turned and he said, “You. Promise me now you will give up cocaine. Promise me now!” Like that. Now, I loved this guy more than anything. He’d been my best friend, my teacher. He kept me alive after Maharajji left the body, he and his family. And there was no way I was not going to do what he asked me to do. So, I didn’t really have a choice. I just said, “Ok.” And that was it. From that moment to this moment, nothing. It was grace. It was grace and it was his love for me and his spiritual power, because he was a great yogi. So, it was his blessing to me. From that moment, a pile of shit and a pile of cocaine… I really couldn’t tell which one was better. So, if, completely honestly… if I had to fight with my desire for drugs, I would have lost. That’s the deal. That’s the way I was made. If it had been up to me, every day to fight that desire, I couldn’t have done it. I just, you know, I’m being honest with you. So, I have such respect and honor so much the people who really do have to work with that every day and do work with it. Whether they’re successful every day or not. It’s a fierce battle for survival. And it’s very difficult. And truly, I don’t think anybody can do it on their own. I think if a person is doing it, it’s coming out of some kind of spiritual strength, inner strength which is not ego-based. Which is not based in the separate self, it’s based in the real self and that real self, your own self, your own true nature, is strengthening you to fight that battle. Ok? Yeah. But what was taken from me at that moment until this moment, was the desire for cocaine. It was gone. Don’t. I can’t say “I let go of it.” I didn’t let go of it. It was taken from me. And so, we’re here today. Otherwise, it wasn’t going to be long before I killed myself. _______________ Q: So, I have seen you together with Sharon Salzberg who I absolutely love… KD: Keep the mic by your mouth, please. Q: I have seen you with Sharon Salzberg who I absolutely love and I listen to a lot of Ram Das’s programs and his podcasts and stuff. But you all studied under the same Guru. KD: Not true. Q: No? KD: No, Sharon never met Maharajji. Q: But Sharon, she meditates all the time and I love her meditations. Do you meditate or do you chant as a way of meditating? Is that your meditation? I’ve never heard you talk about actually sitting quietly. KD: I’ve done a lot of practices over the years. A lot of practices. I’ve meditated with Tibetan Rinpoches. I’ve meditated with Theravada Buddhist Teachers. I’ve done Sufi dancing. I’ve sung Christian chants. But what I do mostly is the repetition of the Name. Q: So that’s what you use for your form of practice or meditation. That’s how you connect. So Sharon does Metta… KD: Sharon does a lot of things, too. Q: Yeah, right. So, but I know that when she… KD: Yeah, chanting is meditation. What else would it be? There’s tv and there’s chanting. They’re not the same. Probably. Unless you’re watching chanting on the tv, then that’s meditation. Hearing the Name is meditation. Chanting the Name is meditation. Thinking about the Name is meditation. Anything that has the Name in it is the Name remembering you in the first place. So, it is meditation. There are Many different types of meditation. Many different types. Because there are many different kinds of people. Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don’t. And when you don’t, you can’t be a nut. So, you have to do something else. So, that’s the deal. It is meditation. It’s most definitely meditation. But there are many different ways to meditate. Just like there are different people, different kinds of people. Q: So the 20 minutes or 30 minutes meditation that some people sit on the mat and do silently or guided or however that is, is it something you would do, like 20 minutes or 40 minutes a day? KD: How about just a really good five minutes? You know? Anything more than that gets scary. Then you start to think, “Ok, I’ve got to sit here.”  Then you’re not paying attention. Give it a good three minutes. Don’t worry about what I do. But you, give it a good one minute and then go have a cup of coffee and come back and do another good minute. One good minute is worth like 500 hours of nonsense. Q: Is that true? You know I always thought it was about discipline of actually just sitting there and ignoring the fact that you’re saying, “Get up.” You don’t really want to do that. KD: That’s just a thought, isn’t it? Q: Yeah, so I thought, yeah. KD: Unless the house is burning, sit your ass down and don’t get it up. Q: Right. KD: And then just, just doing that is so ridiculous. How many people do that? Nobody. Because the minute you sit down, you’re facing everything. That’s when you… so, just to sit there and just remember to just like, “Ok,” just watch your breath. You don’t have to try anything too hard. Don’t try to make anything happen. It already happened. They called it, “The Big Bang.” We’re here. How amazing is that. Let’s just be here. But we can’t. So, we do some practice. But don’t try too hard. Just keep letting go. How can you let go if you’re trying too hard. “Ok, I’ve gotta let go now!  Aargh! Oh, no. Ok!” It doesn’t work that way. You let go. You relax. Q: If I had met you 25 years ago, my mornings would be a lot easier. Because I really prefer chanting over sitting on the mat for the half hour. KD: No time is wasted. No time is wasted. Start now. You’re not starting but you’re learning. You, yourself are asking the questions so you’re ready to, you’re feeling the need for something deeper. So, it’ll come. It’s already come and you’re feeling it. So, now follow that feeling. Q: Thank you. KD: You’re welcome. 25 years ago you weren’t asking these questions. You weren’t, you weren’t in touch with the longing to be here. Q: Your story that you share is filled with moments of such grace and receiving. KD: Yeah. Q: And the devotion that I think hear, it has allowed you to develop, has been supported in satsang, in many different ways, Mr. Tiwari showing up at the right time and so on. My question has to do with how to keep the faith, how to keep the devotional aspect to the practice and to, you know, for lack of a better a word, keeping your eye on the prize in terms of focus. When the messengers might not be as absolutely astounding as maybe some of yours may have been, given that a message could come anywhere anytime from anyone or thing… KD: Yeah. Q: My question is, can you share with us how to keep that connection? How to keep that devotional aspect in an everyday world without, you know, yeah… that’s my question. KD: Well, first of all, cherish it and recognize it and appreciate it, what you do feel in this kind of a world, in this kind of situation. The fact that you’re here, the fact that you asked that question and that’s something to cherish inside yourself, in yourself, that you want that. That the longing for that means that its already, you’re being pulled towards it already. So, it’s up to you to find what helps you live more of that kind of life. You don’t need someone to show up and bang you on the head with something. We do enough banging ourselves. Everybody has their own storyline. People say, “Oh, you’re so lucky to be with Maharajji.” I say, “Well, we were the people who weren’t going to make it.” You know? Maybe the darkness isn’t so intense for you. You don’t need that right now. So, if you don’t need it, you won’t get it. We only get what we need because the underlying logic or agenda of the universe is compassion. And so everything in our lives is there because it’s supposed to be there and whatever messages our life has for us, is what we need to work with. So, don’t be looking for something to come from the outside. See what you have now and nurture it, cherish it. It’s a little plant. Water it. Feed it. Fertilize it. Don’t let the dog piss on it. You know, take care of yourself. The post Ep. 62 | The Spiritual Heart, Addiction, Longing appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 62 The Spiritual Heart, Addiction, Longing Q: I was curious to hear about your experience with your sobriety… “If I had to fight with my desire for drugs, I would have lost. That’s the deal. That’s the way I was made. If it had been up to me, every day to fight that desire, I couldn’t have done it. I just, you know, I’m being honest with you. So, I have such respect and honor so much the people who really do have to work with that every day and do work with it. Whether they’re successful every day or not. It’s a fierce battle for survival. And it’s very difficult. And truly, I don’t think anybody can do it on their own. I think if a person is doing it, it’s coming out of some kind of spiritual strength, inner strength which is not ego-based. Which is not based in the separate self, it’s based in the real self and that real self, your own self, your own true nature, is strengthening you to fight that battle.” – Krishna Das KD: Anybody? Q: Over here. KD: Hi. Q: Hi. There’s some talk in quantum physics community or whatever, for really some years now, maybe 10, 15, 20 years that consciousness is non-local and we are more like satellite dishes and it’s about, you know, your thoughts or absence thereof would be more about tuning into different channels, so to speak, almost like the radio. Like you get tuned to the channel of love or you know, or you could get caught in some just train of thought that is just in the vicinity or just happens to, you know, tune or something and then you could choose to maybe change it if you’re able. I don’t know. Have you heard anything about that? I was just curious if that resonates or anything like that. KD: Well, Ramana Maharshi who was one of the greatest saints that ever lived, said that, like you say, “Consciousness is everywhere all the time,” but there’s one spot in the body where we connect to it. It’s called the hridayam or the spiritual heart. But it’s not the heart chakra, He says. It’s on the other side, He says. I don’t say because I don’t know. So, that’s what He said. And there’s like a little kind of thing that connects us to the universal consciousness and that, the seed of that consciousness is here and when the body dies then that connection, obviously, dies with it. The body is no longer connected to consciousness. It’s just what it usually is, as in, inert. The light goes off. The light was not in there. It wasn’t coming from the body. It was coming from the connection to the light, so to speak. That’s what He says. Q: That’s beautiful. KD: And He says, “That’s the seat of the Self.” That’s where the Atma, the connection to the Paramatma, the Supreme Being, the individual connection is there through that spot. Q: Beautiful. Thank you. KD: Yeah. There’s one over here. Why are you sitting out there? Q: Hi. I asked you a couple questions yesterday. KD: Good because I don’t remember. Q: It’s ok. I gave you a high five on the beach… and I, instead of asking you about that, I asked you other questions and it was just kind of, I was curious to hear about your experience with your sobriety and like, the longevity you have there, like that, and your relationship to… KD: I don’t think of myself as sober. Q: Ok. Yeah, I just want to hear it because I’m going to be coming up on 12 years. KD: Yeah. Good. Q: And I don’t really… my relationship with it has changed over the years. In the beginning I was like, proud of it, and now it’s just become part of my lifestyle and I just thought I’d ask you KD: Sure. When I say, “I don’t think of myself as sober,” it’s not, in other words, it’s not a way I identify myself, in that way. But, in fact, I am sober. Very sober. Sober and boring. For many years. And sometime in the 80’s I was strung out on freebase cocaine for about a year and a half and I was going down. There was no possibility I was going to make it. And my Indian father, Mr. Tiwari, he came to America to visit Maharajji’s devotees here and he first came to Canada and I flew to New York from California where I was living and I stayed up all night smoking freebase and in the morning I got on a plane to go and see him up in Canada. And when I walked into the room, he was sitting on the other side of the room with his back towards the door, ok? So, I walked into the room and I kind of went… and I really, I was starting to back out of the room. I don’t know why. But I just felt this like, and I just started to back out of the room. And he turned and he said, “You. Promise me now you will give up cocaine. Promise me now!” Like that. Now, I loved this guy more than anything. He’d been my best friend, my teacher. He kept me alive after Maharajji left the body, he and his family. And there was no way I was not going to do what he asked me to do. So, I didn’t really have a choice. I just said, “Ok.” And that was it. From that moment to this moment, nothing. It was grace. It was grace and it was his love for me and his spiritual power, because he was a great yogi. So, it was his blessing to me. From that moment, a pile of shit and a pile of cocaine… I really couldn’t tell which one was better. So, if, completely honestly… if I had to fight with my desire for drugs, I would have lost. That’s the deal. That’s the way I was made. If it had been up to me, every day to fight that desire, I couldn’t have done it. I just, you know, I’m being honest with you. So, I have such respect and honor so much the people who really do have to work with that every day and do work with it. Whether they’re successful every day or not. It’s a fierce battle for survival. And it’s very difficult. And truly, I don’t think anybody can do it on their own. I think if a person is doing it, it’s coming out of some kind of spiritual strength, inner strength which is not ego-based. Which is not based in the separate self, it’s based in the real self and that real self, your own self, your own true nature, is strengthening you to fight that battle. Ok? Yeah. But what was taken from me at that moment until this moment, was the desire for cocaine. It was gone. Don’t. I can’t say “I let go of it.” I didn’t let go of it. It was taken from me. And so, we’re here today. Otherwise, it wasn’t going to be long before I killed myself. _______________ Q: So, I have seen you together with Sharon Salzberg who I absolutely love… KD: Keep the mic by your mouth, please. Q: I have seen you with Sharon Salzberg who I absolutely love and I listen to a lot of Ram Das’s programs and his podcasts and stuff. But you all studied under the same Guru. KD: Not true. Q: No? KD: No, Sharon never met Maharajji. Q: But Sharon, she meditates all the time and I love her meditations. Do you meditate or do you chant as a way of meditating? Is that your meditation? I’ve never heard you talk about actually sitting quietly. KD: I’ve done a lot of practices over the years. A lot of practices. I’ve meditated with Tibetan Rinpoches. I’ve meditated with Theravada Buddhist Teachers. I’ve done Sufi dancing. I’ve sung Christian chants. But what I do mostly is the repetition of the Name. Q: So that’s what you use for your form of practice or meditation. That’s how you connect. So Sharon does Metta… KD: Sharon does a lot of things, too. Q: Yeah, right. So, but I know that when she… KD: Yeah, chanting is meditation. What else would it be? There’s tv and there’s chanting. They’re not the same. Probably. Unless you’re watching chanting on the tv, then that’s meditation. Hearing the Name is meditation. Chanting the Name is meditation. Thinking about the Name is meditation. Anything that has the Name in it is the Name remembering you in the first place. So, it is meditation. There are Many different types of meditation. Many different types. Because there are many different kinds of people. Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don’t. And when you don’t, you can’t be a nut. So, you have to do something else. So, that’s the deal. It is meditation. It’s most definitely meditation. But there are many different ways to meditate. Just like there are different people, different kinds of people. Q: So the 20 minutes or 30 minutes meditation that some people sit on the mat and do silently or guided or however that is, is it something you would do, like 20 minutes or 40 minutes a day? KD: How about just a really good five minutes? You know? Anything more than that gets scary. Then you start to think, “Ok, I’ve got to sit here.”  Then you’re not paying attention. Give it a good three minutes. Don’t worry about what I do. But you, give it a good one minute and then go have a cup of coffee and come back and do another good minute. One good minute is worth like 500 hours of nonsense. Q: Is that true? You know I always thought it was about discipline of actually just sitting there and ignoring the fact that you’re saying, “Get up.” You don’t really want to do that. KD: That’s just a thought, isn’t it? Q: Yeah, so I thought, yeah. KD: Unless the house is burning, sit your ass down and don’t get it up. Q: Right. KD: And then just, just doing that is so ridiculous. How many people do that? Nobody. Because the minute you sit down, you’re facing everything. That’s when you… so, just to sit there and just remember to just like, “Ok,” just watch your breath. You don’t have to try anything too hard. Don’t try to make anything happen. It already happened. They called it, “The Big Bang.” We’re here. How amazing is that. Let’s just be here. But we can’t. So, we do some practice. But don’t try too hard. Just keep letting go. How can you let go if you’re trying too hard. “Ok, I’ve gotta let go now!  Aargh! Oh, no. Ok!” It doesn’t work that way. You let go. You relax. Q: If I had met you 25 years ago, my mornings would be a lot easier. Because I really prefer chanting over sitting on the mat for the half hour. KD: No time is wasted. No time is wasted. Start now. You’re not starting but you’re learning. You, yourself are asking the questions so you’re ready to, you’re feeling the need for something deeper. So, it’ll come. It’s already come and you’re feeling it. So, now follow that feeling. Q: Thank you. KD: You’re welcome. 25 years ago you weren’t asking these questions. You weren’t, you weren’t in touch with the longing to be here. Q: Your story that you share is filled with moments of such grace and receiving. KD: Yeah. Q: And the devotion that I think hear, it has allowed you to develop, has been supported in satsang, in many different ways, Mr. Tiwari showing up at the right time and so on. My question has to do with how to keep the faith, how to keep the devotional aspect to the practice and to, you know, for lack of a better a word, keeping your eye on the prize in terms of focus. When the messengers might not be as absolutely astounding as maybe some of yours may have been, given that a message could come anywhere anytime from anyone or thing… KD: Yeah. Q: My question is, can you share with us how to keep that connection? How to keep that devotional aspect in an everyday world without, you know, yeah… that’s my question. KD: Well, first of all, cherish it and recognize it and appreciate it, what you do feel in this kind of a world, in this kind of situation. The fact that you’re here, the fact that you asked that question and that’s something to cherish inside yourself, in yourself, that you want that. That the longing for that means that its already, you’re being pulled towards it already. So, it’s up to you to find what helps you live more of that kind of life. You don’t need someone to show up and bang you on the head with something. We do enough banging ourselves. Everybody has their own storyline. People say, “Oh, you’re so lucky to be with Maharajji.” I say, “Well, we were the people who weren’t going to make it.” You know? Maybe the darkness isn’t so intense for you. You don’t need that right now. So, if you don’t need it, you won’t get it. We only get what we need because the underlying logic or agenda of the universe is compassion. And so everything in our lives is there because it’s supposed to be there and whatever messages our life has for us, is what we need to work with. So, don’t be looking for something to come from the outside. See what you have now and nurture it, cherish it. It’s a little plant. Water it. Feed it. Fertilize it. Don’t let the dog piss on it. You know, take care of yourself. The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-62-the-spiritual-heart-addiction-longing/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 62 | The Spiritual Heart, Addiction, Longing</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 62 | The Spiritual Heart, Addiction, Longing

Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD July 25 2020

Call and Response Ep. 61 Do What You Like, Taking It Personally, As Time Goes By Q:  I go to kirtans. I put in music in my car and I chant and I’ve developed a little bit of a practice. I have a daily sadhana, ultimately because of you… But I’m wondering what it looks like… besides going to kirtan or in my car, (what) do you recommend as part of… a daily sadhana of sitting, like in a meditation pose, and chanting and with music on in the background, that I’m chanting to? Or memorizing various… lines? I’ve memorized a few. “Do what you like. Find out what it is that you like. You’re the only one who knows. Somebody can give you suggestions. Somebody can order you to do things. Somebody can tell you to do things. Somebody can say, “Don’t do this, don’t do that.” Fine. If that feels right to you. See, that’s what’s happening anyway. Even if somebody tells you something, you’re agreeing to either do it or not do it, for whatever reason. It might be you like to be punished, so you can do what you don’t like. I tried that for about 50 years. So, really, in all seriousness, the whole thing is to trust yourself.” – Krishna Das Q:  First, thank you for your music and being you and I’ve told you before, but I guess your music and you really changed my life, ultimately. KD: Mine, too. Q: And so, I do have a question. The practicality that, the actual on-the-ground practicality of chanting, I hear from others, just chant, chant the names. Well, I go to kirtans. I put in music in my car and I chant and I’ve developed a little bit of a practice. I have a daily sadhana ultimately because of you and my yoga. But I’m wondering what it looks like besides going to kirtan or in my car. And I chant and I’ve developed a little bit of a practice. But I’m wondering what it looks like, besides going to kirtan or in my car, do you recommend as part of like, a daily sadhana of sitting, like in a meditation pose, and chanting and with music on in the background, that I’m chanting to? Or memorizing various, you know, lines? I’ve memorized a few. KD: I’m going to give you the secret teaching here. You ready? Do what you like. You have to find out what you like, what works for you, what you want to do, and do it. Don’t do what you don’t like. See how that feels. You might not do what you don’t like and feel bad. So, then you’d better do something. It’s up to you. What does it matter what I say? If I say something, then you’ll do it, maybe, and say “Ah, he’s full of shit, it didn’t work. I’m not going to do that. Good. Do what you like. Find out what it is that you like. You’re the only one who knows. Somebody can give you suggestions. Somebody can order you to do things. Somebody can tell you to do things. Somebody can say, “Don’t do this, don’t do that.” Fine. If that feels right to you. See, that’s what’s happening anyway. Even if somebody tells you something, you’re agreeing to either do it or not do it, for whatever reason. It might be you like to be punished, so you can do what you don’t like. I tried that for about 50 years. So, really, in all seriousness, the whole thing is to trust yourself. Learn how to find what works for you. Now, of course, there are many traditional, many lineages and many teachings already available that have worked for somebody, maybe many “somebody’s”, that doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you right now. It doesn’t mean it’s right for you right now. Only you know. Who else would know? Q: Thank you. _____________ Q: Hello, Krishna Das. KD: Where are you? Hi. Q: I met you before Jivamukti out in the desert out in California and I’d seen you moping. I saw you. I get it. KD: Sometimes I mope just to make people look at me. They feel sorry for me, you know, and then they give me stuff and they’re nice to me. Q: It was all you. It was real and I get it. And we’re both from Long Island and we’ve got the same schtick. KD: Well, that explains it. Q: You know, I, you inspire me. I want to thank you. KD: To mope? Q: No, no, no, no. I’ve got something to share. KD: Ok. Q: The moping is actually the essence of my question or my thought is that we are love. I get it. The practice is… KD: Do you really? Q: Yeah, I do. KD: Do you really? Q:  I really do. KD: When you really get it, you are it. There’s nobody to talk about out it. Q: No, I get it. KD: You understand it might be true. Q: I believe it. You know, it’s in my cells. I know it. KD: Good. Q: But I also know that most of us come into this room programmed through our conditioning, through our genetic makeup, whatever it is, with this intense negativity and my wonder is, the amazement that I have is that we don’t all come in here just chanting the Name of God with happiness, without anything else, just naturally. Rather than having to find it because we’re under a rock. Which you did. I did. We did. All of us. Most of us come that way. What’s that all about? Why is it that we don’t wake up and come into this room Pure Love rather than the dark side? That’s my question. KD: You know, one time I was in the temple and I was sitting with Siddhi Ma, Maharajji’s great devotee and one of, the oldest grandchild of my Indian parents, the Tiwari’s, was getting married and he and the other cousins, they all came to the temple for blessings. And so we were all sitting in the back there and I was watching these kids, right? They’re one family. And there was so much love and so much happiness among these cousins, this, and I was just sitting there and I couldn’t believe how sweet they were, you know? And then, Siddhi Ma looked at me and She said, “You see, Krishna Das? You see? This is what you missed by being born in America.” And I went, “Right.” So, I said, “Ma, what is it with us? With Westerners? Why can’t we love? Why can’t we let ourselves be loved?” She said a few things, but the main thing she said was that affection was used to control you as a child and so, right then, love went out the window because we learned that if we wanted to get what we needed, which was everything, from our parents who are our whole universe when you’re a baby, we had to show them some affection. We couldn’t by crying and nasty all the time because we wouldn’t, they would get angry at us and upset. That’s simplifying it. But essentially, it’s that we sensed that when we were, when the affection shined on us and when it didn’t, and that was used to control us from all the way through and so immediately we learned we have to do business in order to get what we want and that program is still running at 150,000 miles an hour. And also, that’s the way this world is. You know, we have our individual experience, but it’s not completely, it’s not an isolated experience. We’re, there’s a group experience of being on the Earth at this time. Of being here at this time or being, who’s in your life, how you grew up, what kind of, what you were taught, what you absorbed, what the people around you believed. And on one hand, you know, I feel that, we learn to feel about ourselves the way our parents felt about themselves. Not necessarily how they felt about us, but how they saw themselves, we absorb that way of seeing our self. And hey, I know my parents. I’m surprised I can even sit up straight. Not that they meant to do any harm. They were also programmed by their parents who were programmed by their parents and their culture. And then there’s more. You know? I mean, scientifically, they’ve now proven that trauma is passed on in the, around the DNA there’s like a sheath and they’ve proven that trauma is passed on through the generations through that covering of the DNA. So, while we may have trauma that’s caused specifically in this life, we’re also carrying this shadow of it from our parents and the trauma they experience. World Wars. A-bombs. You know, a lot of stuff happened to people. And we’re sharing that trauma as well. So, it’s a lot of stuff to process and let go of as we try to enter that inner love that lives within us. And it’s not all our fault. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s the way the world is now. It’s the way that people are programmed in this, on this earth at this time for the most part. That’s why they say it’s a great blessing to be born into a family of yogis because you don’t, you don’t get programmed the same way. So, it’s not… we take it all so personally, “This is my pain. This is my unhappiness. This is my bullshit. This is that. This is that.” But it’s not only “mine.” We’re sharing a huge ocean of suffering. Some of us have our toes in it. Some of us are up to here. Some of us are up to here. So, that’s all programmed by karma. How much? And what we have to do? The idea, though, that anything can be dealt with is humongous. We don’t give ourselves credit for that. We don’t give our self credit for coming to a place like this to do some practice, to learn some stuff. And we don’t realize what a big thing that is. Like I said  yesterday, “People get born, they graduate High School, they drink some beer and they watch tv and then they die. And they’re never here for a moment.” At least, because of grace and our good karmas, at least we’re trying to get a vote. We’re trying to get here. At least we understand that it might be possible. That’s a huge thing. Now, let’s move on from this place and do the best we can. All you can do is the best you can. You can’t do better than the best you can. And no matter how bad you think you’re doing, you’re doing the best you can. So, keep doing it. I talk much better with coffee. Sai Baba taught me how to do that. ____________ KD: hi. Q: Hi. So, every about 3 of 4 years or so, I have the great blessing to be sitting here before you, with you doing your stuff, sharing with you in your stuff and it’s one of the great benchmarks that I’ve come to have in terms of reflecting what’s going on in my life, where I am now as to where I was then and it’s kind of cool to look at that and about 10 years ago, you were kind enough to pose in a photo with me. This was before Apples and selfies and all of that, and I have to say, you and I, we looked really different in that photo 10 years ago. KD: I was three feet tall? Q: So, for me, you know, coming, I’ve been thinking a lot because I, you know, physically, in body, in maturation, in a very different place, a very marked place in my life right now, and I wanted to ask you, you know, how do you feel as you return to certain places, to be with us and how things, whether you, or the venue where you’re sharing space, you know, how you mark those changes and sort of rectify who you are now versus at another place and time in your life? KD: Could you simplify that a little bit? Q: Ok, sure. So, so things that you use to mark the time, what is it like for you, say, you know, to come back here now as opposed to five or ten years ago and how do you rectify change in transition? That make sense? KD: Maybe. Q: Ok. KD: The implication is that I might know the answer to that question. I really don’t, one of the nice things about getting old is that you don’t think as much about yourself. I don’t really spend a lot of time trying to analyze where I’m at. And as a result, I feel a lot better. So, maybe, because when we tend to evaluate ourselves, we always kind of lean towards the negative side. “What am I doing wrong?” Or, “I’m still stuck in this. I can’t let go of that. Blah blah blah.” All that stuff. So, little by little, one’s state, one’s own state of mind becomes less important. It becomes, you know, basically, for most of us, we go through our day as if we are the number one most important thing in the universe. Everything revolves around our sense of self or happiness.  “Are we feeling ok now? Are we feeling ok now? No. We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do that. That person looks like they’re feeling better than I’m feeling. That’s not good. I should feel better. This is not good.” You know? This kind of stuff. I don’t really.. I think I have a little less of that going on, maybe. Is that ok? Q: Well, yeah.  Thank you. KD: You’re welcome. Very welcome. But maybe I don’t. Maybe I just don’t care. But, and that’s the same thing, too. You don’t necessarily care about how you’re feeling all the time. It’s, it becomes more irrelevant. You know, you don’t, from here, after this is over, I’ll walk back to my cabin, my place. Am I going to be thinking, “Wow, I don’t know. Did I answer the questions ok? Maybe I did? Maybe I didn’t? Maybe I should have said this? Maybe I should have said that?” That doesn’t happen so much. But for most of us, and for me it happens a lot, but I think it’s happening a little less, if I had to think about it. Which you’re asking me to do. Thank you. All right. As you do these practices, especially with the repetition of the Name, not especially, but that’s mostly what I do, you find that the Name comes back to you by itself during the day. While you’re walking around, while you’re doing stuff, you’ll notice, “Oh, there it is.” So, stay with it for a minute until you forget and that will happen more often. You’ll be pulled back into yourself more often as the day goes on. Even without a conscious effort at that moment to so-called, remember. It’ll happen because you’re training, you’re familiarizing yourself with the feeling of being freer some of the time. More of the time. So, that feeling, because it’s naturally, you understand? That feeling is natural. That’s what’s in there. When we know ourselves, we are free. We are not bound by our thoughts, our emotions, by time and space.  We are love. Endless eternal love. That’s who we are. So, that love is pulling us all the time to come back home. And that’s what happens during the day as you go through your day, especially if you’re training yourself to turn towards that place in moments of practice. In other moments, too. Practice doesn’t mean this. It can me, you know, you’re walking around, all of a sudden you come back from dreamland and you’re here for a second and then you’re gone again. That’s a practice. That planted a seed of coming back right there, right then.   The post Ep. 61 | Do What You Like, Taking It Personally, As Time Goes By appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 61 Do What You Like, Taking It Personally, As Time Goes By Q:  I go to kirtans. I put in music in my car and I chant and I’ve developed a little bit of a practice. I have a daily sadhana, ultimately because of you… But I’m wondering what it looks like… besides going to kirtan or in my car, (what) do you recommend as part of… a daily sadhana of sitting, like in a meditation pose, and chanting and with music on in the background, that I’m chanting to? Or memorizing various… lines? I’ve memorized a few. “Do what you like. Find out what it is that you like. You’re the only one who knows. Somebody can give you suggestions. Somebody can order you to do things. Somebody can tell you to do things. Somebody can say, “Don’t do this, don’t do that.” Fine. If that feels right to you. See, that’s what’s happening anyway. Even if somebody tells you something, you’re agreeing to either do it or not do it, for whatever reason. It might be you like to be punished, so you can do what you don’t like. I tried that for about 50 years. So, really, in all seriousness, the whole thing is to trust yourself.” – Krishna Das Q:  First, thank you for your music and being you and I’ve told you before, but I guess your music and you really changed my life, ultimately. KD: Mine, too. Q: And so, I do have a question. The practicality that, the actual on-the-ground practicality of chanting, I hear from others, just chant, chant the names. Well, I go to kirtans. I put in music in my car and I chant and I’ve developed a little bit of a practice. I have a daily sadhana ultimately because of you and my yoga. But I’m wondering what it looks like besides going to kirtan or in my car. And I chant and I’ve developed a little bit of a practice. But I’m wondering what it looks like, besides going to kirtan or in my car, do you recommend as part of like, a daily sadhana of sitting, like in a meditation pose, and chanting and with music on in the background, that I’m chanting to? Or memorizing various, you know, lines? I’ve memorized a few. KD: I’m going to give you the secret teaching here. You ready? Do what you like. You have to find out what you like, what works for you, what you want to do, and do it. Don’t do what you don’t like. See how that feels. You might not do what you don’t like and feel bad. So, then you’d better do something. It’s up to you. What does it matter what I say? If I say something, then you’ll do it, maybe, and say “Ah, he’s full of shit, it didn’t work. I’m not going to do that. Good. Do what you like. Find out what it is that you like. You’re the only one who knows. Somebody can give you suggestions. Somebody can order you to do things. Somebody can tell you to do things. Somebody can say, “Don’t do this, don’t do that.” Fine. If that feels right to you. See, that’s what’s happening anyway. Even if somebody tells you something, you’re agreeing to either do it or not do it, for whatever reason. It might be you like to be punished, so you can do what you don’t like. I tried that for about 50 years. So, really, in all seriousness, the whole thing is to trust yourself. Learn how to find what works for you. Now, of course, there are many traditional, many lineages and many teachings already available that have worked for somebody, maybe many “somebody’s”, that doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you right now. It doesn’t mean it’s right for you right now. Only you know. Who else would know? Q: Thank you. _____________ Q: Hello, Krishna Das. KD: Where are you? Hi. Q: I met you before Jivamukti out in the desert out in California and I’d seen you moping. I saw you. I get it. KD: Sometimes I mope just to make people look at me. They feel sorry for me, you know, and then they give me stuff and they’re nice to me. Q: It was all you. It was real and I get it. And we’re both from Long Island and we’ve got the same schtick. KD: Well, that explains it. Q: You know, I, you inspire me. I want to thank you. KD: To mope? Q: No, no, no, no. I’ve got something to share. KD: Ok. Q: The moping is actually the essence of my question or my thought is that we are love. I get it. The practice is… KD: Do you really? Q: Yeah, I do. KD: Do you really? Q:  I really do. KD: When you really get it, you are it. There’s nobody to talk about out it. Q: No, I get it. KD: You understand it might be true. Q: I believe it. You know, it’s in my cells. I know it. KD: Good. Q: But I also know that most of us come into this room programmed through our conditioning, through our genetic makeup, whatever it is, with this intense negativity and my wonder is, the amazement that I have is that we don’t all come in here just chanting the Name of God with happiness, without anything else, just naturally. Rather than having to find it because we’re under a rock. Which you did. I did. We did. All of us. Most of us come that way. What’s that all about? Why is it that we don’t wake up and come into this room Pure Love rather than the dark side? That’s my question. KD: You know, one time I was in the temple and I was sitting with Siddhi Ma, Maharajji’s great devotee and one of, the oldest grandchild of my Indian parents, the Tiwari’s, was getting married and he and the other cousins, they all came to the temple for blessings. And so we were all sitting in the back there and I was watching these kids, right? They’re one family. And there was so much love and so much happiness among these cousins, this, and I was just sitting there and I couldn’t believe how sweet they were, you know? And then, Siddhi Ma looked at me and She said, “You see, Krishna Das? You see? This is what you missed by being born in America.” And I went, “Right.” So, I said, “Ma, what is it with us? With Westerners? Why can’t we love? Why can’t we let ourselves be loved?” She said a few things, but the main thing she said was that affection was used to control you as a child and so, right then, love went out the window because we learned that if we wanted to get what we needed, which was everything, from our parents who are our whole universe when you’re a baby, we had to show them some affection. We couldn’t by crying and nasty all the time because we wouldn’t, they would get angry at us and upset. That’s simplifying it. But essentially, it’s that we sensed that when we were, when the affection shined on us and when it didn’t, and that was used to control us from all the way through and so immediately we learned we have to do business in order to get what we want and that program is still running at 150,000 miles an hour. And also, that’s the way this world is. You know, we have our individual experience, but it’s not completely, it’s not an isolated experience. We’re, there’s a group experience of being on the Earth at this time. Of being here at this time or being, who’s in your life, how you grew up, what kind of, what you were taught, what you absorbed, what the people around you believed. And on one hand, you know, I feel that, we learn to feel about ourselves the way our parents felt about themselves. Not necessarily how they felt about us, but how they saw themselves, we absorb that way of seeing our self. And hey, I know my parents. I’m surprised I can even sit up straight. Not that they meant to do any harm. They were also programmed by their parents who were programmed by their parents and their culture. And then there’s more. You know? I mean, scientifically, they’ve now proven that trauma is passed on in the, around the DNA there’s like a sheath and they’ve proven that trauma is passed on through the generations through that covering of the DNA. So, while we may have trauma that’s caused specifically in this life, we’re also carrying this shadow of it from our parents and the trauma they experience. World Wars. A-bombs. You know, a lot of stuff happened to people. And we’re sharing that trauma as well. So, it’s a lot of stuff to process and let go of as we try to enter that inner love that lives within us. And it’s not all our fault. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s the way the world is now. It’s the way that people are programmed in this, on this earth at this time for the most part. That’s why they say it’s a great blessing to be born into a family of yogis because you don’t, you don’t get programmed the same way. So, it’s not… we take it all so personally, “This is my pain. This is my unhappiness. This is my bullshit. This is that. This is that.” But it’s not only “mine.” We’re sharing a huge ocean of suffering. Some of us have our toes in it. Some of us are up to here. Some of us are up to here. So, that’s all programmed by karma. How much? And what we have to do? The idea, though, that anything can be dealt with is humongous. We don’t give ourselves credit for that. We don’t give our self credit for coming to a place like this to do some practice, to learn some stuff. And we don’t realize what a big thing that is. Like I said  yesterday, “People get born, they graduate High School, they drink some beer and they watch tv and then they die. And they’re never here for a moment.” At least, because of grace and our good karmas, at least we’re trying to get a vote. We’re trying to get here. At least we understand that it might be possible. That’s a huge thing. Now, let’s move on from this place and do the best we can. All you can do is the best you can. You can’t do better than the best you can. And no matter how bad you think you’re doing, you’re doing the best you can. So, keep doing it. I talk much better with coffee. Sai Baba taught me how to do that. ____________ KD: hi. Q: Hi. So, every about 3 of 4 years or so, I have the great blessing to be sitting here before you, with you doing your stuff, sharing with you in your stuff and it’s one of the great benchmarks that I’ve come to have in terms of reflecting what’s going on in my life, where I am now as to where I was then and it’s kind of cool to look at that and about 10 years ago, you were kind enough to pose in a photo with me. This was before Apples and selfies and all of that, and I have to say, you and I, we looked really different in that photo 10 years ago. KD: I was three feet tall? Q: So, for me, you know, coming, I’ve been thinking a lot because I, you know, physically, in body, in maturation, in a very different place, a very marked place in my life right now, and I wanted to ask you, you know, how do you feel as you return to certain places, to be with us and how things, whether you, or the venue where you’re sharing space, you know, how you mark those changes and sort of rectify who you are now versus at another place and time in your life? KD: Could you simplify that a little bit? Q: Ok, sure. So, so things that you use to mark the time, what is it like for you, say, you know, to come back here now as opposed to five or ten years ago and how do you rectify change in transition? That make sense? KD: Maybe. Q: Ok. KD: The implication is that I might know the answer to that question. I really don’t, one of the nice things about getting old is that you don’t think as much about yourself. I don’t really spend a lot of time trying to analyze where I’m at. And as a result, I feel a lot better. So, maybe, because when we tend to evaluate ourselves, we always kind of lean towards the negative side. “What am I doing wrong?” Or, “I’m still stuck in this. I can’t let go of that. Blah blah blah.” All that stuff. So, little by little, one’s state, one’s own state of mind becomes less important. It becomes, you know, basically, for most of us, we go through our day as if we are the number one most important thing in the universe. Everything revolves around our sense of self or happiness.  “Are we feeling ok now? Are we feeling ok now? No. We’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do that. That person looks like they’re feeling better than I’m feeling. That’s not good. I should feel better. This is not good.” You know? This kind of stuff. I don’t really.. I think I have a little less of that going on, maybe. Is that ok? Q: Well, yeah.  Thank you. KD: You’re welcome. Very welcome. But maybe I don’t. Maybe I just don’t care. But, and that’s the same thing, too. You don’t necessarily care about how you’re feeling all the time. It’s, it becomes more irrelevant. You know, you don’t, from here, after this is over, I’ll walk back to my cabin, my place. Am I going to be thinking, “Wow, I don’t know. Did I answer the questions ok? Maybe I did? Maybe I didn’t? Maybe I should have said this? Maybe I should have said that?” That doesn’t happen so much. But for most of us, and for me it happens a lot, but I think it’s happening a little less, if I had to think about it. Which you’re asking me to do. Thank you. All right. As you do these practices, especially with the repetition of the Name, not especially, but that’s mostly what I do, you find that the Name comes back to you by itself during the day. While you’re walking around, while you’re doing stuff, you’ll notice, “Oh, there it is.” So, stay with it for a minute until you forget and that will happen more often. You’ll be pulled back into yourself more often as the day goes on. Even without a conscious effort at that moment to so-called, remember. It’ll happen because you’re training, you’re familiarizing yourself with the feeling of being freer some of the time. More of the time. So, that feeling, because it’s naturally, you understand? That feeling is natural. That’s what’s in there. When we know ourselves, we are free. We are not bound by our thoughts, our emotions, by time and space.  We are love. Endless eternal love. That’s who we are. So, that love is pulling us all the time to come back home. And that’s what happens during the day as you go through your day, especially if you’re training yourself to turn towards that place in moments of practice. In other moments, too. Practice doesn’t mean this. It can me, you know, you’re walking around, all of a sudden you come back from dreamland and you’re here for a second and then you’re gone again. That’s a practice. That planted a seed of coming back right there, right then. The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-61-do-what-you-like-taking-it-personally-as-time-goes-by/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 61 | Do What You Like, Taking It Personally, As Time Goes By</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 61 | Do What You Like, Taking It Personally, As Time Goes By

Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD July 18 2020

Call and Response Ep. 60 Gurus, Programs and Practice “We’re training ourselves to release whatever it is that is pushing us around. It’s not easy to see what it is because we’re being pushed from behind. It’s the shadows in our hearts, the dark corners in our hearts that push us around. So, it’s not easy to see the programs. That’s why, when we sit down to practice, we just keep letting go of anything that pulls us out of that moment of what we’re trying to do, and then come back.” – Krishna Das So, the poem I was looking for was by Rumi. A Sufi poet. Great poet. One of the Great Beings. It’s called “Love Dogs,” and I’m going to ruin it, but I’ll do the best I can. So, it starts off, “One night, a man was praying, ‘Allah, Allah’ and his lips grew sweet with the chanting. And then a cynic walked by and said, ‘Why are you calling out? You never get an answer.’ And the man was struck by that and thought, ‘He’s right.’ So, he stopped praying. And that night, he had a dream in which the guide of souls came to him and said, ‘Why did you stop praying?’ ‘Because I never got an answer.’ He said, ‘The calling out is the answer.’ He said, ‘You hear that moan of the dog crying for its Master? That’s the connection.’” So, the idea is probably that we’re already being called from within to move more deeply into our own true nature, the love that lives within us as who we really are and when we respond, either through a spiritual practice or through caring for others or kindness to others or doing good in the world, we’re actually answering the call of our own hearts. This isn’t something that comes from the outside. We’re not being, there’s no manipulation in love and love is what lives within us so the whole path is to learn to pay attention to our inner hearts and to do that, we have to learn to trust ourselves and listen to ourselves and honor our own truth, our own feelings, whatever they are. You can’t pretend to be who you’re not. It won’t work. So, really, one of the things that spiritual practice does, it gives us the strength to, little by little, overcome the programs that are running within us that tell us we’re not enough, that tell us we’re not worthy of love, that tell us that we can’t love, that things are not all right and will never be all right. And those programs run all the time. So, practice takes some of the energy away from those programs, little by little. If it happens too fast, they put you away. Right? I said, “Right?” All right, anybody have anything to say? Raise your hand and you’ll be punished. You’re going to make me talk more? Yesterday we were talking about Gurus and sometimes I can get a little bit cranky when we talk about Gurus. Because everybody, ok, just a second… everybody thinks I got started already, you can’t stop me. What’s that? Oh, you have it? I ruined it already, thank you. Q: Hello, Krishna Das KD: Wait, wait. I’m in the middle of something here. I’m in a program. Don’t kill it. So, yeah, I get cranky about it because I guess I have issues myself with physical Guru and the inner Guru because when I was with Maharajji physically, that was it for me. I didn’t want to be anywhere else, ever. That was home. I got home somehow. I tripped and fell and I was home. But, there was still all this stuff inside of me, uncooked seeds, so to speak. Uncooked desires. Desires that were calling out to be fulfilled and to live through. So, after 2 and a half years in India with Him, and He kept me there. He made it, He actually kept me there. One time, I was at Dada’s house in Allahabad, one of Maharajji’s great old devotees and my Visa, I had a tourist Visa and I had gotten one extension so I had been there about six months and… maybe I got it wrong… but anyway, I had to go and do, get another Visa, extend my Visa so I could stay but I knew that if I went back to this place, they would probably send me back to America. But I had to go. I had no choice. Now, Ram Das and the other Westerners, most of the other Westerners, they had got their first extension in New Delhi so in order to get another extension, they had to go back there and they’d heard that there was this government immigration agent that they could pay, they could bribe to extend their Visas. So, one morning they just all left. They went, they didn’t even say goodbye to Maharajji, they just all left. They figured they’d be back the next day or in a couple of days. So, the day after they left, I came at night with my, all my stuff because I was going to have to go to Bodhgaya, to Gaya, which is where I got my first extension. So, when I saw Dada I said, “You know Dada, I’m leaving on the night train tonight to go to Gaya to get my extension, but I’m not going without darshan, without seeing Maharajji.” He said, “Ok, ok.” So, later on Maharajji calls me in, and He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m going to Gaya to get my extension.” He said, “So, go.” I said, “Well, I’ll go. But they’ll probably send me back to America.” “So, go.” “Ok, I know you’re everywhere.” “Get out of here. Go.” So, I was on the porch waiting for the right time to leave for the train and Dada comes out and said, “Maharajji’s calling you.” So, I went inside. He told me that the next day, He was going to send me to this other town where His devotee was the Chief of Police and He was going to stamp my passport and give me an extension for a year. So, that’s what happened. Then, all those people who went to Delhi, when they got there, that agent, that guy that immigration agent had gotten busted for taking bribes, so they all got sent home. Wham bam thank you m’am. You’re outta here. And they never got to come back to Allahabad to even see Maharajji. And when Maharajji heard about this, He just went on and on, and He said, “Oh, those people tried to go to the highest place, the highest place, but look at Krishna Das is so humble. He just tried to do the lowest simplest thing and He’s the one who got to stay.” You know, it was bullshit because, and He knew and I knew it, everybody knew it. I had to go to Gaya, I couldn’t go to Delhi or else I would have gone just like everybody else. “Oh, he’s so humble.” Yeah, right. But the point is, He kept me there. And then He kept me there for another year after that as well. So, it was two and a half years. So, just towards the end of the two and a half years, I was with Him one day and He looked at me and He said, “Go to America when your Visa’s up.” Which was in a month or two. “Go to America.” I said, “But I’m just learning Hindi.” “Too bad. You go.” And then He said, “You have attachment there.” I didn’t know what He was talking about. When I left America, I was never going back. I gave my jeans away. I sold my records. Records? You don’t remember records but some of us do. And I sold my guitar. I sold my car. I got every dollar I could get together and I left and I was never going back. And now, all of a sudden, He says I have attachment there? What attachment? Well, I’ll tell you. Everything that happened to me from the moment I came back to America until this moment was exactly what He was talking about. There was so much stuff inside. So much stuff that just needed to come out. And it wasn’t gonna work for me to stay in India. First of all, I was really sick and I wouldn’t have lasted very long anyway. So, the stuff that’s inside has to come out. The question is, how do we deal with it as it arises? Does it completely grab us and knock us out? Knock us down and screw us up for a long time? Or do we have a better way? A better option to deal with it? This is what practice does. We’re training ourselves to release whatever it is that is pushing us around. It’s not easy to see what it is because we’re being pushed from behind. It’s the shadows in our hearts, the dark corners in our hearts that push us around. So, it’s not easy to see the programs. That’s why, when we sit down to practice, we just keep letting go of anything that pulls us out of that moment of what we’re trying to do, and then come back. When we’re chanting, it’s one of those moments of practice. We’re repeating the Names and then we notice we’re not paying attention and we haven’t been. So, we’re back. Then we go back to the Name again and then we’re gone again. Then we see that we’re gone. We come back. Over and over and over. And this is training our minds to release those obsessive limiting thoughts and feelings. And that movement of releasing is something that functions all day long. We’re just increasing it. We’re just building it up and getting, making it more deep in those moments of practice and then through the day, through the rest of our days, things will happen but we get more used to not being stuck. For most of us, we are, we are who we think we are. And we’re thinking all the time. Thoughts are coming all the time and we get no vote as to how we meet those thoughts. We’re gone. But as we learn to sit more deeply in ourselves, we begin to get a little bit of a vote of how, how we interact with those moments when something strong comes along, some thought or some emotion. Somebody you know all of a sudden, like starts to be weird towards you, right? And you start, you develop a whole storyline in your head. “Why is that person like that? What did I do to them? I never did anything to them. Son of a… you know…” and you’ve got this whole thing going on. And then you’re totally into it and all of a sudden you think, well, “There must be something wrong. Maybe he’s sick. Maybe he’s not feeling good.  And then your program, your story starts to lighten up a little bit. And you become aware of what really might be going on out there. You kind of talk yourself down from being totally stuck in your version of what’s going on. And the point of all this is to uncover the love that we’re all seeking. It’s not to be a great yogi. It’s not to you know, shine and have everybody see, “Oh, he’s a great yogi. Wow, this guy is really fantastic.” It’s not anything like that. It’s simply to find out and uncover what’s already inside of us. These practices help that. Help that evolution. Speed it along. It’s a ripening process. Every time we come back from Dreamland, we’ve moved ourselves a little closer to the sunlight of love where our hearts are ripened. Every time. Every single time. Sri Ramakrishna, who was a really great saint in the 1800s, He once described how this practice of the repetition of the Name works. He said that every repetition of the Name carries shakti, carries power, just like a seed. A tiny little seed might have a whole tree within it, a huge tree. So does every repetition of the Name carry the essence of true reality of love. And He said, “Every repetition carries this power and the seeds of the Name are thrown up like this, and they’re carried by the wind and they land on the roof of an old house in the jungle.” And in those days, the roofs might have been made from clay tiles, but the tiles weren’t very hard. So those seeds of the repetition of the Name that we do are caught between those tiles on that roof. And as time and seasons come and go and wind and rain and sun and everything, those tiles eventually begin to break down and soften. And then, the seeds of the repetition of the Name start to grow. And the roots grow and grow and they destroy the tiles. They destroy the roof. And they keep growing and they destroy the house, the walls of the house. Ramakrishna says, “That house is who we think we are.” “Me.” “Me” is destroyed by the repetition of the Name. And what is “Me?”  “Me” is the separate little feeling of “me-ness” which is different from everybody else’s feeling of “me-ness.” “It’s my house. You have your house. You have your house.” And that separation… we are locked behind the walls of our house, of our “me-ness” of our “ego”… sense of separateness. And reality is that that separateness is temporary. It is not permanent. It is temporary. And so, as the walls of that “me” break down, one expands to fill the whole the universe. Nothing is lost and everything is gained. Everything. Because that’s the way it is. And that’s who we are underneath who we think we are. And the real progress is, happens under the radar. You don’t get to pat yourself on the back. “Wow, this is a really great meditation. I’m really feeling very good these days. I’m able to deal with just about anything now. I think I’ve made it. This is great. Yes.” No. More stuff. But when that program is running, we’re not aware of it. We’re just in it. We don’t get a vote when you’re in it. When you’re not in it and you’re doing practice, it increases, it decreases the amount of time that you spend lost in your programs or your feelings or all that stuff that grabs us so much. And it’s the evaluator that’s getting thinned out. And I have a confession to make. I mope around less than I used to. Really. That’s a very big thing. I miss it. Really. Sometimes I mope around just for fun. It’s such a great feeling. But what are you going to do? I really do mope around less and what can I say? It’s reality. I was born a moper. And it’s taken a long time to mope around less but it’s actually happened. I think.   The post Ep. 60 | Gurus, Programs and Practice appeared first on Krishna Das.

Call and Response Ep. 60 Gurus, Programs and Practice “We’re training ourselves to release whatever it is that is pushing us around. It’s not easy to see what it is because we’re being pushed from behind. It’s the shadows in our hearts, the dark corners in our hearts that push us around. So, it’s not easy to see the programs. That’s why, when we sit down to practice, we just keep letting go of anything that pulls us out of that moment of what we’re trying to do, and then come back.” – Krishna Das So, the poem I was looking for was by Rumi. A Sufi poet. Great poet. One of the Great Beings. It’s called “Love Dogs,” and I’m going to ruin it, but I’ll do the best I can. So, it starts off, “One night, a man was praying, ‘Allah, Allah’ and his lips grew sweet with the chanting. And then a cynic walked by and said, ‘Why are you calling out? You never get an answer.’ And the man was struck by that and thought, ‘He’s right.’ So, he stopped praying. And that night, he had a dream in which the guide of souls came to him and said, ‘Why did you stop praying?’ ‘Because I never got an answer.’ He said, ‘The calling out is the answer.’ He said, ‘You hear that moan of the dog crying for its Master? That’s the connection.’” So, the idea is probably that we’re already being called from within to move more deeply into our own true nature, the love that lives within us as who we really are and when we respond, either through a spiritual practice or through caring for others or kindness to others or doing good in the world, we’re actually answering the call of our own hearts. This isn’t something that comes from the outside. We’re not being, there’s no manipulation in love and love is what lives within us so the whole path is to learn to pay attention to our inner hearts and to do that, we have to learn to trust ourselves and listen to ourselves and honor our own truth, our own feelings, whatever they are. You can’t pretend to be who you’re not. It won’t work. So, really, one of the things that spiritual practice does, it gives us the strength to, little by little, overcome the programs that are running within us that tell us we’re not enough, that tell us we’re not worthy of love, that tell us that we can’t love, that things are not all right and will never be all right. And those programs run all the time. So, practice takes some of the energy away from those programs, little by little. If it happens too fast, they put you away. Right? I said, “Right?” All right, anybody have anything to say? Raise your hand and you’ll be punished. You’re going to make me talk more? Yesterday we were talking about Gurus and sometimes I can get a little bit cranky when we talk about Gurus. Because everybody, ok, just a second… everybody thinks I got started already, you can’t stop me. What’s that? Oh, you have it? I ruined it already, thank you. Q: Hello, Krishna Das KD: Wait, wait. I’m in the middle of something here. I’m in a program. Don’t kill it. So, yeah, I get cranky about it because I guess I have issues myself with physical Guru and the inner Guru because when I was with Maharajji physically, that was it for me. I didn’t want to be anywhere else, ever. That was home. I got home somehow. I tripped and fell and I was home. But, there was still all this stuff inside of me, uncooked seeds, so to speak. Uncooked desires. Desires that were calling out to be fulfilled and to live through. So, after 2 and a half years in India with Him, and He kept me there. He made it, He actually kept me there. One time, I was at Dada’s house in Allahabad, one of Maharajji’s great old devotees and my Visa, I had a tourist Visa and I had gotten one extension so I had been there about six months and… maybe I got it wrong… but anyway, I had to go and do, get another Visa, extend my Visa so I could stay but I knew that if I went back to this place, they would probably send me back to America. But I had to go. I had no choice. Now, Ram Das and the other Westerners, most of the other Westerners, they had got their first extension in New Delhi so in order to get another extension, they had to go back there and they’d heard that there was this government immigration agent that they could pay, they could bribe to extend their Visas. So, one morning they just all left. They went, they didn’t even say goodbye to Maharajji, they just all left. They figured they’d be back the next day or in a couple of days. So, the day after they left, I came at night with my, all my stuff because I was going to have to go to Bodhgaya, to Gaya, which is where I got my first extension. So, when I saw Dada I said, “You know Dada, I’m leaving on the night train tonight to go to Gaya to get my extension, but I’m not going without darshan, without seeing Maharajji.” He said, “Ok, ok.” So, later on Maharajji calls me in, and He said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m going to Gaya to get my extension.” He said, “So, go.” I said, “Well, I’ll go. But they’ll probably send me back to America.” “So, go.” “Ok, I know you’re everywhere.” “Get out of here. Go.” So, I was on the porch waiting for the right time to leave for the train and Dada comes out and said, “Maharajji’s calling you.” So, I went inside. He told me that the next day, He was going to send me to this other town where His devotee was the Chief of Police and He was going to stamp my passport and give me an extension for a year. So, that’s what happened. Then, all those people who went to Delhi, when they got there, that agent, that guy that immigration agent had gotten busted for taking bribes, so they all got sent home. Wham bam thank you m’am. You’re outta here. And they never got to come back to Allahabad to even see Maharajji. And when Maharajji heard about this, He just went on and on, and He said, “Oh, those people tried to go to the highest place, the highest place, but look at Krishna Das is so humble. He just tried to do the lowest simplest thing and He’s the one who got to stay.” You know, it was bullshit because, and He knew and I knew it, everybody knew it. I had to go to Gaya, I couldn’t go to Delhi or else I would have gone just like everybody else. “Oh, he’s so humble.” Yeah, right. But the point is, He kept me there. And then He kept me there for another year after that as well. So, it was two and a half years. So, just towards the end of the two and a half years, I was with Him one day and He looked at me and He said, “Go to America when your Visa’s up.” Which was in a month or two. “Go to America.” I said, “But I’m just learning Hindi.” “Too bad. You go.” And then He said, “You have attachment there.” I didn’t know what He was talking about. When I left America, I was never going back. I gave my jeans away. I sold my records. Records? You don’t remember records but some of us do. And I sold my guitar. I sold my car. I got every dollar I could get together and I left and I was never going back. And now, all of a sudden, He says I have attachment there? What attachment? Well, I’ll tell you. Everything that happened to me from the moment I came back to America until this moment was exactly what He was talking about. There was so much stuff inside. So much stuff that just needed to come out. And it wasn’t gonna work for me to stay in India. First of all, I was really sick and I wouldn’t have lasted very long anyway. So, the stuff that’s inside has to come out. The question is, how do we deal with it as it arises? Does it completely grab us and knock us out? Knock us down and screw us up for a long time? Or do we have a better way? A better option to deal with it? This is what practice does. We’re training ourselves to release whatever it is that is pushing us around. It’s not easy to see what it is because we’re being pushed from behind. It’s the shadows in our hearts, the dark corners in our hearts that push us around. So, it’s not easy to see the programs. That’s why, when we sit down to practice, we just keep letting go of anything that pulls us out of that moment of what we’re trying to do, and then come back. When we’re chanting, it’s one of those moments of practice. We’re repeating the Names and then we notice we’re not paying attention and we haven’t been. So, we’re back. Then we go back to the Name again and then we’re gone again. Then we see that we’re gone. We come back. Over and over and over. And this is training our minds to release those obsessive limiting thoughts and feelings. And that movement of releasing is something that functions all day long. We’re just increasing it. We’re just building it up and getting, making it more deep in those moments of practice and then through the day, through the rest of our days, things will happen but we get more used to not being stuck. For most of us, we are, we are who we think we are. And we’re thinking all the time. Thoughts are coming all the time and we get no vote as to how we meet those thoughts. We’re gone. But as we learn to sit more deeply in ourselves, we begin to get a little bit of a vote of how, how we interact with those moments when something strong comes along, some thought or some emotion. Somebody you know all of a sudden, like starts to be weird towards you, right? And you start, you develop a whole storyline in your head. “Why is that person like that? What did I do to them? I never did anything to them. Son of a… you know…” and you’ve got this whole thing going on. And then you’re totally into it and all of a sudden you think, well, “There must be something wrong. Maybe he’s sick. Maybe he’s not feeling good.  And then your program, your story starts to lighten up a little bit. And you become aware of what really might be going on out there. You kind of talk yourself down from being totally stuck in your version of what’s going on. And the point of all this is to uncover the love that we’re all seeking. It’s not to be a great yogi. It’s not to you know, shine and have everybody see, “Oh, he’s a great yogi. Wow, this guy is really fantastic.” It’s not anything like that. It’s simply to find out and uncover what’s already inside of us. These practices help that. Help that evolution. Speed it along. It’s a ripening process. Every time we come back from Dreamland, we’ve moved ourselves a little closer to the sunlight of love where our hearts are ripened. Every time. Every single time. Sri Ramakrishna, who was a really great saint in the 1800s, He once described how this practice of the repetition of the Name works. He said that every repetition of the Name carries shakti, carries power, just like a seed. A tiny little seed might have a whole tree within it, a huge tree. So does every repetition of the Name carry the essence of true reality of love. And He said, “Every repetition carries this power and the seeds of the Name are thrown up like this, and they’re carried by the wind and they land on the roof of an old house in the jungle.” And in those days, the roofs might have been made from clay tiles, but the tiles weren’t very hard. So those seeds of the repetition of the Name that we do are caught between those tiles on that roof. And as time and seasons come and go and wind and rain and sun and everything, those tiles eventually begin to break down and soften. And then, the seeds of the repetition of the Name start to grow. And the roots grow and grow and they destroy the tiles. They destroy the roof. And they keep growing and they destroy the house, the walls of the house. Ramakrishna says, “That house is who we think we are.” “Me.” “Me” is destroyed by the repetition of the Name. And what is “Me?”  “Me” is the separate little feeling of “me-ness” which is different from everybody else’s feeling of “me-ness.” “It’s my house. You have your house. You have your house.” And that separation… we are locked behind the walls of our house, of our “me-ness” of our “ego”… sense of separateness. And reality is that that separateness is temporary. It is not permanent. It is temporary. And so, as the walls of that “me” break down, one expands to fill the whole the universe. Nothing is lost and everything is gained. Everything. Because that’s the way it is. And that’s who we are underneath who we think we are. And the real progress is, happens under the radar. You don’t get to pat yourself on the back. “Wow, this is a really great meditation. I’m really feeling very good these days. I’m able to deal with just about anything now. I think I’ve made it. This is great. Yes.” No. More stuff. But when that program is running, we’re not aware of it. We’re just in it. We don’t get a vote when you’re in it. When you’re not in it and you’re doing practice, it increases, it decreases the amount of time that you spend lost in your programs or your feelings or all that stuff that grabs us so much. And it’s the evaluator that’s getting thinned out. And I have a confession to make. I mope around less than I used to. Really. That’s a very big thing. I miss it. Really. Sometimes I mope around just for fun. It’s such a great feeling. But what are you going to do? I really do mope around less and what can I say? It’s reality. I was born a moper. And it’s taken a long time to mope around less but it’s actually happened. I think. The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-60-gurus-programs-and-practice/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 60 | Gurus, Programs and Practice</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 60 | Gurus, Programs and Practice

Call and Response Special Edition Conversations With KD July 2 2020

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Ep.11 ~ Well Being “One time, an old lady came to Maharajji, and she said, “Baba, show me God. Show me God, Baba.” And she was all emotional. Baba said, “Ok, Ma. Not now. Go away.” So later, at the end of the day, see she had come from a local town, and at the end of the day, she had to catch the bus back to her family, so at the end of the evening, she comes back to pranam to say goodbye to Maharajji and catch the bus. So she bows down and Maharajji says, “Ok, Ma, come here. I’m going to show you God now.” “Not now Baba, I have to go home!” That’s where we are. You know? We want that, but not now, I’m too busy, I have a movie to go to. I have a date tonight, I can’t do that. So, just, you know, be good to yourself. Learn how to do that. Learn how to be good to yourself.”- Krishna Das Transcription:  Q: In difficult situations, whether we’re out and about or with our coworkers or families, how to, maybe it’s just a momentary thing, maybe, can you offer some suggestions to, like, to bring our mind back to peace other than being with you now, which, as you said, it almost, like when you’re with, in the right situation, it brings you home and there’s that safety there, but when you’re out in the world, what do you do when you’re in a crowded situation to bring yourself back to a better place? KD: When are you not out in the world? Seriously. When? When you’re home? Our mind is working just the same. So, what I hear is there’s some judgement about you feel less connected to yourself when you’re out with other people and busy and reacting to their stuff. So what? It doesn’t matter. The point is you have to do practice. I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for myself. It’s very important to spend a little time, well, it’s important to recognize what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s a huge thing we’re trying to accomplish here. Look, we’re born, we pop out, we drink some milk, then we get to coffee, then we get to beer, then we die. And we never notice what’s going on. You know, that’s it. Next. So we’re trying to do something that most people in this world are not yet, don’t have the karmas and the situation to arise and the good, the positive karmas to try to find a good way to exist in life. It’s not just out there, it’s at home, too. You know? All the time. So, what’s required is some effort, I think, you know? Which comes from some recognition that we’re totally on automatic all the time. The recognition of that is a really big thing because when you recognize that you’re like, in a speed boat going 1000 MPH towards the waterfall, once you recognize that, then you might be able to take your foot off the accelerator, you know? Before you recognize it, there’s nothing you can do. So let’s imagine that, for the last 300 million births, we noticed that, but just too late, and woosh, over the waterfall, next life, and every life, we recognize it a few feet earlier, and one of these days we’ll recognize it soon enough that we’ll be liberated before the waterfall gets to us, before we go over the edge, before we take our last breath. So what we’re trying to do is a really big thing. A really big thing. And it’s not easy. But it starts with recognizing how out of control we are. And also recognizing everybody around us is out of control also. So, let’s not judge ourselves for that. There’s no reason to do that. We’re just human beings. That’s what we do. That’s why we’re human beings. Because we’re out of control and been out of control. So, once you know that, then you look around for a way to slow down, to calm yourself down. To slow down. To kind of rein in the stuff, to let it relax, let it, let it settle, let the leaves finally reach the ground, right? It takes awhile because there’s so much wind out there. So, there’s no quick answer. You’ll find your way to do it, the more you recognize that it’s your own, and our own inability to find what we want in life. That’s causing us pain. We’re not victims of anything outside of us. It’s our own stuff. And once we recognize that, that’s the good news and the bad news. If it’s our own stuff, then we can fix it. Nobody outside can fix it. Only we can fix it. And by fixing it, I mean, we just have to recognize more and more what we really want in life, the way we really want to feel every day, and then find the methods to use, the antidotes to use that are available, and there’s so many of them. So many. Once you start to look, you’ll find so much. You try this. See how it feels. Try that. See how it feels. Keep trying. And that’s it. That’s good. That’s all we can do. One time, an old lady came to Maharajji, and she said, “Baba, show me God. Show me God, Baba.” And she was all emotional. Baba said, “Ok, Ma. Not now. Go away.” So later, at the end of the day, see she had come from a local town, and at the end of the day, she had to catch the bus back to her family, so at the end of the evening, she comes back to pranam to say goodbye to Maharajji and catch the bus. So she bows down and Maharajji says, “Ok, Ma, come here. I’m going to show you God now.” “Not now Baba, I have to go home!” That’s where we are. You know? We want that, but not now, I’m too busy, I have a movie to go to. I have a date tonight, I can’t do that. So, just, you know, be good to yourself. Learn how to do that. Learn how to be good to yourself. You know, we have so many programs running about how not to be good to ourselves that we don’t even recognize how harsh we are with ourselves, how little we give to ourselves, how little we let ourselves breathe and be at ease and be happy, and have any kind of sense of wellbeing. Well Being is a very interesting thing. A sense of wellbeing. That’s actually what’s in there. If we went in there deep enough, what we find is this wonderful sense of wellbeing. Just as we are. Even with all the nonsense. That’s who we are. And you know, there’s a great story about Buddha and Mark Epstein in his book, “Going on Being,” writes about, he said he was very familiar with all the Buddhist texts and one day he was rereading the story of Buddha’s enlightenment and he, what happened is that, according to the teachings that were available at the time of Buddha, he had done all these practices, he had gone to all the teachers who knew anything and within no time at all, he had recognized, realized what they knew and still he saw he wasn’t happy. He wasn’t, he hadn’t reached the state that he recognized intuitively was liberation. And so, he would leave that teacher and find another one, then after some time, he would realize those teachings, and see again that it wasn’t enough. So, he kept looking and finally said, it’s enough. And He goes to the jungle. He had these five guys hanging out with Him. Five disciples. And He went into the jungle and He sat down under this tree, and He continued to do the practices that He had been doing which involved extraordinary tapasya. Tapasya is a word that comes from, “to burn” and so He was doing, like, He was basically not eating. He was taking like three or four breaths a day. You know, because you can do that if you slow yourself down enough and if you have concentration power. You can slow everything way down. He wasn’t eating, He was hardly breathing and He himself described it in the sutras, He said, you know, “You could see the bones through my body.” He had almost become translucent, He was so thin. And He was in great despair after awhile, because He had done everything He could do. Absolutely done everything He could do according to what He’d been taught. According to the teachings that were available at that time in the world. And He wasn’t where He needed to be.  And He was in terrible despair. He didn’t know what to do. And then, one day, out of the blue, He had a memory come to Him and it was a memory of a time when He was a boy out in the fields with His father, who was a king, and His father was watching some people work in the field and the young Buddha, young Siddhartha, was sitting under a tree watching from the distance, kind of resting from the heat of the day in this tree, and He remembered what came over Him at that moment under this tree, was this feeling that He had experienced that day as a child, and it was a feeling of Wellbeing, of all is right in the world. Ok? All is right. And that brought a very sweet feeling to Him. Now this is a guy who had, has been crushing all these feelings and doing this fierce work and this feeling of sweetness that came over Him, He was shocked by it. But being the Buddha, he said, “ok, what is this?” So, He looked into this feeling that He experienced and He recognized two things. He recognized that this feeling had no cause. Ok. I go like this. It feels good. This is the cause of feeling good. Right? I go like that. It feels bad. That’s the cause of feeling bad. I don’t do that. That’s of cause of feeling good. I don’t do this. That’s the cause of not feeling better. Not feeling good. So, in other words, He saw this feeling that arose, that it didn’t come from connecting to pleasurable things, things of pleasure, right? Things we like. Good music. Good food. A couple other things. Nor did it arise from disconnecting from painful things. When we disconnect from painful things, we feel better. This feeling didn’t arise from that, either, so He said to Himself, “If this feeling of, this wonderful feeling that I have, it’s not coming from, it has no cause, it must be innate. It must be natural to my Being.” Do you understand this? This is a really big thing. We’re busy all day long trying to grab onto some pleasure and avoid pain. That’s what we do all day, every day. This feels good. That feels bad. This feels good. This feels bad. That’s what we do. That’s what humans do. That’s what everybody does. But he noticed that this feeling that he was now experiencing again as an adult had no cause. This feeling of Wellbeing, this feeling that, all is ok. I’m ok. All is right in the world. It had no cause. It had to be natural. It had to be His nature. So, He said, maybe this is the way to enlightenment. And He began to center Himself in this feeling of Wellbeing and that was the change that changed everything for Him. Then, he thought, maybe I should eat something? And just then, a woman came by with some milk thing and He put His hands out and she poured some stuff in there. He ate. First thing that happened, His five disciples left Him. Right? That’s why they’re disciples. They don’t understand fuck all. He ate. They left. Siddhartha, the ascetic, has left the path. Let’s go somewhere else. Fine. So he kept sitting there and He went in and in and in through this feeling of ok-ness. And ultimately recognized His true nature. Enlightenment. Freedom. Let’s just sit here for a second, ok? Close your eyes. Don’t get comfortable. I really don’t want you to get comfortable. Just be the way you were and think about this. What is it? What does wellbeing mean? What it would it mean if I felt ok about myself as I am, as screwed up as I am, as dependent as I am, as anxious as I am, as fearful as I am… What if that’s ok somehow? What if I just let it be? What if it’s ok? Take a deep breath, a sweet soft big breath. It’s ok. It’s ok just the way it is. I don’t like it but it’s ok. I wish I had more hair. Oh. It’s ok. It’s ok. You fill in your own blanks. Don’t try. Don’t try too hard. We’re not trying to get anything. Just think about ok-ness. What would it be like if I felt ok about me? Feel the question. It doesn’t have to be a thought. Just feel the opening to the possibility of ok-ness. What would that feel like? Alright, that’s enough ok-ness. So, when we sing, when we chant, when we do practices, we should try to remember sometimes that we’re not trying to get something we don’t already have. This ok-ness is already in there. It’s just covered up and we can’t uncover it by scrambling around for crap outside or for experiences of this and that or being anything special or trying this or that. We just have to let it be here, let ourselves be here, even if we’re doing practices, they can be done without aggression, without ambition.  Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana   Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep.11 | Well Being appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep.11 ~ Well Being</h3> <blockquote>“One time, an old lady came to Maharajji, and she said, “Baba, show me God. Show me God, Baba.” And she was all emotional. Baba said, “Ok, Ma. Not now. Go away.” So later, at the end of the day, see she had come from a local town, and at the end of the day, she had to catch the bus back to her family, so at the end of the evening, she comes back to pranam to say goodbye to Maharajji and catch the bus. So she bows down and Maharajji says, “Ok, Ma, come here. I’m going to show you God now.” “Not now Baba, I have to go home!” That’s where we are. You know? We want that, but not now, I’m too busy, I have a movie to go to. I have a date tonight, I can’t do that. So, just, you know, be good to yourself. Learn how to do that. Learn how to be good to yourself.”- Krishna Das</blockquote> Transcription: Q: In difficult situations, whether we’re out and about or with our coworkers or families, how to, maybe it’s just a momentary thing, maybe, can you offer some suggestions to, like, to bring our mind back to peace other than being with you now, which, as you said, it almost, like when you’re with, in the right situation, it brings you home and there’s that safety there, but when you’re out in the world, what do you do when you’re in a crowded situation to bring yourself back to a better place? KD: When are you not out in the world? Seriously. When? When you’re home? Our mind is working just the same. So, what I hear is there’s some judgement about you feel less connected to yourself when you’re out with other people and busy and reacting to their stuff. So what? It doesn’t matter. The point is you have to do practice. I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for myself. It’s very important to spend a little time, well, it’s important to recognize what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s a huge thing we’re trying to accomplish here. Look, we’re born, we pop out, we drink some milk, then we get to coffee, then we get to beer, then we die. And we never notice what’s going on. You know, that’s it. Next. So we’re trying to do something that most people in this world are not yet, don’t have the karmas and the situation to arise and the good, the positive karmas to try to find a good way to exist in life. It’s not just out there, it’s at home, too. You know? All the time. So, what’s required is some effort, I think, you know? Which comes from some recognition that we’re totally on automatic all the time. The recognition of that is a really big thing because when you recognize that you’re like, in a speed boat going 1000 MPH towards the waterfall, once you recognize that, then you might be able to take your foot off the accelerator, you know? Before you recognize it, there’s nothing you can do. So let’s imagine that, for the last 300 million births, we noticed that, but just too late, and woosh, over the waterfall, next life, and every life, we recognize it a few feet earlier, and one of these days we’ll recognize it soon enough that we’ll be liberated before the waterfall gets to us, before we go over the edge, before we take our last breath. So what we’re trying to do is a really big thing. A really big thing. And it’s not easy. But it starts with recognizing how out of control we are. And also recognizing everybody around us is out of control also. So, let’s not judge ourselves for that. There’s no reason to do that. We’re just human beings. That’s what we do. That’s why we’re human beings. Because we’re out of control and been out of control. So, once you know that, then you look around for a way to slow down, to calm yourself down. To slow down. To kind of rein in the stuff, to let it relax, let it, let it settle, let the leaves finally reach the ground, right? It takes awhile because there’s so much wind out there. So, there’s no quick answer. You’ll find your way to do it, the more you recognize that it’s your own, and our own inability to find what we want in life. That’s causing us pain. We’re not victims of anything outside of us. It’s our own stuff. And once we recognize that, that’s the good news and the bad news. If it’s our own stuff, then we can fix it. Nobody outside can fix it. Only we can fix it. And by fixing it, I mean, we just have to recognize more and more what we really want in life, the way we really want to feel every day, and then find the methods to use, the antidotes to use that are available, and there’s so many of them. So many. Once you start to look, you’ll find so much. You try this. See how it feels. Try that. See how it feels. Keep trying. And that’s it. That’s good. That’s all we can do. One time, an old lady came to Maharajji, and she said, “Baba, show me God. Show me God, Baba.” And she was all emotional. Baba said, “Ok, Ma. Not now. Go away.” So later, at the end of the day, see she had come from a local town, and at the end of the day, she had to catch the bus back to her family, so at the end of the evening, she comes back to pranam to say goodbye to Maharajji and catch the bus. So she bows down and Maharajji says, “Ok, Ma, come here. I’m going to show you God now.” “Not now Baba, I have to go home!” That’s where we are. You know? We want that, but not now, I’m too busy, I have a movie to go to. I have a date tonight, I can’t do that. So, just, you know, be good to yourself. Learn how to do that. Learn how to be good to yourself. You know, we have so many programs running about how not to be good to ourselves that we don’t even recognize how harsh we are with ourselves, how little we give to ourselves, how little we let ourselves breathe and be at ease and be happy, and have any kind of sense of wellbeing. Well Being is a very interesting thing. A sense of wellbeing. That’s actually what’s in there. If we went in there deep enough, what we find is this wonderful sense of wellbeing. Just as we are. Even with all the nonsense. That’s who we are. And you know, there’s a great story about Buddha and Mark Epstein in his book, “Going on Being,” writes about, he said he was very familiar with all the Buddhist texts and one day he was rereading the story of Buddha’s enlightenment and he, what happened is that, according to the teachings that were available at the time of Buddha, he had done all these practices, he had gone to all the teachers who knew anything and within no time at all, he had recognized, realized what they knew and still he saw he wasn’t happy. He wasn’t, he hadn’t reached the state that he recognized intuitively was liberation. And so, he would leave that teacher and find another one, then after some time, he would realize those teachings, and see again that it wasn’t enough. So, he kept looking and finally said, it’s enough. And He goes to the jungle. He had these five guys hanging out with Him. Five disciples. And He went into the jungle and He sat down under this tree, and He continued to do the practices that He had been doing which involved extraordinary tapasya. Tapasya is a word that comes from, “to burn” and so He was doing, like, He was basically not eating. He was taking like three or four breaths a day. You know, because you can do that if you slow yourself down enough and if you have concentration power. You can slow everything way down. He wasn’t eating, He was hardly breathing and He himself described it in the sutras, He said, you know, “You could see the bones through my body.” He had almost become translucent, He was so thin. And He was in great despair after awhile, because He had done everything He could do. Absolutely done everything He could do according to what He’d been taught. According to the teachings that were available at that time in the world. And He wasn’t where He needed to be.  And He was in terrible despair. He didn’t know what to do. And then, one day, out of the blue, He had a memory come to Him and it was a memory of a time when He was a boy out in the fields with His father, who was a king, and His father was watching some people work in the field and the young Buddha, young Siddhartha, was sitting under a tree watching from the distance, kind of resting from the heat of the day in this tree, and He remembered what came over Him at that moment under this tree, was this feeling that He had experienced that day as a child, and it was a feeling of Wellbeing, of all is right in the world. Ok? All is right. And that brought a very sweet feeling to Him. Now this is a guy who had, has been crushing all these feelings and doing this fierce work and this feeling of sweetness that came over Him, He was shocked by it. But being the Buddha, he said, “ok, what is this?” So, He looked into this feeling that He experienced and He recognized two things. He recognized that this feeling had no cause. Ok. I go like this. It feels good. This is the cause of feeling good. Right? I go like that. It feels bad. That’s the cause of feeling bad. I don’t do that. That’s of cause of feeling good. I don’t do this. That’s the cause of not feeling better. Not feeling good. So, in other words, He saw this feeling that arose, that it didn’t come from connecting to pleasurable things, things of pleasure, right? Things we like. Good music. Good food. A couple other things. Nor did it arise from disconnecting from painful things. When we disconnect from painful things, we feel better. This feeling didn’t arise from that, either, so He said to Himself, “If this feeling of, this wonderful feeling that I have, it’s not coming from, it has no cause, it must be innate. It must be natural to my Being.” Do you understand this? This is a really big thing. We’re busy all day long trying to grab onto some pleasure and avoid pain. That’s what we do all day, every day. This feels good. That feels bad. This feels good. This feels bad. That’s what we do. That’s what humans do. That’s what everybody does. But he noticed that this feeling that he was now experiencing again as an adult had no cause. This feeling of Wellbeing, this feeling that, all is ok. I’m ok. All is right in the world. It had no cause. It had to be natural. It had to be His nature. So, He said, maybe this is the way to enlightenment. And He began to center Himself in this feeling of Wellbeing and that was the change that changed everything for Him. Then, he thought, maybe I should eat something? And just then, a woman came by with some milk thing and He put His hands out and she poured some stuff in there. He ate. First thing that happened, His five disciples left Him. Right? That’s why they’re disciples. They don’t understand fuck all. He ate. They left. Siddhartha, the ascetic, has left the path. Let’s go somewhere else. Fine. So he kept sitting there and He went in and in and in through this feeling of ok-ness. And ultimately recognized His true nature. Enlightenment. Freedom. Let’s just sit here for a second, ok? Close your eyes. Don’t get comfortable. I really don’t want you to get comfortable. Just be the way you were and think about this. What is it? What does wellbeing mean? What it would it mean if I felt ok about myself as I am, as screwed up as I am, as dependent as I am, as anxious as I am, as fearful as I am… What if that’s ok somehow? What if I just let it be? What if it’s ok? Take a deep breath, a sweet soft big breath. It’s ok. It’s ok just the way it is. I don’t like it but it’s ok. I wish I had more hair. Oh. It’s ok. It’s ok. You fill in your own blanks. Don’t try. Don’t try too hard. We’re not trying to get anything. Just think about ok-ness. What would it be like if I felt ok about me? Feel the question. It doesn’t have to be a thought. Just feel the opening to the possibility of ok-ness. What would that feel like? Alright, that’s enough ok-ness. So, when we sing, when we chant, when we do practices, we should try to remember sometimes that we’re not trying to get something we don’t already have. This ok-ness is already in there. It’s just covered up and we can’t uncover it by scrambling around for crap outside or for experiences of this and that or being anything special or trying this or that. We just have to let it be here, let ourselves be here, even if we’re doing practices, they can be done without aggression, without ambition. <h3>Suggestions for your practice: <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/sadhanas" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana</a></h3> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8247.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8246.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-11-well-being/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep.11 | Well Being</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep.11 | Well Being

Lama Surya Das

Ep.12 | Krishna Das chats with Lama Surya Das

Ep.02 ~ How Does love Relate to Life  That’s the other thing that happens, you also start to accept all the parts of your life a lot more easily. All the shadows. You know, the shadows, if we don’t see them, they just keep pushing us around and they don’t go away by themselves. They must be looked at, they must be released, consciously released to some degree. So, when Maharajji sent me back to America after two and a half years, he said, “You go back to America. You have attachment there.” So, this is, this is what’s left after 50 years of dealing with attachment. Just, me and my main squeeze here. And my life, you know? But I think one of the things you’re asking, I’m not looking for that love in anybody anymore, in a person, in a human being – Krishna Das Transcription:  Q:  So you mention about having a void and seeking to fill that void and so having had the experience with Maharajji, to piggyback on this gentleman’s question, how did that experience then translate back into, and this doesn’t have to be personal to you, per se, but in your experience, how does it all translate back into the romantic relationship, in your opinion. KD: Well, what about just any relationship? What about, how does it translate at all to life, you know? It changes everything on one hand but it didn’t eradicate the karmas that I had already, you know, that were still to work themselves out. They still were coming. You know, looking back, you know, at that time, it changed a lot. First of all, I knew that there really is something to find that is real. And all I had to do is clean my heart and calm my mind, right? So, I’m still waiting. I think tomorrow I’ll start meditating. Maybe the day after. I’m busy tomorrow. But on the other hand, on one hand, like I said, it changed everything because now there was a context for being alive, whereas before there wasn’t. I mean, I was hoping there was, but I didn’t really know that. But then after that, being there in India and those years and everything, you know, was different. My whole way of living in the world changed to some degree. But it didn’t obliterate a lot of the heavy darkness in my heart.  And that darkness manifested very fiercely over the years and it took me down a lot of places, you know, I would have never thought I would have gone. After being with Maharajji. Most people get fucked up before. But I was too scared to do that. I had to wait til afterwards to get screwed up. And I did. Royally. So, but then there’s, as bad as it gets, most of the time you know that, you have a sense that these are your karmas manifesting and the more you deal with them, the better it is. The more ways you find to deal with them and be present with it as much as you can, the easier it gets but that’s not easy.  Give him the mic, he wants to say more. Q: I almost feel as if this could be a conversation actually? KD: what else is it? Isn’t this my living room? Q: So be it. KD: Or your living room? Q: So it sounds like life only began at that point, per se? KD: no, it sounds like the lights went on for a minute and then they went off again. You know? But once they’ve gone on, you see what’s in the room, to some degree. And then it’s not so, it changes a lot. First of all, you know there’s a door over there. You just have to get to the door to get out. Before you didn’t know what was there. So, you’re bumping around trying to find a way out but you don’t even know if there is a way out, so you might give up very easily, which most people do. Q; So on that note, then, in terms of your relationship with life in general, just as opposed to just, a romantic side of things. KD: Ok, what do you mean by? You’ve said that twice. What do you mean by romantic? Q: Well, actually, just based on his question, so you know, in life one of the things that we seem to accomplish, let’s say for me, is to have a certain degree of sacred partnership. Or whatever that might look like in terms of romantic relationships. And having gone through that experience, sometimes I wonder KD: What experience? Q: The experience of being with Maharajji. Sometimes I wonder, it’s like, there’s a song that says, looking for love in all the wrong places. KD: It’s ike that. Q: So I wonder, what happens after that experience in that realm, you know? KD: Look at it. This is what happens. Q: I’ve been looking at you for a couple of hours. I want to know what’s behind the curtain there. KD: There’s nothing behind the curtain. Just the same shit you see.  There are very few secrets left, especially in the days of social media. Ram Das talks about the time he was standing in line at a porn, outside waiting to buy a ticket at a porn movie, you know? The guy behind him goes, “Are you Ram Das?” He said, Yes, bought his ticket and went in. That’s the other thing that happens, you also start to accept all the parts of your life a lot more easily. All the shadows. You know, the shadows, if we don’t see them, they just keep pushing us around and they don’t go away by themselves. They must be looked at, they must be released, consciously released to some degree. So, when Maharajji sent me back to America after 2 and a half years, he said, “You go back to America. You have attachment there.” So, this is, this is what’s left after 50 years of dealing with attachment. Just, me and my main squeeze here. And my life, you know? But I think one of the things you’re asking, I’m not looking for that love in anybody anymore, in a person, in a human being. You know? That love, I understand to be the, like the sky that holds everything within it. We’re all inside of that love all the time. Most of us are trapped inside of me, so we don’t feel that space that we’re all a part of. That’s how I see Maharajji now.  And that’s how I see the love now.  That love can be manifested by a person, you know, to some degree. But only a true Saint, a true Guru can actually, who’s become that, can, is that. Can transmit that, so to speak. Human beings can only transmit what human beings have to transmit, whatever that is. Affection, kindness, caring, compassion, tenderness, partnership, friendship, neediness, greediness, anger, shame, fear, guilt, that’s our world. That’s not the same world as, and that whole world is held in the arms of this vast sky of love all the time. There’s nothing outside of that. Couldn’t be. But we don’t know that. We’re not aware of that. But what to do? That’s why he sent me home. First of all, I would have died within a year or two if I had stayed there. I was so sick. Ridiculously sick. And second of all, I would have never, I would have never had a chance to live through the untying of the knots in my own heart. It had to be done this way I guess, because that’s what happened. But there are other people who’ve gone to India, they’ve become monks or nuns and they’ve stayed there their whole lives. You know? That wasn’t me. I thought it was me. But it wasn’t. And He knew that. That’s why He sent me back.   Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana   Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep.02 | How Does Love Relate to Life. appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep.02 ~ How Does love Relate to Life </h3> That’s the other thing that happens, you also start to accept all the parts of your life a lot more easily. All the shadows. You know, the shadows, if we don’t see them, they just keep pushing us around and they don’t go away by themselves. They must be looked at, they must be released, consciously released to some degree. So, when Maharajji sent me back to America after two and a half years, he said, “You go back to America. You have attachment there.” So, this is, this is what’s left after 50 years of dealing with attachment. Just, me and my main squeeze here. And my life, you know? But I think one of the things you’re asking, I’m not looking for that love in anybody anymore, in a person, in a human being – Krishna Das <h3>Transcription: </h3> Q:  So you mention about having a void and seeking to fill that void and so having had the experience with Maharajji, to piggyback on this gentleman’s question, how did that experience then translate back into, and this doesn’t have to be personal to you, per se, but in your experience, how does it all translate back into the romantic relationship, in your opinion. KD: Well, what about just any relationship? What about, how does it translate at all to life, you know? It changes everything on one hand but it didn’t eradicate the karmas that I had already, you know, that were still to work themselves out. They still were coming. You know, looking back, you know, at that time, it changed a lot. First of all, I knew that there really is something to find that is real. And all I had to do is clean my heart and calm my mind, right? So, I’m still waiting. I think tomorrow I’ll start meditating. Maybe the day after. I’m busy tomorrow. But on the other hand, on one hand, like I said, it changed everything because now there was a context for being alive, whereas before there wasn’t. I mean, I was hoping there was, but I didn’t really know that. But then after that, being there in India and those years and everything, you know, was different. My whole way of living in the world changed to some degree. But it didn’t obliterate a lot of the heavy darkness in my heart.  And that darkness manifested very fiercely over the years and it took me down a lot of places, you know, I would have never thought I would have gone. After being with Maharajji. Most people get fucked up before. But I was too scared to do that. I had to wait til afterwards to get screwed up. And I did. Royally. So, but then there’s, as bad as it gets, most of the time you know that, you have a sense that these are your karmas manifesting and the more you deal with them, the better it is. The more ways you find to deal with them and be present with it as much as you can, the easier it gets but that’s not easy.  Give him the mic, he wants to say more. Q: I almost feel as if this could be a conversation actually? KD: what else is it? Isn’t this my living room? Q: So be it. KD: Or your living room? Q: So it sounds like life only began at that point, per se? KD: no, it sounds like the lights went on for a minute and then they went off again. You know? But once they’ve gone on, you see what’s in the room, to some degree. And then it’s not so, it changes a lot. First of all, you know there’s a door over there. You just have to get to the door to get out. Before you didn’t know what was there. So, you’re bumping around trying to find a way out but you don’t even know if there is a way out, so you might give up very easily, which most people do. Q; So on that note, then, in terms of your relationship with life in general, just as opposed to just, a romantic side of things. KD: Ok, what do you mean by? You’ve said that twice. What do you mean by romantic? Q: Well, actually, just based on his question, so you know, in life one of the things that we seem to accomplish, let’s say for me, is to have a certain degree of sacred partnership. Or whatever that might look like in terms of romantic relationships. And having gone through that experience, sometimes I wonder KD: What experience? Q: The experience of being with Maharajji. Sometimes I wonder, it’s like, there’s a song that says, looking for love in all the wrong places. KD: It’s ike that. Q: So I wonder, what happens after that experience in that realm, you know? KD: Look at it. This is what happens. Q: I’ve been looking at you for a couple of hours. I want to know what’s behind the curtain there. KD: There’s nothing behind the curtain. Just the same shit you see.  There are very few secrets left, especially in the days of social media. Ram Das talks about the time he was standing in line at a porn, outside waiting to buy a ticket at a porn movie, you know? The guy behind him goes, “Are you Ram Das?” He said, Yes, bought his ticket and went in. That’s the other thing that happens, you also start to accept all the parts of your life a lot more easily. All the shadows. You know, the shadows, if we don’t see them, they just keep pushing us around and they don’t go away by themselves. They must be looked at, they must be released, consciously released to some degree. So, when Maharajji sent me back to America after 2 and a half years, he said, “You go back to America. You have attachment there.” So, this is, this is what’s left after 50 years of dealing with attachment. Just, me and my main squeeze here. And my life, you know? But I think one of the things you’re asking, I’m not looking for that love in anybody anymore, in a person, in a human being. You know? That love, I understand to be the, like the sky that holds everything within it. We’re all inside of that love all the time. Most of us are trapped inside of me, so we don’t feel that space that we’re all a part of. That’s how I see Maharajji now.  And that’s how I see the love now.  That love can be manifested by a person, you know, to some degree. But only a true Saint, a true Guru can actually, who’s become that, can, is that. Can transmit that, so to speak. Human beings can only transmit what human beings have to transmit, whatever that is. Affection, kindness, caring, compassion, tenderness, partnership, friendship, neediness, greediness, anger, shame, fear, guilt, that’s our world. That’s not the same world as, and that whole world is held in the arms of this vast sky of love all the time. There’s nothing outside of that. Couldn’t be. But we don’t know that. We’re not aware of that. But what to do? That’s why he sent me home. First of all, I would have died within a year or two if I had stayed there. I was so sick. Ridiculously sick. And second of all, I would have never, I would have never had a chance to live through the untying of the knots in my own heart. It had to be done this way I guess, because that’s what happened. But there are other people who’ve gone to India, they’ve become monks or nuns and they’ve stayed there their whole lives. You know? That wasn’t me. I thought it was me. But it wasn’t. And He knew that. That’s why He sent me back. <h3>Suggestions for your practice: <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/sadhanas" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana</a></h3> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8247.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8246.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-02-how-does-love-relate-to-life/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep.02 | How Does Love Relate to Life.</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep.02 | How Does Love Relate to Life.

Dada Vaswani

{Photo by Krishna Das, Auckland Harbor July 2018} Ep. 21 Longing, Ripening and Dada Vaswani The other people who met Maharajji talk about is the experience of His unconditional love, as you said once, “His unbearable love,” and my guess is that for many people, certainly who’ve not had the experience of Baba in the body and who maybe don’t have… my guess is when you speak of that, many people wish to feel that, to feel unconditional love, maybe that’s why they keep coming, I don’t know. And so, after a lifetime of doing this and becoming a teacher, what can you say? You know, what can you say to people about having that experience, finding that experience? “I would say that the more you long for it, the better it is. Period. You have to be where you are. You can’t be anybody else. You can’t be anywhere else. What you can do is look, be yourself 100% and the longing for that love is what brings towards it. Period. End of conversation. That’s it. Nothing else. That’s my only qualification for any of this, is longing. This insane amount of longing that destroyed my life. It destroyed everything I thought I was going to be in life and replaced it with all this nonsense. It was that longing which I brought into this life and when I speak about this love and my Guru and you feel “I want a guru, I want a guru,” that’s a good longing to have because that longing will not leave you until you find what it is you’re longing for. There’s no easy way to get through this. It sucks. Period. I can’t make it all right for anybody but I can tell you that the more longing you have, the better it is. “ – Krishna Das Q: Hi. Ram Ram. KD: Ram Ram. Q: I’m Annapurna. KD: Annapurna. Annapurna. Q: The gentleman who asked about finding, looking for a guru, finding a guru, one of the more compelling things that you and the other MTM’s talk about… KD: Use words, ok? Q: the other people who met Maharajji talk about is the experience of His unconditional love as you said once, His unbearable love… and my guess is that for many people, certainly who’ve not had the experience of Baba in the body and who maybe don’t have… my guess is when you speak of that, many people wish to feel that, to feel unconditional love, maybe that’s why they keep coming, I don’t know. And so after a lifetime of doing this and becoming a teacher, what can you say… KD: I’m not a teacher, thank you. Q: You know, what can you say to people about having that experience, finding that experience… KD: I would say that the more you long for it, the better it is. Period. You have to be where you are. You can’t be anybody else. You can’t be anywhere else. What you can do is look, be yourself 100% and the longing for that love is what brings towards it. Period. End of conversation. That’s it. Nothing else. That’s my only qualification for any of this, is longing. This insane amount of longing that destroyed my life. It destroyed everything I thought I was going to be in life and replaced it with all this nonsense. It was that longing which I brought into this life and when I speak about this love and my Guru and you feel “I want a guru, I want a guru,” that’s a good longing to have because that longing will not leave you until you find what it is you’re longing for. There’s no easy way to get through this. It sucks. Period. I can’t make it all right for anybody but I can tell you that the more longing you have, the better it is. So what, I shouldn’t talk about Maharajji because it makes people unhappy? That unhappiness is a good thing. And that’s what happened when I met Ram Das. This longing was the longing I already had for something that I didn’t even know what it was, it got crystallized in a way. It got concentrated. It got super infused and then nothing kept me away from that. And it just worked out the way it worked out. You know, many of you probably know the story but, so, after about a year and a half of hanging out with Ram Das and I recognized that it was Maharajji that was coming through Him, I said, you know, “I want to go see Maharajji” and he said, “Well, I can’t tell you where He is.” He couldn’t even, He didn’t even tell us his name. Because when he left India, when Maharajji, when he was going home, Maharajji said to him, “Don’t talk about me in America.” So of course, all he did was talk about him, but he never said his name. And he never said where you could find Him. But he talked about Him. So I said to Ram Das, I’m going to India. And he said, “Well, I can’t tell you where to go.” I said, “I don’t care, I’m going. I’ll find Him.” And he said, “Ok, ok wait. I’ll give you my friend’s address in Nainital,” which is this little town up in the hills, “and you can write to him and see what happens.”  So his friend’s name was KK. KK Shah. Now, KK had grown up in Maharajji’s lap from the  year, 8 years old, really literally in his lap. Maharajji was like his grandfather and they had the most intimate, sweetest relationship and KK was, also had the personality of a spoiled child. If Maharajji said, “Sit down.” He would stand up. If Maharajji said “Stand up,” He would sit down. Go away, he would stay. Stay, he would go away. Eat, he would fast. Fast, he would eat. That’s the way he was, you know? So, after Ram Das met Maharajji the first time, that day KK was there. He was his translator and Maharajji said to KK, “Take him home and take care of him and serve him and feed him and make sure he has what he needs.” So, Maharajji had given KK this seva or this service to do for Ram Das. So now, I wrote to KK and I said, you know, I would like to come and see Maharajji. So he wrote back to say, “You know, He’s not in the hills at this time, but when he returns I’ll write back to you and I’ll let you know.” So about a month later, or a month or two later I got a letter back saying, “Maharajji,” he still didn’t say his name, right? “Maharajji has returned to his temple in Kainchi.” Aha, I have a place. “And after some days I was able to see Him. As you know, Great Saints do not encourage the devotees to come to them. But their doors are always open.” Great! And then the next line was, “And if you’re traveling in India, you can come see Him.” Fantastic! Here we go, right? Not exactly. Many years later, KK says to me, “Did I ever tell you what Maharajji said that day?” I said, “No.” He said, “Well, I came to the temple with, now there were three letters, my letter and two other guys, I came to the temple and I came into the room where Maharajji was and I put the letters on this bed next to Him and I sat down on the floor and I began peeling an apple and cutting it into small pieces to feed it to Maharajji.” He used to buy these very soft apples because he had three teeth, so he’d cut them small. So he was cutting the apple. He was feeding Maharajji the apple and Maharajji was talking to these other people in the room and He looks down and He sees the letters and He says, “What’s that?” And KK said, “They’re letters from students of Ram Dass. They want to come see you.” “Nay. Tell them not to come. What do I have to do with this?” And He goes back to His conversation. Now, see the play right? KK got very upset and he began to pout because Maharajji had given him the job of helping Ram Das, so to speak. The seva. And now Maharajji was interfering with the very work that He gave KK to do and this was unacceptable. So he began to pout and he stopped feeding Maharajji the apple. And Maharajji, and he looked down like this. Maharajji said, “ KK what’s the matter?” And he, KK showed me, he tried to push his head up like this. KK would look away. Then he’d let go and he’d put his head back down like this. Finally, Maharajji said, “Ok. Say what you want. Tell them what you want.” So, what did he write? Ok? What did he write? He’s not going to lie. He’s a good devotee. But he wrote, “As you know, great saints like Maharajji do not encourage the devotees to come to them but their doors are always open. So if you’re traveling in India…” My whole life hanging on a thread. Oops. Or so it seemed, right? But I, great… all I thought was “I’m going.” I was going to go, I didn’t care what happened. So, I had that longing, that pushed me. Everybody has that but we kill it mostly because we don’t believe we can ever really be happy. We don’t believe we’re worthy of love. We don’t believe we can be loved and we can love. Fully. And so we kill that longing. We try to numb it, numb ourselves down with everything we do.  That’s why the stronger the longing is, the better it is. You know that Rumi poem, you must have heard “Love Dogs”? I’ll screw it up, but you know, it’s like “A Man is Crying ‘Allah Allah’ and his lips grew sweet with the praising… and this cynic walks by and says, ‘ why are you calling out, have you ever got a response?’ and the guy thinks “he’s right and he quits singing.’ And he goes to sleep and he has this dream where the guide of souls comes to him and says, “Why did you stop calling out?” And he said, “Because I never got a response.” And he said, “ The calling out is the response.” You see. He said, “You hear that dog moaning in the distance, calling out for its master? That’s the connection.” We think we’re doing it. We think it’s up to us. We think when we call out that’s the first thing and we’re waiting for a response. The calling out is the response of the longing that comes from our own soul, our own Being. That’s the chanting. So, when you say the Name right once, which means you’re fully there, completely immersed in the longing, in the presence, then of course the real Ram will come. It’s not like it’s not here already but we don’t see it. That longing, it saves our, it’s the only thing that can save us and on the other hand, it fucks up our whole life completely because nothing will ever be enough, no matter how much we try to fake it, we don’t know we’re faking it. And we’re good at faking it. That’s ok. Go ahead, fake it. Maharajji said, keep lying. Keep singing the false Name. Don’t stop. One of these days, it’ll come out of you the right way. You have to keep calling out. If you don’t do it, what will happen? Nothing. And of course, the Name, chanting the Name is only one of the many practices and anything can be a practice if it’s done the right way, if it’s done with awareness, with intention. The trick is to be able to give yourselves and give ourselves 100% to it. And we don’t do that.  I remember the winter of ’69-’70, Ram Das and I and others were up at the Lama Foundation all winter, and we heard about this New York artist named Herman who had gone to India and learned to meditate and had come back and was now living just down the mountain from the Lama and so a group of us went to see him and I sat in the back of the room and everybody else was talking. I was just listening and stuff and then we were leaving a couple of hours later and I was the last one out the door. He grabbed my arm and he looked at me and he said, “You, you have to find out why it is that you can’t give yourself 100% to whatever you’re doing.” You ever see, like, in a taxidermy shop, you know? The squirrel on the wall? That was me. He nailed me to the fucking wall. It was unbelievable. I can remember that feeling right now. That was 50 years ago.  He got me perfectly and from that moment to this moment, I notice that I’m not giving myself 100% to it so then I recommit again and again. I come back. It’s… so at one point, I would assume that I’ll come back and I’ll never leave. We’ll see. It’s a nice fantasy. Q: Ah Krishna Das, I want to say thank you so much for coming out to LA. Our mutual sister, who we were going to actually fly to Atlanta with, Geeta… KD: Oh yeah, Geeta. Lovely. We had a great time. Q: To come and see you , so thank you so much. KD: Are you a disciple of Dada? Q: Exactly. Dada talks about, when you talk about ripening the soul, He talks about the ego and once we can start to diminish that I think that’s where the ripening process begins. So before you answer that, I just have a request, either today or tomorrow, if you can sing “God is Real” because I have watch it about 50,000 times and I just can not get… KD: So you know it by now. Give it up. Q: I want to hear it from you. I want to hear it from you. KD: This is the weirdest thing. I want to tell you, for some crazy reason, every place I’ve been going the last month or so, people have been asking me to sing “God is Real.” After like, years. I hardly ever sang it. Everybody wants… what’s the deal here? Q: I think I’ve been sharing it all over social media so that’s why. KD: Terrific. So, Dada Vaswani, who left His body last year at 100 years old was one of the greatest saints I’ve ever met. This man, there was nothing in there but love. It was extraordinary. And he was so kind to me. The first time I met him was in Chicago and this guy Jeremy who made the movie of me, you know? Whatever it’s called. One Track Heart.  Yeah. He was in Chicago shooting and he knew the people where Dada was staying. So we went over there.  And so I sang for Dada and he just sat there. He was in a wheel chair at the time. He was 96 maybe at that point or 95.  And after I was finished singing, this Indian guy goes “Oh Dada, when Krishna Das sings it makes me dance…” and Dada kind of opened up his eyes. He looked at the guy and said, “When Krishna Das sings, it brings my mind to peace.” Very nice. I thought, that was very nice. Thank  you. But so then last year, a year and a half ago, he would come to New York and he would ask me to come and sing at his talks and he would always, he would talk first and then he would sit on the side of the stage and listen while we sang. So the last time I saw him after we chanted, we went over, I went over there to see him and I was sitting on the ground in front of him, and he just looked at me and he said to one of his people, he said, “Go bring those books for Krishna Das.” And she said, “Dada, they’re all the way on the other side of the room in the hallway” “Yeah, go get them go get them.” So this woman goes off to get the books for me. And he just sat there and he was looking at me and smiling, just looking and smiling, like 15 minutes went by, right? And another one of his devotees said, “Dada, Krishna Das is sitting here but you’re not talking.” And he looked at her and then he looked back at me and he smiled again and he said, “Ralph Waldo Emerson was a very great yogi and he wanted to meet this other guy in England,” I forget who it was, “and he took a horse carriage and then he took a train and then he took the boat and then he goat to England and he took another train and then a carriage and then he walked and he got to this other guy’s, this great saint’s place in England, this yogi’s place in England,” and this was in the 1800s, “and they went in and they sat for an hour together without a word being spoken and then Ralph Waldo Emerson left and walked and took the train and took the boat and went back home.” And then he looks at her and he looks over at me and he says, “Krishna Das and I have said everything there is to say.” That was the last time I saw him. He was so beautiful. God.  That there are Beings like that, it’s inconceivable. We slog around in our miserable lives and there are Beings like that in the world. And we are like that. But we don’t see that. It’s extraordinary. Kindness. Kindness.     Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep. 21 | Longing, Ripening and Dada Vaswani appeared first on Krishna Das.

{Photo by Krishna Das, Auckland Harbor July 2018} Ep. 21 Longing, Ripening and Dada Vaswani The other people who met Maharajji talk about is the experience of His unconditional love, as you said once, “His unbearable love,” and my guess is that for many people, certainly who’ve not had the experience of Baba in the body and who maybe don’t have… my guess is when you speak of that, many people wish to feel that, to feel unconditional love, maybe that’s why they keep coming, I don’t know. And so, after a lifetime of doing this and becoming a teacher, what can you say? You know, what can you say to people about having that experience, finding that experience? “I would say that the more you long for it, the better it is. Period. You have to be where you are. You can’t be anybody else. You can’t be anywhere else. What you can do is look, be yourself 100% and the longing for that love is what brings towards it. Period. End of conversation. That’s it. Nothing else. That’s my only qualification for any of this, is longing. This insane amount of longing that destroyed my life. It destroyed everything I thought I was going to be in life and replaced it with all this nonsense. It was that longing which I brought into this life and when I speak about this love and my Guru and you feel “I want a guru, I want a guru,” that’s a good longing to have because that longing will not leave you until you find what it is you’re longing for. There’s no easy way to get through this. It sucks. Period. I can’t make it all right for anybody but I can tell you that the more longing you have, the better it is. “ – Krishna Das Q: Hi. Ram Ram. KD: Ram Ram. Q: I’m Annapurna. KD: Annapurna. Annapurna. Q: The gentleman who asked about finding, looking for a guru, finding a guru, one of the more compelling things that you and the other MTM’s talk about… KD: Use words, ok? Q: the other people who met Maharajji talk about is the experience of His unconditional love as you said once, His unbearable love… and my guess is that for many people, certainly who’ve not had the experience of Baba in the body and who maybe don’t have… my guess is when you speak of that, many people wish to feel that, to feel unconditional love, maybe that’s why they keep coming, I don’t know. And so after a lifetime of doing this and becoming a teacher, what can you say… KD: I’m not a teacher, thank you. Q: You know, what can you say to people about having that experience, finding that experience… KD: I would say that the more you long for it, the better it is. Period. You have to be where you are. You can’t be anybody else. You can’t be anywhere else. What you can do is look, be yourself 100% and the longing for that love is what brings towards it. Period. End of conversation. That’s it. Nothing else. That’s my only qualification for any of this, is longing. This insane amount of longing that destroyed my life. It destroyed everything I thought I was going to be in life and replaced it with all this nonsense. It was that longing which I brought into this life and when I speak about this love and my Guru and you feel “I want a guru, I want a guru,” that’s a good longing to have because that longing will not leave you until you find what it is you’re longing for. There’s no easy way to get through this. It sucks. Period. I can’t make it all right for anybody but I can tell you that the more longing you have, the better it is. So what, I shouldn’t talk about Maharajji because it makes people unhappy? That unhappiness is a good thing. And that’s what happened when I met Ram Das. This longing was the longing I already had for something that I didn’t even know what it was, it got crystallized in a way. It got concentrated. It got super infused and then nothing kept me away from that. And it just worked out the way it worked out. You know, many of you probably know the story but, so, after about a year and a half of hanging out with Ram Das and I recognized that it was Maharajji that was coming through Him, I said, you know, “I want to go see Maharajji” and he said, “Well, I can’t tell you where He is.” He couldn’t even, He didn’t even tell us his name. Because when he left India, when Maharajji, when he was going home, Maharajji said to him, “Don’t talk about me in America.” So of course, all he did was talk about him, but he never said his name. And he never said where you could find Him. But he talked about Him. So I said to Ram Das, I’m going to India. And he said, “Well, I can’t tell you where to go.” I said, “I don’t care, I’m going. I’ll find Him.” And he said, “Ok, ok wait. I’ll give you my friend’s address in Nainital,” which is this little town up in the hills, “and you can write to him and see what happens.”  So his friend’s name was KK. KK Shah. Now, KK had grown up in Maharajji’s lap from the  year, 8 years old, really literally in his lap. Maharajji was like his grandfather and they had the most intimate, sweetest relationship and KK was, also had the personality of a spoiled child. If Maharajji said, “Sit down.” He would stand up. If Maharajji said “Stand up,” He would sit down. Go away, he would stay. Stay, he would go away. Eat, he would fast. Fast, he would eat. That’s the way he was, you know? So, after Ram Das met Maharajji the first time, that day KK was there. He was his translator and Maharajji said to KK, “Take him home and take care of him and serve him and feed him and make sure he has what he needs.” So, Maharajji had given KK this seva or this service to do for Ram Das. So now, I wrote to KK and I said, you know, I would like to come and see Maharajji. So he wrote back to say, “You know, He’s not in the hills at this time, but when he returns I’ll write back to you and I’ll let you know.” So about a month later, or a month or two later I got a letter back saying, “Maharajji,” he still didn’t say his name, right? “Maharajji has returned to his temple in Kainchi.” Aha, I have a place. “And after some days I was able to see Him. As you know, Great Saints do not encourage the devotees to come to them. But their doors are always open.” Great! And then the next line was, “And if you’re traveling in India, you can come see Him.” Fantastic! Here we go, right? Not exactly. Many years later, KK says to me, “Did I ever tell you what Maharajji said that day?” I said, “No.” He said, “Well, I came to the temple with, now there were three letters, my letter and two other guys, I came to the temple and I came into the room where Maharajji was and I put the letters on this bed next to Him and I sat down on the floor and I began peeling an apple and cutting it into small pieces to feed it to Maharajji.” He used to buy these very soft apples because he had three teeth, so he’d cut them small. So he was cutting the apple. He was feeding Maharajji the apple and Maharajji was talking to these other people in the room and He looks down and He sees the letters and He says, “What’s that?” And KK said, “They’re letters from students of Ram Dass. They want to come see you.” “Nay. Tell them not to come. What do I have to do with this?” And He goes back to His conversation. Now, see the play right? KK got very upset and he began to pout because Maharajji had given him the job of helping Ram Das, so to speak. The seva. And now Maharajji was interfering with the very work that He gave KK to do and this was unacceptable. So he began to pout and he stopped feeding Maharajji the apple. And Maharajji, and he looked down like this. Maharajji said, “ KK what’s the matter?” And he, KK showed me, he tried to push his head up like this. KK would look away. Then he’d let go and he’d put his head back down like this. Finally, Maharajji said, “Ok. Say what you want. Tell them what you want.” So, what did he write? Ok? What did he write? He’s not going to lie. He’s a good devotee. But he wrote, “As you know, great saints like Maharajji do not encourage the devotees to come to them but their doors are always open. So if you’re traveling in India…” My whole life hanging on a thread. Oops. Or so it seemed, right? But I, great… all I thought was “I’m going.” I was going to go, I didn’t care what happened. So, I had that longing, that pushed me. Everybody has that but we kill it mostly because we don’t believe we can ever really be happy. We don’t believe we’re worthy of love. We don’t believe we can be loved and we can love. Fully. And so we kill that longing. We try to numb it, numb ourselves down with everything we do.  That’s why the stronger the longing is, the better it is. You know that Rumi poem, you must have heard “Love Dogs”? I’ll screw it up, but you know, it’s like “A Man is Crying ‘Allah Allah’ and his lips grew sweet with the praising… and this cynic walks by and says, ‘ why are you calling out, have you ever got a response?’ and the guy thinks “he’s right and he quits singing.’ And he goes to sleep and he has this dream where the guide of souls comes to him and says, “Why did you stop calling out?” And he said, “Because I never got a response.” And he said, “ The calling out is the response.” You see. He said, “You hear that dog moaning in the distance, calling out for its master? That’s the connection.” We think we’re doing it. We think it’s up to us. We think when we call out that’s the first thing and we’re waiting for a response. The calling out is the response of the longing that comes from our own soul, our own Being. That’s the chanting. So, when you say the Name right once, which means you’re fully there, completely immersed in the longing, in the presence, then of course the real Ram will come. It’s not like it’s not here already but we don’t see it. That longing, it saves our, it’s the only thing that can save us and on the other hand, it fucks up our whole life completely because nothing will ever be enough, no matter how much we try to fake it, we don’t know we’re faking it. And we’re good at faking it. That’s ok. Go ahead, fake it. Maharajji said, keep lying. Keep singing the false Name. Don’t stop. One of these days, it’ll come out of you the right way. You have to keep calling out. If you don’t do it, what will happen? Nothing. And of course, the Name, chanting the Name is only one of the many practices and anything can be a practice if it’s done the right way, if it’s done with awareness, with intention. The trick is to be able to give yourselves and give ourselves 100% to it. And we don’t do that.  I remember the winter of ’69-’70, Ram Das and I and others were up at the Lama Foundation all winter, and we heard about this New York artist named Herman who had gone to India and learned to meditate and had come back and was now living just down the mountain from the Lama and so a group of us went to see him and I sat in the back of the room and everybody else was talking. I was just listening and stuff and then we were leaving a couple of hours later and I was the last one out the door. He grabbed my arm and he looked at me and he said, “You, you have to find out why it is that you can’t give yourself 100% to whatever you’re doing.” You ever see, like, in a taxidermy shop, you know? The squirrel on the wall? That was me. He nailed me to the fucking wall. It was unbelievable. I can remember that feeling right now. That was 50 years ago.  He got me perfectly and from that moment to this moment, I notice that I’m not giving myself 100% to it so then I recommit again and again. I come back. It’s… so at one point, I would assume that I’ll come back and I’ll never leave. We’ll see. It’s a nice fantasy. Q: Ah Krishna Das, I want to say thank you so much for coming out to LA. Our mutual sister, who we were going to actually fly to Atlanta with, Geeta… KD: Oh yeah, Geeta. Lovely. We had a great time. Q: To come and see you , so thank you so much. KD: Are you a disciple of Dada? Q: Exactly. Dada talks about, when you talk about ripening the soul, He talks about the ego and once we can start to diminish that I think that’s where the ripening process begins. So before you answer that, I just have a request, either today or tomorrow, if you can sing “God is Real” because I have watch it about 50,000 times and I just can not get… KD: So you know it by now. Give it up. Q: I want to hear it from you. I want to hear it from you. KD: This is the weirdest thing. I want to tell you, for some crazy reason, every place I’ve been going the last month or so, people have been asking me to sing “God is Real.” After like, years. I hardly ever sang it. Everybody wants… what’s the deal here? Q: I think I’ve been sharing it all over social media so that’s why. KD: Terrific. So, Dada Vaswani, who left His body last year at 100 years old was one of the greatest saints I’ve ever met. This man, there was nothing in there but love. It was extraordinary. And he was so kind to me. The first time I met him was in Chicago and this guy Jeremy who made the movie of me, you know? Whatever it’s called. One Track Heart.  Yeah. He was in Chicago shooting and he knew the people where Dada was staying. So we went over there.  And so I sang for Dada and he just sat there. He was in a wheel chair at the time. He was 96 maybe at that point or 95.  And after I was finished singing, this Indian guy goes “Oh Dada, when Krishna Das sings it makes me dance…” and Dada kind of opened up his eyes. He looked at the guy and said, “When Krishna Das sings, it brings my mind to peace.” Very nice. I thought, that was very nice. Thank  you. But so then last year, a year and a half ago, he would come to New York and he would ask me to come and sing at his talks and he would always, he would talk first and then he would sit on the side of the stage and listen while we sang. So the last time I saw him after we chanted, we went over, I went over there to see him and I was sitting on the ground in front of him, and he just looked at me and he said to one of his people, he said, “Go bring those books for Krishna Das.” And she said, “Dada, they’re all the way on the other side of the room in the hallway” “Yeah, go get them go get them.” So this woman goes off to get the books for me. And he just sat there and he was looking at me and smiling, just looking and smiling, like 15 minutes went by, right? And another one of his devotees said, “Dada, Krishna Das is sitting here but you’re not talking.” And he looked at her and then he looked back at me and he smiled again and he said, “Ralph Waldo Emerson was a very great yogi and he wanted to meet this other guy in England,” I forget who it was, “and he took a horse carriage and then he took a train and then he took the boat and then he goat to England and he took another train and then a carriage and then he walked and he got to this other guy’s, this great saint’s place in England, this yogi’s place in England,” and this was in the 1800s, “and they went in and they sat for an hour together without a word being spoken and then Ralph Waldo Emerson left and walked and took the train and took the boat and went back home.” And then he looks at her and he looks over at me and he says, “Krishna Das and I have said everything there is to say.” That was the last time I saw him. He was so beautiful. God. That there are Beings like that, it’s inconceivable. We slog around in our miserable lives and there are Beings like that in the world. And we are like that. But we don’t see that. It’s extraordinary. Kindness. Kindness. <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-21-longing-ripening-and-dada-vaswani/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 21 | Longing, Ripening and Dada Vaswani</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 21 | Longing, Ripening and Dada Vaswani

Ep. 19 ~ Spiritual Love and Worldly Love I wanted to ask if you could talk a bit about your relationship with Maharajji and maybe the difference between love as we know it in the sense of a romantic relationship or relationships, and the love you felt when you were with Maharajji.  “He (Maharajji”, being completely free of subjectivity, would mirror what we needed to see for us, what we wanted to see but inside of that subjective take on Him, He would manifest real love.”- Krishna Das Q: I wanted to ask if you could talk a bit about your relationship with Maharajji and maybe the difference between love as we know it in the sense of a romantic relationship or relationships, and the love you felt when you were with Maharajji. KD: Thanks for thinking that I know the difference. You know, ok, each of us lives in our own world, each one of us, our own individual worlds. It’s a completely subjective reality. I look out at you and I see you and whatever I see kind of pushes buttons in my head and so I think I know, ok, that’s what that person’s like. That person’s grumpy. That person hates me. This one loves me. You know, this is what we do all day long. 24-7 for our whole lives. And it was no different with Maharajji on our side. We were seeing our projection of Guru. Our version of Guru and He, being the indwelling presence in each, in the Heart of everyone, every being in the universe, that’s what a real Guru is, that’s what God is, that’s what True Self is. Guru, God, and Self are not different. Capital “S” Self. And He being completely free of subjectivity, would mirror what we needed to see for us, what we wanted to see but inside of that subjective take on Him, He would manifest real love. Whereas you know, our lives, that kind of love doesn’t usually come up too much and if it does arise, it doesn’t stay very long because we want something and we need something and so we try to get that love, find that love on the outside as if there is an outside. That’s the funny thing. We assume there is because we have car accidents with cars that are on the outside, we have relationships with people we feel are on the outside, we go through our whole lives as if we’re on the inside and everything else is on the outside. It may not be like that. And Guru is, you can’t even say what a Guru is but I was going to say, the Guru knows that, whether He knows He knows, or He doesn’t know He knows, it doesn’t matter. But the Guru is that indwelling awareness in each Being, Presence, Awareness, Reality, Love. That’s real love. And so being with a Being like that lets you kind of enter that room where the real love lives and that’s within you, within us, it’s not outside. But, because we think it’s outside, we get attached to the different forms of people and I got very attached to Maharajji’s body and I suffered terribly when it disappeared. That was my problem. Not His. He wasn’t attached to my body, in fact, He wasn’t attached to anybody. Not even His own body. So, because He saw that that’s not reality, you know? We, in this room, we all sit here and each one of us probably, if not, don’t raise your hand, don’t let anybody know, but most of us sit here and we think that, you know, I’m Me and you’re You. Right? And based on that we go through our lives. We like some people. We don’t like other people. We want this. We don’t want that. We go through, based on who we think we are. Underneath who we think we are, always here always present, is real love. That’s Guru. That’s God. And to be with somebody who can allow you to feel that, who can open you up to feeling that, is a great blessing. And you know, there’s a great book called “Love Everyone.” I don’t know if you know about it. It’s a pretty new book about Maharajji and it was compiled from the diaries of many of the old devotees, all western devotees, who were there. And this woman, Parvati, put it together and when you read it, it kind of takes you through a day with Maharajji. The different darshans, the different times we spent with Him. And everybody’s, you know, you’ll read about a half a page of what this person’s thinking about and then the next half a page is what somebody else is thinking about and experiencing in the same moment. Completely different. You know, that was the amazing, that was one of the many amazing things about it. Ten people could sit there for two hours with Him and go back and write what happened, and you’d have ten completely different stories that almost, there wouldn’t be one thing that was the same, except, “he hit me with a banana.” That you could tell actually probably happened. But the rest of it was just… it was really extraordinary. He loved each one of us. He loved every one in just the way they wanted and needed to be loved and needed to be touched. Just the way Krishna danced with the gopis. He manifested 108 different for each one of the gopis and loved each one of them the way they secretly desired to be loved. That’s Big Time. Very Big Time. That’s avatar time. So, how are we gonna get out of this subjective totally colored version of life? You know? We think it’s enough to go through life like that? Hating these people? Loving these people? Wanting this? Not wanting that? Avoiding this? Holding onto this? Is that going to do it? No, for me, it was never gonna do it. Even when I was 15, I knew there was something wrong here. It was me, of course. And once a month or two, I go out to dinner with six, seven or eight of my old high school friends.  We’re talking 50 years ago, right? More. And so, two dinners ago, for the first time, they all know me, they all know what I do, they all know where I’ve been and how crazy I am in their eyes, but they love me. That’s nice of them. Very compassionate of them. The love that’s there is so sweet, just to hang out with these people, still talk to you like you’re in homeroom, you know? Anyway, so for the first time in like, I’ve been doing this on and off for like four years now. I reconnected with these folks four or five years ago. One of them said to me, “So, why did you go to India? What’s all that about? What’s all? Where you been?” And I was shocked because nobody, not one of them had ever asked me that question in all the time we’d been hanging out together. So I just said, you know, “You know, I always felt that there was something missing in my life. You know, I just felt there was something I needed that it was like a hole in my heart or something.” And the next he said was, “Really? I never felt that.” Right? Whoa. Right. They never felt that. So, what to do? Right? Yeah here have another vodka. That was mind-blowing for me. Really mind-blowing. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to not feel what I felt which led me to do whatever happened next, right? “I never felt that.” Amazing. So, if we want that love, if we don’t want to suffer needlessly then some practice has to be done. It’s only spiritual practice that will help extricate us from the completely immediate knee jerk attachment and identification to our thoughts and emotions and stories that we tell ourselves. And we’re doing that all the time. We create, not just living life, we’re telling ourselves a story about what’s happening based on our own prejudices, our own way see things, how we were brought up and you know, it goes really deep. I mean, it’s not like we’re doing something wrong but this is the way we’ve been programmed. So, there’s that and there’s also the fact that we’re all here together today. Now that’s pretty amazing, too.  There’s a lot of other things we could be doing. And we’re not, we come here to, for some reason, and the bottom line reason is we need something that we don’t have yet. And that’s that thing that my friend didn’t have. Right? So there are people who don’t have that, who don’t recognize that. The thing is everybody wants the same thing, but for some reason or other, there are people who understand that it might be possible to find it and there are people who, for whom that thought never arises. Never arises. Never. So their karmas are not there this life for them to get some kind of self awareness and find some, something real in life, you know? They’re not bad people, those people, they’re not bad. They want just what we want but they don’t know that it’s possible. So there’s a real kind of sadness there. If there’s nothing to find, why look? You know? When I went to India, I wanted to see, I went there to find out if that love really did exist, you know? Luckily, it did. It does. But, we still have to find our way into it, so to speak. And we can’t keep blundering through our lives with our eyes closed and imagine that we’re going to find something. We’ve gotta do some practice. We’ve gotta start waking up a little bit. You don’t have to change your life. Nothing we’re doing is wrong. But we have to start adding another vector into our daily life, which is a little practice, which is slowing ourselves down and starting to pay a little bit of attention to our motivations, not intellectually so much, but just to notice why we do what we do and why we feel how we feel most of the time. And chanting is certainly one of those practices. It’s the practice I do most. These Names have, these Names are direct. You know they say that the Name and what is Named are not different, or God and His or Her Name are not different. That’s a very interesting statement. So that means, when I say Ram, where’s Ram? Not different. So the name and what is Named is not different and like I said, Maharajji used to say, “Go on sing your false fake Ram Ram. One of these days you’ll get it right once.” So, its seeds. It’s like planting seeds. Every action is a seed. Every action is karma. Karmic seed that gets planted. If we plant seeds of anger and greed and selfishness and manipulation of people, those kinds of seeds, that’s what will grow, if we plant seeds of compassion and kindness and caring and awareness of other people’s unhappiness, then that’s what’ll grow. It’s simple. It’s not easy. But it’s simple. This is what Maharajji used to say: “From repeating these Names, everything is made full and complete.  Everything is brought to fulness.” Purnam. The practice of chanting ripens us, ripens our hearts. It’s not our job to keep cutting little pieces off of the fruit to see if it’s ripe yet. Our job is to keep the fruit in the sun of the repetition of the Names and let it ripen. That’s all. Do the practice and do your life. That’s it. No big deal. You don’t have to change anything. Things will change because from this practice, the way we feel about things starts to change. How we see ourselves starts to change and then as we see things differently, we act differently. It’s like, we’ve been born in total darkness, right? And as we grow up, it stays dark and so we think this is the way things are. Those shadows out there are kind of scary and those things moving in the dark look like demons and you know, it’s like, whatever it is, but then, the sun starts to rise. It even begins to start, a little bit of light, and then all of a sudden things look differently. “Oh, wow. That’s just a tree. That’s just a demon.” So, we see things, so we feel different and we act differently. It’s not like we have to kind of do anything special, but through these practices, that sun of love and awareness starts to rise in our hearts and we see things differently. People don’t look so scary. So, and then we’re able to extend ourselves to people more, we’re not, there’s not so much at stake. Social situations change. Everything looks different. The happier you are, the less you need other people to make you happy. That takes the pressure off of them. Then they can be who they are around you. They don’t have to be who you want them to be all the time. That’s a heavy burden. So… You can’t think yourself out of a prison that’s made of thought. It’s never going to happen. It’s not about understanding any of this stuff intellectually. Yeah, some general view, enough to keep you on the road, instead of driving through the fields, is good. But that’s, any more than that, it can be a barrier and a problem. It’s harder to give up what you think about or what you think is real because you’re really attached to that version of things. It’s hard to give that up. So, you can’t think  yourselves, ourselves, out of prison that’s made of thought. Every thought is the prison itself because we actually think we’re thinking. Sometimes we actually sit down to think. That’s interesting. I wonder how that works. Think about that. So, Maharajji is like the sun. He just keeps shining. He shines on everyone equally. He didn’t love anybody more than anybody else. He loved everybody equally. It might have been expressed differently according to the need of that individual. One time, there was this one guy  there who used to run away. One day, Maharajji said, “Where is he, where is he, where has he gone? Find him. Where do you think he went? What happened?” Here was this guy who knows everything, right? “Where did he go? Where did he go?” He said, “I’ve fallen in love with him today.” I got so jealous. You’ve fallen in love with that sonofabitch?  But it’s all a play. I hated that guy.  I really hated him. And I was sitting in front of Maharajji with him once, and Maharajji looked at the two of us, and He looked at me and He pointed to the guy and He said, “You love him so much.” And I looked at him and I totally fell in love with him. To this day, when I think of him, my heart goes, ah. I don’t know what happened. I hated him two seconds before that.  Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album * Hungry Hearts Chant  Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for download in our digital library (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime. Door of Faith An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our online shop.       Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep. 19 | Spiritual Love and Worldly Love appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep. 19 ~ Spiritual Love and Worldly Love</h3> I wanted to ask if you could talk a bit about your relationship with Maharajji and maybe the difference between love as we know it in the sense of a romantic relationship or relationships, and the love you felt when you were with Maharajji. “He (Maharajji”, being completely free of subjectivity, would mirror what we needed to see for us, what we wanted to see but inside of that subjective take on Him, He would manifest real love.”- Krishna Das Q: I wanted to ask if you could talk a bit about your relationship with Maharajji and maybe the difference between love as we know it in the sense of a romantic relationship or relationships, and the love you felt when you were with Maharajji. KD: Thanks for thinking that I know the difference. You know, ok, each of us lives in our own world, each one of us, our own individual worlds. It’s a completely subjective reality. I look out at you and I see you and whatever I see kind of pushes buttons in my head and so I think I know, ok, that’s what that person’s like. That person’s grumpy. That person hates me. This one loves me. You know, this is what we do all day long. 24-7 for our whole lives. And it was no different with Maharajji on our side. We were seeing our projection of Guru. Our version of Guru and He, being the indwelling presence in each, in the Heart of everyone, every being in the universe, that’s what a real Guru is, that’s what God is, that’s what True Self is. Guru, God, and Self are not different. Capital “S” Self. And He being completely free of subjectivity, would mirror what we needed to see for us, what we wanted to see but inside of that subjective take on Him, He would manifest real love. Whereas you know, our lives, that kind of love doesn’t usually come up too much and if it does arise, it doesn’t stay very long because we want something and we need something and so we try to get that love, find that love on the outside as if there is an outside. That’s the funny thing. We assume there is because we have car accidents with cars that are on the outside, we have relationships with people we feel are on the outside, we go through our whole lives as if we’re on the inside and everything else is on the outside. It may not be like that. And Guru is, you can’t even say what a Guru is but I was going to say, the Guru knows that, whether He knows He knows, or He doesn’t know He knows, it doesn’t matter. But the Guru is that indwelling awareness in each Being, Presence, Awareness, Reality, Love. That’s real love. And so being with a Being like that lets you kind of enter that room where the real love lives and that’s within you, within us, it’s not outside. But, because we think it’s outside, we get attached to the different forms of people and I got very attached to Maharajji’s body and I suffered terribly when it disappeared. That was my problem. Not His. He wasn’t attached to my body, in fact, He wasn’t attached to anybody. Not even His own body. So, because He saw that that’s not reality, you know? We, in this room, we all sit here and each one of us probably, if not, don’t raise your hand, don’t let anybody know, but most of us sit here and we think that, you know, I’m Me and you’re You. Right? And based on that we go through our lives. We like some people. We don’t like other people. We want this. We don’t want that. We go through, based on who we think we are. Underneath who we think we are, always here always present, is real love. That’s Guru. That’s God. And to be with somebody who can allow you to feel that, who can open you up to feeling that, is a great blessing. And you know, there’s a great book called “Love Everyone.” I don’t know if you know about it. It’s a pretty new book about Maharajji and it was compiled from the diaries of many of the old devotees, all western devotees, who were there. And this woman, Parvati, put it together and when you read it, it kind of takes you through a day with Maharajji. The different darshans, the different times we spent with Him. And everybody’s, you know, you’ll read about a half a page of what this person’s thinking about and then the next half a page is what somebody else is thinking about and experiencing in the same moment. Completely different. You know, that was the amazing, that was one of the many amazing things about it. Ten people could sit there for two hours with Him and go back and write what happened, and you’d have ten completely different stories that almost, there wouldn’t be one thing that was the same, except, “he hit me with a banana.” That you could tell actually probably happened. But the rest of it was just… it was really extraordinary. He loved each one of us. He loved every one in just the way they wanted and needed to be loved and needed to be touched. Just the way Krishna danced with the gopis. He manifested 108 different for each one of the gopis and loved each one of them the way they secretly desired to be loved. That’s Big Time. Very Big Time. That’s avatar time. So, how are we gonna get out of this subjective totally colored version of life? You know? We think it’s enough to go through life like that? Hating these people? Loving these people? Wanting this? Not wanting that? Avoiding this? Holding onto this? Is that going to do it? No, for me, it was never gonna do it. Even when I was 15, I knew there was something wrong here. It was me, of course. And once a month or two, I go out to dinner with six, seven or eight of my old high school friends.  We’re talking 50 years ago, right? More. And so, two dinners ago, for the first time, they all know me, they all know what I do, they all know where I’ve been and how crazy I am in their eyes, but they love me. That’s nice of them. Very compassionate of them. The love that’s there is so sweet, just to hang out with these people, still talk to you like you’re in homeroom, you know? Anyway, so for the first time in like, I’ve been doing this on and off for like four years now. I reconnected with these folks four or five years ago. One of them said to me, “So, why did you go to India? What’s all that about? What’s all? Where you been?” And I was shocked because nobody, not one of them had ever asked me that question in all the time we’d been hanging out together. So I just said, you know, “You know, I always felt that there was something missing in my life. You know, I just felt there was something I needed that it was like a hole in my heart or something.” And the next he said was, “Really? I never felt that.” Right? Whoa. Right. They never felt that. So, what to do? Right? Yeah here have another vodka. That was mind-blowing for me. Really mind-blowing. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to not feel what I felt which led me to do whatever happened next, right? “I never felt that.” Amazing. So, if we want that love, if we don’t want to suffer needlessly then some practice has to be done. It’s only spiritual practice that will help extricate us from the completely immediate knee jerk attachment and identification to our thoughts and emotions and stories that we tell ourselves. And we’re doing that all the time. We create, not just living life, we’re telling ourselves a story about what’s happening based on our own prejudices, our own way see things, how we were brought up and you know, it goes really deep. I mean, it’s not like we’re doing something wrong but this is the way we’ve been programmed. So, there’s that and there’s also the fact that we’re all here together today. Now that’s pretty amazing, too.  There’s a lot of other things we could be doing. And we’re not, we come here to, for some reason, and the bottom line reason is we need something that we don’t have yet. And that’s that thing that my friend didn’t have. Right? So there are people who don’t have that, who don’t recognize that. The thing is everybody wants the same thing, but for some reason or other, there are people who understand that it might be possible to find it and there are people who, for whom that thought never arises. Never arises. Never. So their karmas are not there this life for them to get some kind of self awareness and find some, something real in life, you know? They’re not bad people, those people, they’re not bad. They want just what we want but they don’t know that it’s possible. So there’s a real kind of sadness there. If there’s nothing to find, why look? You know? When I went to India, I wanted to see, I went there to find out if that love really did exist, you know? Luckily, it did. It does. But, we still have to find our way into it, so to speak. And we can’t keep blundering through our lives with our eyes closed and imagine that we’re going to find something. We’ve gotta do some practice. We’ve gotta start waking up a little bit. You don’t have to change your life. Nothing we’re doing is wrong. But we have to start adding another vector into our daily life, which is a little practice, which is slowing ourselves down and starting to pay a little bit of attention to our motivations, not intellectually so much, but just to notice why we do what we do and why we feel how we feel most of the time. And chanting is certainly one of those practices. It’s the practice I do most. These Names have, these Names are direct. You know they say that the Name and what is Named are not different, or God and His or Her Name are not different. That’s a very interesting statement. So that means, when I say Ram, where’s Ram? Not different. So the name and what is Named is not different and like I said, Maharajji used to say, “Go on sing your false fake Ram Ram. One of these days you’ll get it right once.” So, its seeds. It’s like planting seeds. Every action is a seed. Every action is karma. Karmic seed that gets planted. If we plant seeds of anger and greed and selfishness and manipulation of people, those kinds of seeds, that’s what will grow, if we plant seeds of compassion and kindness and caring and awareness of other people’s unhappiness, then that’s what’ll grow. It’s simple. It’s not easy. But it’s simple. This is what Maharajji used to say: “From repeating these Names, everything is made full and complete.  Everything is brought to fulness.” Purnam. The practice of chanting ripens us, ripens our hearts. It’s not our job to keep cutting little pieces off of the fruit to see if it’s ripe yet. Our job is to keep the fruit in the sun of the repetition of the Names and let it ripen. That’s all. Do the practice and do your life. That’s it. No big deal. You don’t have to change anything. Things will change because from this practice, the way we feel about things starts to change. How we see ourselves starts to change and then as we see things differently, we act differently. It’s like, we’ve been born in total darkness, right? And as we grow up, it stays dark and so we think this is the way things are. Those shadows out there are kind of scary and those things moving in the dark look like demons and you know, it’s like, whatever it is, but then, the sun starts to rise. It even begins to start, a little bit of light, and then all of a sudden things look differently. “Oh, wow. That’s just a tree. That’s just a demon.” So, we see things, so we feel different and we act differently. It’s not like we have to kind of do anything special, but through these practices, that sun of love and awareness starts to rise in our hearts and we see things differently. People don’t look so scary. So, and then we’re able to extend ourselves to people more, we’re not, there’s not so much at stake. Social situations change. Everything looks different. The happier you are, the less you need other people to make you happy. That takes the pressure off of them. Then they can be who they are around you. They don’t have to be who you want them to be all the time. That’s a heavy burden. So… You can’t think yourself out of a prison that’s made of thought. It’s never going to happen. It’s not about understanding any of this stuff intellectually. Yeah, some general view, enough to keep you on the road, instead of driving through the fields, is good. But that’s, any more than that, it can be a barrier and a problem. It’s harder to give up what you think about or what you think is real because you’re really attached to that version of things. It’s hard to give that up. So, you can’t think  yourselves, ourselves, out of prison that’s made of thought. Every thought is the prison itself because we actually think we’re thinking. Sometimes we actually sit down to think. That’s interesting. I wonder how that works. Think about that. So, Maharajji is like the sun. He just keeps shining. He shines on everyone equally. He didn’t love anybody more than anybody else. He loved everybody equally. It might have been expressed differently according to the need of that individual. One time, there was this one guy  there who used to run away. One day, Maharajji said, “Where is he, where is he, where has he gone? Find him. Where do you think he went? What happened?” Here was this guy who knows everything, right? “Where did he go? Where did he go?” He said, “I’ve fallen in love with him today.” I got so jealous. You’ve fallen in love with that sonofabitch?  But it’s all a play. I hated that guy.  I really hated him. And I was sitting in front of Maharajji with him once, and Maharajji looked at the two of us, and He looked at me and He pointed to the guy and He said, “You love him so much.” And I looked at him and I totally fell in love with him. To this day, when I think of him, my heart goes, ah. I don’t know what happened. I hated him two seconds before that. <h3></h3> <h3>Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album *</h3> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Hungry Hearts Chant</a> Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">download in our digital library</a> (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime.</h4> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/door-of-faith" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Door of Faith</a> An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/harmonium-tutorials/products/harmonium-tutorials" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">online shop.</a></h4> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/img_9440/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-30-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-40-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3></h3> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-19-spiritual-love-and-worldly-love/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 19 | Spiritual Love and Worldly Love</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 19 | Spiritual Love and Worldly Love

Ep.03 ~ Bearing Witness Unconditional love, it’s a word, it’s a phrase, it’s hard to connect with that. Unconditional love. Just think about the sun. It shines evenly all the time on everything. On the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the high, the low. It shines on those miserable people who kill people and murder people and treat people like shit and it shines on the people who care for people and do charity and help people every chance they get. The sun shines equally on everything and everyone. That’s what it is. That’s unconditional.”- Krishna Das An explanation of bearing witness to suffering without judgement. So, I said nothing was happening when we were sitting with Maharajji, that’s not exactly true. I don’t want to mislead you. So much nothing was happening, that it was like, the whole universe was happening. We were being loved in a way that we had never been loved before. Period. End of story. When I think about that, just imagine what it would be like to be loved in just the way you want to be loved, just the way you would imagine, “If I could only be loved that way, I would feel this way.” That’s what it is. That’s what it felt like at that time. That’s what real love is. It didn’t involve another person. Maharajji wasn’t a person although it appeared to us that there was this body sitting there throwing fruit at us, laughing. But that wasn’t exactly the point. Nothing, He didn’t seem to be doing anything except shining like the sun. Unconditional love, it’s a word, it’s a phrase, it’s hard to connect with that. Unconditional love. Just think about the sun. It shines evenly all the time on everything. On the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the high, the low. It shines on those miserable people who kill people and murder people and treat people like shit and it shines on the people who care for people and do charity and help people every chance they get. The sun shines equally on everything and everyone. That’s what it is. That’s unconditional. When I was in Auschwitz with Bernie Glassman, we got there, I think it was early November, and there was green fields and the trees were autumn, were just alive, blossoming colors, exploding with all the colors, all the leaves, right? It was so beautiful. And the first thing the polish woman said, who was our guide, she said, “You see all this green and these colors? There was nothing except mud and dirt because the prisoners ate everything they could eat. They ate the bark off the trees. The ate the grass. They ate the dead leaves. Anything they could put in their mouth, they ate.” Oh. And so then we were taken around the camp and were given, pointed out things, what happened here, what happened there. You know. And every day I would come to that camp and I would look up at the sun and I’d say, “How dare you shine on this place? How can you shine on this place?” Really, my heart was exploding in anger. “How can you shine on this place? What’s wrong with you?” he said. Well, we were there for a particular purpose. The reason Bernie takes people there is to bear witness to the suffering that happened there. To bear witness to the Beings and the Souls who suffered there and he feels their presence there and he feels by coming there to bear witness to their suffering, we dissolve the isolation and the loneliness that they must feel and in so doing, remove some of the suffering. It lightens the load of suffering by bearing witness. Bearing witness is an interesting concept. Witness. It’s not judging. The witness tells what they see. It’s the judge who gives the sentence. The witness simply witnesses. But I wasn’t able to do that. Every day I went there and I said, “How can you shine on this place?” And I would walk around and I was really, it was a heavy dark place until one day I looked up at the sun and I recognized, that’s what the sun does. It shines everywhere on everything. It shines on the inside and the outside. It shines on the way we love ourselves and the way we hate ourselves. It shines on everything. So, I had to give up, in order to bear witness and be there, I had to give up my shit. I had to let go of my judgements about what happened there and who did what to whom. Not that it didn’t happen. But I had to stop judging in order to be there with the people who suffered. And another thing happened while I was walking around after this, kind of, breakthrough. I just thought to myself, “Listen, if I had been born in Nazi Germany to a family of Nazis and brought up a certain way, how would I be any different than any of the guards in that prison? What would I know? I would know nothing different than what I’d been taught and what I believed was true.” It ws humbling to see that I was no better than them. You know, we tend to, we completely don’t recognize how much the culture we were born in, the world we were born in, the time we were born in, the situation within the culture, our families, our close friends, we don’t recognize the effect it has on us and we think that we’re kind of, “we’ve got it together, we’re good, this is good, you know? I understand things. I’m together.” Not necessarily. So anyway, but I, for me it was a big thing to see that, really I was no different than the guards or the prisoners or the victims. And I had to kind of expand into that awareness of the way the sun shines on everything. So the kind of love that I’m talking about, when I talk about real love or Maharajji’s love, or the love, if you want to use the word, God or Divine, that love, that love has nothing to do with “me”, with who I think I am. That’s the love that lives within us as who we are underneath our thoughts and underneath the stories we tell ourselves. Underneath the way we treat ourselves. Underneath the way we treat other people, underneath the way we project our stories onto other people and our needs and our desires and our hatreds and our angers and our friendship and goodness and all that stuff, too. Underneath all that is this Presence within us. That’s Ram. That’s Krishna. That’s Kali. That’s Buddha nature. That’s the real love. That’s God. It’s inside. There’s nowhere you can go to get it. It’s just not available out there. Because out there is just what we see. Our movie. We wake up in the morning and we start writing, producing, directing and acting in the movie of Me. All day long. It’s only about Me. Me, me, me, me, me. And of course, we play all the parts in the sense that, I don’t know who you are, I look at you, I see the way you sit, I see you hold yourself, the way your hair is, the beard, the this, the frown on your face, and I think I know who you are. But that’s just my version of you, in my mind. We do that 24-7 365, to every one and every thing that we see, taste, touch, feel. Underneath all that is that sun shining on everything. So when we do these practices, what we’re doing is slowly extricating ourselves from those projections, what we think is the outside world, and releasing it so that we naturally fall back into our self for a moment. And then we’re gone again. And then we recognize, oh, we’re actually in a room with a few hundred people chanting, so we remember to start singing again, paying attention, “ah we’re back” then we’re gone. Then we’re back. Then we’re gone. If you’re really watching, if you’re really paying attention, you’ll be coming and going like five billion times a second, but the point is that most of the time, we don’t know that. We’re just gone all the time and we never notice. When we start doing practice, that’s when we begin to notice. Not that you can do anything about it. Forget about it. There’s nothing you can do about it except practice. You can’t, where do the thoughts come from, where do they go? We don’t know. All we do is think. And thinking about it is just more thinking. You can’t, what do I always say? Something about a prison, something like that, right? This is why it’s good to be brain dead, you don’t have to work so hard. You can’t free yourself through thought from a prison that’s made of thought. The prison is the thinking, the thoughts. You can’t think your way out of that. Every thought is the prison. So, we have to find a way to release the thoughts. That’s what practice does.  And, the fact that we’re interested in practice at all is a fucking miracle. Look around. I mean, go to the supermarket and just look around. There’s nobody there. They’re just like… there’s nobody there. It’s amazing. And when you start to look around, you’ll see, most especially, now with technology, nobody’s here. Even when you had a moment that you might drop into yourself, nope… we’ve found more ways not to be here, that’s all. Terrific.  And don’t think India’s any better, they have more cell phones per capita than any other place in the universe. Everybody has a cell phone. Sadhus have cell phones. Yogis have cell phones. One Baba I know who’s so sweet, so beautiful, he lives in the jungle, he has to kind of go up onto this little hill, it’s a walk so he can get a signal and then he calls people and then you look at him and the phone’s upside down and backwards, you know? And he’s going, “haaaa” and the phone is like over here… he’s only pretending to use a phone.  Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana   Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep.03 | Bearing Witness appeared first on Krishna Das.

Ep.03 ~ Bearing Witness Unconditional love, it’s a word, it’s a phrase, it’s hard to connect with that. Unconditional love. Just think about the sun. It shines evenly all the time on everything. On the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the high, the low. It shines on those miserable people who kill people and murder people and treat people like shit and it shines on the people who care for people and do charity and help people every chance they get. The sun shines equally on everything and everyone. That’s what it is. That’s unconditional.”- Krishna Das An explanation of bearing witness to suffering without judgement. So, I said nothing was happening when we were sitting with Maharajji, that’s not exactly true. I don’t want to mislead you. So much nothing was happening, that it was like, the whole universe was happening. We were being loved in a way that we had never been loved before. Period. End of story. When I think about that, just imagine what it would be like to be loved in just the way you want to be loved, just the way you would imagine, “If I could only be loved that way, I would feel this way.” That’s what it is. That’s what it felt like at that time. That’s what real love is. It didn’t involve another person. Maharajji wasn’t a person although it appeared to us that there was this body sitting there throwing fruit at us, laughing. But that wasn’t exactly the point. Nothing, He didn’t seem to be doing anything except shining like the sun. Unconditional love, it’s a word, it’s a phrase, it’s hard to connect with that. Unconditional love. Just think about the sun. It shines evenly all the time on everything. On the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the high, the low. It shines on those miserable people who kill people and murder people and treat people like shit and it shines on the people who care for people and do charity and help people every chance they get. The sun shines equally on everything and everyone. That’s what it is. That’s unconditional. When I was in Auschwitz with Bernie Glassman, we got there, I think it was early November, and there was green fields and the trees were autumn, were just alive, blossoming colors, exploding with all the colors, all the leaves, right? It was so beautiful. And the first thing the polish woman said, who was our guide, she said, “You see all this green and these colors? There was nothing except mud and dirt because the prisoners ate everything they could eat. They ate the bark off the trees. The ate the grass. They ate the dead leaves. Anything they could put in their mouth, they ate.” Oh. And so then we were taken around the camp and were given, pointed out things, what happened here, what happened there. You know. And every day I would come to that camp and I would look up at the sun and I’d say, “How dare you shine on this place? How can you shine on this place?” Really, my heart was exploding in anger. “How can you shine on this place? What’s wrong with you?” he said. Well, we were there for a particular purpose. The reason Bernie takes people there is to bear witness to the suffering that happened there. To bear witness to the Beings and the Souls who suffered there and he feels their presence there and he feels by coming there to bear witness to their suffering, we dissolve the isolation and the loneliness that they must feel and in so doing, remove some of the suffering. It lightens the load of suffering by bearing witness. Bearing witness is an interesting concept. Witness. It’s not judging. The witness tells what they see. It’s the judge who gives the sentence. The witness simply witnesses. But I wasn’t able to do that. Every day I went there and I said, “How can you shine on this place?” And I would walk around and I was really, it was a heavy dark place until one day I looked up at the sun and I recognized, that’s what the sun does. It shines everywhere on everything. It shines on the inside and the outside. It shines on the way we love ourselves and the way we hate ourselves. It shines on everything. So, I had to give up, in order to bear witness and be there, I had to give up my shit. I had to let go of my judgements about what happened there and who did what to whom. Not that it didn’t happen. But I had to stop judging in order to be there with the people who suffered. And another thing happened while I was walking around after this, kind of, breakthrough. I just thought to myself, “Listen, if I had been born in Nazi Germany to a family of Nazis and brought up a certain way, how would I be any different than any of the guards in that prison? What would I know? I would know nothing different than what I’d been taught and what I believed was true.” It ws humbling to see that I was no better than them. You know, we tend to, we completely don’t recognize how much the culture we were born in, the world we were born in, the time we were born in, the situation within the culture, our families, our close friends, we don’t recognize the effect it has on us and we think that we’re kind of, “we’ve got it together, we’re good, this is good, you know? I understand things. I’m together.” Not necessarily. So anyway, but I, for me it was a big thing to see that, really I was no different than the guards or the prisoners or the victims. And I had to kind of expand into that awareness of the way the sun shines on everything. So the kind of love that I’m talking about, when I talk about real love or Maharajji’s love, or the love, if you want to use the word, God or Divine, that love, that love has nothing to do with “me”, with who I think I am. That’s the love that lives within us as who we are underneath our thoughts and underneath the stories we tell ourselves. Underneath the way we treat ourselves. Underneath the way we treat other people, underneath the way we project our stories onto other people and our needs and our desires and our hatreds and our angers and our friendship and goodness and all that stuff, too. Underneath all that is this Presence within us. That’s Ram. That’s Krishna. That’s Kali. That’s Buddha nature. That’s the real love. That’s God. It’s inside. There’s nowhere you can go to get it. It’s just not available out there. Because out there is just what we see. Our movie. We wake up in the morning and we start writing, producing, directing and acting in the movie of Me. All day long. It’s only about Me. Me, me, me, me, me. And of course, we play all the parts in the sense that, I don’t know who you are, I look at you, I see the way you sit, I see you hold yourself, the way your hair is, the beard, the this, the frown on your face, and I think I know who you are. But that’s just my version of you, in my mind. We do that 24-7 365, to every one and every thing that we see, taste, touch, feel. Underneath all that is that sun shining on everything. So when we do these practices, what we’re doing is slowly extricating ourselves from those projections, what we think is the outside world, and releasing it so that we naturally fall back into our self for a moment. And then we’re gone again. And then we recognize, oh, we’re actually in a room with a few hundred people chanting, so we remember to start singing again, paying attention, “ah we’re back” then we’re gone. Then we’re back. Then we’re gone. If you’re really watching, if you’re really paying attention, you’ll be coming and going like five billion times a second, but the point is that most of the time, we don’t know that. We’re just gone all the time and we never notice. When we start doing practice, that’s when we begin to notice. Not that you can do anything about it. Forget about it. There’s nothing you can do about it except practice. You can’t, where do the thoughts come from, where do they go? We don’t know. All we do is think. And thinking about it is just more thinking. You can’t, what do I always say? Something about a prison, something like that, right? This is why it’s good to be brain dead, you don’t have to work so hard. You can’t free yourself through thought from a prison that’s made of thought. The prison is the thinking, the thoughts. You can’t think your way out of that. Every thought is the prison. So, we have to find a way to release the thoughts. That’s what practice does.  And, the fact that we’re interested in practice at all is a fucking miracle. Look around. I mean, go to the supermarket and just look around. There’s nobody there. They’re just like… there’s nobody there. It’s amazing. And when you start to look around, you’ll see, most especially, now with technology, nobody’s here. Even when you had a moment that you might drop into yourself, nope… we’ve found more ways not to be here, that’s all. Terrific.  And don’t think India’s any better, they have more cell phones per capita than any other place in the universe. Everybody has a cell phone. Sadhus have cell phones. Yogis have cell phones. One Baba I know who’s so sweet, so beautiful, he lives in the jungle, he has to kind of go up onto this little hill, it’s a walk so he can get a signal and then he calls people and then you look at him and the phone’s upside down and backwards, you know? And he’s going, “haaaa” and the phone is like over here… he’s only pretending to use a phone. <h3>Suggestions for your practice: <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/sadhanas" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana</a></h3> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8247.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8246.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-03-bearing-witness/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep.03 | Bearing Witness</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep.03 | Bearing Witness

Ep.04 ~ Desire and Willfulness “Most of everything we do in life is designed to shine us up a little bit, so people will like us and look at us and appreciate us more and we get some attention, some affection. You know? But we don’t have to shine. We really don’t have to. So, if you’re noticing all the ways you’re trying to shine, that’s good. Otherwise how can you let go of that stuff if you don’t notice? Right? It’s not going to help you get happy. You’re just going to spend a lot of time shining yourself up. Then you fall apart.” – Krishna Das Transcription:  Q: I’m wondering if you can speak to the differentiation between going after what you want, desire and like a willfulness. KD: You need will, you know? Will is what moves you. It directs your energy. Without will, you know, where does it go? What do you do? Whether it’s, you’re trying to direct your attention, that’s also your will. I remember, I’ve told this many times, but when I was in the jungle with this old Baba who was 163 at the time, he said to me one day, he looked at me and said, “Hm. You have to develop willpower.” And my first thought was, “Willpower? What do I need that for?” And then he kind of went like, like he saw my thought, so He did something and He showed me inside of myself, what He was seeing and it was pretty intense. I saw that I was not, I was putting chains around my ankles, you know? I was not going after the things I wanted in life, and I was all justifying it with, “well, I don’t need that. I don’t need this.”  You know, all this kind of stuff. But I really wanted things that I wasn’t going after.  Things I wanted. And I saw that I had this kind of funny thing like that there was spiritual life and worldly life and that you could live a spiritual life and you didn’t have to, you know. But I was in the world. There was only one life, mine, right? And if I wasn’t going to live it, who was going to live it? I was not going after the things I wanted. I wasn’t living fully. And that was a big moment for me. Willfulness, by that I mean, I take it to mean inappropriate selfish craving of something. But not, go ahead Q: Yeah perhaps, but do you think it’s possible to experience that kind of want and desire in a positive way and at the same time have that craving and wanting. So there’s two things happening. KD: Ok, let’s do this again. So, you have a desire for something and, which is called craving. Desire is craving. The issue is it going to hurt you or somebody else. That’s the only real issue I can see. If it’s a desire to drink a bottle of poison because it might taste good, I don’t think that’s good. Q: I think, can I elaborate? KD: Please. Q: So, like, if I want something in my life, if I have a goal or an aspiration for something that’s important, but then when I find that I’m pursuing it, that I get caught up in wanting it to turn out a certain way or I get caught up in what people think of me or how good I am in the face of someone else. KD: Well, first of all, one thing is why do you want it? Do you want people to think a certain way about you? You’re trying to get something so that people will appreciate and look at you a certain kind of way? If that’s your motivation, hm, that’s what’ll happen. But the other part of it is that you know, as far as the fruits of our actions, we have no control over that, all we can do is do what we do, and whatever comes to us, comes to us. We can’t guarantee success in anything and we can’t guarantee failure. Well, we can guarantee failure by not going after what we want. So it was my fear of failure that was keeping me from going after the things I wanted. And when I noticed that, I was able to overcome that to some degree. But yeah that’s good, being aware of all that stuff that happens to you on the way to getting something is very good. Is that a reason to not go after it anymore? Not necessarily. It’s like it’s doing good, it’s showing you parts of yourself that you weren’t seeing before, which then horrify you and that’s very healthy. It’s good to be horrified by things that are horrifying and selfishness and greed and desire to shine, you know? I remember, one of Mahrajji’s great old devotees named Dada, and we were at the Kumbh Mela in India in 1989 and Dada lived also in Allahabad, a few miles away from this space, the place where the rivers meet and there’s a big Mela there, a big festival. So, we were going to, we stayed with Dada for awhile, and then we were going to go to the Mela grounds and stay at this Baba’s place, and so He sent one of His disciples to come get us and show us how to find Him because it was very hard, there were 20 million people, you know, that came from all over India for two weeks, and then they disappear again. So, this sadhu comes into Dada’s house and he was so arrogant and so, had so much pride, it was, he walked in like, “Look at me, I’m such a great sadhu, you’re just a householder”, he walked in like this, you know. Dada took one look at him and he grabbed me and he pulled me into the back room and there was an old Almira, you know, an old cabinet and he reached down under it, way down in the back and he pulls out this key and then he opens it, right, he opens the door and he reaches down the back shelf and he pulls something out, and it’s these old funky newspapers, something wrapped up in newspaper, so he starts unwrapping it, and it’s this really cheap aluminum Lota, which is a, like a big copper pot, small pot, which they use to pour water or carry water. It was all rusty and dirty and dusty and he looks, and he takes it and he holds it up to me. “Krishna Das, do you see? Do you see?” “No Dada, I don’t see.” “Do you see? Do you see?” “No Dada, I don’t see.” And he looks at me, and he goes, “You don’t have to shine.” And he just wrapped it up again. Oh, sorry. He said, “Maharajji left this for me, the last time He was here, He left this for me. Do you see?” I said, “No.” “Do you see?” “No.” He said, “You don’t have to shine.” And he put it back, folded it up, closed it, took the key, put the key back under there and walked out of the room. You don’t have to shine. You know? Most of everything we do in life is designed to shine us up a little bit, so people will like us and look at us and appreciate us more and we get some attention, some affection. You know? But we don’t have to shine. We really don’t have to. So, if you’re noticing all the ways you’re trying to shine, that’s good. Otherwise how can you let go of that stuff if you don’t notice? Right? It’s not going to help you get happy. You’re just going to spend a lot of time shining yourself up. Then you fall apart. Your arms fall off and your legs fall because you’ve been shining so much.  So, desires are not necessarily bad. Necessarily lead to shining, but they lead to fulfillment in many ways. They lead to wisdom, too. Because you want something, go after it, look at all the things you’re learning by going after something. If you stayed home and watched tv, you’d never see these parts of yourself. If you don’t see them, who will see them? If you can’t let go of them, how will you ever really get what you really want? Since those desires to shine and attract this and attention and all that stuff, that’s in the way of real love. So, Dada was too much, you know?  He was really something. Anything Maharajji said, he said, “Yes, Baba.” “Dada you are an idiot. You never, you have no brains.” “Ha Baba, I have no brains. Yes, I have no brains.” “If I was your wife, Dada, I would have thrown you out long ago.” “Yes, Baba, you would have thrown me out. Yes, You would have thrown me out.”  “You have no brains.” “Ha, Baba.” “No Dada, you have no brains.” Then He goes, “Dada, I have plenty of brains.” “Yes, Baba, you have plenty of brains. Yes.” “You have brains, too, Dada.” “Yes, Baba, I have brains, too.” It didn’t matter what Maharajji said, Dada just said, “Yes, Baba.” It was unbelievable. We used to, he would be with Maharajji from morning til night and for most of his life he was a smoker, a heavy smoker, so there’d be long periods where he’d be with Maharajji and he couldn’t smoke, so Maharajji would go, “Go take your two minutes.” So, he would run through our room in the back, we always had an ash tray, his favorite brand of cigarettes and some chai ready for him and he would come in and he would start smoking cigarettes and drinking chai and telling us Maharajji stories, and then all of a sudden he would, you’d see like, he’d feel and start to move and you’d see that he was starting to throw the cigarette down, you know? And put the tea cup down and then we heard Maharajji, “Dada!” But he heard it before anybody heard it, before it was even a sound, he was already moving in that direction. It was so cool. So cool. One time Maharajji says to him, “Dada, I could have been a really big Saint.  I could have been a really big Saint, but I had one fault.” “What’s that, Baba?” “Too much compassion.” Really. When he said, “ really big Saint,” he means, walked around in those fancy clothes and drove big cars and had thousands and millions of disciples. He was just so far beyond that shit it’s unbelievable. Everywhere He sat down it became a town. People showed up from everywhere. How did they know he was there? Woosh. Like this. He couldn’t stay in one place. He couldn’t in one place. They used to call him Latrine Baba because the first place, the first thing He would do when He got to a place was build latrines. Because there would be a thousand people there in one day, where are they going to go poop? So He became known as latrine Baba. He used to say, “People come here, they think they can fool Me.” One time this group of people came and they wanted, they wanted to use Maharajji’s name to raise money for a school, which is a good thing to do for kids, start a school. But for some reason He didn’t give them permission and when they left, He said, “People come here, they think they can fool me. I go on fooling the whole world. And people think they can fool me.” We just kind of went… He could see everything. He knew everything. It was, and He knew everything about us and He still loved us. That’s the fucking miracle. I’m sorry. That’s a miracle. That’s the miracle of love. Unconditional love.  Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana   Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep.04 | Desire and Willfulness appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep.04 ~ Desire and Willfulness</h3> “Most of everything we do in life is designed to shine us up a little bit, so people will like us and look at us and appreciate us more and we get some attention, some affection. You know? But we don’t have to shine. We really don’t have to. So, if you’re noticing all the ways you’re trying to shine, that’s good. Otherwise how can you let go of that stuff if you don’t notice? Right? It’s not going to help you get happy. You’re just going to spend a lot of time shining yourself up. Then you fall apart.” – Krishna Das Transcription: Q: I’m wondering if you can speak to the differentiation between going after what you want, desire and like a willfulness. KD: You need will, you know? Will is what moves you. It directs your energy. Without will, you know, where does it go? What do you do? Whether it’s, you’re trying to direct your attention, that’s also your will. I remember, I’ve told this many times, but when I was in the jungle with this old Baba who was 163 at the time, he said to me one day, he looked at me and said, “Hm. You have to develop willpower.” And my first thought was, “Willpower? What do I need that for?” And then he kind of went like, like he saw my thought, so He did something and He showed me inside of myself, what He was seeing and it was pretty intense. I saw that I was not, I was putting chains around my ankles, you know? I was not going after the things I wanted in life, and I was all justifying it with, “well, I don’t need that. I don’t need this.”  You know, all this kind of stuff. But I really wanted things that I wasn’t going after.  Things I wanted. And I saw that I had this kind of funny thing like that there was spiritual life and worldly life and that you could live a spiritual life and you didn’t have to, you know. But I was in the world. There was only one life, mine, right? And if I wasn’t going to live it, who was going to live it? I was not going after the things I wanted. I wasn’t living fully. And that was a big moment for me. Willfulness, by that I mean, I take it to mean inappropriate selfish craving of something. But not, go ahead Q: Yeah perhaps, but do you think it’s possible to experience that kind of want and desire in a positive way and at the same time have that craving and wanting. So there’s two things happening. KD: Ok, let’s do this again. So, you have a desire for something and, which is called craving. Desire is craving. The issue is it going to hurt you or somebody else. That’s the only real issue I can see. If it’s a desire to drink a bottle of poison because it might taste good, I don’t think that’s good. Q: I think, can I elaborate? KD: Please. Q: So, like, if I want something in my life, if I have a goal or an aspiration for something that’s important, but then when I find that I’m pursuing it, that I get caught up in wanting it to turn out a certain way or I get caught up in what people think of me or how good I am in the face of someone else. KD: Well, first of all, one thing is why do you want it? Do you want people to think a certain way about you? You’re trying to get something so that people will appreciate and look at you a certain kind of way? If that’s your motivation, hm, that’s what’ll happen. But the other part of it is that you know, as far as the fruits of our actions, we have no control over that, all we can do is do what we do, and whatever comes to us, comes to us. We can’t guarantee success in anything and we can’t guarantee failure. Well, we can guarantee failure by not going after what we want. So it was my fear of failure that was keeping me from going after the things I wanted. And when I noticed that, I was able to overcome that to some degree. But yeah that’s good, being aware of all that stuff that happens to you on the way to getting something is very good. Is that a reason to not go after it anymore? Not necessarily. It’s like it’s doing good, it’s showing you parts of yourself that you weren’t seeing before, which then horrify you and that’s very healthy. It’s good to be horrified by things that are horrifying and selfishness and greed and desire to shine, you know? I remember, one of Mahrajji’s great old devotees named Dada, and we were at the Kumbh Mela in India in 1989 and Dada lived also in Allahabad, a few miles away from this space, the place where the rivers meet and there’s a big Mela there, a big festival. So, we were going to, we stayed with Dada for awhile, and then we were going to go to the Mela grounds and stay at this Baba’s place, and so He sent one of His disciples to come get us and show us how to find Him because it was very hard, there were 20 million people, you know, that came from all over India for two weeks, and then they disappear again. So, this sadhu comes into Dada’s house and he was so arrogant and so, had so much pride, it was, he walked in like, “Look at me, I’m such a great sadhu, you’re just a householder”, he walked in like this, you know. Dada took one look at him and he grabbed me and he pulled me into the back room and there was an old Almira, you know, an old cabinet and he reached down under it, way down in the back and he pulls out this key and then he opens it, right, he opens the door and he reaches down the back shelf and he pulls something out, and it’s these old funky newspapers, something wrapped up in newspaper, so he starts unwrapping it, and it’s this really cheap aluminum Lota, which is a, like a big copper pot, small pot, which they use to pour water or carry water. It was all rusty and dirty and dusty and he looks, and he takes it and he holds it up to me. “Krishna Das, do you see? Do you see?” “No Dada, I don’t see.” “Do you see? Do you see?” “No Dada, I don’t see.” And he looks at me, and he goes, “You don’t have to shine.” And he just wrapped it up again. Oh, sorry. He said, “Maharajji left this for me, the last time He was here, He left this for me. Do you see?” I said, “No.” “Do you see?” “No.” He said, “You don’t have to shine.” And he put it back, folded it up, closed it, took the key, put the key back under there and walked out of the room. You don’t have to shine. You know? Most of everything we do in life is designed to shine us up a little bit, so people will like us and look at us and appreciate us more and we get some attention, some affection. You know? But we don’t have to shine. We really don’t have to. So, if you’re noticing all the ways you’re trying to shine, that’s good. Otherwise how can you let go of that stuff if you don’t notice? Right? It’s not going to help you get happy. You’re just going to spend a lot of time shining yourself up. Then you fall apart. Your arms fall off and your legs fall because you’ve been shining so much.  So, desires are not necessarily bad. Necessarily lead to shining, but they lead to fulfillment in many ways. They lead to wisdom, too. Because you want something, go after it, look at all the things you’re learning by going after something. If you stayed home and watched tv, you’d never see these parts of yourself. If you don’t see them, who will see them? If you can’t let go of them, how will you ever really get what you really want? Since those desires to shine and attract this and attention and all that stuff, that’s in the way of real love. So, Dada was too much, you know?  He was really something. Anything Maharajji said, he said, “Yes, Baba.” “Dada you are an idiot. You never, you have no brains.” “Ha Baba, I have no brains. Yes, I have no brains.” “If I was your wife, Dada, I would have thrown you out long ago.” “Yes, Baba, you would have thrown me out. Yes, You would have thrown me out.”  “You have no brains.” “Ha, Baba.” “No Dada, you have no brains.” Then He goes, “Dada, I have plenty of brains.” “Yes, Baba, you have plenty of brains. Yes.” “You have brains, too, Dada.” “Yes, Baba, I have brains, too.” It didn’t matter what Maharajji said, Dada just said, “Yes, Baba.” It was unbelievable. We used to, he would be with Maharajji from morning til night and for most of his life he was a smoker, a heavy smoker, so there’d be long periods where he’d be with Maharajji and he couldn’t smoke, so Maharajji would go, “Go take your two minutes.” So, he would run through our room in the back, we always had an ash tray, his favorite brand of cigarettes and some chai ready for him and he would come in and he would start smoking cigarettes and drinking chai and telling us Maharajji stories, and then all of a sudden he would, you’d see like, he’d feel and start to move and you’d see that he was starting to throw the cigarette down, you know? And put the tea cup down and then we heard Maharajji, “Dada!” But he heard it before anybody heard it, before it was even a sound, he was already moving in that direction. It was so cool. So cool. One time Maharajji says to him, “Dada, I could have been a really big Saint.  I could have been a really big Saint, but I had one fault.” “What’s that, Baba?” “Too much compassion.” Really. When he said, “ really big Saint,” he means, walked around in those fancy clothes and drove big cars and had thousands and millions of disciples. He was just so far beyond that shit it’s unbelievable. Everywhere He sat down it became a town. People showed up from everywhere. How did they know he was there? Woosh. Like this. He couldn’t stay in one place. He couldn’t in one place. They used to call him Latrine Baba because the first place, the first thing He would do when He got to a place was build latrines. Because there would be a thousand people there in one day, where are they going to go poop? So He became known as latrine Baba. He used to say, “People come here, they think they can fool Me.” One time this group of people came and they wanted, they wanted to use Maharajji’s name to raise money for a school, which is a good thing to do for kids, start a school. But for some reason He didn’t give them permission and when they left, He said, “People come here, they think they can fool me. I go on fooling the whole world. And people think they can fool me.” We just kind of went… He could see everything. He knew everything. It was, and He knew everything about us and He still loved us. That’s the fucking miracle. I’m sorry. That’s a miracle. That’s the miracle of love. Unconditional love. <h3>Suggestions for your practice: <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/sadhanas" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana</a></h3> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8247.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8246.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-04-desire-willfulness/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep.04 | Desire and Willfulness</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep.04 | Desire and Willfulness

Ep.07 ~ Four Fruits Of Life “Hanuman not only gives liberation, frees us, but in the process of freeing us, He allows us to satisfy the desires that we need to have satisfied to move on.”– Krishna Das Transcription:  Q:  In the practice that we’re doing, it’s said, “the Four Fruits of Life?” KD: Yeah, I let that out, didn’t I? The other day, when I was talking about Sri Gurucharana Saroja Raja. Q: What are the four fruits of life? KD: Artha, Kama, Dharma and Moksha. Wealth, or those kind of things. Kama which means your desires get fulfilled. Dharma, the dharma. Teachings. And Moksha, liberation. Those are the four fruits of life. The four things that we, the four fruits of life, of a good life is to have those four things. And Hanuman not only gives liberation, they say, this is a, I wish I had written, somewhere I had this Sanskrit of this, but Hanuman not only gives liberation, frees us, but in the process of freeing us, He allows us to satisfy the desires that we need to have satisfied to move on. Hunger for, you have to eat, right? It’s also a desire, to eat. But it’s also a need, so He gives us food. He creates, it’s like Maharajji, when He would bless us, He blessed us in so many ways, He changed our lives. For instance, my life is very, a 99% possibility that if my life had gone a certain way, I would have been dead by 23 or 24.  That’s the way it was going. But because I came in contact with Maharajji, everything changed. I was able to avoid certain situations that would have ended my life and in fact, my life was transformed so that, for instance, I always wanted to be a rock and roll star, right? I wanted to be in a band, a musician. If I had stayed in the band involved with those people that I was, I would be dead now. So, here’s my life. It has a similar form, but it’s for a whole different reason. I’m in a band. Hallelujah.  I’m in a band. I’m singing. I’m a big star. In a very small world. Who cares? But it’s not all about me. The whole motivation for doing this is to find myself. Not to manipulate other people into having a minute of pleasure that’s going to end in two seconds. It’s a totally different thing. It may even look the same, except the words are kind of weird. So, it’s all His blessing. He just did that. Boom. Next. It all changed. That’s the way, that’s Hanuman. That’s what He does. It’s not a renunciate path. You don’t have to sit at home, tie yourself up, take cold showers forty times a day. Don’t look at tv. Don’t eat anything but celery. It’s not about that. It’s about living fully and getting into life. Really. It’s about overcoming all those fears that we have and really getting out there and living. I told this before but one time, I was sitting with Him in this apartment building, in this town in Mumbai. We had trailed Him to Mumbai and captured Him. So we were sitting for many hours, all day, every day. We’d sit. And He’d just lie on the bed. He’d sit up, then He’d lie this way, then He’d lie this way. Then He’d sit up. Then lie this way. And I would just sit, you know, looking at Him. That was my job. I just couldn’t take my eyes off Him, right? Then all of a sudden He sat up, really tense and He looked at me, He said, “Courage is a really big thing.”  What’s going to happen? And so there was one Indian devotee there who said, “Oh, but Baba, God takes care of His devotees.” “Courage is a really big thing.” And then He laid back down and went to sleep. So, you know, you really need a lot of courage to push through the places where we’re very stuck. But we get the strength to do that from practice. That’s how it works, together, they work together. The more we practice letting go of our thoughts and coming back here, letting go, coming back, letting go, coming back, we’re loosening up the bondage that thoughts put us in. Because we believe everything we think. We wake up one day, we feel like shit, we believe it. You know? It’s not necessarily true. But we believe it. It may not be true, but we believe it. And if we believe it, then we’re stuck in it. That’s our prison. You can only let go at that point. You can only notice you’re caught, you can’t stop a thought, you can’t kill a thought. Where is it? Where did it come from? Where did it go? You can only notice you’re thinking and come back to the, to Ram or to whatever you’re doing, whether you’re watching your breath or repeating a mantra. And that’s training, that’s mind training. That’s what it’s called. That’s what we’re doing. There’s another thing happening in that room which was very far out, so I’d been in India about three or four months and Maharajji ran away from us, we didn’t know where He was, so we went to Bodhgaya, which is the place where the Bodhi tree is, where Buddha was enlightened, and we were going to do these meditation courses there, and while we were, probably between the courses, there was a couple of days between a course, I went to visit this old Lama that we heard about who was staying in the Tibetan Dharmasala, His name was Kunu Rinpoche and somebody said, He’s a really big Lama, a really high Lama, we didn’t know anything about Him, so we went to see Him, we walk in this room, right? And there’s this little Lama sitting on the bed, you know? He’s got no teeth and He’s very funky, unshaven and He’s sweet and He smiled at us, you know? And we sat down and He, He wanted to give us mantra. So He said, will we take a mantra?  We said, “Of course.” We couldn’t’ understand a word He was saying. What mantra is this? Finally we got it. Ok ok. And it was actually the mantra we sang with Tulku Sherdor.  So then we sat for awhile and, and He reached into His, He pulled out this little leather pouch from inside His jacket and He opens it up and He took out seeds from the Bodhi tree that had been blessed, you know? That had, puja and prayers had been done over these seeds for God knows how long. He takes it out and He gives us each a seed, so I went to put it away, because I wanted to save it and keep it and put it on my altar and He saw me and He said, “Eat it, now.” So I took the seed and I ate it. Oh. See, I don’t have the tooth there because of that seed. Anyways, so I ate it and then we left. This was in December 1970. So, we did five meditation courses, one after the other, with like a break of a day and a half between them. And now, in late January, or early February 71, that’s when we took off in the bus from, you know, I don’t know if you know the story of the bus, you’d better read it because I ain’t telling it. So, it’s Ram Das’s books and my book, so we get on this bus and we’re on our way, we’re going to go to Delhi to try to find Maharajji, it’s a big Mercedes bus that somebody had driven across from somewhere in Europe and taken people to India. So he offered us a ride back to Delhi, so we did, so on the way. Ok, I’ll tell you the story. So on the way back to Delhi, so on the way back to Delhi, Danny Goldman, who was with us, he had left Bodhgaya for a few days and gone to the Mela in Allahabad. A Mela’s what, like a Kumbh Mela you’ve heard of. This wasn’t a Kumbh, but it was a Mela, every January, January February there’s a Mela at this place. So he went there and there millions of sadhus and people and all kinds of stuff going on. And he came back to finish the courses with us and then, we’re on our way to Delhi, he said, “Why don’t we just drive there and see the Mela going on?” So, we wanted to, Ram Das was kind of the boss, so, and as the eldest, you know, he wanted to get to Delhi and find Maharajji and that’s all he wanted. He didn’t want to see the Mela, but there was a lot of discussion going on. Everybody was putting their two cents in. “You know, we’ll go. We won’t stay long. We’ll spend one night. We’ll go. We’ll come back.” Finally after like hours of wrangling, we decided we would drive there, just like an hour off the road, drive there, take a look around and get back on the road and get to Delhi by night time. Fine. So, we’re driving along and the bus turns off towards Allahabad and we reached the site of the Melaa and there was no one there. Everybody had gone home. Mela’s finished. Two weeks before, there were 20 million people, literally. And now, three. And a dog. So, we’re driving through this field, right? Now it’s all just like sand and we’re going to turn the bus around and head back to Delhi, but Danny said, “You know there’s a Hanuman temple over there in the corner of the field, why don’t we just go see Hanumanji and then we’ll go to Delhi.” So the bus goes in that direction and right along the edge of the field there’s a walkway and the bus is going this way, and walking in the other way, were these two people. One of them was Maharajji.  The other was Dada. And they were walking in the opposite direction that the bus was going and He didn’t look up. He did not look up at the bus but He says to Dada as the bus is going by, “Oh, they’ve come.” And it just so happened that one guy in the bus noticed Him. We almost drove past Him. He didn’t say, “Hi I’m here.” No, He just kept walking. Someone said, “There’s Maharajji.” The bus stops. We all run out. “Oh, they’ve come.” That was the big thing. So, then they said, they got on this little cycle rickshaw and they asked, they told us to follow the rickshaw, so there’s this huge fancy shiny Mercedes bus following this tiny little cycle rickshaw throught he streets of this tiny little village. And the rickshaw stops out in front of a house and Maharajji and this gentleman who we hadn’t met yet, get out and walk into the house, and the bus stops and we kind of get out of the bus, looking around, now what? So, a lady comes out of the house, and says, “come. Come in. Come in. Come to take your lunch.” And we said, “But there’s 25 of us.” “Oh, yes, Maharajji woke us up this morning and told us to prepare lunch for 25 people. That you’d be coming.” This is true. It happened. I was there. Now, you, if I had any karmas at all, that would have been enough to blow my brains to bits. End of story. Enlightened. He knew everything. He’d brought, the whole drama of “who, should we go? Should we go? No, we don’t want to go. I mean, there was some juice in that.  Why should we go? We’ll go, we’ll get to Delhi.”  For hours, we went on like that. Finally, Ram Das said, “Ok, look, we’ll go and we’ll just see it and we’ll go.” Who was making that decision? Who? Was it written? Sir? Yeah, ok. Thank you.  You just answered your own question. But we thought we were deciding so we made the decision that we made but were we really deciding? We think we were but in retrospect, it might not have been that way. To put it mildly. All right, so, we spend a few days there and then we were sent away. Two years later, two years later, a lot of coming and going all around India, we were with Maharajji here, we were with Him there, He disappeared, He’s here, He’s all over the place. Two years later, I found myself in Mumbai with Maharajji and I was in that room I just told you about, and He was lying on the bed doing this, doing that, and I was sitting there staring at Him. All of a sudden, He sits up and He goes, “Give me the seed the Lama gave you.” I did not know what He was talking about. What seed? What Lama? “Give me the seed the Lama gave you. Give me. Give me.” I said, “Baba I don’t know what… ohhhh. Baba… he made me eat it. I ate it.” And then He goes, “Very good.” He said, “Good. Now you’ll be enlightened.” Then He went back to sleep. Do I look enlightened to you?  Hallelujah. Well, so what? You know? What was that? Someday. But anyway, so things like that were happening all the time. And after a while, when you live in that kind of environment, your brain just stops working. You know? It just says, “Enough of that. Forget it.” And you just get more present. And you get more open to things more in the moment because you’re living, you’re surrounded, you’re having Satsang, real Satsang. People gathered together in the name of Truth. That’s what it is, Satsang. And when you’re in that kind of Satsang, it lifts you up into it. It changes your brain, the way your brain works. That’s what this is, this weekend, this is Satsang. We’re all part of this process, all of us doing, singing together, doing all this stuff, it affects everybody, the whole vibration, the atmosphere is good, with a capital “G”.  Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana   Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep.07 | Four Fruits Of Life appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep.07 ~ Four Fruits Of Life</h3> <blockquote>“Hanuman not only gives liberation, frees us, but in the process of freeing us, He allows us to satisfy the desires that we need to have satisfied to move on.”– Krishna Das</blockquote> Transcription: Q:  In the practice that we’re doing, it’s said, “the Four Fruits of Life?” KD: Yeah, I let that out, didn’t I? The other day, when I was talking about Sri Gurucharana Saroja Raja. Q: What are the four fruits of life? KD: Artha, Kama, Dharma and Moksha. Wealth, or those kind of things. Kama which means your desires get fulfilled. Dharma, the dharma. Teachings. And Moksha, liberation. Those are the four fruits of life. The four things that we, the four fruits of life, of a good life is to have those four things. And Hanuman not only gives liberation, they say, this is a, I wish I had written, somewhere I had this Sanskrit of this, but Hanuman not only gives liberation, frees us, but in the process of freeing us, He allows us to satisfy the desires that we need to have satisfied to move on. Hunger for, you have to eat, right? It’s also a desire, to eat. But it’s also a need, so He gives us food. He creates, it’s like Maharajji, when He would bless us, He blessed us in so many ways, He changed our lives. For instance, my life is very, a 99% possibility that if my life had gone a certain way, I would have been dead by 23 or 24.  That’s the way it was going. But because I came in contact with Maharajji, everything changed. I was able to avoid certain situations that would have ended my life and in fact, my life was transformed so that, for instance, I always wanted to be a rock and roll star, right? I wanted to be in a band, a musician. If I had stayed in the band involved with those people that I was, I would be dead now. So, here’s my life. It has a similar form, but it’s for a whole different reason. I’m in a band. Hallelujah.  I’m in a band. I’m singing. I’m a big star. In a very small world. Who cares? But it’s not all about me. The whole motivation for doing this is to find myself. Not to manipulate other people into having a minute of pleasure that’s going to end in two seconds. It’s a totally different thing. It may even look the same, except the words are kind of weird. So, it’s all His blessing. He just did that. Boom. Next. It all changed. That’s the way, that’s Hanuman. That’s what He does. It’s not a renunciate path. You don’t have to sit at home, tie yourself up, take cold showers forty times a day. Don’t look at tv. Don’t eat anything but celery. It’s not about that. It’s about living fully and getting into life. Really. It’s about overcoming all those fears that we have and really getting out there and living. I told this before but one time, I was sitting with Him in this apartment building, in this town in Mumbai. We had trailed Him to Mumbai and captured Him. So we were sitting for many hours, all day, every day. We’d sit. And He’d just lie on the bed. He’d sit up, then He’d lie this way, then He’d lie this way. Then He’d sit up. Then lie this way. And I would just sit, you know, looking at Him. That was my job. I just couldn’t take my eyes off Him, right? Then all of a sudden He sat up, really tense and He looked at me, He said, “Courage is a really big thing.”  What’s going to happen? And so there was one Indian devotee there who said, “Oh, but Baba, God takes care of His devotees.” “Courage is a really big thing.” And then He laid back down and went to sleep. So, you know, you really need a lot of courage to push through the places where we’re very stuck. But we get the strength to do that from practice. That’s how it works, together, they work together. The more we practice letting go of our thoughts and coming back here, letting go, coming back, letting go, coming back, we’re loosening up the bondage that thoughts put us in. Because we believe everything we think. We wake up one day, we feel like shit, we believe it. You know? It’s not necessarily true. But we believe it. It may not be true, but we believe it. And if we believe it, then we’re stuck in it. That’s our prison. You can only let go at that point. You can only notice you’re caught, you can’t stop a thought, you can’t kill a thought. Where is it? Where did it come from? Where did it go? You can only notice you’re thinking and come back to the, to Ram or to whatever you’re doing, whether you’re watching your breath or repeating a mantra. And that’s training, that’s mind training. That’s what it’s called. That’s what we’re doing. There’s another thing happening in that room which was very far out, so I’d been in India about three or four months and Maharajji ran away from us, we didn’t know where He was, so we went to Bodhgaya, which is the place where the Bodhi tree is, where Buddha was enlightened, and we were going to do these meditation courses there, and while we were, probably between the courses, there was a couple of days between a course, I went to visit this old Lama that we heard about who was staying in the Tibetan Dharmasala, His name was Kunu Rinpoche and somebody said, He’s a really big Lama, a really high Lama, we didn’t know anything about Him, so we went to see Him, we walk in this room, right? And there’s this little Lama sitting on the bed, you know? He’s got no teeth and He’s very funky, unshaven and He’s sweet and He smiled at us, you know? And we sat down and He, He wanted to give us mantra. So He said, will we take a mantra?  We said, “Of course.” We couldn’t’ understand a word He was saying. What mantra is this? Finally we got it. Ok ok. And it was actually the mantra we sang with Tulku Sherdor.  So then we sat for awhile and, and He reached into His, He pulled out this little leather pouch from inside His jacket and He opens it up and He took out seeds from the Bodhi tree that had been blessed, you know? That had, puja and prayers had been done over these seeds for God knows how long. He takes it out and He gives us each a seed, so I went to put it away, because I wanted to save it and keep it and put it on my altar and He saw me and He said, “Eat it, now.” So I took the seed and I ate it. Oh. See, I don’t have the tooth there because of that seed. Anyways, so I ate it and then we left. This was in December 1970. So, we did five meditation courses, one after the other, with like a break of a day and a half between them. And now, in late January, or early February 71, that’s when we took off in the bus from, you know, I don’t know if you know the story of the bus, you’d better read it because I ain’t telling it. So, it’s Ram Das’s books and my book, so we get on this bus and we’re on our way, we’re going to go to Delhi to try to find Maharajji, it’s a big Mercedes bus that somebody had driven across from somewhere in Europe and taken people to India. So he offered us a ride back to Delhi, so we did, so on the way. Ok, I’ll tell you the story. So on the way back to Delhi, so on the way back to Delhi, Danny Goldman, who was with us, he had left Bodhgaya for a few days and gone to the Mela in Allahabad. A Mela’s what, like a Kumbh Mela you’ve heard of. This wasn’t a Kumbh, but it was a Mela, every January, January February there’s a Mela at this place. So he went there and there millions of sadhus and people and all kinds of stuff going on. And he came back to finish the courses with us and then, we’re on our way to Delhi, he said, “Why don’t we just drive there and see the Mela going on?” So, we wanted to, Ram Das was kind of the boss, so, and as the eldest, you know, he wanted to get to Delhi and find Maharajji and that’s all he wanted. He didn’t want to see the Mela, but there was a lot of discussion going on. Everybody was putting their two cents in. “You know, we’ll go. We won’t stay long. We’ll spend one night. We’ll go. We’ll come back.” Finally after like hours of wrangling, we decided we would drive there, just like an hour off the road, drive there, take a look around and get back on the road and get to Delhi by night time. Fine. So, we’re driving along and the bus turns off towards Allahabad and we reached the site of the Melaa and there was no one there. Everybody had gone home. Mela’s finished. Two weeks before, there were 20 million people, literally. And now, three. And a dog. So, we’re driving through this field, right? Now it’s all just like sand and we’re going to turn the bus around and head back to Delhi, but Danny said, “You know there’s a Hanuman temple over there in the corner of the field, why don’t we just go see Hanumanji and then we’ll go to Delhi.” So the bus goes in that direction and right along the edge of the field there’s a walkway and the bus is going this way, and walking in the other way, were these two people. One of them was Maharajji.  The other was Dada. And they were walking in the opposite direction that the bus was going and He didn’t look up. He did not look up at the bus but He says to Dada as the bus is going by, “Oh, they’ve come.” And it just so happened that one guy in the bus noticed Him. We almost drove past Him. He didn’t say, “Hi I’m here.” No, He just kept walking. Someone said, “There’s Maharajji.” The bus stops. We all run out. “Oh, they’ve come.” That was the big thing. So, then they said, they got on this little cycle rickshaw and they asked, they told us to follow the rickshaw, so there’s this huge fancy shiny Mercedes bus following this tiny little cycle rickshaw throught he streets of this tiny little village. And the rickshaw stops out in front of a house and Maharajji and this gentleman who we hadn’t met yet, get out and walk into the house, and the bus stops and we kind of get out of the bus, looking around, now what? So, a lady comes out of the house, and says, “come. Come in. Come in. Come to take your lunch.” And we said, “But there’s 25 of us.” “Oh, yes, Maharajji woke us up this morning and told us to prepare lunch for 25 people. That you’d be coming.” This is true. It happened. I was there. Now, you, if I had any karmas at all, that would have been enough to blow my brains to bits. End of story. Enlightened. He knew everything. He’d brought, the whole drama of “who, should we go? Should we go? No, we don’t want to go. I mean, there was some juice in that.  Why should we go? We’ll go, we’ll get to Delhi.”  For hours, we went on like that. Finally, Ram Das said, “Ok, look, we’ll go and we’ll just see it and we’ll go.” Who was making that decision? Who? Was it written? Sir? Yeah, ok. Thank you.  You just answered your own question. But we thought we were deciding so we made the decision that we made but were we really deciding? We think we were but in retrospect, it might not have been that way. To put it mildly. All right, so, we spend a few days there and then we were sent away. Two years later, two years later, a lot of coming and going all around India, we were with Maharajji here, we were with Him there, He disappeared, He’s here, He’s all over the place. Two years later, I found myself in Mumbai with Maharajji and I was in that room I just told you about, and He was lying on the bed doing this, doing that, and I was sitting there staring at Him. All of a sudden, He sits up and He goes, “Give me the seed the Lama gave you.” I did not know what He was talking about. What seed? What Lama? “Give me the seed the Lama gave you. Give me. Give me.” I said, “Baba I don’t know what… ohhhh. Baba… he made me eat it. I ate it.” And then He goes, “Very good.” He said, “Good. Now you’ll be enlightened.” Then He went back to sleep. Do I look enlightened to you?  Hallelujah. Well, so what? You know? What was that? Someday. But anyway, so things like that were happening all the time. And after a while, when you live in that kind of environment, your brain just stops working. You know? It just says, “Enough of that. Forget it.” And you just get more present. And you get more open to things more in the moment because you’re living, you’re surrounded, you’re having Satsang, real Satsang. People gathered together in the name of Truth. That’s what it is, Satsang. And when you’re in that kind of Satsang, it lifts you up into it. It changes your brain, the way your brain works. That’s what this is, this weekend, this is Satsang. We’re all part of this process, all of us doing, singing together, doing all this stuff, it affects everybody, the whole vibration, the atmosphere is good, with a capital “G”. <h3>Suggestions for your practice: <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/sadhanas" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana</a></h3> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8247.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8246.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-07-four-fruits-life/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep.07 | Four Fruits Of Life</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep.07 | Four Fruits Of Life

Bob Thurman

Ep. 14 ~ KD Chats with Bob Thurman Robert A.F. Thurman recently retired as Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in theDepartment of Religion atColumbia University,President of theTibet House U.S., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization,Time magazine chose Professor Thurman as one of its 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, from Asia to America.” The New York Times recently said Thurman “is considered the leading American expert onTibetan Buddhism.Inspired by his good friend the Dalai Lama, Thurman stands on Buddhism’s open reality, and thence takes us along with him into an expanded vision of the world, whether the sweep of history, the subtleties of the inner science of the psyche, or the wonders of the life of the heart.He always shares the sense of refuge in the Dharma, which unfailingly helps us clear away the shrouds of fear and confusion, sustains us with the cheerfulness of an enriched present, and opens a door to a path of realistic hope for a peaceful future.“There’s two ways of looking at the sublime continuum, which is to say the Buddha Nature.There’s one way where the Buddha says, ‘Buddha nature is something we teach to reassure people who are frightened when we say ‘selfless’ and they think there’s no soul.’ So BuddhaNature sort of substitutes for soul. But that’s a lower way of looking at it. A higher way of looking at Buddha Nature is, it is Reality Itself in the form of the fact that enlightened Beings,Beings who are truly enlightened, which doesn’t mean every kind of deity, but some of them, maybe, but enlightened Beings feel, they viscerally feel themselves to be everybody else. So, for example, any Buddha, and there are millions of them, but particularly the one who worries most about us at the moment is Shakyamuni, you know, Siddhartha’s last Shakyamuni, He is you, Krishna Das, and Me, from His perspective. He’s us. He actually enjoys being us. He does.”–Robert Thurman    Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep. 14 | KD Chats with Bob Thurman appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep. 14 ~ KD Chats with Bob Thurman</h3> Robert A.F. Thurman recently retired as Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in theDepartment of Religion atColumbia University,President of theTibet House U.S., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization,Time magazine chose Professor Thurman as one of its 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, from Asia to America.” The New York Times recently said Thurman “is considered the leading American expert onTibetan Buddhism.Inspired by his good friend the Dalai Lama, Thurman stands on Buddhism’s open reality, and thence takes us along with him into an expanded vision of the world, whether the sweep of history, the subtleties of the inner science of the psyche, or the wonders of the life of the heart.He always shares the sense of refuge in the Dharma, which unfailingly helps us clear away the shrouds of fear and confusion, sustains us with the cheerfulness of an enriched present, and opens a door to a path of realistic hope for a peaceful future.“There’s two ways of looking at the sublime continuum, which is to say the Buddha Nature.There’s one way where the Buddha says, ‘Buddha nature is something we teach to reassure people who are frightened when we say ‘selfless’ and they think there’s no soul.’ So BuddhaNature sort of substitutes for soul. But that’s a lower way of looking at it. A higher way of looking at Buddha Nature is, it is Reality Itself in the form of the fact that enlightened Beings,Beings who are truly enlightened, which doesn’t mean every kind of deity, but some of them, maybe, but enlightened Beings feel, they viscerally feel themselves to be everybody else. So, for example, any Buddha, and there are millions of them, but particularly the one who worries most about us at the moment is Shakyamuni, you know, Siddhartha’s last Shakyamuni, He is you, Krishna Das, and Me, from His perspective. He’s us. He actually enjoys being us. He does.”–Robert Thurman <h3></h3> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/call-and-response-ep-14-kd-chats-with-bob-thurman/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 14 | KD Chats with Bob Thurman</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 14 | KD Chats with Bob Thurman

Ep.05~ Judging and Acting “You don’t have to judge. Judging means you’re seeing that person as evil. Or bad. And you’re not seeing that that person, just like you, is a result of many different things in that person’s life. Most people who abuse, have been abused. Right? Does that make them bad? It just makes them victims. Victims become victimizers. Not 100% but to a large degree. Most of what we’re taught about ourselves through our earlier life and our parents, we then absorb and we teach it to anybody around us. So, people who abuse are often abusing out of their own pain. That doesn’t excuse them. You wouldn’t let them hurt somebody if you were there. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to hate them to stop them. The not hating is the inner work. The preventing suffering on the outside is the outer result of that work”– Krishna Das Transcription:  Q:  The woman behind me had asked essentially, about taking direct action versus looking inward and doing the spiritual practice. And I’ve run into that myself. KD: I don’t know if that’s what she asked exactly but, I don’t know, there is no “versus”, you know? There are not two different things. Q: Well, that is my question because I have begun to try to look inward and try to develop a spiritual practice, an interest thing has happened, which is, I have become a more passionate, a compassionate person. KD: You ever hear of a Freudian slip? Q: Probably that, too actually. KD: That’s good for you, too. No problem there. Money and sex, who can do without it? Some people think they can. Q: And so the harshness of the world outside us is there. KD: Sure. Q: And it seems to me that direct action is often required or I feel that need to take direct action and we do need to in this world. If somebody came in here, a cruise ship drunkard, we would have to physically remove them. KD: Maybe. Q: And so how do we balance looking inward, developing a spiritual practice with also going out in the world and making a difference in the world. That’ my question. KD: It’s really easy. You do the best, don’t take it away from him, I didn’t forget the word you used. “Challenge.” No, it’s really easy. You do the best you can. That’s it. Now think about that. Just think about it for a second. You do the best you can. What would you like to… how would you modify that statement? Q: I guess what I’m hearing, sometimes, is don’t take direct action. KD: You never heard it from me. Q: Ok, that’s where I got confused, because she was saying these other people that are doing horrible things. Then what I’m hearing is, who are we to judge? And sometimes we have to judge. KD: No. You don’t have to judge. Judging means you’re seeing that person as evil. Or bad. And you’re not seeing that that person, just like you, is a result of many different things in that person’s life. Most people who abuse, have been abused. Right? Does that make them bad? It just makes them victims. Victims become victimizers. Not 100% but to a large degree. Most of what we’re taught about ourselves through our earlier life and our parents, we then absorb and we teach it to anybody around us. So, people who abuse are often abusing out of their own pain. That doesn’t excuse them. You wouldn’t let them hurt somebody if you were there. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to hate them to stop them. The not hating is the inner work. The preventing suffering on the outside is the outer result of that work. If you hate that person, you’ve created a whole drama for yourself. Who knows what you’re going to do out of? Who knows? You might take that to excess. You might kill the person. And you know what they say in the East? They say, if you kill somebody, you give that person the right to kill you for a hundred lifetimes. Karma. You can’t. When you start talking about these things, you can either say, ok there’s no such thing as karma, I’m just going to be a good person and do the best I can. That’s fine. So find out what the best you can, is. Is the best you can getting really pissed off and angry and you go and prevent somebody from slaughtering a sheep and go home and kick the dog because you’re so pissed off? Or abuse, or get mad at your kids or have a car accident or do something stupid because you’ve lost your mind? There’s nothing good about that. There’s nothing righteous about that. So whatever you do, it’s like the Dalai Lama said, “Am I gonna let them take my piece of mind also?”  That’s where you, that’s your kingdom. Where you have say. Where you have the only vote to find a way to stay at ease within regardless of what’s going on outside. You know, one time Maharajji was sitting in a room with somebody, with a group of people, and these two guys walked and they sat in the back and Maharajji ignored them, all right? So finally one of the guys stood up and he said, “Excuse me, Baba, but my friend here is in great difficulty.” So then Maharajji looks at the guy and says, “Why did you kill him?” To the other guy. And he said, “Baba I didn’t kill him.” “No, but you arranged it. Why did you do that?” He said, “Baba he was in my way.” He said, “You didn’t think about his family. Who’ll take care of his family? What have you done? What have you done?” He said, “Promise me you’ll take care of his family and his children.” The guy, the murderer, said “Ok.” The judge, the story goes, I don’t know how they know these things but the story goes that the judge had already written the verdict as guilty. He got up in the middle of the night and changed it to not guilty because that guy had agreed. He agreed that he had done wrong and he had also agreed to take, you know, in India, no one knows, there’s a tremendous amount of the population, they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. We have refrigerators full of shit that we throw out. They don’t know. So many people. Less these days. But still. So, and this was 50 years ago or more so, where is this woman going to take care of her kids? How are they going to eat? Where are they going to live? What’s going to happen to them? The only person who was making, taking care of them was just murdered by this guy. So Maharajji could have blown him off and said “You’re a bad guy. You ought to be killed. Get out out of here.” But no. He said, and they other thing He said, was “Eventually you’ll understand what you’ve done.” So, judging is one thing. Acting is another thing. You know? Q: Great answer. Thank you. KD: I gotta tell you a funny story. You know, this is big time judging, this is a murderer. But Maharajji didn’t judge anyone, but He knew everything, ok? So there was this one guy who’d been a devotee for many many years and he was a big guy in the government, and he was a very righteous, honest guy. Now as you know, the Indian government, up until very recently, lives on bribes. Bribes are a way that they get extra money. It’s not really a bad thing. The heads of the departments will get this money from people who want services, they’ll take a certain amount for themselves and then they’ll pass it down the line to their, the people who work under them, it’s just been going on for years. But this one guy, he would never take a bribe. So everybody was very afraid of this guy and very straight honest, straightforward kind of guy. So, one day he’s sitting in a room, now when this guy was young. Much younger. Long before he met Maharajji… I hope you’ll appreciate this. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you.  Ok, I’ll tell you. So, when this guy was young, he hurt his back and he went to an Ayurvedic ashram somewhere and he was getting treatments and everything and he had this woman who was treating him every day and they wound up having an affair. This is like, 40 or 50 years, 40 years before the time I’m talking about, and gradually his back got better and he came back to his family and blah blah blah. Now 40 years had gone by, they’re sitting in a room, and this guy recently had hurt his back again, after many years, so he’s sitting in a room with a bunch of devotees with Maharajji, and one by one, Maharajji sends all the other people away and finally it’s just Him and this guy, and he leans over really close to this guy and he says, “She’s too old and her daughter’s too young. Don’t go back there.” How is that… that’s too much. I thought, that’s the secret teaching I just gave you. I hope you appreciate it. What does that show? He knew everything, right? He knew what had happened. He knew the guy had hurt his back again. He knew he was thinking about going back to that place and look how he chose to tell you. Such a filthy mouth, right? It’s fantastic. She’s too old and her daughter’s too… What kind of a slimeball is my Guru? The best.  She’s too old and her daughter’s too young. Terrible. Her daughter was probably 40, by the way.  All right any more questions?  Behind all this stuff is incredible love, you know? It’s, when you have this, when you sit deeply enough in yourself, not judging just means loving. And when you love someone, you love them as they are. You’re not trying to change them. You’re not going to love them only if they change. You already love them. This is the kind of love Maharajji has, or these great Beings have for us. They see us exactly the way we are. They see everything we’ve done. Everything we’ve thought. Everything we’re going to do. And they still love us. It’s inconceivable. It’s, you can’t wrap your mind around it. You can only, at some point, if we’re lucky, feel it just a little bit. It’s called unconditional love. They don’t love us because we’re good and they don’t pull that back from us if we do things that are harmful or hurtful. It’s the way the sun shines on everything.  Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana   Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep.05 | Judging and Acting appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep.05~ Judging and Acting</h3> <blockquote>“You don’t have to judge. Judging means you’re seeing that person as evil. Or bad. And you’re not seeing that that person, just like you, is a result of many different things in that person’s life. Most people who abuse, have been abused. Right? Does that make them bad? It just makes them victims. Victims become victimizers. Not 100% but to a large degree. Most of what we’re taught about ourselves through our earlier life and our parents, we then absorb and we teach it to anybody around us. So, people who abuse are often abusing out of their own pain. That doesn’t excuse them. You wouldn’t let them hurt somebody if you were there. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to hate them to stop them. The not hating is the inner work. The preventing suffering on the outside is the outer result of that work”– Krishna Das</blockquote> Transcription: Q:  The woman behind me had asked essentially, about taking direct action versus looking inward and doing the spiritual practice. And I’ve run into that myself. KD: I don’t know if that’s what she asked exactly but, I don’t know, there is no “versus”, you know? There are not two different things. Q: Well, that is my question because I have begun to try to look inward and try to develop a spiritual practice, an interest thing has happened, which is, I have become a more passionate, a compassionate person. KD: You ever hear of a Freudian slip? Q: Probably that, too actually. KD: That’s good for you, too. No problem there. Money and sex, who can do without it? Some people think they can. Q: And so the harshness of the world outside us is there. KD: Sure. Q: And it seems to me that direct action is often required or I feel that need to take direct action and we do need to in this world. If somebody came in here, a cruise ship drunkard, we would have to physically remove them. KD: Maybe. Q: And so how do we balance looking inward, developing a spiritual practice with also going out in the world and making a difference in the world. That’ my question. KD: It’s really easy. You do the best, don’t take it away from him, I didn’t forget the word you used. “Challenge.” No, it’s really easy. You do the best you can. That’s it. Now think about that. Just think about it for a second. You do the best you can. What would you like to… how would you modify that statement? Q: I guess what I’m hearing, sometimes, is don’t take direct action. KD: You never heard it from me. Q: Ok, that’s where I got confused, because she was saying these other people that are doing horrible things. Then what I’m hearing is, who are we to judge? And sometimes we have to judge. KD: No. You don’t have to judge. Judging means you’re seeing that person as evil. Or bad. And you’re not seeing that that person, just like you, is a result of many different things in that person’s life. Most people who abuse, have been abused. Right? Does that make them bad? It just makes them victims. Victims become victimizers. Not 100% but to a large degree. Most of what we’re taught about ourselves through our earlier life and our parents, we then absorb and we teach it to anybody around us. So, people who abuse are often abusing out of their own pain. That doesn’t excuse them. You wouldn’t let them hurt somebody if you were there. But you wouldn’t necessarily have to hate them to stop them. The not hating is the inner work. The preventing suffering on the outside is the outer result of that work. If you hate that person, you’ve created a whole drama for yourself. Who knows what you’re going to do out of? Who knows? You might take that to excess. You might kill the person. And you know what they say in the East? They say, if you kill somebody, you give that person the right to kill you for a hundred lifetimes. Karma. You can’t. When you start talking about these things, you can either say, ok there’s no such thing as karma, I’m just going to be a good person and do the best I can. That’s fine. So find out what the best you can, is. Is the best you can getting really pissed off and angry and you go and prevent somebody from slaughtering a sheep and go home and kick the dog because you’re so pissed off? Or abuse, or get mad at your kids or have a car accident or do something stupid because you’ve lost your mind? There’s nothing good about that. There’s nothing righteous about that. So whatever you do, it’s like the Dalai Lama said, “Am I gonna let them take my piece of mind also?”  That’s where you, that’s your kingdom. Where you have say. Where you have the only vote to find a way to stay at ease within regardless of what’s going on outside. You know, one time Maharajji was sitting in a room with somebody, with a group of people, and these two guys walked and they sat in the back and Maharajji ignored them, all right? So finally one of the guys stood up and he said, “Excuse me, Baba, but my friend here is in great difficulty.” So then Maharajji looks at the guy and says, “Why did you kill him?” To the other guy. And he said, “Baba I didn’t kill him.” “No, but you arranged it. Why did you do that?” He said, “Baba he was in my way.” He said, “You didn’t think about his family. Who’ll take care of his family? What have you done? What have you done?” He said, “Promise me you’ll take care of his family and his children.” The guy, the murderer, said “Ok.” The judge, the story goes, I don’t know how they know these things but the story goes that the judge had already written the verdict as guilty. He got up in the middle of the night and changed it to not guilty because that guy had agreed. He agreed that he had done wrong and he had also agreed to take, you know, in India, no one knows, there’s a tremendous amount of the population, they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. We have refrigerators full of shit that we throw out. They don’t know. So many people. Less these days. But still. So, and this was 50 years ago or more so, where is this woman going to take care of her kids? How are they going to eat? Where are they going to live? What’s going to happen to them? The only person who was making, taking care of them was just murdered by this guy. So Maharajji could have blown him off and said “You’re a bad guy. You ought to be killed. Get out out of here.” But no. He said, and they other thing He said, was “Eventually you’ll understand what you’ve done.” So, judging is one thing. Acting is another thing. You know? Q: Great answer. Thank you. KD: I gotta tell you a funny story. You know, this is big time judging, this is a murderer. But Maharajji didn’t judge anyone, but He knew everything, ok? So there was this one guy who’d been a devotee for many many years and he was a big guy in the government, and he was a very righteous, honest guy. Now as you know, the Indian government, up until very recently, lives on bribes. Bribes are a way that they get extra money. It’s not really a bad thing. The heads of the departments will get this money from people who want services, they’ll take a certain amount for themselves and then they’ll pass it down the line to their, the people who work under them, it’s just been going on for years. But this one guy, he would never take a bribe. So everybody was very afraid of this guy and very straight honest, straightforward kind of guy. So, one day he’s sitting in a room, now when this guy was young. Much younger. Long before he met Maharajji… I hope you’ll appreciate this. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you.  Ok, I’ll tell you. So, when this guy was young, he hurt his back and he went to an Ayurvedic ashram somewhere and he was getting treatments and everything and he had this woman who was treating him every day and they wound up having an affair. This is like, 40 or 50 years, 40 years before the time I’m talking about, and gradually his back got better and he came back to his family and blah blah blah. Now 40 years had gone by, they’re sitting in a room, and this guy recently had hurt his back again, after many years, so he’s sitting in a room with a bunch of devotees with Maharajji, and one by one, Maharajji sends all the other people away and finally it’s just Him and this guy, and he leans over really close to this guy and he says, “She’s too old and her daughter’s too young. Don’t go back there.” How is that… that’s too much. I thought, that’s the secret teaching I just gave you. I hope you appreciate it. What does that show? He knew everything, right? He knew what had happened. He knew the guy had hurt his back again. He knew he was thinking about going back to that place and look how he chose to tell you. Such a filthy mouth, right? It’s fantastic. She’s too old and her daughter’s too… What kind of a slimeball is my Guru? The best.  She’s too old and her daughter’s too young. Terrible. Her daughter was probably 40, by the way.  All right any more questions?  Behind all this stuff is incredible love, you know? It’s, when you have this, when you sit deeply enough in yourself, not judging just means loving. And when you love someone, you love them as they are. You’re not trying to change them. You’re not going to love them only if they change. You already love them. This is the kind of love Maharajji has, or these great Beings have for us. They see us exactly the way we are. They see everything we’ve done. Everything we’ve thought. Everything we’re going to do. And they still love us. It’s inconceivable. It’s, you can’t wrap your mind around it. You can only, at some point, if we’re lucky, feel it just a little bit. It’s called unconditional love. They don’t love us because we’re good and they don’t pull that back from us if we do things that are harmful or hurtful. It’s the way the sun shines on everything. <h3>Suggestions for your practice: <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/sadhanas" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana</a></h3> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8247.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8246.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-05-judging-acting/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep.05 | Judging and Acting</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep.05 | Judging and Acting

Ep.10 ~ Selfless Service One time, Mr. Tiwari, my Indian father, was sitting with Maharajji. Maharajji said, “So, you’re a brahmin, you’re supposed to know everything. What does Krishna teach in the Gita?” So now everybody, if you ask that question, they basically say, “Selfless Service,” right? So, he knew it was a setup, but he said it anyway. “You miserable brahmins, misleading the people. Only God does Selfless Service.” Because God is the whole thing. There is no Self. You know? There’s only That. All of us are just doing the best we can and we’re working on thinning that, that barrier or shell that seems so solid of self.”- Krishna Das Transcription:  Q: So, I once thanked you for sharing your practice with us and KD: I belted you, right? Boom. Left hook. Q: Yeah, and you didn’t appreciate that. KD: Listen, this is proof that you can sing your ass off and still be an asshole. Q: No, but this is my question for you, because I’ve actually thought about it a lot, I think that the whole concept of being really cognizant of your ego and letting your ego get fluffed up, for lack of a better word… KD: Fluffed… Q: Fluffed. Is, this is important, but at the same time, if what you’re doing is really just a practice to draw yourself closer to your Guru, to your God, to your Self, to your One, isn’t that, and you’ll really think I’m a brat, but isn’t that really in direct conflict with what the underlying message was of Maharajji, which was to serve others? And so, if what you’re doing is just your practice and, but, are you, do you feel like it’s in service of others? Or how do you wrap around, and I’m not trying to be difficult… KD: You’re just good at it. I said to Ram Das at lunch, it’s weird to be famous for being humble. People say all the time, “Oh, you’re so humble.” I say, “No, no, I know who I am.” “Oh, wow you’re so humble.” Ok, what can I do? It comes to a point where it’s what, me thinks the lady doth protest too much, you know? Fuck it, I’m just going to sing, no matter what, whether I’m taking it personally or not taking it personally, or its good or its bad or people are singing or not singing or I’m in my bathroom alone or I’m with you, I’m going to keep singing. And I’m not, I always say, I sing to save my miserable ass, right? However, through all the years of chanting, my ass has gotten much wider. And all ya’ll are part of it. Thank you. If I, service, just to serve, it doesn’t mean you have to walk around with a big sign saying “I’m serving.” That’s ridiculous. That’s not service. You’re not serving anybody at that point except your own ego. The real Beings that serve humanity, that serve, they have no, they really do service because, you know one time, Mr. Tiwari, my Indian father, was sitting with Maharajji. Maharajji said, “So, you’re a brahmin, you’re supposed to know everything. What does Krishna teach in the Gita?” So now everybody, if you ask that question, they basically say, “Selfless Service,” right? So, he knew it was a setup, but he said it anyway. “You miserable brahmins, misleading the people. Only God does Selfless Service.” Because God is the whole thing. There is no Self. You know? There’s only That. All of us are just doing the best we can and we’re working on thinning that, that barrier or shell that seems so solid of self, but we don’t have to do it with a big sign, or carrying around a sign, if I was sitting here thinking I’m really doing something for you, then I’d be like, “What should I do now? What should I sing now? Should I make them happy? I should sing faster now. Now louder and faster. Ok. Now I’ll sing a soft one.” Ugh. Why would I think about all that stuff? I just sing. And so do you. And maybe because I’m doing my practice, you could do yours. I don’t kmow. I don’t know how it works. But this is what is, this is what the program is at the moment. So, yeah, it’s not necessary for me to think about this all the time. It’s a pain in the ass. I sing and then I binge watch and I don’t feel guilty much.  Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana   Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep.10 | Selfless Service appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep.10 ~ Selfless Service</h3> <blockquote>One time, Mr. Tiwari, my Indian father, was sitting with Maharajji. Maharajji said, “So, you’re a brahmin, you’re supposed to know everything. What does Krishna teach in the Gita?” So now everybody, if you ask that question, they basically say, “Selfless Service,” right? So, he knew it was a setup, but he said it anyway. “You miserable brahmins, misleading the people. Only God does Selfless Service.” Because God is the whole thing. There is no Self. You know? There’s only That. All of us are just doing the best we can and we’re working on thinning that, that barrier or shell that seems so solid of self.”- Krishna Das</blockquote> Transcription: Q: So, I once thanked you for sharing your practice with us and KD: I belted you, right? Boom. Left hook. Q: Yeah, and you didn’t appreciate that. KD: Listen, this is proof that you can sing your ass off and still be an asshole. Q: No, but this is my question for you, because I’ve actually thought about it a lot, I think that the whole concept of being really cognizant of your ego and letting your ego get fluffed up, for lack of a better word… KD: Fluffed… Q: Fluffed. Is, this is important, but at the same time, if what you’re doing is really just a practice to draw yourself closer to your Guru, to your God, to your Self, to your One, isn’t that, and you’ll really think I’m a brat, but isn’t that really in direct conflict with what the underlying message was of Maharajji, which was to serve others? And so, if what you’re doing is just your practice and, but, are you, do you feel like it’s in service of others? Or how do you wrap around, and I’m not trying to be difficult… KD: You’re just good at it. I said to Ram Das at lunch, it’s weird to be famous for being humble. People say all the time, “Oh, you’re so humble.” I say, “No, no, I know who I am.” “Oh, wow you’re so humble.” Ok, what can I do? It comes to a point where it’s what, me thinks the lady doth protest too much, you know? Fuck it, I’m just going to sing, no matter what, whether I’m taking it personally or not taking it personally, or its good or its bad or people are singing or not singing or I’m in my bathroom alone or I’m with you, I’m going to keep singing. And I’m not, I always say, I sing to save my miserable ass, right? However, through all the years of chanting, my ass has gotten much wider. And all ya’ll are part of it. Thank you. If I, service, just to serve, it doesn’t mean you have to walk around with a big sign saying “I’m serving.” That’s ridiculous. That’s not service. You’re not serving anybody at that point except your own ego. The real Beings that serve humanity, that serve, they have no, they really do service because, you know one time, Mr. Tiwari, my Indian father, was sitting with Maharajji. Maharajji said, “So, you’re a brahmin, you’re supposed to know everything. What does Krishna teach in the Gita?” So now everybody, if you ask that question, they basically say, “Selfless Service,” right? So, he knew it was a setup, but he said it anyway. “You miserable brahmins, misleading the people. Only God does Selfless Service.” Because God is the whole thing. There is no Self. You know? There’s only That. All of us are just doing the best we can and we’re working on thinning that, that barrier or shell that seems so solid of self, but we don’t have to do it with a big sign, or carrying around a sign, if I was sitting here thinking I’m really doing something for you, then I’d be like, “What should I do now? What should I sing now? Should I make them happy? I should sing faster now. Now louder and faster. Ok. Now I’ll sing a soft one.” Ugh. Why would I think about all that stuff? I just sing. And so do you. And maybe because I’m doing my practice, you could do yours. I don’t kmow. I don’t know how it works. But this is what is, this is what the program is at the moment. So, yeah, it’s not necessary for me to think about this all the time. It’s a pain in the ass. I sing and then I binge watch and I don’t feel guilty much. <h3>Suggestions for your practice: <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/sadhanas" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana</a></h3> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8247.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8246.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-10-selfless-service/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep.10 | Selfless Service</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep.10 | Selfless Service

Ep. 20 ~ Compassion for Abusers I know the basis of all this is we’re One, we’re Love, we’re Compassion, we enfold. And then I go home and I’m on the periphery of a group that deals with abused animals. And I really have a hard time putting together “We are One, We are Compassion” with how do I go about treating the abusers.  Now I know what I want to do, but that would put me in jail. I’m stuck in this place that says, “you shouldn’t do that” and I know that that’s, I know I’m right, and I know that’s my ego and all of what I’m studying or learning or becoming is to get rid of the ego, to let the ego go.  “Ramana Maharshi said, “If you ask the thief to be the policeman, there will be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.” So, you’re asking the thief to make everybody else obey the rules whereas you’re already a thief and you’re not obeying the rules yourself. These things you’re talking about, they’re not things to be used to either beat yourself up with or beat other people up with. Nor is it something that you’re supposed to think about. These are things that you realize through practice.  In the meantime, you try to get through life doing as little damage as possible to yourself and the people around you.” – Krishna Das Q: I’ve been meaning to ask you this question but I’ve never gotten up the nerve to. KD: Next question. Q: Ok, I go to Bhakti Fest, I come here, I have a Guru, I know the basis of all this is we’re One, we’re Love, we’re Compassion, we enfold. And then I go home and I’m on the periphery of a group that deals with abused animals. And I really have a hard time putting together “We are One, We are Compassion” with how do I go about treating the abusers.  Now I know what I want to do, but that would put me in jail. I’m stuck in this place that says, “you shouldn’t do that” and I know that that’s, I know I’m right, and I know that’s my ego and all of what I’m studying or learning or becoming is to get rid of the ego, to let the ego go. KD: Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Q: I’m in a lot of conflict. KD: Who’s going to get rid of the ego? The ego’s not gonna. Q: So how do I incorporate these abusers? KD: Ramana Maharshi said, “If you ask the thief to be the policeman, there will be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.” So, you’re asking the thief to make everybody else obey the rules whereas you’re already a thief and you’re not obeying the rules yourself. These things you’re talking about, they’re not things to be used to either beat yourself up with or beat other people up with. Nor is it something that you’re supposed to think about. These are things that you realize through practice.  In the meantime, you try to get through life doing as little damage as possible to yourself and the people around you. Period. If you’re treating abused animals and abusing people, what are you doing? First of all, every one of your own actions creates a karma in the first place. That’s where you should be focused the most. What is your motivation for your own actions? If it’s anger, what are you going to create with anger? More hatred. More anger. More suffering. So, as that guy said, “Take the splinter out of your own eye first.” Wow. Oh, it’s Shivaratri, of course. We have to talk about Jesus. Take the splinter out of your own eye first, and then things will look different, and then you can operate on everybody else. So, it’s good that you see what you’re caught in, but you’re trying to figure it out, you’re trying to pick yourself up like this. But you can’t, there’s no leverage. You have to quiet your mind, calm yourself down and take responsibility for your actions. Thinking and knowing that thoughts are actions as well. They don’t make as big a ripple in the karmic field as physical action, but it’s also a definite karma. This is a question that everybody’s asking me now. “What I do with that guy in the White House?” “How do I get through the day?” If you, you know, somebody asked the Dalai Lama once, they said, “Your Holiness, you talk about Peace of Mind, do you have Peace of Mind?” So he said, “Yes yes. The Chinese tortured us, they took our country, they slaughtered my people, we had to escape with our lives, with nothing. Now we live in exile. Should I let them take my Peace of Mind as well?” The only vote you get in life, is how you go through the day, and we don’t even have a vote yet. We haven’t even registered to vote yet. We’re not even old enough to register yet. Maybe we’re not even born yet, and still worried about what we’re going to do. Let’s figure out that there is voting. Maybe we know that. Then we can register to vote. And then we can vote on our actions. On how we treat ourselves and other people. Those people, you know it’s the same thing, I remember when there was that other guy in the White House that we thought was bad.  Bush. Oh I wish he was back. I want him again. Anyway. So, obviously I didn’t like him very much. So, I was channel surfing one time and I was passing through a news program so I saw there was a video, President Bush was walking down this hallway and he was on the way to meet the widows of the first group of Iraqi veterans. There were about 25-30 women waiting to meet him. And he’s the President, walking down the hall. Yes. With his entourage and his agents, right? And he walks in this room and he takes one look at these women and he falls apart and cries like a baby. I was really pissed. I couldn’t hate him any more. How do you hate somebody, right? And you see, we’re all the same. Do you think you’re better than those people who abuse those animals? You’re not. You’re no different. You’re the same person as they are. You have a slightly different, you were brought up a little bit differently by the effects of your own karmas. You were brought up in a slightly different culture by the effects of your own karmas. But you’re no better than they are as a human being. You’re exactly the same. You may know a little bit more about what’s good to do and what’s harmful to do. But you still have anger and shame and guilt and grief and selfishness, just like the rest of us. So don’t be riding such a big high horse. It’s not worth it. You’ll fall. It’s too far to fall. So recognize that those people, just like Bush, are creating more and more suffering, not just for other people, but for themselves. You think they’re not going to have to live through their own karmas? And we’re not even going into who those animals were and what they must have done to those people in a previous life, to be switched like that. Karma is karma. Who knows? Nobody knows. They say only a fully enlightened Buddha, or a fully enlightened Being, can understand all the ins and outs of karma.  You’re very, judging very harshly, but if you see the basis for your judgement, it’s really a lack of self love. If you really loved your self, every body would be included in that, regardless of what they do, you don’t have to love what people do, you don’t have to, it’s not required, but you have to make space for who they are inside of that and recognize that they don’t have a fucking clue. And everything they do is creating more and more karma for themselves and the people around them and they don’t know there’s any other way to live. You might have some idea there’s another way to live. Maybe. And if you do, you’re very lucky. But most people in the world don’t and they just dig deeper and deeper holes for themselves every step of the way. Is that something to be happy about?  Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album * Hungry Hearts Chant  Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for download in our digital library (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime. Door of Faith An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our online shop.       Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep. 20 | Compassion for Abusers appeared first on Krishna Das.

Ep. 20 ~ Compassion for Abusers I know the basis of all this is we’re One, we’re Love, we’re Compassion, we enfold. And then I go home and I’m on the periphery of a group that deals with abused animals. And I really have a hard time putting together “We are One, We are Compassion” with how do I go about treating the abusers.  Now I know what I want to do, but that would put me in jail. I’m stuck in this place that says, “you shouldn’t do that” and I know that that’s, I know I’m right, and I know that’s my ego and all of what I’m studying or learning or becoming is to get rid of the ego, to let the ego go. “Ramana Maharshi said, “If you ask the thief to be the policeman, there will be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.” So, you’re asking the thief to make everybody else obey the rules whereas you’re already a thief and you’re not obeying the rules yourself. These things you’re talking about, they’re not things to be used to either beat yourself up with or beat other people up with. Nor is it something that you’re supposed to think about. These are things that you realize through practice.  In the meantime, you try to get through life doing as little damage as possible to yourself and the people around you.” – Krishna Das Q: I’ve been meaning to ask you this question but I’ve never gotten up the nerve to. KD: Next question. Q: Ok, I go to Bhakti Fest, I come here, I have a Guru, I know the basis of all this is we’re One, we’re Love, we’re Compassion, we enfold. And then I go home and I’m on the periphery of a group that deals with abused animals. And I really have a hard time putting together “We are One, We are Compassion” with how do I go about treating the abusers.  Now I know what I want to do, but that would put me in jail. I’m stuck in this place that says, “you shouldn’t do that” and I know that that’s, I know I’m right, and I know that’s my ego and all of what I’m studying or learning or becoming is to get rid of the ego, to let the ego go. KD: Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Q: I’m in a lot of conflict. KD: Who’s going to get rid of the ego? The ego’s not gonna. Q: So how do I incorporate these abusers? KD: Ramana Maharshi said, “If you ask the thief to be the policeman, there will be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.” So, you’re asking the thief to make everybody else obey the rules whereas you’re already a thief and you’re not obeying the rules yourself. These things you’re talking about, they’re not things to be used to either beat yourself up with or beat other people up with. Nor is it something that you’re supposed to think about. These are things that you realize through practice.  In the meantime, you try to get through life doing as little damage as possible to yourself and the people around you. Period. If you’re treating abused animals and abusing people, what are you doing? First of all, every one of your own actions creates a karma in the first place. That’s where you should be focused the most. What is your motivation for your own actions? If it’s anger, what are you going to create with anger? More hatred. More anger. More suffering. So, as that guy said, “Take the splinter out of your own eye first.” Wow. Oh, it’s Shivaratri, of course. We have to talk about Jesus. Take the splinter out of your own eye first, and then things will look different, and then you can operate on everybody else. So, it’s good that you see what you’re caught in, but you’re trying to figure it out, you’re trying to pick yourself up like this. But you can’t, there’s no leverage. You have to quiet your mind, calm yourself down and take responsibility for your actions. Thinking and knowing that thoughts are actions as well. They don’t make as big a ripple in the karmic field as physical action, but it’s also a definite karma. This is a question that everybody’s asking me now. “What I do with that guy in the White House?” “How do I get through the day?” If you, you know, somebody asked the Dalai Lama once, they said, “Your Holiness, you talk about Peace of Mind, do you have Peace of Mind?” So he said, “Yes yes. The Chinese tortured us, they took our country, they slaughtered my people, we had to escape with our lives, with nothing. Now we live in exile. Should I let them take my Peace of Mind as well?” The only vote you get in life, is how you go through the day, and we don’t even have a vote yet. We haven’t even registered to vote yet. We’re not even old enough to register yet. Maybe we’re not even born yet, and still worried about what we’re going to do. Let’s figure out that there is voting. Maybe we know that. Then we can register to vote. And then we can vote on our actions. On how we treat ourselves and other people. Those people, you know it’s the same thing, I remember when there was that other guy in the White House that we thought was bad.  Bush. Oh I wish he was back. I want him again. Anyway. So, obviously I didn’t like him very much. So, I was channel surfing one time and I was passing through a news program so I saw there was a video, President Bush was walking down this hallway and he was on the way to meet the widows of the first group of Iraqi veterans. There were about 25-30 women waiting to meet him. And he’s the President, walking down the hall. Yes. With his entourage and his agents, right? And he walks in this room and he takes one look at these women and he falls apart and cries like a baby. I was really pissed. I couldn’t hate him any more. How do you hate somebody, right? And you see, we’re all the same. Do you think you’re better than those people who abuse those animals? You’re not. You’re no different. You’re the same person as they are. You have a slightly different, you were brought up a little bit differently by the effects of your own karmas. You were brought up in a slightly different culture by the effects of your own karmas. But you’re no better than they are as a human being. You’re exactly the same. You may know a little bit more about what’s good to do and what’s harmful to do. But you still have anger and shame and guilt and grief and selfishness, just like the rest of us. So don’t be riding such a big high horse. It’s not worth it. You’ll fall. It’s too far to fall. So recognize that those people, just like Bush, are creating more and more suffering, not just for other people, but for themselves. You think they’re not going to have to live through their own karmas? And we’re not even going into who those animals were and what they must have done to those people in a previous life, to be switched like that. Karma is karma. Who knows? Nobody knows. They say only a fully enlightened Buddha, or a fully enlightened Being, can understand all the ins and outs of karma.  You’re very, judging very harshly, but if you see the basis for your judgement, it’s really a lack of self love. If you really loved your self, every body would be included in that, regardless of what they do, you don’t have to love what people do, you don’t have to, it’s not required, but you have to make space for who they are inside of that and recognize that they don’t have a fucking clue. And everything they do is creating more and more karma for themselves and the people around them and they don’t know there’s any other way to live. You might have some idea there’s another way to live. Maybe. And if you do, you’re very lucky. But most people in the world don’t and they just dig deeper and deeper holes for themselves every step of the way. Is that something to be happy about? <h3></h3> <h3>Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album *</h3> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Hungry Hearts Chant</a> Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">download in our digital library</a> (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime.</h4> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/door-of-faith" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Door of Faith</a> An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/harmonium-tutorials/products/harmonium-tutorials" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">online shop.</a></h4> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/img_9440/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-30-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-40-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3></h3> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-20-compassion-for-abusers/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 20 | Compassion for Abusers</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 20 | Compassion for Abusers

Ep.06 ~ The Atheist Mind  “The clouds come and go but the sky is always here, so, you can’t disbelieve the sky when you see everything going through it. You may not be able to see the sky, but you know it’s there.”– Krishna Das Transcription:  Q: I heard someone say on a podcast once, “I’m a Hindu and a Jew, and 50 percent of the time, I’m an atheist.” And I thought, yeah, that’s me. And the longing and the looking for something and the even thinking I’m not getting it, those parts aren’t so bad, but the part that says, “No, there’s nothing here” and looks at all of this with skepticism, that’s really hard to take.  What do you do with the atheist part? KD: I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in anything I haven’t experienced myself. Period. What I have experienced, I believe, but an atheist is somebody who hasn’t experienced anything other than, you know, his own mind and whatever else the senses tell us, and never experienced anything beyond that. So why would they believe that? Blind faith is useless. The problem is that person also doesn’t have an understanding that his suffering is coming out of his own Being and until he changes that, suffering will never change. Atheists don’t want to suffer, either, you know? They just don’t think there’s any end to it. Q: Maybe you’re luckier than I am. There’s a part of me that can disbelieve what I have experienced. KD: Who’s saying that? That you can’t disbelieve. You can disbelieve your thoughts and your feelings, but you can’t disbelieve who just said that because that’s who’s here now, that will be here later, that was here before when you had that experience. You just, the clouds come and go but the sky is always here, so, you can’t disbelieve the sky when you see everything going through it. You may not be able to see the sky, but you know it’s there. So your Self, you know your self is there, but you don’t, you can’t see it. But that doesn’t mean, you know it’s there, but you can’t see it. If you want to see it, you have to do something. If you don’t, you don’t. But you still know you’re here. You’re always here. Whether you’re feeling like shit or you’re feeling good. Whether you’re driving a car or watching a movie. Whether you’re doing this or something else, you’re always here. That here-ness is the Self. It’s not being, it’s not the thinking about it. It’s what’s behind all that all the time. So it doesn’t matter what you think. You’re still here. Try not to be here. Q: I am. KD: You can’t. But it would be a good work, because eventually, if you really tried hard enough not to be here, you’d see how much, how here you are. And then all that other stuff would fall into place. But you believe your emotions. You believe your thoughts because you haven’t gone deeper than that. You haven’t anchored yourself. You let them take you away. We all do. We let all that stuff just pull us away, like an eagle. I saw this thing on Facebook, this eagle picked up this little kid, right? An eagle swoops down and takes this little baby and starts to take off with him, but a few feet off the ground, the baby fell. That’s like we are. We’re those little babies and our thoughts swoop down and take us away. They don’t drop us for a long time. So, but even that happens inside the sky. So, you have to do some practice. Practice just means sitting there and help trying to let those thoughts kind of dissolve as they go away. Watch them come. Watch them go. Who’s watching? It’s not the same one who’s thinking. The watching, if it was, if you were the thought, you know, there would never be any awareness of this Being, but there’s the awareness of the thought. You know, this, Ah, thinking, I’m thinking, ok. Come back to the chant. Come back to your breath. You know, we’re like, we’re in a raging river heading towards a waterfall, and we look at the bank of the river and we think that’s moving, so we just relax in the boat. Woosh, over the falls. Because we think the bank is moving, the bank of the river, and we’re still. So that’s why we have to do some practice. If we don’t, nothing’s going to happen. That’s ok. If it is. If it’s not, do some practice.  Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana   Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep.06 | The Atheist Mind appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep.06 ~ The Atheist Mind </h3> <blockquote>“The clouds come and go but the sky is always here, so, you can’t disbelieve the sky when you see everything going through it. You may not be able to see the sky, but you know it’s there.”– Krishna Das</blockquote> Transcription: Q: I heard someone say on a podcast once, “I’m a Hindu and a Jew, and 50 percent of the time, I’m an atheist.” And I thought, yeah, that’s me. And the longing and the looking for something and the even thinking I’m not getting it, those parts aren’t so bad, but the part that says, “No, there’s nothing here” and looks at all of this with skepticism, that’s really hard to take.  What do you do with the atheist part? KD: I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in anything I haven’t experienced myself. Period. What I have experienced, I believe, but an atheist is somebody who hasn’t experienced anything other than, you know, his own mind and whatever else the senses tell us, and never experienced anything beyond that. So why would they believe that? Blind faith is useless. The problem is that person also doesn’t have an understanding that his suffering is coming out of his own Being and until he changes that, suffering will never change. Atheists don’t want to suffer, either, you know? They just don’t think there’s any end to it. Q: Maybe you’re luckier than I am. There’s a part of me that can disbelieve what I have experienced. KD: Who’s saying that? That you can’t disbelieve. You can disbelieve your thoughts and your feelings, but you can’t disbelieve who just said that because that’s who’s here now, that will be here later, that was here before when you had that experience. You just, the clouds come and go but the sky is always here, so, you can’t disbelieve the sky when you see everything going through it. You may not be able to see the sky, but you know it’s there. So your Self, you know your self is there, but you don’t, you can’t see it. But that doesn’t mean, you know it’s there, but you can’t see it. If you want to see it, you have to do something. If you don’t, you don’t. But you still know you’re here. You’re always here. Whether you’re feeling like shit or you’re feeling good. Whether you’re driving a car or watching a movie. Whether you’re doing this or something else, you’re always here. That here-ness is the Self. It’s not being, it’s not the thinking about it. It’s what’s behind all that all the time. So it doesn’t matter what you think. You’re still here. Try not to be here. Q: I am. KD: You can’t. But it would be a good work, because eventually, if you really tried hard enough not to be here, you’d see how much, how here you are. And then all that other stuff would fall into place. But you believe your emotions. You believe your thoughts because you haven’t gone deeper than that. You haven’t anchored yourself. You let them take you away. We all do. We let all that stuff just pull us away, like an eagle. I saw this thing on Facebook, this eagle picked up this little kid, right? An eagle swoops down and takes this little baby and starts to take off with him, but a few feet off the ground, the baby fell. That’s like we are. We’re those little babies and our thoughts swoop down and take us away. They don’t drop us for a long time. So, but even that happens inside the sky. So, you have to do some practice. Practice just means sitting there and help trying to let those thoughts kind of dissolve as they go away. Watch them come. Watch them go. Who’s watching? It’s not the same one who’s thinking. The watching, if it was, if you were the thought, you know, there would never be any awareness of this Being, but there’s the awareness of the thought. You know, this, Ah, thinking, I’m thinking, ok. Come back to the chant. Come back to your breath. You know, we’re like, we’re in a raging river heading towards a waterfall, and we look at the bank of the river and we think that’s moving, so we just relax in the boat. Woosh, over the falls. Because we think the bank is moving, the bank of the river, and we’re still. So that’s why we have to do some practice. If we don’t, nothing’s going to happen. That’s ok. If it is. If it’s not, do some practice. <h3>Suggestions for your practice: <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/sadhanas" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana</a></h3> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8247.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8246.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-06-atheist-mind/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep.06 | The Atheist Mind</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep.06 | The Atheist Mind

Ep. 15 ~ Our State of Mind Is Everything How does one’s state of mind color one’s world view?  “I remember the first rainy season. Oh, everything was wet. The bed is wet. The hair was wet. The clothes were wet. You sat down, it was wet. You stood up, it was wet. You got on the bus, wet came down on you. There was no place it wasn’t wet. For three months, I was like… And then, I remember like the second year, wet. By the third year, wet. Nothing. It didn’t, I hardly noticed. It was strange. I go to India now, it’s so hot. I lived there in those days. There was no air conditioning. There was nothing. It was 120 degrees and I don’t remember being hot. Now, it’s like oof. So, it’s, state of mind is everything. Everything. Everything.” – Krishna Das We used to sit in front of Maharajji and nothing would happen. You know, we saw people who went to these Gurus down south who could bounce around the room and squawk like chickens and stuff like that. But nothing would ever happen. I kept wanting something to happen. And even though nothing was happening, there was still no place in the whole world I wanted to be other than sitting right there because it was home. And you know, we used to say to Him, you know, “How do we find God?” We figured He knew, He would tell us. He seemed to like us. At least, He let us hang around. “How do we find God?” He said, “Serve people.” You know, what? Serve people? Well, ok. How do you raise Kundalini? “Feed people.” What? Serve everyone. Feed everyone. And then He used to say, “From going on repeating these names,” these Names of God as they call them in India, “Everything is made full and complete. Everything is brought to completion. Everything is made full.” He said it 100 times and it’s been about how many years? 43 years since He left the body. I still don’t believe it. And I heard Him say it. I mean, I figure, it possibly could be true. Maybe. Ok. I know that He’s telling the truth but I don’t know what He’s talking about. But little by little, the guy who can’t understand what He’s talking about is being worn away. Disappearing. Becoming more transparent. So all those thoughts about like, what the fuck does He mean? Are disappearing. They’re not arising. So when those thoughts don’t arise, you don’t feel a certain way, right? But what you do with thoughts, you can’t stop those thoughts. You can’t stop thoughts. Because all we do is think all day long. All we do. Think think think. Think about this, think about that. Think about me me me me me. So that’s what that means. By cultivating these, opening up these passageways, training the mind to remember to do something else other than think about yourself all the time, little by little, even when those thoughts arise, even when those stories arise, even when we notice that we’re really involved in something, they don’t get us the same way. They don’t grab us the same way. They don’t grab us for so long. And there’s no timeline on this. It’s not written out anyplace we can see it as when we’ll finally figure it out or wake up. You don’t ever figure it out. We’re asleep. One of these days, we’ll wake up. That’s it. But while we’re asleep, in our sleep, there are things we can do, like chanting, meditation, different types of practices. These are the things that slowly move us closer to the edge of the bed, then we fall off and wake up when we hit the ground. So, when we chant, just chant. When you notice that you’re not paying attention, just chant. Let it go. Come back to the chanting. It’s not rocket science. There’s nothing to figure out. Sing. When you notice you’re not singing, sing. That’s it. At least for today, these few hours, and time we’re chanting, that’s the deal. Nothing’s gonna happen. I guarantee you, when you leave here you’ll be the same person you were when you walked in. But maybe, you won’t care so much. At least for a few minutes. Because we’re kind of stepping out of the traffic here for a minute by releasing those thoughts. Practicing releasing the thoughts. It’s not a negative thing. When you release the thoughts, feelings arise that are very beautiful, little by little.  A little piece of mind, a little less anxious about things. A little bit less involved in the story line. It’s little by little, spontaneous enlightenment takes millions of births to develop. So I figure I’m about my third birth. I might as well relax, it’s a long way to go. No sense hurrying. Suzuki Roshi once said, “Come take a walk with me in the rain. Don’t hurry. Don’t run. It’s raining everywhere.” So, this is it. We’re in the rain. So we might as well just relax. There’s no place that it’s not raining. Get used to it. And the more you get used to it, it’s like when I was in India the first, I was there for three years, the first time I went. Three complete cycles of the seasons. I remember the first rainy season. Oh, everything was wet. The bed is wet. The hair was wet. The clothes were wet. You sat down, it was wet. You stood up, it was wet. You got on the bus, wet came down on you. There was no place it wasn’t wet. For three months, I was like… And then, I remember like the second year, wet. By the third year, wet. Nothing. It didn’t, I hardly noticed. It was strange. I go to India now, it’s so hot. I lived there in those days. There was no air conditioning. There was nothing. It was 120 degrees and I don’t remember being hot. Now, it’s like oof. So, it’s, state of mind is everything. Everything. Everything.  Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album * Hungry Hearts Chant  Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for download in our digital library (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime. Door of Faith An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our online shop.       Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep. 15 | Our State of Mind Is Everything appeared first on Krishna Das.

Ep. 15 ~ Our State of Mind Is Everything How does one’s state of mind color one’s world view? “I remember the first rainy season. Oh, everything was wet. The bed is wet. The hair was wet. The clothes were wet. You sat down, it was wet. You stood up, it was wet. You got on the bus, wet came down on you. There was no place it wasn’t wet. For three months, I was like… And then, I remember like the second year, wet. By the third year, wet. Nothing. It didn’t, I hardly noticed. It was strange. I go to India now, it’s so hot. I lived there in those days. There was no air conditioning. There was nothing. It was 120 degrees and I don’t remember being hot. Now, it’s like oof. So, it’s, state of mind is everything. Everything. Everything.” – Krishna Das We used to sit in front of Maharajji and nothing would happen. You know, we saw people who went to these Gurus down south who could bounce around the room and squawk like chickens and stuff like that. But nothing would ever happen. I kept wanting something to happen. And even though nothing was happening, there was still no place in the whole world I wanted to be other than sitting right there because it was home. And you know, we used to say to Him, you know, “How do we find God?” We figured He knew, He would tell us. He seemed to like us. At least, He let us hang around. “How do we find God?” He said, “Serve people.” You know, what? Serve people? Well, ok. How do you raise Kundalini? “Feed people.” What? Serve everyone. Feed everyone. And then He used to say, “From going on repeating these names,” these Names of God as they call them in India, “Everything is made full and complete. Everything is brought to completion. Everything is made full.” He said it 100 times and it’s been about how many years? 43 years since He left the body. I still don’t believe it. And I heard Him say it. I mean, I figure, it possibly could be true. Maybe. Ok. I know that He’s telling the truth but I don’t know what He’s talking about. But little by little, the guy who can’t understand what He’s talking about is being worn away. Disappearing. Becoming more transparent. So all those thoughts about like, what the fuck does He mean? Are disappearing. They’re not arising. So when those thoughts don’t arise, you don’t feel a certain way, right? But what you do with thoughts, you can’t stop those thoughts. You can’t stop thoughts. Because all we do is think all day long. All we do. Think think think. Think about this, think about that. Think about me me me me me. So that’s what that means. By cultivating these, opening up these passageways, training the mind to remember to do something else other than think about yourself all the time, little by little, even when those thoughts arise, even when those stories arise, even when we notice that we’re really involved in something, they don’t get us the same way. They don’t grab us the same way. They don’t grab us for so long. And there’s no timeline on this. It’s not written out anyplace we can see it as when we’ll finally figure it out or wake up. You don’t ever figure it out. We’re asleep. One of these days, we’ll wake up. That’s it. But while we’re asleep, in our sleep, there are things we can do, like chanting, meditation, different types of practices. These are the things that slowly move us closer to the edge of the bed, then we fall off and wake up when we hit the ground. So, when we chant, just chant. When you notice that you’re not paying attention, just chant. Let it go. Come back to the chanting. It’s not rocket science. There’s nothing to figure out. Sing. When you notice you’re not singing, sing. That’s it. At least for today, these few hours, and time we’re chanting, that’s the deal. Nothing’s gonna happen. I guarantee you, when you leave here you’ll be the same person you were when you walked in. But maybe, you won’t care so much. At least for a few minutes. Because we’re kind of stepping out of the traffic here for a minute by releasing those thoughts. Practicing releasing the thoughts. It’s not a negative thing. When you release the thoughts, feelings arise that are very beautiful, little by little.  A little piece of mind, a little less anxious about things. A little bit less involved in the story line. It’s little by little, spontaneous enlightenment takes millions of births to develop. So I figure I’m about my third birth. I might as well relax, it’s a long way to go. No sense hurrying. Suzuki Roshi once said, “Come take a walk with me in the rain. Don’t hurry. Don’t run. It’s raining everywhere.” So, this is it. We’re in the rain. So we might as well just relax. There’s no place that it’s not raining. Get used to it. And the more you get used to it, it’s like when I was in India the first, I was there for three years, the first time I went. Three complete cycles of the seasons. I remember the first rainy season. Oh, everything was wet. The bed is wet. The hair was wet. The clothes were wet. You sat down, it was wet. You stood up, it was wet. You got on the bus, wet came down on you. There was no place it wasn’t wet. For three months, I was like… And then, I remember like the second year, wet. By the third year, wet. Nothing. It didn’t, I hardly noticed. It was strange. I go to India now, it’s so hot. I lived there in those days. There was no air conditioning. There was nothing. It was 120 degrees and I don’t remember being hot. Now, it’s like oof. So, it’s, state of mind is everything. Everything. Everything. <h3></h3> <h3>Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album *</h3> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Hungry Hearts Chant</a> Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">download in our digital library</a> (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime.</h4> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/door-of-faith" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Door of Faith</a> An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/harmonium-tutorials/products/harmonium-tutorials" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">online shop.</a></h4> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/img_9440/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-30-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-40-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3></h3> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-15-our-state-of-mind-is-everything/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 15 | Our State of Mind Is Everything</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 15 | Our State of Mind Is Everything

Graveyard Talks With Sacinandana Swami

Ep. 18 ~ How To Develop Faith Tell me a little bit about how your faith… and trust in the universe that happened over time… how did it develop for you? How do you develop faith?  “The mind can’t conceive of what’s not a thought. Emotions can’t feel anything that’s not a feeling, an emotional feeling. The body and the senses can’t receive anything that’s not a sense input. Faith and grace, they have nothing to do with the body and the mind or the emotions. It’s a blessing that comes to us due to a combination of our good karmas, the work that we’ve already done in our life and in our lives before if you believe in that, and the kindness of the Saints who have realized what this is all about and we’ve all, if we’re interested in this nonsense at all, it’s because we have a connection with some lineage at some time with our own past already. It’s not an accident.”- Krishna Das Q: Hey KD, how do you…. You tell me a little bit about about faith, how you… because I know about your, I’ve seen your movies and stuff and you followed Ram Das and then went to India but, and certainly the miracles, but tell me a little bit about how your faith, you know, and trust in the universe that happened over time… how did it develop for you? How do you develop faith? KD: Next question.  You know, there’s a very interesting line in the Bible, what’s his name? That Saint, Paul, he said, “By Grace was I saved through faith.” You don’t, the mind can’t conceive of what’s not a thought. Emotions can’t feel anything that’s not a feeling, an emotional feeling. The body and the senses can’t receive anything that’s not a sense input. Faith and grace, they have nothing to do with the body and the mind or the emotions. It’s a blessing that comes to us due to a combination of our good karmas, the work that we’ve already done in our life and in our lives before, if you believe in that, and the kindness of the Saints who have realized what this is all about and we’ve all, if we’re interested in this nonsense at all, it’s because we have a connection with some lineage at some time with our own past already. It’s not an accident. There’s no accidents. We’re here because we’ve been connected to something and in this life we’re trying to reconnect again. It’s a longing we feel to do that. Where does that longing come from? You didn’t get it from watching TV as a kid. Otherwise I’d have a hell of a lot more. What do I mean,”kid”? I would have a hell of a lot more right now. So those are blessings. It’s all blessing. Blessings. You know, it’s the nature of a true saint, they have no reason to be here except for the fact that we don’t know who we are, so because of our suffering and our pain these Beings who have gone beyond any kind of personal self-interest remain around for our sake. It’s called compassion. And so through the compassion of the Saints, which is a quality of God itself, compassion, kindness, caring, through that presence of those Beings who are once again, no different that who we already are in our deepest Being, not who we think we are, that’s a whole other story, or a million other stories, but who we really are, it’s through those blessings and that grace and our own longing which comes, which is the fruit of our own work on ourself in the past, so those two meet and then faith happens, Now what does faith mean?  Faith means that you believe something that you just absolutely can’t fucking prove. There’s no way you can prove it. Why do you believe it? Why do you think there’s anything more to find in life? Stupid. Or, smart. A lot of people would say you’re stupid, but I think it’s the opposite, so it’s that longing inside of us that’s pulling us inside to where it all is and we follow that because there’s a part of us that understands, in may not be this part of us, but it’s a part of us that understands that’s the way to go. And so we go as fast as we can, which is as fast as we can. It’s not a race.  Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album * Hungry Hearts Chant  Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for download in our digital library (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime. Door of Faith An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our online shop.       Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep. 18 | How To Develop Faith appeared first on Krishna Das.

Ep. 18 ~ How To Develop Faith Tell me a little bit about how your faith… and trust in the universe that happened over time… how did it develop for you? How do you develop faith? “The mind can’t conceive of what’s not a thought. Emotions can’t feel anything that’s not a feeling, an emotional feeling. The body and the senses can’t receive anything that’s not a sense input. Faith and grace, they have nothing to do with the body and the mind or the emotions. It’s a blessing that comes to us due to a combination of our good karmas, the work that we’ve already done in our life and in our lives before if you believe in that, and the kindness of the Saints who have realized what this is all about and we’ve all, if we’re interested in this nonsense at all, it’s because we have a connection with some lineage at some time with our own past already. It’s not an accident.”- Krishna Das Q: Hey KD, how do you…. You tell me a little bit about about faith, how you… because I know about your, I’ve seen your movies and stuff and you followed Ram Das and then went to India but, and certainly the miracles, but tell me a little bit about how your faith, you know, and trust in the universe that happened over time… how did it develop for you? How do you develop faith? KD: Next question.  You know, there’s a very interesting line in the Bible, what’s his name? That Saint, Paul, he said, “By Grace was I saved through faith.” You don’t, the mind can’t conceive of what’s not a thought. Emotions can’t feel anything that’s not a feeling, an emotional feeling. The body and the senses can’t receive anything that’s not a sense input. Faith and grace, they have nothing to do with the body and the mind or the emotions. It’s a blessing that comes to us due to a combination of our good karmas, the work that we’ve already done in our life and in our lives before, if you believe in that, and the kindness of the Saints who have realized what this is all about and we’ve all, if we’re interested in this nonsense at all, it’s because we have a connection with some lineage at some time with our own past already. It’s not an accident. There’s no accidents. We’re here because we’ve been connected to something and in this life we’re trying to reconnect again. It’s a longing we feel to do that. Where does that longing come from? You didn’t get it from watching TV as a kid. Otherwise I’d have a hell of a lot more. What do I mean,”kid”? I would have a hell of a lot more right now. So those are blessings. It’s all blessing. Blessings. You know, it’s the nature of a true saint, they have no reason to be here except for the fact that we don’t know who we are, so because of our suffering and our pain these Beings who have gone beyond any kind of personal self-interest remain around for our sake. It’s called compassion. And so through the compassion of the Saints, which is a quality of God itself, compassion, kindness, caring, through that presence of those Beings who are once again, no different that who we already are in our deepest Being, not who we think we are, that’s a whole other story, or a million other stories, but who we really are, it’s through those blessings and that grace and our own longing which comes, which is the fruit of our own work on ourself in the past, so those two meet and then faith happens, Now what does faith mean?  Faith means that you believe something that you just absolutely can’t fucking prove. There’s no way you can prove it. Why do you believe it? Why do you think there’s anything more to find in life? Stupid. Or, smart. A lot of people would say you’re stupid, but I think it’s the opposite, so it’s that longing inside of us that’s pulling us inside to where it all is and we follow that because there’s a part of us that understands, in may not be this part of us, but it’s a part of us that understands that’s the way to go. And so we go as fast as we can, which is as fast as we can. It’s not a race. <h3></h3> <h3>Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album *</h3> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Hungry Hearts Chant</a> Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">download in our digital library</a> (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime.</h4> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/door-of-faith" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Door of Faith</a> An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/harmonium-tutorials/products/harmonium-tutorials" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">online shop.</a></h4> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/img_9440/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-30-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-40-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3></h3> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-18-how-to-develop-faith/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 18 | How To Develop Faith</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 18 | How To Develop Faith

Ep. 16 Spiritual Practice and the State of the World How do we live a spiritual life in today’s political climate? “When Maharajji was around physically…  something was going on, some upheaval, political problems, and one of His devotees came to Him and said, “Oh, if there was only a king like King Janaka”, who, in the history of India, was an enlightened King, you know? “If there was only someone like Janaka to fix up all this political stuff.” Maharajji said, “there’s a King greater than Janaka now who is taking care of all this.” There is somebody running the show. “And if it has to go this way now, let it go.” That doesn’t mean we don’t do everything we have to do in regard to this, but the most important thing is to remember that, when you take your last breath, whatever karmas you have, whatever programs are still running in there, are going to keep running into your next incarnation. So you do your best work right now…” – Krishna Das Q: When Maharajji was around physically, one of His, something was going on, some upheaval, political problems and one of His devotees came to Him and said, “Oh, if there was only a king like King Janaka”, who, in the history of India, was an enlightened King, you know? “If there was only someone like Janaka to fix up all this political stuff.” Maharajji said, “there’s a King greater than Janaka now who is taking care of all this.” There is somebody running the show. “And if it has to go this way now, let it go.” That doesn’t mean we don’t do everything we have to do in regards to this, but the most important thing is to remember that, when you take your last breath, whatever karmas you have, whatever programs are still running in there, are going to keep running into your next incarnation. So you do your best work right now and difficult times, it shows us a lot, but it’s very difficult. You don’t have to solve the whole thing, but just be aware that there’s an inner and an outer and what you can have some say about, on one hand, is your inner and whatever you can control on the outer, you can do, too. But if you do it with anger, like I always hated John Lennon, “Give Peace A Chance.” He was just an angry motherfucker. He was an angry cranky drug addict motherfucker and he would sing, “Give Peace a Chance,”damn.  You know he was arguing with you. I’m telling you, “Give Peace a chance, goddammit.” That’s what it sounded like to me and you know, there’s no peace in that. It was a nice, “give peace a chance and let me shoot up later, ok?” “And if I can’t get my stuff, I’m gonna kill you.” It’s not real. That whole gloss of culture is just completely bullshit, you know? People cover up their stuff and they act like this, but that’s not really helping anybody. He didn’t deal with his demons until much later. Let’s deal with our demons now. And luckily, we’re getting a lot of help with that. So, who knows what’s going to happen. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. It’s horrible. Most people I hang out with agree, it’s not very pleasant, but there a lot of people who are just as happy as pigs in shit. This is what they wanted. They finally got it. It’s kind of humbling, you know, to recognize that so much of America wanted this. Enough to make it happen. So, we’ll do what we can to try to get it back to, or get it forward to another way that we think is better for us and everybody. We’ll do that but at the same time, we can’t lose sight that every minute is right here. If we’re lost in blind reaction to this stuff, we’re just creating more suffering for ourselves and others. Period. You know? I sneak little peaks at things and I go, “Aw, shit.” So, I don’t bring politics into this stuff because I think, this is what I do, right? And everybody’s welcome. If I say, I’m for this one or that one, that’s just my own personal thing, but this is not personal. Everybody should feel welcome to come sing and that’s, I feel very strongly about that. I’m not, it’s pretty easy which side of the line I’m on, but still, everybody’s welcome, that’s the way I want it to be. Maybe I’m not very successful at that, but that’s what I feel. And people are just people. Remember how easy it was to hate George Bush? G.W.? Don’t you wish he was back?  So things change. He turned out to be the Dalai Lama’s best buddy. Who knew?  He was probably a Buddhist monk last time and wanted to be president. Ok? “You can have America.” So, we only see the most superficial level of stuff. And it should, but it needs to be dealt with the best way we can. There’s no escaping it. You can’t run through a cave. You’ll be bringing it with you. So, in order to do the best we can on that level, we have to be as conscious and as caring and as kind and as open as we can be inside. And, just to try to generate that wish that all beings be free of suffering. Just generating that wish is a very powerful thing. I mean, it doesn’t maybe seem that way, when it’s late at night and you’re getting those flashes from the New York Times or Facebook and every one is like a slap in the face. It may not seem like that, but just generating, to understand that everybody wants to be happy and look at these people who, by everything they do, create more suffering for themselves as well as everybody else. They have to pay for that. You have to live through everything. That’s the sad part. When people don’t understand the real results of their own actions. Then, you begin, compassion just arises because you’ve seen, we can see in ourselves how we do that and we can see it in others, that their own actions are creating more and more suffering for themselves, their loved ones, their close people they’re supposedly trying to protect. They’re creating hell worlds for themselves. You know, it’s kind of a question of, how much are you really going to buy into with this stuff, you know? Unfortunately, I’ve been in India so long, I’ve actually, most of my Long Island programming is gone. You know, I’ve been going so long. I’ve been so involved in this stuff, reincarnation seems perfectly reasonable to me. For most people, it’s not perfectly reasonable, it’s kind of a little bit out there. But that doesn’t mean I believe it 100%, it just seems like, hm, yeah, could be. And if it is then you have to start, the next thing is, you know, our actions, what do our actions do and what are the results of our own actions? You start to look at yourself and your stuff. Karma is something, they say, that no one but a perfectly enlightened Being could understand. It’s so complex. But it is basically a cause and effect situation. Our intentions, when we act, are the most important thing. And so, if we’re lost in all this emotion and all this negativity that’s surrounding us at this point, it seems, then we’re not capable of really having good intentions about ourselves and others, you know? Because we want to escape from the pain of that. There’s no escape from the pain, other than creating and cultivating compassion for ourselves and others. Like, Tulku was saying this morning, you know, sometimes, when that Being shows up that’s really difficult, you can say, take that Being as your guru, as your teacher. Because he’s showing you, showing  you where you’re really at. And there’s this great Lama who went on a long pilgrimage. And He took this attendant with him who was a complete fuck up. I mean, a complete… and one of His disciples said, “Lama, why are you taking this guy, you know what’s going to happen.” He said, “Oh yes. That’s why I’m taking Him. How will I learn patience, if not for Him.” See, we’re not really dedicated. We’re kind of, we’re not into getting free. We still want to be comfortable. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But ultimately, it’s not possible. It’s not possible to be comfortable for more than a minute. Sooner or later, something’s going to happen. And hey, I remember when I was young, 65, and I thought, “Hey, this is a piece of cake.” Then, 66 came around. So, shit’s going to happen. How are we going to deal with it? Right? We have to get real. We have to recognize, we’ve been dropped in a pot of boiling oil. We’ve got to find our way out of here. There’s no sense pretending just learning how to swim is going to be enough. We’ll be cooked. I wish there was another way, but there isn’t. That’s the good news and the bad news. There is no other way. We’re doing what we can do. We’re doing the best we can. So, and these guys, these great beings know what’s going on, I mean, at one point after Indian Independence, Pandit Nehru became the President of India, the Prime Minister or the President, and as he got older, he got a little bit crazy, and if someone would criticize him from a crowd, sometimes he would jump into the crowd and try to get to the person. He wanted to fight with him, and his people were very concerned about him, because they thought, something’s going to happen to him, so they secretly came to Maharajji, and they said, “We’re very worried about Nehru and we think somebody might, something bad’s going to happen,” and Maharajji said, “No one, for five years, not a hair on his head will be touched…” never could be touched, right? So they went away feeling very happy and in fact, nothing, for five years, everything was fine. Then he died. Five years. So there are Beings that know what’s going on and they have the power to change it but they don’t change it necessarily because we have our karmas to live through. We have to change it inside of ourselves. And if we’re looking outside, if we think that, you know, we have to start paying more attention to what’s going on. Not outside, but inside. And then whatever we do in the world, the quality of it will change. Peace comes from within and if we want peace outside, we have to really be at peace inside. Or at least be working on it in a certain kind of way. In an honest, sincere way. It’s messy in there. You know? It’s messy. But the more acquainted we are with ourselves and all that mess, the easier it is to deal with the stuff that comes out. And the strength to deal with it comes from these letting go practices. The ability to let go of, first very simple thoughts, eventally you can let go of big emotions. By letting go, I mean, you don’t take them in. Like, you’re just about to get angry, and then you release it. And it just passes by. And then all those things that you were going to do when you were angry and that you would do, which would create such intense causes of more suffering, just don’t happen. But that’s not easy. You’ve gotta start where we are. We have to start where we are. Which is just singing. And coming back and getting the feeling, what that feels like to just be involved in that. And then you, your heart recognizes that and it pulls you to that more. Even if you’re busy wanting to watch the rest of Fringe. Your heart wants you to go sing kirtan. So, you go sing for 10 minutes and then you watch Fringe.  Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album * Door of Faith An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our online shop.       Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep. 16 | Spiritual Practice and the State of the World appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep. 16 Spiritual Practice and the State of the World</h3> How do we live a spiritual life in today’s political climate? “When Maharajji was around physically…  something was going on, some upheaval, political problems, and one of His devotees came to Him and said, “Oh, if there was only a king like King Janaka”, who, in the history of India, was an enlightened King, you know? “If there was only someone like Janaka to fix up all this political stuff.” Maharajji said, “there’s a King greater than Janaka now who is taking care of all this.” There is somebody running the show. “And if it has to go this way now, let it go.” That doesn’t mean we don’t do everything we have to do in regard to this, but the most important thing is to remember that, when you take your last breath, whatever karmas you have, whatever programs are still running in there, are going to keep running into your next incarnation. So you do your best work right now…” – Krishna Das Q: When Maharajji was around physically, one of His, something was going on, some upheaval, political problems and one of His devotees came to Him and said, “Oh, if there was only a king like King Janaka”, who, in the history of India, was an enlightened King, you know? “If there was only someone like Janaka to fix up all this political stuff.” Maharajji said, “there’s a King greater than Janaka now who is taking care of all this.” There is somebody running the show. “And if it has to go this way now, let it go.” That doesn’t mean we don’t do everything we have to do in regards to this, but the most important thing is to remember that, when you take your last breath, whatever karmas you have, whatever programs are still running in there, are going to keep running into your next incarnation. So you do your best work right now and difficult times, it shows us a lot, but it’s very difficult. You don’t have to solve the whole thing, but just be aware that there’s an inner and an outer and what you can have some say about, on one hand, is your inner and whatever you can control on the outer, you can do, too. But if you do it with anger, like I always hated John Lennon, “Give Peace A Chance.” He was just an angry motherfucker. He was an angry cranky drug addict motherfucker and he would sing, “Give Peace a Chance,”damn.  You know he was arguing with you. I’m telling you, “Give Peace a chance, goddammit.” That’s what it sounded like to me and you know, there’s no peace in that. It was a nice, “give peace a chance and let me shoot up later, ok?” “And if I can’t get my stuff, I’m gonna kill you.” It’s not real. That whole gloss of culture is just completely bullshit, you know? People cover up their stuff and they act like this, but that’s not really helping anybody. He didn’t deal with his demons until much later. Let’s deal with our demons now. And luckily, we’re getting a lot of help with that. So, who knows what’s going to happen. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. It’s horrible. Most people I hang out with agree, it’s not very pleasant, but there a lot of people who are just as happy as pigs in shit. This is what they wanted. They finally got it. It’s kind of humbling, you know, to recognize that so much of America wanted this. Enough to make it happen. So, we’ll do what we can to try to get it back to, or get it forward to another way that we think is better for us and everybody. We’ll do that but at the same time, we can’t lose sight that every minute is right here. If we’re lost in blind reaction to this stuff, we’re just creating more suffering for ourselves and others. Period. You know? I sneak little peaks at things and I go, “Aw, shit.” So, I don’t bring politics into this stuff because I think, this is what I do, right? And everybody’s welcome. If I say, I’m for this one or that one, that’s just my own personal thing, but this is not personal. Everybody should feel welcome to come sing and that’s, I feel very strongly about that. I’m not, it’s pretty easy which side of the line I’m on, but still, everybody’s welcome, that’s the way I want it to be. Maybe I’m not very successful at that, but that’s what I feel. And people are just people. Remember how easy it was to hate George Bush? G.W.? Don’t you wish he was back?  So things change. He turned out to be the Dalai Lama’s best buddy. Who knew?  He was probably a Buddhist monk last time and wanted to be president. Ok? “You can have America.” So, we only see the most superficial level of stuff. And it should, but it needs to be dealt with the best way we can. There’s no escaping it. You can’t run through a cave. You’ll be bringing it with you. So, in order to do the best we can on that level, we have to be as conscious and as caring and as kind and as open as we can be inside. And, just to try to generate that wish that all beings be free of suffering. Just generating that wish is a very powerful thing. I mean, it doesn’t maybe seem that way, when it’s late at night and you’re getting those flashes from the New York Times or Facebook and every one is like a slap in the face. It may not seem like that, but just generating, to understand that everybody wants to be happy and look at these people who, by everything they do, create more suffering for themselves as well as everybody else. They have to pay for that. You have to live through everything. That’s the sad part. When people don’t understand the real results of their own actions. Then, you begin, compassion just arises because you’ve seen, we can see in ourselves how we do that and we can see it in others, that their own actions are creating more and more suffering for themselves, their loved ones, their close people they’re supposedly trying to protect. They’re creating hell worlds for themselves. You know, it’s kind of a question of, how much are you really going to buy into with this stuff, you know? Unfortunately, I’ve been in India so long, I’ve actually, most of my Long Island programming is gone. You know, I’ve been going so long. I’ve been so involved in this stuff, reincarnation seems perfectly reasonable to me. For most people, it’s not perfectly reasonable, it’s kind of a little bit out there. But that doesn’t mean I believe it 100%, it just seems like, hm, yeah, could be. And if it is then you have to start, the next thing is, you know, our actions, what do our actions do and what are the results of our own actions? You start to look at yourself and your stuff. Karma is something, they say, that no one but a perfectly enlightened Being could understand. It’s so complex. But it is basically a cause and effect situation. Our intentions, when we act, are the most important thing. And so, if we’re lost in all this emotion and all this negativity that’s surrounding us at this point, it seems, then we’re not capable of really having good intentions about ourselves and others, you know? Because we want to escape from the pain of that. There’s no escape from the pain, other than creating and cultivating compassion for ourselves and others. Like, Tulku was saying this morning, you know, sometimes, when that Being shows up that’s really difficult, you can say, take that Being as your guru, as your teacher. Because he’s showing you, showing  you where you’re really at. And there’s this great Lama who went on a long pilgrimage. And He took this attendant with him who was a complete fuck up. I mean, a complete… and one of His disciples said, “Lama, why are you taking this guy, you know what’s going to happen.” He said, “Oh yes. That’s why I’m taking Him. How will I learn patience, if not for Him.” See, we’re not really dedicated. We’re kind of, we’re not into getting free. We still want to be comfortable. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But ultimately, it’s not possible. It’s not possible to be comfortable for more than a minute. Sooner or later, something’s going to happen. And hey, I remember when I was young, 65, and I thought, “Hey, this is a piece of cake.” Then, 66 came around. So, shit’s going to happen. How are we going to deal with it? Right? We have to get real. We have to recognize, we’ve been dropped in a pot of boiling oil. We’ve got to find our way out of here. There’s no sense pretending just learning how to swim is going to be enough. We’ll be cooked. I wish there was another way, but there isn’t. That’s the good news and the bad news. There is no other way. We’re doing what we can do. We’re doing the best we can. So, and these guys, these great beings know what’s going on, I mean, at one point after Indian Independence, Pandit Nehru became the President of India, the Prime Minister or the President, and as he got older, he got a little bit crazy, and if someone would criticize him from a crowd, sometimes he would jump into the crowd and try to get to the person. He wanted to fight with him, and his people were very concerned about him, because they thought, something’s going to happen to him, so they secretly came to Maharajji, and they said, “We’re very worried about Nehru and we think somebody might, something bad’s going to happen,” and Maharajji said, “No one, for five years, not a hair on his head will be touched…” never could be touched, right? So they went away feeling very happy and in fact, nothing, for five years, everything was fine. Then he died. Five years. So there are Beings that know what’s going on and they have the power to change it but they don’t change it necessarily because we have our karmas to live through. We have to change it inside of ourselves. And if we’re looking outside, if we think that, you know, we have to start paying more attention to what’s going on. Not outside, but inside. And then whatever we do in the world, the quality of it will change. Peace comes from within and if we want peace outside, we have to really be at peace inside. Or at least be working on it in a certain kind of way. In an honest, sincere way. It’s messy in there. You know? It’s messy. But the more acquainted we are with ourselves and all that mess, the easier it is to deal with the stuff that comes out. And the strength to deal with it comes from these letting go practices. The ability to let go of, first very simple thoughts, eventally you can let go of big emotions. By letting go, I mean, you don’t take them in. Like, you’re just about to get angry, and then you release it. And it just passes by. And then all those things that you were going to do when you were angry and that you would do, which would create such intense causes of more suffering, just don’t happen. But that’s not easy. You’ve gotta start where we are. We have to start where we are. Which is just singing. And coming back and getting the feeling, what that feels like to just be involved in that. And then you, your heart recognizes that and it pulls you to that more. Even if you’re busy wanting to watch the rest of Fringe. Your heart wants you to go sing kirtan. So, you go sing for 10 minutes and then you watch Fringe. <h3></h3> <h3>Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album *</h3> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/door-of-faith" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Door of Faith</a> An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/harmonium-tutorials/products/harmonium-tutorials" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">online shop.</a></h4> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/img_9440/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-30-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-40-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3></h3> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-16-spiritual-practice-and-the-state-of-the-world/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 16 | Spiritual Practice and the State of the World</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 16 | Spiritual Practice and the State of the World

Bernie Glassman

Ep.13 ~ Remembering Bernie Glassman Roshi Bernie Glassman, an American Zen Master affectionately referred to as “Bernie,” was a vibrant character who had a significant influence on American dharma. Along with being a Zen master, was also an aeronautical engineer, a social entrepreneur, an interfaith activist, and a clown.  Bernie left his body in late 2018.  In this episode, KD shares his recollections on his great friend. At 11:42 KD sings “Hungry Hearts” chant. This chant was recently recorded for Bernie’s memorial. If you would like to download this chant for your practice, its available in our digital library details are below. You can also find a video of KD and Bernie together on YouTube channel Krishna Das Music, and album recording of Sri Hanuman Chalisa / Gate of Sweet Nectar on the album Door of Faith.  “He was pulled to relieve the suffering, to confront the fear around those situations, to melt and vaporize the arrows of anger and shame and greed and fear that are release in all directions by our egoistic self-serving desires, self-protection, walls we put up, laws we make to limit people’s freedoms, everything that causes suffering was what Bernie wanted to relieve.“ ~ Krishna Das  {photo: Peter Cunningham, 2001} Transcription:  I’m here at the Sivananda ashram in the Bahamas where I first met Bernie Glassman on the eve of the millennium. I arrived here for the first and he had already been here for a few days. I knew about him. I had seen his picture and I’d heard about these Homeless Street Retreats that he took people on. And I looked at his picture and I was scared shitless. There was no way I was going to meet him or go on these retreats, but when I ran into him here at the ashram in the Bahamas, he came up to me, and he said, “You’re Krishna Das?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I’ve been listening to you every day since my wife died.” And I said, “What?” And he said, “I’ve been listening. I put the headphones on and play ‘Namah Shivaya’ over and over and I just do my work on the computer.” And that was it. I fell in love with him and it was love at first sight.  He so sweet to me, so kind. And in that closeness that I felt to him, I never felt any awe. It was always perfect at-easement and loving friendship. Now that he has left the body, even though I miss him so much, mostly I feel awe. He seems to fill the universe. Because there was nowhere he wouldn’t go. There was nothing he wouldn’t face. There was no fear that he wouldn’t confront with love and kindness and caring. Everybody was a part of his family. He greeted everyone equally. He didn’t carry signs and badges to advertise how great a being he was, and the real sign of greatness. My guru, Neem Karoli Baba, looked like somebody’s grandfather. And in fact, one time, He said, “I could have been a really big Saint. I could have been a really big Saint, but I had one fault.” And his devotee said, “Baba, what was that?” He said, “Too much compassion.” And that was Bernie. Too much compassion to take anything for himself. Too much compassion to advertise himself. Too much compassion to be a great Zen Master. He cared too much about people. He wanted to meet everyone exactly where they are. And that’s the mark of a real Great Being. Shortly after I met him, I got an email from him with eight lines of a prayer called “The Gates of Sweet Nectar” from the Japanese prayer book, “The Kan Ro Mon”, the Japanese liturgy and apparently this was Bernie’s favorite and most powerful prayer. He had had an extraordinary experience riding in the back of a car once and he experienced the interconnectedness of All Beings in the Universe; Human, Animal and Beyond. All Beings. And this prayer is an offering to All Beings to come for a meal and the meal that is offered is the Enlightened Heart, the Enlightened Mind, the True Nature of all of us. So the prayer had eight lines and he wrote, at the end of the eight lines he said, “Could you do something with this?” So I wrote back, “Like what?” And I got another email saying, “Well, you know, we Buddhists aren’t that good with melody. Maybe you could come up with a nice melody and then we could sing this at the Zen Peacemaker meetings.” The Zen Peacemakers Organization was one of the organizations Bernie started to confront suffering and bear witness to suffering anywhere in the world that it was happening. And that led to him going to Auschwitz and Ireland and Rwanda and Palestine, Israel, many places that most of us are scared to go to. He was just pulled right there to be there and bear witness to the pain and the suffering and liberate it into caring and kindness. So I carried those lines around with me, around the world, for about 11 months, and then I wrote back, I said, “Bernie,” you know, “Can I mess with the lines a little?” And then I get a one world email back, “Mess.” So I started reworking the words just a little bit and then a melody came to me and it fit very nicely with those, with that prayer so I told Bernie, that you know, I’ve got it now. And he said, “Good, now you can sing it at the meeting next month with the peacemakers.” “Oh ok.” And then he said, “Now you can start working on the rest of the prayer, which I don’t know, is like 40 pages or something like that. So, I wrote back, I wrote to him, I said, “Bernie, that will take three lifetimes.” I get an email back, “Two.” So, the prayer goes “Calling out to hungry hearts everywhere through endless time. You who wander, you who thirst, I offer you this Bodhi mind. Calling out to hungry spirits, all the lost and the left behind. Gather round and share this meal, your joy and your sorrow, I make it mine.” Now, the actual last line of the prayer is, “Gather round and share this meal, all of your sorrow, I make it mine.” However, when I first showed it to Bernie just before the meeting with the peacemakers, he looked at me and said, “Oh, I don’t only want your sorrow. I want your joy, too.” So, I had to change the last line to “your joy and your sorrow, I make it mine.” This was Bernie. At ease in the world. Totally motivated to relieve suffering wherever it arose, wherever it entered into his consciousness in any way. He was pulled to relieve the suffering, to confront the fear around those situations, to melt and vaporize the arrows of anger and shame and greed and fear that are release in all directions by our egoistic self-serving desires, self-protection, walls we put up, laws we make to limit people’s freedoms, everything that causes suffering was what Bernie wanted to relieve. Now that he’s not in the body, I’m in complete awe of the things he accomplished in this world, the energy he put into helping people, in creating situations that allowed them to grow and to find happiness in life and accomplish things that were previously impossible for them. I’m blessed to have called him a friend.  Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album * Hungry Hearts Chant  Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for download in our digital library (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime. Door of Faith An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our online shop.       Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep.13 | Remembering Bernie Glassman appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep.13 ~ Remembering Bernie Glassman</h3> Roshi Bernie Glassman, an American Zen Master affectionately referred to as “Bernie,” was a vibrant character who had a significant influence on American dharma. Along with being a Zen master, was also an aeronautical engineer, a social entrepreneur, an interfaith activist, and a clown.  Bernie left his body in late 2018.  In this episode, KD shares his recollections on his great friend. At 11:42 KD sings “Hungry Hearts” chant. This chant was recently recorded for Bernie’s memorial. If you would like to <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">download</a> this chant for your practice, its available in our <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">digital library</a> details are below. You can also find a <a href="https://youtu.be/bLx0Dtuxj-k" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">video of KD and Bernie together</a> on YouTube channel Krishna Das Music, and album recording of <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/door-of-faith" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Sri Hanuman Chalisa / Gate of Sweet Nectar</a> on the album Door of Faith. <blockquote>“He was pulled to relieve the suffering, to confront the fear around those situations, to melt and vaporize the arrows of anger and shame and greed and fear that are release in all directions by our egoistic self-serving desires, self-protection, walls we put up, laws we make to limit people’s freedoms, everything that causes suffering was what Bernie wanted to relieve.“ ~ Krishna Das  {photo: Peter Cunningham, 2001}</blockquote> Transcription: I’m here at the Sivananda ashram in the Bahamas where I first met Bernie Glassman on the eve of the millennium. I arrived here for the first and he had already been here for a few days. I knew about him. I had seen his picture and I’d heard about these Homeless Street Retreats that he took people on. And I looked at his picture and I was scared shitless. There was no way I was going to meet him or go on these retreats, but when I ran into him here at the ashram in the Bahamas, he came up to me, and he said, “You’re Krishna Das?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I’ve been listening to you every day since my wife died.” And I said, “What?” And he said, “I’ve been listening. I put the headphones on and play ‘Namah Shivaya’ over and over and I just do my work on the computer.” And that was it. I fell in love with him and it was love at first sight.  He so sweet to me, so kind. And in that closeness that I felt to him, I never felt any awe. It was always perfect at-easement and loving friendship. Now that he has left the body, even though I miss him so much, mostly I feel awe. He seems to fill the universe. Because there was nowhere he wouldn’t go. There was nothing he wouldn’t face. There was no fear that he wouldn’t confront with love and kindness and caring. Everybody was a part of his family. He greeted everyone equally. He didn’t carry signs and badges to advertise how great a being he was, and the real sign of greatness. My guru, Neem Karoli Baba, looked like somebody’s grandfather. And in fact, one time, He said, “I could have been a really big Saint. I could have been a really big Saint, but I had one fault.” And his devotee said, “Baba, what was that?” He said, “Too much compassion.” And that was Bernie. Too much compassion to take anything for himself. Too much compassion to advertise himself. Too much compassion to be a great Zen Master. He cared too much about people. He wanted to meet everyone exactly where they are. And that’s the mark of a real Great Being. Shortly after I met him, I got an email from him with eight lines of a prayer called “The Gates of Sweet Nectar” from the Japanese prayer book, “The Kan Ro Mon”, the Japanese liturgy and apparently this was Bernie’s favorite and most powerful prayer. He had had an extraordinary experience riding in the back of a car once and he experienced the interconnectedness of All Beings in the Universe; Human, Animal and Beyond. All Beings. And this prayer is an offering to All Beings to come for a meal and the meal that is offered is the Enlightened Heart, the Enlightened Mind, the True Nature of all of us. So the prayer had eight lines and he wrote, at the end of the eight lines he said, “Could you do something with this?” So I wrote back, “Like what?” And I got another email saying, “Well, you know, we Buddhists aren’t that good with melody. Maybe you could come up with a nice melody and then we could sing this at the Zen Peacemaker meetings.” The Zen Peacemakers Organization was one of the organizations Bernie started to confront suffering and bear witness to suffering anywhere in the world that it was happening. And that led to him going to Auschwitz and Ireland and Rwanda and Palestine, Israel, many places that most of us are scared to go to. He was just pulled right there to be there and bear witness to the pain and the suffering and liberate it into caring and kindness. So I carried those lines around with me, around the world, for about 11 months, and then I wrote back, I said, “Bernie,” you know, “Can I mess with the lines a little?” And then I get a one world email back, “Mess.” So I started reworking the words just a little bit and then a melody came to me and it fit very nicely with those, with that prayer so I told Bernie, that you know, I’ve got it now. And he said, “Good, now you can sing it at the meeting next month with the peacemakers.” “Oh ok.” And then he said, “Now you can start working on the rest of the prayer, which I don’t know, is like 40 pages or something like that. So, I wrote back, I wrote to him, I said, “Bernie, that will take three lifetimes.” I get an email back, “Two.” So, the prayer goes “Calling out to hungry hearts everywhere through endless time. You who wander, you who thirst, I offer you this Bodhi mind. Calling out to hungry spirits, all the lost and the left behind. Gather round and share this meal, your joy and your sorrow, I make it mine.” Now, the actual last line of the prayer is, “Gather round and share this meal, all of your sorrow, I make it mine.” However, when I first showed it to Bernie just before the meeting with the peacemakers, he looked at me and said, “Oh, I don’t only want your sorrow. I want your joy, too.” So, I had to change the last line to “your joy and your sorrow, I make it mine.” This was Bernie. At ease in the world. Totally motivated to relieve suffering wherever it arose, wherever it entered into his consciousness in any way. He was pulled to relieve the suffering, to confront the fear around those situations, to melt and vaporize the arrows of anger and shame and greed and fear that are release in all directions by our egoistic self-serving desires, self-protection, walls we put up, laws we make to limit people’s freedoms, everything that causes suffering was what Bernie wanted to relieve. Now that he’s not in the body, I’m in complete awe of the things he accomplished in this world, the energy he put into helping people, in creating situations that allowed them to grow and to find happiness in life and accomplish things that were previously impossible for them. I’m blessed to have called him a friend. <h3></h3> <h3>Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album *</h3> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Hungry Hearts Chant</a> Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">download in our digital library</a> (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime.</h4> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/door-of-faith" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Door of Faith</a> An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/harmonium-tutorials/products/harmonium-tutorials" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">online shop.</a></h4> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/img_9440/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-30-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-40-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3></h3> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep.13 | Remembering Bernie Glassman</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep.13 | Remembering Bernie Glassman

Ep. 17 ~ Grace in The West How do we, in the West live the way you speak of? The way we all want to in our hearts? We need money in this culture… We can’t walk around, as you said, with a wraparound, shoeless and in the East you can.  So…. it’s so difficult, how do we compromise in the West? Or, how do we recover peace in the West when we strive for the Eastern culture? “Once, I was having a dream, I had this dream where I was being reincarnated, I was coming back to a body and I was heading right for India, right for India, and at the last minute I made a left turn and wound up in New York. But, I was impelled by my karmas. This was the place where I would be able to fulfill the things I needed to do. The hungers that I was, in another culture, I might not have been able to get what I needed to have in order to complete certain karmic desires. So, it’s not a mistake that we’re here. But it would be a mistake to try to do it like the Indians do it. We can’t, we’re not born that way. We have a different psychological shape. Very different. But we’re still, we’re no different from anybody on the planet anywhere, inside. So that’s all the same, it’s just the outer shell is different. We have to find a way to look at that and see what that is. Work with it.” – Krishna Das Q: Hi. Being in the Western Culture, being brought up here, and the Eastern Culture, how do we, in the West live the way you speak of? The way we all want to in our hearts? We need money in this culture to pay bridge, go over the bridge, to get on a bus, so it’s, it is a lot of monetarily, a lot of monetary things that we have to provide for. We can’t walk around, as you said, with a wrap around, shoeless and in the East you can.  So, how, it’s so difficult, how do we compromise in the West? Or, how do we recover peace in the West when we strive for the Eastern culture? KD: Well, first of all, we’re doing it. This is it. Q: Is this as good as it gets? KD: I didn’t say that. I said, this is it. This is our attempt at doing that. We found our own forms, you know, people in India, believe it or not, they have to eat, too. They have to work in the fields. They have to find jobs, they have to support their families, you know, not everybody, and these days, sadhus don’t really get supported the way that they have been in the past. So, it’s very different, but it’s essentially the same. We’re human beings, we all pretty much want the same thing and we all have different karmic shape that we have to come to terms with this life. Once, I was having a dream, I had this dream where I was being reincarnated, I was coming back to a body and I was heading right for India, right for India, and at the last minute I made a left turn and wound up in New York. But, I was impelled by my karmas. This was the place where I would be able to fulfill the things I needed to do. The hungers that I was, in another culture, I might not have been able to get what I needed to have in order to complete certain karmic desires. So, it’s not a mistake that we’re here. But it would be a mistake to try to do it like the Indians do it. We can’t, we’re not born that way. We have a different psychological shape. Very different. But we’re still, we’re no different from anybody on the planet anywhere, inside. So that’s all the same, it’s just the outer shell is different. We have to find a way to look at that and see what that is. Work with it. I once asked Siddhi Ma, “Ma should I meditate?” Because I was doing a lot of these meditation courses with Tibetans and learning all these practices and enjoying it quite a bit. I said, “Ma should I meditate?” She said, “In 40 years with Maharajji, not once did He ask me to meditate.” And then I said, “Well, should I meditate or should I sing?” And She said, “Well, what do you like to do?” It never occurred to me that what I liked to do might be good for me. That’s not what my mama told me. But you see how subtle it is? You know? In her mind, chanting, meditation, no problem, same. In my mind, it was different because it was hard and must be good for me, and chanting was easy and must not be good for me. I was doing that to myself. Then She said, “Maharajji said that, ‘the more subtle states of consciousness, we can’t do that ourselves. We can’t make that happen with our own personal will, with our own personal effort. You can’t do that, you can’t push a button and enter into the deeper states.’” Like, “Ok, I’m going to do it now.” It doesn’t work that way. But She said, He told Her to continue to Her japa, repetition of the Name, that the Name, repetition of the Name would ripen Her. Ripen us to be ready to, for those things to naturally occur. The Name is a big thing. It just sounds like another whatever, but it’s a really Big Thing. I don’t even pretend to have a clue what it’s about but you read these books, you know, and you read some of these things They say about the practice of the repetition of the Name, some of them say it’s the only way for human beings to actually accomplish anything in one lifetime at this time, in this age because you’re planting seeds and the seeds stay with us. So, I don’t know, it’s kind of like what they tell you in Catholic school. You don’t have to take it on faith. You should never take anything on blind faith, just because somebody says so, try something and see what it feels like to you. That’s how you find out. If it doesn’t work, fine, do something else. Anybody tells you it’s the only way, look for the closest door and get the fuck out of there because, you know, anybody says it’s the only way, they’re just selling something. There’s no only way. And there is an only way. The only way is to go into your own heart and see what’s there and throw out the garbage and leave what’s pure and beautiful, which is our true nature. How are you going to do that? There’s a million ways to do that, but chanting is the only way.  Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album * Hungry Hearts Chant  Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for download in our digital library (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime. Door of Faith An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our online shop.       Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep. 17 | Grace in The West appeared first on Krishna Das.

Ep. 17 ~ Grace in The West How do we, in the West live the way you speak of? The way we all want to in our hearts? We need money in this culture… We can’t walk around, as you said, with a wraparound, shoeless and in the East you can.  So…. it’s so difficult, how do we compromise in the West? Or, how do we recover peace in the West when we strive for the Eastern culture? “Once, I was having a dream, I had this dream where I was being reincarnated, I was coming back to a body and I was heading right for India, right for India, and at the last minute I made a left turn and wound up in New York. But, I was impelled by my karmas. This was the place where I would be able to fulfill the things I needed to do. The hungers that I was, in another culture, I might not have been able to get what I needed to have in order to complete certain karmic desires. So, it’s not a mistake that we’re here. But it would be a mistake to try to do it like the Indians do it. We can’t, we’re not born that way. We have a different psychological shape. Very different. But we’re still, we’re no different from anybody on the planet anywhere, inside. So that’s all the same, it’s just the outer shell is different. We have to find a way to look at that and see what that is. Work with it.” – Krishna Das Q: Hi. Being in the Western Culture, being brought up here, and the Eastern Culture, how do we, in the West live the way you speak of? The way we all want to in our hearts? We need money in this culture to pay bridge, go over the bridge, to get on a bus, so it’s, it is a lot of monetarily, a lot of monetary things that we have to provide for. We can’t walk around, as you said, with a wrap around, shoeless and in the East you can.  So, how, it’s so difficult, how do we compromise in the West? Or, how do we recover peace in the West when we strive for the Eastern culture? KD: Well, first of all, we’re doing it. This is it. Q: Is this as good as it gets? KD: I didn’t say that. I said, this is it. This is our attempt at doing that. We found our own forms, you know, people in India, believe it or not, they have to eat, too. They have to work in the fields. They have to find jobs, they have to support their families, you know, not everybody, and these days, sadhus don’t really get supported the way that they have been in the past. So, it’s very different, but it’s essentially the same. We’re human beings, we all pretty much want the same thing and we all have different karmic shape that we have to come to terms with this life. Once, I was having a dream, I had this dream where I was being reincarnated, I was coming back to a body and I was heading right for India, right for India, and at the last minute I made a left turn and wound up in New York. But, I was impelled by my karmas. This was the place where I would be able to fulfill the things I needed to do. The hungers that I was, in another culture, I might not have been able to get what I needed to have in order to complete certain karmic desires. So, it’s not a mistake that we’re here. But it would be a mistake to try to do it like the Indians do it. We can’t, we’re not born that way. We have a different psychological shape. Very different. But we’re still, we’re no different from anybody on the planet anywhere, inside. So that’s all the same, it’s just the outer shell is different. We have to find a way to look at that and see what that is. Work with it. I once asked Siddhi Ma, “Ma should I meditate?” Because I was doing a lot of these meditation courses with Tibetans and learning all these practices and enjoying it quite a bit. I said, “Ma should I meditate?” She said, “In 40 years with Maharajji, not once did He ask me to meditate.” And then I said, “Well, should I meditate or should I sing?” And She said, “Well, what do you like to do?” It never occurred to me that what I liked to do might be good for me. That’s not what my mama told me. But you see how subtle it is? You know? In her mind, chanting, meditation, no problem, same. In my mind, it was different because it was hard and must be good for me, and chanting was easy and must not be good for me. I was doing that to myself. Then She said, “Maharajji said that, ‘the more subtle states of consciousness, we can’t do that ourselves. We can’t make that happen with our own personal will, with our own personal effort. You can’t do that, you can’t push a button and enter into the deeper states.’” Like, “Ok, I’m going to do it now.” It doesn’t work that way. But She said, He told Her to continue to Her japa, repetition of the Name, that the Name, repetition of the Name would ripen Her. Ripen us to be ready to, for those things to naturally occur. The Name is a big thing. It just sounds like another whatever, but it’s a really Big Thing. I don’t even pretend to have a clue what it’s about but you read these books, you know, and you read some of these things They say about the practice of the repetition of the Name, some of them say it’s the only way for human beings to actually accomplish anything in one lifetime at this time, in this age because you’re planting seeds and the seeds stay with us. So, I don’t know, it’s kind of like what they tell you in Catholic school. You don’t have to take it on faith. You should never take anything on blind faith, just because somebody says so, try something and see what it feels like to you. That’s how you find out. If it doesn’t work, fine, do something else. Anybody tells you it’s the only way, look for the closest door and get the fuck out of there because, you know, anybody says it’s the only way, they’re just selling something. There’s no only way. And there is an only way. The only way is to go into your own heart and see what’s there and throw out the garbage and leave what’s pure and beautiful, which is our true nature. How are you going to do that? There’s a million ways to do that, but chanting is the only way. <h3></h3> <h3>Suggestions for your practice: Hungry Hearts Chant &amp; Door of Faith Album *</h3> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Hungry Hearts Chant</a> Made especially for you. This recording is a 7 min 11 sec loop of  the chant. This track is FREE and available for <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/pages/e-library" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">download in our digital library</a> (thats where we offer other free stuff too)  for you to use at anytime.</h4> <h4><a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/door-of-faith" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Door of Faith</a> An unusual recording, a departure from the call-and-response (kirtan) style, the deep longing to connect with his guru that comes through makes one feel as if you are listening in on Krishna Das’s personal puja offerings. Also included is Bernie’s Chalisa/Gate of Sweet Nectar.  Find out more in our <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/harmonium-tutorials/products/harmonium-tutorials" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">online shop.</a></h4> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/img_9440/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-30-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/remembering-bernie-glassman/attachment/screen-shot-2019-03-20-at-9-52-40-am/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3></h3> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-17-grace-in-the-west/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep. 17 | Grace in The West</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep. 17 | Grace in The West

Ep.09 ~ Surrender Surrender happens by grace. It’s not an act of personal will. That might be a hard thing to understand because we don’t, you know, grace is such a foreign concept to Westerners, but you know, Ramana Maharshi said, “If you ask the thief to be the policeman, there will be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.”  That’s the thing about surrender. If you ask your ego to surrender, it’ll make a good job of looking like it’s trying to do that, all the time it’s getting bigger and stronger.” – Krishna Das Transcription:  Q. Could you talk just a little bit about, in regards to your own personal experience then in regards to how it would apply to the rest of us, the process of letting go? KD. It might sound funny to point this out but whenever you’re, let’s say you’re sitting or chanting or doing some practice, or let’s say we’re chanting together, so you might feel something for a minute, it might come, it might go after something else. Where is this experience happening? I’ll answer. It’s happening in here. In each one of us. It’s not outside. It’s not somewhere else. It’s happening within each one of us. Having our own experience. Very different from the person next to you. And if you think about it, we go through our whole day, our whole life having our own experience. Each one of us. And that experience, what we experience, we, is and by our stuff, our, who we think we are, the stuff we like, the stuff we don’t like, the things that happen to us in life, the things that didn’t happen to us in life. Everything that makes us, everything that makes me, me, is what’s having these experiences, and that “me” is what spiritual practice begins to dissolve. So that gradually, the subjective bubble that we’re imprisoned in, and it is prison, the subjective buble that we’re imprisoned in begins to melt away. When Maharajji would say, “All one,” what he’s pointing to is that place when the bubble’s broken and there’s no, and you don’t think you’re that person anymore, you experience yourself in a different way. You don’t disappear, but you experience yourself in a much different way, you’re not limited or imprisoned or defined by your thoughts and emotions but you’re very much here, more here than you are when you’re thinking about shit all the time, Much more here. I mean, it’s inconceivable who much more it is, because it’s inconceivable by definition. You can’t conceive of it. It’s not a concept, it’s the experience of Being. And these Names that we sing, they’re calling us. We think we’re calling them out, but they’re actually pulling us into our Self. We’re being pulling pulled into ourself. Human beings experience being pulled within by your own Being as longing. Longing. That’s the killer. Longing is the killer. That’s what ruins your life. Wanting something we don’t, we think we don’t have. The longing for that, to be in that place, to be That. To feel That. That’s what drives us forward. That’s the saving grace, actually, is the longing. It’s a tough one. It’s very hard to just, to really surrender to That. Accept that. We still think we’re going to squeeze out a little bit of happiness. “I know, it’s just around the corner, I’ll grab it, you know, I can do it, yeah, this is ok, but I’ll get that.”  Good luck. Good luck. I mean that. Good luck. I hope you do. You’d be the first since time began. But you know, anything could happen. All right, any questions or anything? Anybody want to say anything? Talk about anything? I know I’m not like Lama here. I’m not very erudite, but I can bluff my way through it. Sir. Give him the mic. Q: Could you talk just a little bit about, in regards to your own personal experience then in regards to how it would apply to the rest of us, the process of letting go? KD: What does that mean? What does letting go mean? Or? Q: I think we all can understand it in some, to some varying degree, the word “surrender” or at least the way you’ve been using it, and so, yes, what it is but also how to do it? KD: How to surrender? Just fill out this form.  I seem to be out of forms, sorry. Surrender happens by grace. It’s not an act of personal will. That might be a hard thing to understand because we don’t, you know, grace is such a foreign concept to Westerners, but you know, Ramana Maharshi said, “If you ask the thief to be the policeman, there will be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.”  That’s the thing about surrender. If you ask your ego to surrender, it’ll make a good job of looking like it’s trying to do that, all the time it’s getting bigger and stronger. So, it’s not… Surrender is something that, you know, there’s this line, “Purify and wait for grace.” “Purify your heart and wait for grace.” That seems like very passive kind of practice. But it’s actually not passive at all. Purifying the heart means cleaning the mirror of the heart, just like I was saying last night about the Hanuman Chalisa. First, you clean the mirror of your heart so you see what’s really there. The mirrors of our hearts are just covered with stuff, you know? Shame and guilt and fear and anger and greed and selfishness. That’s what’s covering the mirror of our heart. So when we look and see what’s looking at us… I once had a grand mal seizure in an airplane flying back from New Orleans to Los Angeles. They had to land the plane in Albuquerque. Luckily it wasn’t Gallop. I don’t know if you know those towns, but anyway, if it was Gallop, I probably wouldn’t be here today. But Albuquerque, they took me to the hospital and they, whatever, and then they gave me some medicine and later in the day a friend of mine came down from Santa Fe and took me back to their house, and I stayed there for 10 days and I remember when I could finally walk, I got up to go to the bathroom and I walked by the mirror and I looked in the mirror, you know, what was looking at me out of that mirror was somebody I did not know. I just looked at my, I looked in the mirror and I saw there was no personality around my eyes. There was no stuff. It was just like.. argh. So, it came back, don’t worry. When we fall in love, part of us surrenders, naturally to that space, to that presence and we think we’re surrendering to that person, that other person. However, that’s one type of love, that has certain qualities to it but there’s another love, a non-personal love that’s more intimate than a personal love. Personal love is between two persons, right? There’s bodies in the way, there’s all kinds of weird stuff. You know? But a non-personal love, there’s no me and you, it’s just this, it’s like an atmosphere that you walked in and it’s oh, you’re in it. So, that’s a deeper place within us and when, when we surrender, when we let go of what keeps us clinging to our stuff, our thoughts, our emotions, all the clothes we wear over our personality, as we let go of that stuff, we actually move deeper into that place within us. That takes practice because we were born and nobody told us to do these things. By the time we started suffering enough to look within, all the programs were running already and had been for so long that it’s very hard to disconnect them. We forgot where the plug is. So, the more practice we do, the more we get in, kind of, harmony with what Tulku Sherdor calls the dharma or these teachings, this path. The more, a part of us relaxes because we’re not asked to be somebody else or something else. We’re asked to just let go and be ourselves. Which is scary enough, you know? Because we don’t like ourselves. Why would I want to be somebody I don’t like? You already are. So get over it. So the whole, it’s the process of getting over all that stuff. With our will, with our personal will, with our intention, we sit down or get up or whatever we do to do some practices and the practices always revolve around some type of paying attention to one thing and not paying attention to other things. They all have that, mostly all of them, except very final practices. We try to pay attention to what we’re doing. You don’t have to sit here and try to manufacture some kind of feeling, or try to make something happen. It already happened, you know? We’re here. That’s the big bang. Now we’re just trying to live through it. So we simply chant. We keep coming back. That’s the miracle. Why do we even come back from where we’ve gone, right? Why should we just wake up in the morning and think and then die? Why? Why? Why? You know? What is that? It’s very interesting. Why should a thought, why you should you be able to let go of a thought? Actually, we can’t. To tell you the truth. We don’t let go of thoughts. They let go of us and then we recognize that’s what happened. So you’ll be singing and then you recognize, “Oh, I haven’t even been listening to what’s been going on.” You didn’t let go of that thought, the thought let go of you. And then, at that moment, you have an opportunity to rededicate yourself to become aware again of the chanting that’s been going on, even while you’ve been gone, you’ve even been doing it while you’ve been gone. The miracle is that we come back at all to here. You’re back for a billionth of a second and then, “Sri” and then you’re gone. And then we’re doing Hare Krishna, and how did that happen? So that’s really amazing. So what we need to do is slow down enough to participate in that happening more deeply and the more we… there’s space… believe it or not, there’s a lot of space between the thoughts, if we’re really paying attention and as the mind gets finer and finer and quieter and quieter and more receptive, you begin to experience that. Many years ago, I was still in college or pretending I was in college. I had scored ten capsules of LSD. They were from Sandoz, Sandoz is the Swiss company that created the first LSD. These were from, it was still legal then, nobody had caught on yet. They didn’t know how much fun it was, so they didn’t make it illegal. So I had ten of these capsules and the first one I split with a friend of mine and we drove out to the beach and started jumping off these cliffs right? These sand cliffs, all day long, it was great, all night long. And then actually wandering through the suburbs of Long Island, we found the tree that Buddha was enlightened under. Who knew it was in Miller Place, right? Or was that Sound Beach? I don’t know, one of those.  It’s amazing, but we sat there for a few hours and said, “Well, I guess He’s not coming back, let’s do something else.” So, one weekend I, you know, I was home alone, so I did a whole capsule. 1000 micrograms, which is enough to put a horse on the moon. And I was, I didn’t know, I was in Playland for like 24 hours. I was out on the front lawn with the dog in the snow and rainbow lights, it was so great. So at one point, I found myself laying in my bed and I was just laying… and on the opposite wall there was a window, right? And I was just laying there and I felt something coming from like, through the window, way out, from the far distance away. What is that? And then I’d space out and it was still coming. Coming coming coming. And it came closer and closer and closer and just as it broke over me like a huge wave, I thought “Oh, no. It’s a thought!” Crash.  And then I was thinking. And I was thinking. And I was thinking. And then it was going away. “No, don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go!” No thinking. And then after some indeterminate period of time, “Oh, no. No no no.” Crash. And I was thinking again. And then, it started happening more quickly. The space between the thoughts got smaller and smaller. And then, here I am. It was interesting. So I’ve had similar, I’ve experienced similar things in meditation where thoughts don’t grab you. They just go through like birds and they don’t… but most of the time, we are completely immersed in our thinking. I mean, we get up in the morning and it’s just already going, “Ok, what am I gonna do? Let me check facebook” while you’re still laying in bed. We don’t ever get a break from it. So, the first thing that we need to do in spiritual life is to slow down. To pay some attention to letting those thoughts go. Find something to pay attention to like your breath or a mantra or the chanting, something, a visualization. And every time you realize you’re not there, you come back. A million times a minute if you’re really paying attention. And eventually, you develop a new neural pathway in the brain. They’ve proved this now. The brain is, there is neural plasticity. The brain changes shape through these practices. So we’re creating new pathways in our brain. And it makes it easier every time, the more practice we do makes it easier to release that stuff and just be in present, be present. Be in awareness. The surrender is not an emotional thing. You can’t surrender, just like you can’t pick yourself up like this, you know? It doesn’t matter how hard you try or how much you want to, surrender happens when we’re ripe and we ripen ourselves by practice and by developing an understanding about what this is all about and why we’re doing it. Maharajji said, over and over, “From repeating these Names, the repetition of these Names, everything is brought to completion and fulness.” “Everything.” What He’s saying is, this is all you have to do. Now, I was with Him from ’70-’73 and I heard Him say this. I still can’t through Fringe. I’m watching all five seasons instead of doing Ram Nam. So, I don’t expect that anybody is able to do this, you understand? I waste so much time doing all kinds of nonsense and I have this, it’s written right on my harmonium, right here.  From repeating these Names, it’s all you have to do. Do I do it? Yeah, when I remember. So, this is the same thing as when you’re practicing. You’re gone and all of a sudden you realize you’re gone, so you rededicate yourself to the practice. So when I remember, I do the practices as much as I can. How much time do I remember? How much time do you remember that you’re even alive? You know? Most of the time, it’s just going from one thing to the other all day long, all week long, all month long, all year long, all life long. Waking up is what we’re talking about. But not in a cold way, we wake up to this to understanding what the path is about. Surrender is graduation day. Meanwhile we have to work. I don’t think I’m even in nursery school yet. Surrender is graduation. Surrender is when you recognize that you never were separate in the first place. You never were cut off. You never were isolated. You never were who you think, who we think we are. But since we think we are somebody, then we’ve got to do something. This is not something that you only know here, like “Oh, yeah, I’m nobody.” That’s a pretty big nobody. This is something we experience directly within ourselves through practice and through wanting, that longing that pulls us to do these things. It can manifest in many ways. Maybe we just want to be better at what we do. We want to be able to pay better attention to what we’re doing, we want to be more successful, we want to be happier. Whatever we tell ourselves, the practice will ripen us. It’s a ripening process. It’s not a learning process. I am incapable of learning anything. He learned a lot. Like, he’s a lawyer from Montreal. Of course he learned things. I’m from Long Island. We don’t learn things but we sing our asses off. That’s all. That’s all I have to do. I don’t care.   Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana   Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation  Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. “Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD The post Ep.09 | Surrender appeared first on Krishna Das.

<h3>Ep.09 ~ Surrender</h3> <blockquote>Surrender happens by grace. It’s not an act of personal will. That might be a hard thing to understand because we don’t, you know, grace is such a foreign concept to Westerners, but you know, Ramana Maharshi said, “If you ask the thief to be the policeman, there will be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.”  That’s the thing about surrender. If you ask your ego to surrender, it’ll make a good job of looking like it’s trying to do that, all the time it’s getting bigger and stronger.” – Krishna Das</blockquote> Transcription: Q. Could you talk just a little bit about, in regards to your own personal experience then in regards to how it would apply to the rest of us, the process of letting go? KD. It might sound funny to point this out but whenever you’re, let’s say you’re sitting or chanting or doing some practice, or let’s say we’re chanting together, so you might feel something for a minute, it might come, it might go after something else. Where is this experience happening? I’ll answer. It’s happening in here. In each one of us. It’s not outside. It’s not somewhere else. It’s happening within each one of us. Having our own experience. Very different from the person next to you. And if you think about it, we go through our whole day, our whole life having our own experience. Each one of us. And that experience, what we experience, we, is and by our stuff, our, who we think we are, the stuff we like, the stuff we don’t like, the things that happen to us in life, the things that didn’t happen to us in life. Everything that makes us, everything that makes me, me, is what’s having these experiences, and that “me” is what spiritual practice begins to dissolve. So that gradually, the subjective bubble that we’re imprisoned in, and it is prison, the subjective buble that we’re imprisoned in begins to melt away. When Maharajji would say, “All one,” what he’s pointing to is that place when the bubble’s broken and there’s no, and you don’t think you’re that person anymore, you experience yourself in a different way. You don’t disappear, but you experience yourself in a much different way, you’re not limited or imprisoned or defined by your thoughts and emotions but you’re very much here, more here than you are when you’re thinking about shit all the time, Much more here. I mean, it’s inconceivable who much more it is, because it’s inconceivable by definition. You can’t conceive of it. It’s not a concept, it’s the experience of Being. And these Names that we sing, they’re calling us. We think we’re calling them out, but they’re actually pulling us into our Self. We’re being pulling pulled into ourself. Human beings experience being pulled within by your own Being as longing. Longing. That’s the killer. Longing is the killer. That’s what ruins your life. Wanting something we don’t, we think we don’t have. The longing for that, to be in that place, to be That. To feel That. That’s what drives us forward. That’s the saving grace, actually, is the longing. It’s a tough one. It’s very hard to just, to really surrender to That. Accept that. We still think we’re going to squeeze out a little bit of happiness. “I know, it’s just around the corner, I’ll grab it, you know, I can do it, yeah, this is ok, but I’ll get that.”  Good luck. Good luck. I mean that. Good luck. I hope you do. You’d be the first since time began. But you know, anything could happen. All right, any questions or anything? Anybody want to say anything? Talk about anything? I know I’m not like Lama here. I’m not very erudite, but I can bluff my way through it. Sir. Give him the mic. Q: Could you talk just a little bit about, in regards to your own personal experience then in regards to how it would apply to the rest of us, the process of letting go? KD: What does that mean? What does letting go mean? Or? Q: I think we all can understand it in some, to some varying degree, the word “surrender” or at least the way you’ve been using it, and so, yes, what it is but also how to do it? KD: How to surrender? Just fill out this form.  I seem to be out of forms, sorry. Surrender happens by grace. It’s not an act of personal will. That might be a hard thing to understand because we don’t, you know, grace is such a foreign concept to Westerners, but you know, Ramana Maharshi said, “If you ask the thief to be the policeman, there will be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.”  That’s the thing about surrender. If you ask your ego to surrender, it’ll make a good job of looking like it’s trying to do that, all the time it’s getting bigger and stronger. So, it’s not… Surrender is something that, you know, there’s this line, “Purify and wait for grace.” “Purify your heart and wait for grace.” That seems like very passive kind of practice. But it’s actually not passive at all. Purifying the heart means cleaning the mirror of the heart, just like I was saying last night about the Hanuman Chalisa. First, you clean the mirror of your heart so you see what’s really there. The mirrors of our hearts are just covered with stuff, you know? Shame and guilt and fear and anger and greed and selfishness. That’s what’s covering the mirror of our heart. So when we look and see what’s looking at us… I once had a grand mal seizure in an airplane flying back from New Orleans to Los Angeles. They had to land the plane in Albuquerque. Luckily it wasn’t Gallop. I don’t know if you know those towns, but anyway, if it was Gallop, I probably wouldn’t be here today. But Albuquerque, they took me to the hospital and they, whatever, and then they gave me some medicine and later in the day a friend of mine came down from Santa Fe and took me back to their house, and I stayed there for 10 days and I remember when I could finally walk, I got up to go to the bathroom and I walked by the mirror and I looked in the mirror, you know, what was looking at me out of that mirror was somebody I did not know. I just looked at my, I looked in the mirror and I saw there was no personality around my eyes. There was no stuff. It was just like.. argh. So, it came back, don’t worry. When we fall in love, part of us surrenders, naturally to that space, to that presence and we think we’re surrendering to that person, that other person. However, that’s one type of love, that has certain qualities to it but there’s another love, a non-personal love that’s more intimate than a personal love. Personal love is between two persons, right? There’s bodies in the way, there’s all kinds of weird stuff. You know? But a non-personal love, there’s no me and you, it’s just this, it’s like an atmosphere that you walked in and it’s oh, you’re in it. So, that’s a deeper place within us and when, when we surrender, when we let go of what keeps us clinging to our stuff, our thoughts, our emotions, all the clothes we wear over our personality, as we let go of that stuff, we actually move deeper into that place within us. That takes practice because we were born and nobody told us to do these things. By the time we started suffering enough to look within, all the programs were running already and had been for so long that it’s very hard to disconnect them. We forgot where the plug is. So, the more practice we do, the more we get in, kind of, harmony with what Tulku Sherdor calls the dharma or these teachings, this path. The more, a part of us relaxes because we’re not asked to be somebody else or something else. We’re asked to just let go and be ourselves. Which is scary enough, you know? Because we don’t like ourselves. Why would I want to be somebody I don’t like? You already are. So get over it. So the whole, it’s the process of getting over all that stuff. With our will, with our personal will, with our intention, we sit down or get up or whatever we do to do some practices and the practices always revolve around some type of paying attention to one thing and not paying attention to other things. They all have that, mostly all of them, except very final practices. We try to pay attention to what we’re doing. You don’t have to sit here and try to manufacture some kind of feeling, or try to make something happen. It already happened, you know? We’re here. That’s the big bang. Now we’re just trying to live through it. So we simply chant. We keep coming back. That’s the miracle. Why do we even come back from where we’ve gone, right? Why should we just wake up in the morning and think and then die? Why? Why? Why? You know? What is that? It’s very interesting. Why should a thought, why you should you be able to let go of a thought? Actually, we can’t. To tell you the truth. We don’t let go of thoughts. They let go of us and then we recognize that’s what happened. So you’ll be singing and then you recognize, “Oh, I haven’t even been listening to what’s been going on.” You didn’t let go of that thought, the thought let go of you. And then, at that moment, you have an opportunity to rededicate yourself to become aware again of the chanting that’s been going on, even while you’ve been gone, you’ve even been doing it while you’ve been gone. The miracle is that we come back at all to here. You’re back for a billionth of a second and then, “Sri” and then you’re gone. And then we’re doing Hare Krishna, and how did that happen? So that’s really amazing. So what we need to do is slow down enough to participate in that happening more deeply and the more we… there’s space… believe it or not, there’s a lot of space between the thoughts, if we’re really paying attention and as the mind gets finer and finer and quieter and quieter and more receptive, you begin to experience that. Many years ago, I was still in college or pretending I was in college. I had scored ten capsules of LSD. They were from Sandoz, Sandoz is the Swiss company that created the first LSD. These were from, it was still legal then, nobody had caught on yet. They didn’t know how much fun it was, so they didn’t make it illegal. So I had ten of these capsules and the first one I split with a friend of mine and we drove out to the beach and started jumping off these cliffs right? These sand cliffs, all day long, it was great, all night long. And then actually wandering through the suburbs of Long Island, we found the tree that Buddha was enlightened under. Who knew it was in Miller Place, right? Or was that Sound Beach? I don’t know, one of those.  It’s amazing, but we sat there for a few hours and said, “Well, I guess He’s not coming back, let’s do something else.” So, one weekend I, you know, I was home alone, so I did a whole capsule. 1000 micrograms, which is enough to put a horse on the moon. And I was, I didn’t know, I was in Playland for like 24 hours. I was out on the front lawn with the dog in the snow and rainbow lights, it was so great. So at one point, I found myself laying in my bed and I was just laying… and on the opposite wall there was a window, right? And I was just laying there and I felt something coming from like, through the window, way out, from the far distance away. What is that? And then I’d space out and it was still coming. Coming coming coming. And it came closer and closer and closer and just as it broke over me like a huge wave, I thought “Oh, no. It’s a thought!” Crash.  And then I was thinking. And I was thinking. And I was thinking. And then it was going away. “No, don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go!” No thinking. And then after some indeterminate period of time, “Oh, no. No no no.” Crash. And I was thinking again. And then, it started happening more quickly. The space between the thoughts got smaller and smaller. And then, here I am. It was interesting. So I’ve had similar, I’ve experienced similar things in meditation where thoughts don’t grab you. They just go through like birds and they don’t… but most of the time, we are completely immersed in our thinking. I mean, we get up in the morning and it’s just already going, “Ok, what am I gonna do? Let me check facebook” while you’re still laying in bed. We don’t ever get a break from it. So, the first thing that we need to do in spiritual life is to slow down. To pay some attention to letting those thoughts go. Find something to pay attention to like your breath or a mantra or the chanting, something, a visualization. And every time you realize you’re not there, you come back. A million times a minute if you’re really paying attention. And eventually, you develop a new neural pathway in the brain. They’ve proved this now. The brain is, there is neural plasticity. The brain changes shape through these practices. So we’re creating new pathways in our brain. And it makes it easier every time, the more practice we do makes it easier to release that stuff and just be in present, be present. Be in awareness. The surrender is not an emotional thing. You can’t surrender, just like you can’t pick yourself up like this, you know? It doesn’t matter how hard you try or how much you want to, surrender happens when we’re ripe and we ripen ourselves by practice and by developing an understanding about what this is all about and why we’re doing it. Maharajji said, over and over, “From repeating these Names, the repetition of these Names, everything is brought to completion and fulness.” “Everything.” What He’s saying is, this is all you have to do. Now, I was with Him from ’70-’73 and I heard Him say this. I still can’t through Fringe. I’m watching all five seasons instead of doing Ram Nam. So, I don’t expect that anybody is able to do this, you understand? I waste so much time doing all kinds of nonsense and I have this, it’s written right on my harmonium, right here.  From repeating these Names, it’s all you have to do. Do I do it? Yeah, when I remember. So, this is the same thing as when you’re practicing. You’re gone and all of a sudden you realize you’re gone, so you rededicate yourself to the practice. So when I remember, I do the practices as much as I can. How much time do I remember? How much time do you remember that you’re even alive? You know? Most of the time, it’s just going from one thing to the other all day long, all week long, all month long, all year long, all life long. Waking up is what we’re talking about. But not in a cold way, we wake up to this to understanding what the path is about. Surrender is graduation day. Meanwhile we have to work. I don’t think I’m even in nursery school yet. Surrender is graduation. Surrender is when you recognize that you never were separate in the first place. You never were cut off. You never were isolated. You never were who you think, who we think we are. But since we think we are somebody, then we’ve got to do something. This is not something that you only know here, like “Oh, yeah, I’m nobody.” That’s a pretty big nobody. This is something we experience directly within ourselves through practice and through wanting, that longing that pulls us to do these things. It can manifest in many ways. Maybe we just want to be better at what we do. We want to be able to pay better attention to what we’re doing, we want to be more successful, we want to be happier. Whatever we tell ourselves, the practice will ripen us. It’s a ripening process. It’s not a learning process. I am incapable of learning anything. He learned a lot. Like, he’s a lawyer from Montreal. Of course he learned things. I’m from Long Island. We don’t learn things but we sing our asses off. That’s all. That’s all I have to do. I don’t care. <h3>Suggestions for your practice: <a href="https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/sadhanas" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana</a></h3> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8247.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_8246.jpg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <h3>Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation </h3> Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials,  as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/category/foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">blog</a> for recent updates as well as <a href="https://krishnadas.wpengine.com/sign-up-kwf/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sign up</a> for our foundation news letter. A note about your donation: Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity. <h3>“Donations are like streams, flowing into the great river of compassion that carries us to the ocean of Love.” ~ KD</h3> The post <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/ep-09-surrender/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ep.09 | Surrender</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.krishnadas.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Krishna Das</a>.

Ep.09 | Surrender

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