Call and Response Podcast Special Edition | Removing the Triggers

Call and Response Podcast Special Edition | Removing the Triggers

Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das | Special Edition – Removing the Triggers cover photo: Lonnie Raffray This special edition comes with a special offer from our friends at SoHum Mountain Healing Resort ~ When life moves too fast, the body and heart begin to whisper for rest. Ayurveda is the science of life, teaching us how to live in balance with our true nature. SoHum mountain healing resort offers Ayurvedic Pancha Karma detoxification retreats in a calm, supportive environment. You can learn more at SoHumhealing.com [https://sohumhealing.com/] and use the code KrishnaDasPK2026 for $500 off on your PanchaKarma retreat! “Through the name, you can actually remove the triggers for those thoughts. It’s a different practice. but pranayama is very useful in calming … It can calm the mind and the thoughts, slow down the thoughts, and give you a little hit. But there’s no destruction of the thinking mechanism or the triggers for those thoughts. It’s temporary, very temporary. But the name is different. That’s what they say. I can’t prove it to you.” –  Krishna Das Q: Hi. KD: Yeah Q: Could you tell us about the saints that you met this summer? KD: No. Yes, I can tell you, you’ll never find them. Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you about one baba that we met. He’s easily over 100. He looks like he’s over 100, too. He couldn’t sit up straight, and it … He was in this … his devotees built, like, a little, small little temple room for him, and he would sit in front of the murti and just give out prasad all day. But we walked in, and then there’s, like, maybe 30, 40 people in this tiny room, people sitting on the floor, talking on their phones, dogs walking through, the ladies stalking the men, coming and going, and it was like, it was like walking through somebody’s living room, you know? And yet … But the guy was sitting there, you know? And, we brought some ladoos, and we held them. He couldn’t pick his head up. He’s, you know, he was just sitting like this, but he took a pinch from each tray of ladoo. And his devotee said, “Oh, he accepted your prasad. That’s very good.” And we just sat down on the bench there for about half an hour and just watched this crazy scene, like a circus, you know, people talking, coming in, the baba sitting there, you know. And then we left. It was great. There was a beautiful banyan tree just outside the little room, right on the banks of this river. So, he must’ve been, like, sitting under the tree for 50 years or so, you know. People started coming to him for this and that, and then they built him a room, a temple, and he just sits there. Fantastic. Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of beings like that all around. And when I was in this place called Amarkantak many years ago, the, the baba I was with was 163, and he was taking us through the jungle, and he was pointing out all these herbs and saying, “You know, this is a cure for this kind of cancer, and this is a cure for that, and this and that, and this and that.” And then there was these little small hills, and he said, “You see those hills?” And he said … I said, “Yeah.” He said, “They’re not hills. Inside that hill, it’s all crystal, and in the center, there’s a yogi who’s been meditating for thousands of years.” Wow. And there were a few of them, you know. He pointed to this one and that one. And then we were walking down the river, and we came to this little area that had a short fence around it, and it was a tiny little ashram, and there was this beautiful baba standing, sitting there, very old, long hair, and very thin, sitting very straight up. And we walked by, and we pranamed to him, and he pranamed to us, and somehow or other he recognized that this baba I was with, who he was. And he said, “Oh, I’m so happy to meet you. I’ve been wanting to meet you for so long,” and, you know, and he told us … He told us two things. He said, “I’ve been going into samadhi for so long these days that I told my devotees not to burn the body until the ants move in.” Okay. Because he goes, “Who knows?” He went weeks at a time. He may not be going … He was not breathing. He’s just gone, you know? And they’ll go, “Maybe he’s dead now? Or wait, did the ants move in? No, not yet. Okay, we’ll wait.” But then he said, “On full moon nights, he’s a … There’s a hill, you know… This is like a little valley with a river, right? And we’re walking down the river. So, on either side, there’s these kind of … So he said on full moon nights, he’s sitting in samadhi facing the river, but from up the hill behind him, he said these two beings kind of float down. One is a male, a yogi about 16 feet tall, and the other one’s a yogini, and she was about 12 feet tall, and they silently float down. And as they pass where the ashram is, they open his eyes so he can see them, and they go down all the way to the river and bathe, and he’s sitting there, you know. And then they come back, and as soon as they pass him, his eyes close again. And he goes back into samadhi. They open his eyes so he can have their darshan. You know, India. It’s just like, what is going on here? Audience Member:  You got some real good LSD. KD: Say what? Audience Member: I said you got some real good LSD. KD: Yeah. Yeah, so things like that. Q: So, speaking of samadhi… KD:  Where are you? Where are you? Oh, hi. Q: In Flow of Grace, I think you talked about somebody who would, who went in front of you in samadhi, and you said you experienced it once while on LSD and the second time without it. But have you experienced it since then, and can you describe what does going into samadhi and what does that feeling even mean? KD: What, somebody, you’re talking about somebody else? Q: Yeah, in Flow of Grace- Yeah … you said somebody in front of you was teaching you how to go in to meditate and then go into samadhi, and they actually just, like- KD: No, no. Mr. Tiwari was teaching me a prayerd, and he just went into samadhi singing it … Q: Ah. KD: Yeah, that’s it. Okay, Q: Ok, sorry. So can you describe, like- KD: No … what does that mean? I don’t know what it means. I’ve never been there myself, so what can I tell you? Q: But you said you did, right? Like, once, what- KD: Maybe I lied. I don’t know. Or maybe I’m lying now, I don’t know. Q: You’re lying now. KD: You think so? No, first of all, I don’t know. I don’t know what samadhi is. No. I don’t. I’ve had some experiences, but mostly they’re not,  describable, actually. There’s been times when I’ve completely disappeared, as far as I know. And then, but I’m still here, so I couldn’t have completely disappeared. So, I don’t know what to tell you. Q: What does disappearing mean? Like, what do you mean when you say, you know, “I completely dis-” KD: You could say “unconscious.” You could say “unconscious,” but it’s not really exactly what it was. But it felt like, kind of… It’s, like, not… It’s like when you go to sleep, but you’re not asleep. You see, that’s why I don’t talk about it. It doesn’t make any sense. Q: Does it happen while doing, the kirtan? KD: It doesn’t happen while driving, as far as I know. Q: Does it happen while doing kirtan? KD: I don’t know. I don’t know what happens when I do kirtan. I’m doing kirtan. You want me to think about it? I won’t. People ask me a lot of times, “What is it, what do you feel when you sing?” How the fuck am I supposed to know? I’m singing. I’m not writing down what happened… what’s happening. Whatever happens, I just let it go. I don’t make a note. Hello, goodbye, Ram, that’s it. And then, but you’re here, that’s the difference. You’re more present. You’re aware of the sound of the name, and, you know, that the bass player’s fucking up again. All kinds of things happening. He can take it. Hello. I woke him up. So, yeah. When you chant, anything you think, feel, if it’s not the name, you just let it go. Because, you see,  intellectually, it doesn’t make any sense, because when I say if it’s not the name… okay, the name. But the implication is that that’s just another thing, but it isn’t. That’s the problem with words. You come back home to yourself through the sound of the name, and when you’re home, you’re at ease. Anything can come and go. It makes no difference. You’re home. So, thoughts, emotions, memories, fears, all kinds of things come, but they come and they go. They just flow through. They’re not thinking you. It’s different. It’s just, it’s a figure-ground relationship change, in a sense. You see, this is why we don’t talk about it, because now you’ll think about it while you’re singing. And you’ll think you really should be thinking about it, but you shouldn’t be. You just do it, and whatever you’re thinking, let it go. That’s all. But we think so quickly. There’s so many thoughts that we let go, but we’re still thinking. But that’s why you just keep coming back to the sound of the name. Either outside or inside, it’s still a sound. The silent name is always going on within us, but we have to tune to that. Q: What is the role of other people in all of this? What KD: There are no other people. Q: Well- KD: Okay … Q: We can react to people, we can need people, we can be each other. And in this process that you’re talking about, I wonder how you experience the people around you in the practice. KD: You know, Ram Dass used to talk a lot about roles and souls. Basically, when you say “people,” there’s two levels to “people.” There’s the role of the person, who the person thinks they are. And then there’s the soul. And the soul is the same in every being. There’s no difference between souls. Soul is pure light, pure clarity, pure being, pure awareness. That’s the same in everyone. What’s different is what’s laid over that. So, as we, as you go through your sadhana, your practice, what you see in other people changes, and also what you see in yourself changes. And so how you relate to the people that enter your awareness changes, too. If you’re seeing souls, which is a very advanced state, you’re experiencing oneness, and you might be able to see what that person thinks, who they think they are. But you’re not fooled by that because you see their essence. But until you see your own essence, you can’t see anybody else’s essence. You’re just projecting. But when your essence is open, or when the mirror of the heart is clear of its stuff, then what’s reflected is accurate and deeper than the stuff, because… So, at first, we are always in reaction mode to other people’s stuff. Our stuff doesn’t like your stuff, you know. “But I love you, but my stuff really doesn’t like your stuff, so get the fuck out of here.” But, as you get less attached and identify with your own stuff, you see other people differently. You experience things differently. People who were bothersome before, it doesn’t bother you quite that way. Or who you identified as something before, you don’t see them the same way. You’re not stuck in that reactive mode. It opens up, and there’s much more space in it, and you could call that love. There’s much more acceptance. You can see people’s pain. You can see why they do what they do to each other and themselves, and it opens your own heart, and you no longer judge and react against that because you see how people, what they do, and you see yourself. You know? Okay, we’re pretty… We think we’re on the path. We’re making some effort. All the people… This is a very small percentage of people on the planet doing this. Look what they’re doing. It’s horrific. But they can’t help themselves, and that’s horrific. It’s terrible. But we can barely help ourselves once in a while, and yet we’re ready to judge other people and react all the time. Right? So… not easy. That’s why we cultivate things like kindness and compassion and loving kindness, because something’s going be going on in there all the time. If we just allow those habitual reactive things to go on unimpeded, they just create more of that. So, we try to, through practice, we try to kind of sneak in a little kindness, sneak in a little compassion. We kind of develop different habits of thinking, because it’s just habits all the time. Mindless, stupid, habitual, reactive habits. That’s how we go through the day, most of us, our whole lives. So, what we want to do is create different habits that will bring to us what we want, will free us from that other stuff. That’s what cultivating compassion is about, that’s what loving kindness practice is about, that’s what the repetition of the name is about. Reminding us to come home again and again. Q: Hello. KD: Hi. Q:  I have a question about,  just the … I guess it’s more like a pragmatic question about arriving at the place that you were just speaking of in yourself, emptying your mind. We have the same thoughts over and over again every day. You know, tens of thousands that are the same as the day before, and letting that go has been really a lot of work for me for many years. And being able to just listen, you know, to nothing. My journey has been through, I think, chanting more than anything, aside from breathwork. And so, I’m just wondering, I don’t know how much breathwork you’ve done in your work with chanting, and how that relates, and if you have any advice on how breathwork and chanting work together, physically as well as just in the sense of letting go. For me, it’s been very helpful,  more so than what the deities mean and- KD: So, when, when you mean breathwork, what are you talking about? Q: Well, when we’re chanting back and forth, doing breath holds, like really breathing in, belly breathing, and diaphragmatic breathing, and then holding when, bringing it to the top when, when you are singing, and then out breath when, when we’re chanting outwards- and using the breath to, you know, deepen the chant and allow the thoughts to stop. And just how … has that practice worked for you? Do you know … Like, what do you know about that, and how that works together? KD: I know it ain’t chanting. That’s all I can tell you. Q: You might just do it naturally, because you’re- KD: Yeah, I’m not … I don’t think about that. But breathwork, you can suppress thoughts by calming them, the breathing. But they … You don’t kill them, they just come back. Through the name, you can actually remove the triggers for those thoughts. It’s a different practice. but pranayama is very useful in calming … It can calm the mind and the thoughts, slow down the thoughts, and give you a little hit. But there’s no destruction of the thinking mechanism or the triggers for those thoughts. It’s temporary, very temporary. But the name is different. That’s what they say. I can’t prove it to you. Q: Thank you. KD: But that’s what they say. So, whatever happens, I mean, if you’re chanting the way I chant,  I don’t think about anything. I don’t worry about what my breath is doing. I might have to worry about what my stomach is doing, depending on where I’ve been, but, you know, because I have to sing for two more hours before I can get to a bathroom, so. But other than that, it’s pretty much, you know, I don’t really think about it. So, I would, I mean, if you’re … I would experiment a little bit without thinking about breath. Because if you’re thinking about the breath, you’re not remembering the name. You can’t … The mind cannot do two … It’s called “mind moments.” There’s, like, millions of mind moments in the blink of an eye, and the mind can only be in one place at a time, even though it’s, like, a billionth of a second. So, if you’re thinking about breath, you’re not aware of the name while you’re thinking about the breath. You might think you are, but this is a Buddhist, you know, Abhidharma, the Buddhist psychology. They, they, you know, they got it together. They tell you. So, if you’re thinking about the breath, then you’re, you’re not aware of the sound of the name. So, you might want to just experiment a little bit and see how it goes. Q: Thank you. Appreciate it. Q:  So, when you were with Maharajji, or the entire group was with Maharajji, did anyone ever ask this question? That, like, you know, in, let’s say in the year 1500, the human population was less than a billion. Now we are at eight billion. KD: In 1970, it was 500, 500 million. Now it’s, it’s over a billion. In 1970 it was- 1970, we got there to India. Q: You were probably at four-point-some billion, I’m pretty sure. KD: Oh, the world’s population. World’s population. I’m talking about India. Yeah. Q: No, no, no. Yeah. Not India. KD: Sorry. Q: So did anyone ask him, like, what the- KD: No. Like, what- Nobody asked him anything. The only thing we wanted to know is- are you, are you going away? And if you’re going away, when are you coming back? Or how long can we spend with you today? That’s all. I mean, we had no other interest in the universe other than staying close to that man. Q: No, but the question about what are we… just going be born and we’re going just die and? KD: No. Did you ever fall in love?   Just by mistake, you might have fallen in love once. Q: Yeah, okay. KD: Did you ask that person, you know, what they ate for breakfast? You don’t give a shit what they ate for breakfast. You just want to be with them, and that’s what it was like with him. We didn’t care about anything. We didn’t care about ourselves. We didn’t care about our families. We didn’t care about anybody. We just wanted to be in that presence, in that love, period. That’s it. Q: Okay. KD: Yeah, we didn’t ask him anything. He wouldn’t have told us anyway. Even though he knew everything, he wouldn’t tell us. But we didn’t care. Q: Right. I, I could have told him that. KD: You could’ve. Why didn’t he ask you? Q: Yeah. So, I’m a person who’s had no profound experiences, no enlightenment. I don’t believe in much. I don’t buy into gods and gurus and all that stuff. KD: You, you believe all that stuff you just said? Q: I don’t- Not really. Not really. KD: Thank you. Q: Belief is my, is… Belief is very difficult for me to believe in anything, so… KD: You think so, but you believe who you think you are. Q: Well, you know, yeah, right. You can keep you know, going back and back in that. Why not? Yeah, I know, but where do you end up? And what do you do? KD: Right here. Q: You gotta take care of the kids. You gotta eat. You gotta drive the car. You gotta work, right? KD: You wind up completely, it’s called Sat-Chit-Ananda. That’s where you wind up. Sat-Chit-Ananda. And you can still stop at the red and go on the green. Q: What is Sat-Chit-Ananda again? KD: Truth, consciousness, bliss. Truth, consciousness, bliss, awareness, reality, awareness … Q: The bliss, the bliss is the, that’s the thing I don’t get a lot of. You know, because to me, life- KD: Sorry to hear that … Q: you know, life, life is- KD: Try some drugs … Q: Well, like you, it’s been a while, but I’m thinking about it again. KD: I keep thinking maybe I should take some acid, you know, and then I thought-  My arms and legs will probably fall off. I have no idea what’ll happen Yeah. I think I’ll wait. Q: So I, I guess the question is when you, you have these, you know, 1% of life is wonderful, 1% of life is really, really bad. The rest of it is just kind of eh, meh, as they say.  I- KD: You sure of those percentages? Q: I didn’t do a scientific study. KD: Yeah, I figured. Q: You know, I’m just, you know, spitballing.  So even you, you seem to somehow, continue on and maintain both a sense of humor and a sense of love, or a sense of interest in life. How do you do that? KD: I meet people like you. I’m an atheist, I think. I don’t believe anything I haven’t experienced myself. I allow that it might be possible, but unless I experience it myself, I don’t believe it. I don’t fully accept it. I mean, I allow … Like, I don’t know what Maharajji’s experience is, but I know what my experience of him is, and that I believe. That, why not believe that? I have that. That, you know, so … But that leads me to a lot of other things, because if that’s possible, then there are a lot of other things that are possible. I may not be tasting that at the moment, but I can allow for the possibility that it’s in there, and it’s only a question of my ripening, so to speak, before I can actually taste it. And so, I do what I can do to help that ripening process, take my heart out into the sun as much as I can. It takes a lot of faith. Say what? Q: It takes a lot of faith. KD: I don’t think so. Right? What are the options? What are the alternatives? Q: Well, get old and die anyway, so I might as well do what I want. KD: Yeah. I mean, Faith, I don’t have faith. I have my experience. My experience. I believe my… I know what I know, and I … But I don’t know what I don’t know, and I don’t pretend to know what I don’t know. But what I do know is enough for me. So that’s pretty much it. You know, it took a lot of suffering to get to that place. 20 years I didn’t sing. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. So, I paid for my stupidity. I paid for my darkness, and I know I did, so I don’t have to keep paying for that. The bill is paid. Mostly. There’s still a bunch of bills in the mail, I think. But they don’t have the right address. Q: Thank you.  First of all, thank you so much for your gift of music that has brought me to my practice and my mat for  decades. Thank you. KD: I thought you were going say, “Brought me to my knees.” Q: And that, yes, it has. So, thank you for that.  So,  my mother is turning 90, and I’ve found in the past few years this incredible new relationship that I have with her softening, I think sort of becoming nobody. And we spend a lot of time with Ma… laying next to her. She has peripheral neuropathy, but her brain is completely there. So, I just kind of almost spoon with her and read- KD: No dementia? Q: No dementia, and she’s so sharp.  She can walk, but mostly she likes to lay around, and I read from a lot of these, you know, your books or Ram Dass books. I read her little sections and try to help her, you know, to just have some philosophy about what’s coming for her. But, because she doesn’t mind talking about it, talking about death. But for me,  she’s almost become, like, a little guru to me. Like, I just want to be by her side, and even being here this weekend is hard for me not to be with her, because I don’t know when she’s going go. And I have this incredible fear building that I’m going not be there or not have spent enough time, or I’m teaching too many yoga classes. Well, why am I doing that? I should be laying by my mom. And, so I just wanted to… My question is, I know you experienced such an incredible deep loss when Maharajji left his body, and it took a while for you to find that. And I’m just trying to prepare myself, I guess, for as much as I read and know, that the soul is different than the body, I’ve– getting closer and closer to this, like, feeling of her body near me and feeling like it’s going… What’s, what… How am I going deal with that loss? So, I just thought you might be able to- KD: Well, you’re dealing with it the way you’re going deal with it. It’s not going… You’re going have regret. You’re going have sadness. You’re going have all the things you’re feeling right now. So, if you allow yourself to enjoy these moments more, you’ll have less regret later that you didn’t, right?  But, you know, it’s… You know, how you live is how you die. And, the only thing we take with us is our state of mind. So that’s what we need to work on while we’re here, and we can. And what we share with other people also as they’re transitioning is, is our, our state of mind. So, the more you can kind of accept who you are and the inevitability of all the change, it’ll be- make it easier for her, too. She feels your tension. She feels your fear. So,yeah. Q: I think it’s also really interesting that it’s taken this long for all the judgment and all the expectations and approval and all that stuff from child to parent. I don’t care how old you are, you still feel like you want to do that for your parent. And it’s all, like, melted away now, and there’s this beauty of this relationship. And I guess I feel like this process is helping me to do that now in my life- and not wait till I’m in my last couple years of my life- where I can just be so loving and accepting. So that’s- that’s been really helpful. KD: Also, your mother’s probably lost a lot of her stuff, too, you know? Her attachment to her stuff and identification with that stuff, so that helps. So, there’s less, you know, stuff there. Parents. Who invented parents? Q: Well, my lesson is the earlier you can let go of that stuff- the better parent. And not that my parents weren’t good parents, but I certainly feel like the best relationship now when I barely have any time left- because they’re losing all that attachment, so… KD: Well, be thankful for what you do have. Gratitude is a really big thing. Most people don’t get this. Either their parents go right away while they’re still alienated from them or angry at them or something else. So, you have this opportunity. So, whether you’re … And don’t give yourself such a hard time about, “Oh, I’m not doing the best I can.” You’re doing the best you can. It’s okay. Be grateful for it. Q: Thank you Q: I have another question.  So, when I was moving from Singapore, I had a few options, right? So, the options were, I could go to Germany, to US, or back to India. One reason why I moved to US is because I was just intrigued by, you know, yourself and Ram Dass. I mean, they come from such a different culture, and still the internal journey you must have gone through, to be there in India and to connect and kind of articulate the wisdom. I just wanted to get a feel of what the culture here is firsthand. KD: For me, Western culture is totally alien. I have no idea what it’s about. I’m at home in India. I was … The minute my feet hit the ground, I went, “Oh, finally. Made it.” Q: In the process of making that decision, you know, when I was thinking of, should I move back to India,  the answer I was getting was I was not ready. KD: Bad internet. It’s getting better. Q: I felt that I had to be kind of much more mature in my practice before I could get back, because just the day-to-day mundane things that happen, I didn’t feel I was prepared for it. Even if there was a lot happening, like my mother was going through cancer and stuff, but somehow I wanted to be on this journey before I could get back. So now when I think … I mean, I’ve kind of at least known what it feels like to be here and what, you know, your journey must have been.  Now when I think about, you know, when am I going to go back to India, I mean, I do have that longing, but my struggle is to understand whether, India symbolizes for me, going back to my past, or does it really symbolize going back to my roots? I really struggle with that and… KD: Only you know. Nobody can tell you. This is the path, finding out what to do and figuring it out. That’s the whole path. You have to … Only you can do that. That’s the good news, by the way. Even Maharajji never told us what to do, except go away. And he knew everything. If you don’t figure it out yourself, it won’t be real. He never told me to sing with people. If he had told me to sing with people, 100% guaranteed I wouldn’t be doing it. Really. It’s just, I’m that way. You tell me to stand up, I sit down. That’s another Springsteen song.  It had to come from inside. It had to be what I needed to do for me. The whole path is just figuring out how to live your life in a good way. What else could it be? Create as little suffering for yourself and others as you can. That’s the second bump. But first of all, we have to figure out how to feed ourselves, how to live a good life, how to do what we want to do. Nobody told us we can do what we want to do. It’s kind of a big thing to learn how to do what you want to do. First, you have to figure out what that is, and the only way you figure that out is making mistakes, one after the other, after the other, till you’re battered and bruised, and finally you go, “Oh, wait a second. Yeah.”  And then something happens and it’s all good. The struggle is what it’s about. It’s supposed to be that way.  Otherwise, you’d never know when there’s no struggle. Q: Hi. This, I feel like this is maybe, I’m going ask a practical question, but in my mind it probably isn’t practical. I don’t know. I’ve been trying to plant seeds for like, 20 years, since I became aware of the ability to do so. But recently I was so triggered and, like, in my fear mind that I lost connection to all of that. And- KD: So, what are you doing here? Q: I’m taking notes.  And literally you said, through the name- KD: Don’t forget to plant the notes Q: Through the name you can remove the triggers for those thoughts.  I mean, what is … Can you just talk more about that? Like, what does that look like? KD: No. You have to keep repeating the name, to find out what it means. Q: But if those are the seeds, it’s like- KD: Well, you don’t stand there. You don’t go, “I just planted the seed. They’re not growing. It’s been 32 seconds. What the fuck is going on here?  Hey, grow goddammit.” Q: I mean, I should have some trees by now. Like, what … You know? KD: Oh, yeah. You say so. Right. When you plant a seed. You don’t stand over it and, “What the fuck? What you…” Q: Well, I’m beating myself up over it. KD: Just keep planting the seed.  Yeah. So, you’re planting those seeds too. That’s nice. But it’s okay, because the more aware you are of it, the more shallow those seeds are planted, the easier they die, so to speak. But it’s not, we don’t just stop all of a sudden killing ourselves, but we don’t complete the job that easily. We live to plant more seeds. But the other part of it, you plant the seeds and then you live your life. You don’t stand there waiting for them to grow. You just do your practice, and you live your life. That’s all. You don’t demand that your practice make you happy. You don’t demand that your practice give you this. You don’t demand anything from your practice. The doing of the practice is enough. But we don’t like that, because we want this and we want that, and we want this, and we want that. That’s not what it’s about. And the motivation that you have, all the stuff you bring to every moment, that also goes with the seeds. So, your fear, the anxiety, the wanting this, the wanting that, that goes in there with the seed too. Everything goes into that So that’s why you just keep letting go and coming back. That’s a seed. That’s the seed. The letting go is the seed. But that’s … It’s not like, “Okay, I’m planting a seed now.” No. You just let go, and you come back to the sound of the name. That’s it. That’s how the seed gets planted, the seed of coming home, coming back. it doesn’t say what it’s going feel like. It doesn’t say how long it’s going last. Doesn’t say if somebody’s going pat you on the back. Doesn’t say if your hair’s going uncurl itself or curl itself at that point. It just says, boop, you’re back, and then you’re gone again. So, the rest of the day, what do you do? You just try to be, you know, you try not to hurt other people. You try to treat people the way you would like to be treated. You try to remember that next time you get cut off on the highway, and before you get your shotgun out of the back of the car. Right? That’s not easy to remember. But over time, there’s more space to it, more space. Less reactiveness, more spaciousness, more presence. Don’t give yourself such a hard time. Q: I’ll try. KD: If you can help it, but you can’t help it, so might as well enjoy it then. Oh, there she goes again. Oh. Why are you … Oh, go- it’s okay. You can do that. Yeah. Invite it in. Say, “Oh, you’re back again. Didn’t you just leave?” “Okay, have some tea. What did you have last time? Here.” You know. Just keep noticing how they go, they come, they go, they come, they go, they come. And through the day you can notice, too. You don’t have to write it down. But you just can see how reactive you get, you know? But then there’s another reaction on top of that, judging yourself. That’s the stuff that really stings, because we’re so programmed to judge ourselves. But if, if we didn’t judge ourselves, if we didn’t have that internal dialogue, guess what?  There’d be no place in the whole universe where it was. It’d be nowhere. So, if you don’t have that thought, it doesn’t exist anywhere. We’re doing it to ourselves, and that’s the good news because if we’re doing it to ourselves, we can stop doing it to ourselves. Nobody else is doing it to us, regardless of what brought us to that point, the external realities. That’s already in the past. This is this moment, and it’s still going on. That’s the good news, believe it or not. If you didn’t see it, you just keep piling more shit on. But when you see it, some of the shit falls off to the side. Some percentage. Yeah. So, just try to be good to people, and try to notice other people. You know, like the cashier at the supermarket. Look at the person. You can see their whole life. It’s scary. You know?  Walk down the aisles of the supermarket, nobody’s home. You won’t see one present person, I guarantee you. It’s like empty space. Grabbing stuff up, throwing it in the cart, nobody’s there. These days, they’re probably listening to a podcast of Krishna Das, thinking that they’re really present. Q: I first wanted to thank everyone who’s asked their really intimate questions, because I think I dismiss my own. Or I say, “Oh,” like, “I don’t need an answer from KD. I’ll find it inside.”  And yet I still really love listening to your answers, so thank you, everybody, for asking those questions. And the question I permit myself to ask feels really light.  You know, when I sit and I listen to the cello or the violin or the bass, I often wonder … I’m really new to listening and knowing anything about you. It’s just been about a year, and I wonder, how has it happened that you’ve kind of collected either the instruments or the specific people to play with you? How has that evolved, or … KD: I have no fucking idea where these people came from. I wonder how they got here. I didn’t even know who would be here, actually, to tell you the truth, this week, or whatever this is. Just bad luck, I guess, you know? You know, actually, I love playing with these folks very much. It’s not easy to play with me, really, actually. Because it’s so much not about the music, that if somebody’s playing is more about the music, it just won’t work. You feel it. It gets too self-involved. So, everybody agrees to dumb down to my level. And they play with me. They sign the contract. “I agree to dumb down for three hours every night that we play.” So yeah, I mean, first of all, I don’t, don’t know what I’m going play, so I can’t tell them beforehand, mostly. It’s very beautiful. Their dedication is to the practice, you know. They’re bringing their music to the practice. It’s not about the music, and so that’s really great. Q: Thanks. Q: So, after that question, are there things that you do when you’re singing all day every day or don’t do to- KD: I don’t sing every day, all day. That’s the first thing I don’t do. Q: What do you do to preserve your voice or keep it there or- KD: Nothing. Q: You don’t do it. KD: Sometimes if I remember, I try to warm up a little bit before I sing. But I never remember. So sometimes I do. If I’m really out on the road singing a lot every night or every other night, I try to remember to warm up a little bit. I actually had to learn how to sing from an opera singer. I went to this, … My … I was having a problem with my throat. I went to this doctor, and he said, “Oh, you have … You, you’re singing from too low in your throat.” I was singing like rock and roll, you know? So, he had me take vocal lessons from this woman who’s a opera singer, and she taught me how to sing up higher in the throat.  So, without pushing. So I had to learn how to do that, or else I wouldn’t be singing anymore. I forgot about that, but that actually happened. Like this. You know, that kind of shit. On that note, see you later. The post Call and Response Podcast Special Edition | Removing the Triggers [https://krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/call-and-response-podcast-special-edition-removing-the-triggers/] appeared first on Krishna Das [https://krishnadas.com].

Call and Response Podcast Special Edition | Saint Junky

Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das | Special Edition – Saint Junky This special edition comes with a special offer from our friends at SoHum Mountain Healing Resort ~ When life moves too fast, the body and heart begin to whisper for rest. Ayurveda is the science of life, teaching us how to live in balance with our true nature. SoHum mountain healing resort offers Ayurvedic Pancha Karma detoxification retreats in a calm, supportive environment. You can learn more at SoHumhealing.com [https://sohumhealing.com/] and use the code KrishnaDasPK2026 for $500 off on your PanchaKarma retreat! “When we sit down to chant, the biggest obstacles are our expectations. We think something’s supposed to happen. Problem is, it already happened. We’re here, but we don’t know it. So, what we’re trying to do is come back home. We’re not looking for any particular kind of experience. You might be looking for bliss or ecstasy, but that actually might be just running away from suffering. And you can’t run away from things, nor can you hold onto things.” – Krishna Das Cover photo: Lonnie Raffray TRANSCRIPT:  I remember when Ram Dass, we were at Brighton Bush. This is a long time ago. Soon after the stroke, a few years after the stroke he decided that he would try to talk with a group without smoking dope for the first time in 60 years, or something like that. So he was in total panic, right? “What am I going to say? What do I do?” You know? I say, “Look, just go out and say, ‘we will sit in silence until someone has something to say.’” And he said, “oh, that’ll never work.” I said, “just try it. Just try it.” So, he came out and he said, “we will sit in silence until someone has something…” Everyone, all the hands went up like in about a quarter of a second. He was worried that, you know, nobody would say anything. So, could be nappy time for the Das, too. You never know. Q: So you didn’t smoke today? KD: Huh? Did I smoke today? I, not only did I not smoke today, it’s probably been about 40 years or maybe more… What am I talking about? 50 years. Hi. Q: Hi.  I hope this isn’t too silly, but… KD: I hope it is. Turn it up. If it’s silly, I really want to hear it. Q: Okay. I’ve always wondered, after Maharajji gave you the orders to sing, what you sounded like when you first started. KD: You’ll never know. I just… Q: Does she know? You know? KD: No, she doesn’t know. Q: Maybe she can do an impression KD: Somewhere, actually… the first thing I recorded was probably about a year and a half or two years before One Track Heart was recorded. We recorded it out in Taos, New Mexico, and how should I put it? It’s cringe-worthy. It’s so horrible. I can’t even bear to think about it. And even…. you don’t want to hear all this shit. Oh, you do? I even don’t like One Track Heart. I’m sorry. Except for the Devi Puja was very good. Because I can hear my mind, you see> I was thinking, how do you do this? What should I do? And I could hear my mind. Every time I listen to that, it’s like, ooh. But by Pilgrim Heart, that was a whole other thing. And then from then on, God knows what it is, I hope. So, yeah. There’s just so much less in between my ears these days. It’s scary sometimes. Anybody else? Yeah. It’s been a strange… long, strange trip. I mean, Ram Dass and I, in Maui, after breakfast, we would sit at the table together for hours and hours. Everybody else would go away, and we’d just kind of sit in silence, and talk, then silence, then talk. So, one day I turned the phone on… a recording and we sat there for hours. So, when it was over, I said, “you know, I recorded this.” And he goes, “Oh.” I said, “What should I call it?” He said, call it, “Dick And Jeff’s journey to,” what did he say… Oh, “Dick and Jeff’s journey to Soul Land.” Yeah, what a journey. Q: Hello, Krishna Das. I’ve waited 20 years to say this. You’re on my bucket list and I’m sorry, I’m going to tell everybody how old you are right now, but… KD: Don’t be sorry. I’m still alive. Be sorry if I wasn’t. Q: Last year when I realized you were 75, I knew I had to come and see you after 20 years. Because I’m like, “he might be gone!” KD: I’ve got at least 20 minutes left. Q: I wanted to give you a hug. I’m like, “oh my God, you’re still alive. Thank you for breathing. Thank you for continuing to breathe. I know it’s an effort, but make that effort.” KD: I’m actually not any more alive than I was before I had this body, but that’s okay. Q: That’s good. That’s good. Actually, I have a question. I’ve been studying Sikhism, I’m sorry, and I noticed that the name’s Krishna Das… KD: I’m sorry. No, I’m just teasing. Q: Krishna Das and Ram Dass. I noticed that Ros. Was a name that came from the Sikh tradition and I was wondering if … KD: It didn’t come from the Sikh tradition. It just means servant of God. It’s from all the traditions. Q: Okay. KD: All the same. There is Guru Ram Dass, of course, in the Sikh tradition. But the name itself is, it’s just like John or Frank or Tony in English. Q: So, there wasn’t like a significance to why Neem Karoli Baba named you guys Krishna Das and Ram Dass? KD: Well, the significance is that Maharajji is Hanuman. And that’s the Ram, the tradition of Ram, and Das means “servant.” Hanuman is the servant. So, part of that lineage. So Dasses and the non Dasses are all part of that with Maharajji. Q: Thank you. KD: You’re welcome. Was that worth 20 years waiting? Q: One of them, one of the things. Just being in front of you is enough. KD: Oh, really? He can’t pay for that. I mean, how do you get something like that? Q: So, God bless you. Thank you for all your music. Thank you for a lifetime of music. You’ve changed my life, and you’ll continue to change my life for the rest of my life, so I appreciate it. Q: I was introduced to your chanting when I was 12 years old, and then… KD: two years ago? Q: no, no. Oh no, no. 15. And then about five years later I got involved, heavily involved in a spiritual institution where I did kirtan a lot, both leading and just being in the audience, responding, but it was an environment where there was, it was just very damaging and destructive and there was a lot of ego and spiritual bypassing. And now that I’m out of it, I’m feeling that really damaged my relationship to the holy names of all kinds. And I still want, of course, to cultivate a relationship with them in my heart. But as I’m starting to be exposed to kirtan outside of that environment that I was in, I’m just feeling all of the blockages. And I’m wondering if you have any suggestions or advice on how to…yeah… repair that KD: First of all, let’s just think about chanting for a second. When we sit down to chant, the biggest obstacles are our expectations. We think something’s supposed to happen. Problem is, it already happened. We’re here, but we don’t know it. So, what we’re trying to do is come back home. We’re not looking for any particular kind of experience. You might be looking for bliss or ecstasy, but that actually might be just running away from suffering. And you can’t run away from things, nor can you hold onto things. So, when you sit down to chant or remember the name, silently or outwardly, you just… when you notice your thinking, whether it’s positive or negative, or fantasy or fear, you notice it, and you come back to the name. You see, you can always come back. That’s the beauty of the name. You can always come back from whatever you’re thinking. You have to notice that you’re thinking. So, you notice you’re stuck. You have all these negative stories that are going on. Okay, so come back. That’s all you have to do. And the more you do that, the more often we come back, the less glued we are to those stories, and then they’ll eventually, they just come through like Indian food. Right through. But they call it practice for a reason. It’s a repetition of training ourselves to let go again and again. And you might think, “oh, it’s unfortunate that I have all this negativity about the name,” but it doesn’t matter what the negativity is about. It’s not really about the name. It’s about your experience with that group and the names involved with that. But it doesn’t really matter what the subject matter is of the negativity. As soon as you notice that you’re stuck, you’re actually not stuck at that moment. I mean, the mist of the stuck might be around, but you actually, if you’re noticing, you’re no longer that stuck. That’s when you rededicate yourself just to the sound of the name. You don’t push it away and you don’t grab onto the name. You just remember it. You see, inside, everything’s totally cool. It’s just the next bump out, we’re totally fucked. Everybody’s the same, you see. It doesn’t matter what the subject matter is. Everybody’s screwed up, one thing or another, but the letting go is exactly the same for everybody. And here’s the other thing. So, you sit down, you’re going to practice and you, you know, all of a sudden, you’ve got all this stuff going on, and then you notice it. How did that happen? That you noticed you were stuck or that you noticed you were thinking? You woke up for a second. Now nothing can happen without a cause. Can the cause of waking up be “asleepness?” No. The cause of waking up can only be that we planted seeds of waking up previously. So, that’s already working. Underneath what you think you are and what you think you’re doing, there’s a whole karmic flow going on. So, you just keep letting go into that again and again, and you don’t try to push away the negativity. Look at it. Allow it to be. You can really learn a lot. You know, like one of the lamas I study with talks about the handshake practice. He says, “well, okay, you see something comes in, like some negative thing, a negative feeling, and you go, ‘oh, hi. How you doing? I know you, yeah, you weren’t you here just 10 minutes ago? I think you were, yeah. You know,’ so you say, ‘come on, come on in. Have a cup of tea. What do you like in your tea? Poison. Okay, I got some of that. Oh, okay. Never mind. I won’t give you poison. Just come in, have some something. How about sugar? That’s pretty bad for you.’” But the thing is, don’t be afraid. You’re here. Whatever happened, happened, but you’re still here. You’re here now, and 10 minutes from now you’ll still be here now. And tomorrow and next week you’ll be here now. So, it’s just a matter of remembering to let go, and just be. Don’t try to make something happen. It  already happened, and nothing we can create in our minds or you know, “I want this kind of feeling. I want to have this.” None that could never last, because we created it. This is why Groucho Marx is my guru. He used to say, “I’ll never join any club that I’m invited to to join.” And that’s perfect, because I don’t want to join anything I can create in my mind, or my emotions. It won’t last. But what last is what is here now, and what will always be right here now, which is our true nature, who we really are. So, it’s good. And then you have resentment for being stuck. But there’s a secret in that, and the secret is, the lesson of betrayal is trust. Not only other people’s betrayal, but we gave ourselves away. So that’s how we learn to trust. We forgive ourselves for being, how should we put it… assholes, and needy and greedy, and wanting this and wanting that, and all the reasons we would join any kind of group, and be attracted to that underneath the surface. We have to forgive ourselves for that, because it’s just like everybody, we’re just like everybody else. But the lesson that we learn, that’s imprinted on us from betraying our own hearts, is learning how to trust that heart, because that’s what you’re doing now. It’s just a little unfamiliar. That’s all. But that’s okay. Q: Thank you. KD: Yeah. I was in a cult myself, you know? So, I know what it’s like. Fun. Q: Thank you. Hi. KD: Hi. Q: Two things. One may be silly. And then the other one’s more practical. The first one is, I think I remember seeing or reading that Maharajji threw fruit at you. KD: Everybody. Q: Right. If you were thinking? KD: Anytime. Q: Anytime? KD: He needed no reason to throw fruit. He wasn’t throwing it at you. He was distributing Prasad in all directions, but if He wanted to, it could hit you right in the head, you know? Q: Okay. Maybe I misunderstood. KD: Yeah, it wasn’t a violent act. Q: Okay. Oh, because then, yeah, I wanted to ask if it worked. KD: Sometimes. No, it didn’t work. It could be a wake up call, you know, like bringing you back from outer space. Because you’re sitting in front of him thinking about, you know, some movie you saw back in New York three years ago. Boom. Q: Okay. KD: But very gentle. I mean, yeah. However, I once got hit in the heart with a hard unripe guava from about 50 yards away by by a baba who was 270 years old. Q: Wow. KD: He hit me, and I turned away from it, and I went, what? And he was so far away I could hardly see him. You know, there were like a thousand people there, like, you know, and Maharajji, you just kind of…. Q: Oh, okay. KD: Soft bananas. Usually not hard. Q: I’m going to update my visual. KD: Yeah. Okay. Okay. And the other question was, I have a family. I have three kids, and many people in my house and I don’t really have like a sanctuary that I couldn’t go to and do this. And so, and I’m from Iceland, so I… KD: That’s what the bathroom is for. Q: True. And I’m from Iceland and I do the Thursdays a lot. KD: Oh, I love Iceland. I’ve been there so many times. Did I see you there? Q: No. KD: No? I love it there. Q: I found you after. But, and so it’s at like midnight or something and sometimes or 11 at night. And so I’ll go for walks in the empty cold tundra with my dog and so I’m walking and moving when I’m listening and chanting. Is that okay? KD: Sure. Any, anytime you remember the name is good. Yeah. You’re planting a seed. You know, if you’re walking on a tight rope, 3000 feet off the ground, maybe you should pay attention more to the rope. But you know, if you fall, the name will be there.So that’s good. Q: Thank you. KD: Where, where in Iceland are you from? Q: I’m from the north, but I live in Reykjavik now. KD: Very good. I loved it there. Q: will you come back? KD: You know, this is a country that the government, they believe in gnomes and stuff like that, you know, and there’s these certain rock formations that they believe these gnomes live in. So, if the government’s building a road, they build the road around the foundation. Not like America where they destroy cities just to put a road up. You know? They move 50,000 people just to make a highway. In Iceland, they go around it like that.  It was so cool. Yeah, I had a great time there. I loved it. Was I there twice, or once? I don’t remember. Once maybe. Q: What were we like? KD: We were very nice. Q: I’ve just never seen a harmonium or anything like this there, so I was just curious. KD: This one group, this one spiritual group brought me over. But we sang, I sang in that beautiful new… I think it just built when I got there. Q: And will you come back? KD: Yeah. You know, it is. Iceland is amazing. We went down to the beach, it was like 110 degrees, and then we got into a car, and we drove maybe 15 minutes up to this canyon, and then we got into this machine. It had these paddles, but they’re like 15 feet wide, right? These big paddles going around like this, and we get up on this thing. And it starts going up the mountain. In 10 minutes we were in a blizzard and it was like 30 below. Unbelievable. We went up right into a glacier. It was extraordinary. Within like, you know, 10 minutes, you’re like on the beach, then you’re in a glacier. It was amazing. What a place. Yeah. Good. Q: Thank you. KD: Yeah. Nice place. I love that. Q: I have a Haman Chalisa question. Um, So I enjoy chanting, and like today I loved it, but a lot of times I mumble through certain parts because I just can’t pronounce everything. And when COVID hit, then you talked about the Hanuman Chalisa, I decided I really needed to learn it. That it would be important, but I really struggled with it, and it caused a lot of stress. Because I thought, “I need to learn this so I can find some peace and I, and I wasn’t.” And, so I think it was you that told the story about. Neem Karoli Baba put, that he put a song in someone’s head in India, and he was able to sing it and knew it perfectly. KD: Oh yeah, yeah. That was the Bhagavad Gita. Yeah. Q: And so I thought, you know, I’m going to ask if Neem Karoli Baba would put this in my head so I could just repeat it. And so I get down on my bicycle and I spin and I put like a YouTube of the Hanuman Chalisa, on or a cd and I just spin and I try to repeat it and learn it. And usually like I’ll listen to Nina’s,  because she has that nice long one. And normally another Nina one pops up, But this time the, the next one that popped up was Neem Karoli Baba, who I’ve never Googled. And he’s just going, “Ram Ram Ram.” And I thought, “I can do that.” You know, it kind of took me off the hook from learning it, and I feel like I can just “Ram Ram Ram.” And I was just wondering what your thoughts were. KD: My, my thoughts are you are the hook. If we could repeat the name constantly, we would be, but it’s not so easy. We have a lot of other stuff going on, habitual patterns of thought, et cetera, et cetera. And the Hanuman Chalisa is a practice that purifies the heart, and the effort that it takes to learn it…. Now, it doesn’t have to be memorized. Nobody said you had to memorize it. Okay? Carry on a little piece of paper. You know, it’s not a test. But the Chalisa itself, the practice, Maharajji gave us that practice. And if you read the Chalisa, the translation, you learn a lot about Hanuman, and about a lot of things. You know, and Maharajji said, “Go on saying your fake Ram Rams.  One of these days the real, your call will come and the real Ram will come.” So it’s not that you can just go Ram Ram… and that because we say Ram… But it’s said that the name and what is named, or God, are not different. But when we say “Ram,” you know, nothing happens. So, we don’t have that awareness. We’re not open that way. Our bandwidth is still too constrained. So, repetition of the name is also purifying. No question about it. And Maharajji just said, do it whether you feel any devotion or not. Whether you’re angry, whether you’re tired, whatever. Just do it. Because if you don’t do it, then what? You don’t plant seeds, nothing will grow. That being said, the practice of chanting the Hanuman Chalisa is very powerful, and it’s a direct connection with Maharajji, who is Hanuman himself. And so, if you want to learn it, there’s those two, you know, the Flow of Grace cd. And the second CD has every word or every phrase very slowly, easy to repeat. And you can just do it, just do it a thousand times. You’ll know it, it doesn’t have to be memorized. It’s just some kind of weird trip that we do to ourselves. Q: Okay so it’s okay just to keep repeating it with you on the cd. KD: Of course it’s okay. Right. Better than raping and killing, right?  Then? Q: My name’s Peter, and I’m kind of on this almost opposite journey of everybody else where I’m a Gen Z. So, I’m kind of very young, especially among this group, and I don’t have, sorry… KD: Gen Z? What happens after z? You start back at A? Q: And I’m sorry if I offended anybody. I just… KD: I don’t even know what language you’re talking Go ahead, go ahead. Q: So I’m in this specific situation where I feel a strong calling towards service and towards kind of a spiritual path. And that’s very new towards my family and specifically even me. And I feel this calling towards specifically service in any way I can find it, but I don’t see many outlets in my, my current life to find that. And I always hear Ram Dass talking about the classic “be here now” and your next step is always right in front of you. But that can be a little hard to find and especially when there’s, there’s so many paths, especially for the younger generation to go, and there’s so many needs of this world when it comes to different societies, and I was wondering if you had any help with the ability to find that path when it comes to specifically a spiritual practice, but also just a pragmatic way to live life, I guess. KD: Whatever else you do, sooner or later you’re going to have to calm your mind down. So, start there, see what happens. And there’s a million different practices to do that. You can just simply watch your breath come in and out. And if you do it well enough, you know, you can get enlightened just with that. But start somewhere. I mean, start practicing calming yourself down a little bit, you know, and then see how things go. See what shows up in your life. I mean, the more open you are and receptive, the more you become aware of what shows up. A lot of things are there that you’re not aware of right around the corner. You know, Krishna could be living next door, but until you look, you never see. Actually, he is. He’s actually living in your house, as you. Yeah. So, you know, this is what’s called life and living. It happens. So, according to what you want in life and how you greet every day and every moment, you see what happens. It’s exciting. Sometimes it’s very depressing, but that’s what’s called an emotion. Let it go. Come back to your breath. Don’t believe what you think. Okay? That’s the definition of insanity. We all believe what we think. Isn’t that crazy? I mean, there’s no reason for us to believe what we think, but we do. And I feel like shit today. Why? Why did I think that? I don’t feel like shit. Why did I think I did? That’s weird. Okay, but calm your ass down. That’s the main thing. Every day. Just a couple of minutes at first, right? If you try too hard, if you ruin everything. Just chill. You know? Three minutes, four minutes. Set a timer so you don’t sit there too long. Maybe an alarm clock to wake you up when you fall asleep in 30 seconds. Q: Thank you. KD: Yeah. Oh, good advice. Really. Q: Hi. I wonder if you could… KD: Nah… Q:  No, probably not, because of your attitude towards your own stories now. But I was wondering if you could elaborate on a story from your autobiography where Maharajji asked you to have courage, and I’m not sure in the book, whether it, you go into detail of like later in your life when you thought that that. Like you looked back and said, oh, he’s addressing this moment. So I guess the question is can you continue that story and how did you find the courage and what sort of grace was involved? KD: Well, he had just told me that he was sending me back to America, and I was sitting there, and my mind was totally spinning out. You know, I was thinking about chocolate chip cookies, and Wheaties and, you know, going to basketball games again, you know. I was just going crazy sitting there. Right? And I started to get worried. What am I going to do? I just didn’t know what I was going to do in America. And I still had January, I still had like three months in India. He said when my visa was up, that’s when I had to go back. So, this was Christmas time, and my visa was up at the beginning of March, so I still had a couple of months. So sitting there, all of a sudden he sits up and he looks at me really intensely and he says, “courage is a really big thing.” And the Indian guy goes, “Oh, Baba, God takes care of his devotees.” “Courage is a really big thing.” I was thinking, “what’s going to happen?” You know? So, I just remembered that, you know, because he put it in there pretty strongly and… there were a lot of times when all I had was the vague memory of that moment, which was just about enough to get me through whatever I was going through, internally or externally. There were a lot of, you know, horrible situations I found myself in over the years. But it was interesting because, you know, we have all these ideas. “Oh, God does everything,” or “everything is karma” or “it doesn’t matter.” But he was telling me courage was really important. So that was a big thing. There’s not really much to elaborate about other than that. There were times that there was nothing but the memory of that.You know, there wasn’t any courage, but just remembering that moment kind of got me through to the next moment. Yeah. Q: Thank you. KD: Yeah. Q: Namaste Krishna Dasji. You were introduced to me may be three, four years ago by a close friend of mine, and the first time I’ve heard you, the tranquility of your voice actually has taken me to a different plane. And since then, I’ve been a huge fan of you. So along with me, I brought about three, four friends of mine to attend this retreat. So, the question to you, what has been your experiences or transformational journey to took you on this path of Bhakti Marga? I don’t think you’re born as a singer or probably you’re not born as a practicing singer. So, what took you, or what experiences led you to that path of Bhakti Yoga Marga? KD: Bhakti, Jnana, Karma, it’s all the same. It’s your life. Bhakti means love. And when I met my guru, I fell in love, and I never fell out at that love. And that’s Bhakti. It’s also wisdom because Guru is everything. The whole universe. So, when you’re in a loving relationship with the universe, everything changes. So, I don’t know if there’s been much transformation, to tell you the truth. I mean, really, I just, you know. I just cut myself a break every once in a while now, when I didn’t use to, and as a result, I cut other people a break once in a while. Because everybody’s guru. When I can see that, when I live in that space, then it’s a very different universe, and that’s the way it really is. Guru is not a physical person and not limited to a body, a physical body. We think that, because we think we are physical bodies. That’s what we identify with. And so, when somebody says guru, you think of somebody out there. That’s not what it is at all. Guru is like the space of the sky. Inside, everything is inside of that. There’s nothing outside of that vast space, that vast presence. But we, our minds, our stuff is focused on stuff, on little things, on forms and shapes and egos and psychology, and all this stuff. So, we miss the space. We don’t see this. We don’t experience that presence in which we all live. When we do, then everything’s fine. That’s real devotion and that’s a mature devotion, a ripe devotion. But it starts very simply, you know, with a loving connection with either yourself or a being. You don’t have to meet that being physically to feel the love. I felt the love from Maharajji when I met Ram Dass, and I didn’t know what it was at first, you know. I thought it was Ram Dass, but he very quickly abused me of that thought, disabused me, or whatever the word is. Q: You beautifully explained that in your book though, by the way. That was very nice. KD: Yeah. And he liked that too. But you know, so one has to experience these things oneself. But we hear about them from other people. We hear about what’s possible, but it’s up to us to plant those seeds in our lives of the things that we want to experience. If we don’t plant the seeds, nothing can grow. The Hanuman Chalisa is a very powerful practice for cleaning the mirror of the heart. The mirror is covered with crud, all our stuff. So, when we look into the mirror, all we see is the crud. We don’t see what really could be reflected, but as the crud is polished off, we see more clearly and more accurately what’s reflected in that mirror. So, on one hand we’re looking in a mirror ourselves, and when the mirror is all our stuff, all the me, me, me stuff, all the ego stuff, all the greed, the selfishness, the shame, the fear, all that stuff, the anger… all that stuff. However, this is the mirror. Right now, what you’re looking into is a mirror, and you’re seeing your stuff, all your, all our, our ideas, all our interpretations, all our likes and dislikes, all our frustrations, all our neediness, all our beauty, all the everything. So, as we clean our hearts, everything we see changes. It’s like you’re born with glasses on that are the wrong prescription, but you don’t know that. So, you look around and everything, kind of what it is, doesn’t seem weird to you because it’s what you were born with. Little by little, that those glasses start, the prescription changes. It self-corrects and little by little, things come into clarity. And clear. Everything becomes clear and you see things as they are. I mean, you see yourself as you really are, and that’s the result of practice, spiritual practice, in a very general sense. So, we’re all in our own little version of the universe. But we share a bandwidth, so we can talk to each other, and we can see all these bodies and all these minds and all this stuff. But when the mirror of the heart is perfectly clear, everything’s very different. And that’s when you, you experience the oneness of it all. And on the way to that oneness, a lot of different qualities arise, compassion and kindness, equanimity, happiness, just for no reason. Just because that’s who we are. And Maharajji said, “from going on, repeating these names, everything is accomplished.” Whatever it is, it’s accomplished. It’s made full and complete. Q: I like, I’ve had… KD: Dysentery? Q: Not yet. A long way to go, though. It’s probably going to happen. So I’ve had, like, I’ve had these deep and profound awakening experiences in my life, and I used to be a person who sought ceaseless pleasure. KD: Good luck, Q: Right? And so I recognize that that’s a fool’s errand. And I no longer seek that. I want to be here for all of life. That includes all of it, the horror, pain, love, beauty, all of it. And so, like I feel this resistance to the possibility of enlightenment. Partially because I don’t believe, I guess I question if there would even be a me there to experience it, like this idea of enlightenment being a transcendence of being human, being here, being here in this form. I love that you’re making these faces at me. KD: It is totally the opposite of that, of course. You’re totally here and there’s nothing in your way. Everything is experienced because there’s nothing to filter or to push away or to judge or evaluate. It’s wide open total presence, which is who you are already. So, there’s no sense fighting it. That’s who you are. All this other stuff is just stuff. Let it go. By saying you want to be here for all of it. You’re actually narrowing it down pretty fiercely. Don’t say it. Don’t even think it. Just be here. But that’s not so easy.  Because we’re always thinking all this stuff. When, when the me is not functioning, you’re completely present with everything and everyone and everything completely. Absolutely. There’s no fear, there’s no distance. You’re out of your own way. It is just exactly the way you know it is. But you can’t get there yet. And it’s just another storyline that you’re identifying with, which is gotta go anyhow, so let it go. Q: Thank you. I had a, another question. KD: He’s, he’s, he’s saying something. Oh, okay. Q: So, you’ve lived this amazing life with these amazing experiences. KD: You think so? Q: And these awakenings, we’re being…. KD: falling asleeps Q: A guru, right? And so I’m curious about your current experience. Like we all, we’re all coming starry-eyed, looking at you, and if there’s a need for you, like, do you look outward for something, to a person, a discipline? And is your current experience, is there a deepening, a deeper awakening? And or what, like what challenges you now in, in life? I’m curious about your current experience. KD: I am just hanging out. I don’t have much of an agenda. I signed the line and said I’d be here for a few days, so I drove over from my house. Other than that, I didn’t make any commitments to be especially holy or anything. I just said I’d be here with y’all. What did you ask? We could roll the tape back. Q: Oh, like there, well, I asked like a shitload of questions. That’s really the problem here. But like, one, if you’re seeking inspiration elsewhere, is there like a current deepening or awakening, or like, what is showing up as challenging or like in the way for you these days? KD: Having to get here at two in the afternoon is really hard. Okay. So, I love, yeah. I get inspiration. I love to find saints, yogis. I met a couple of really great yogis in India this time. Wow. They’re still here. It’s unbelievable. Let me tell you, they’re here. It’s extraordinary. So that’s what I am. I’m a Saint junkie. That’s what I am. And it’s all Maharajji. Everything that happens, happens inside of him. So, I don’t worry about that. But I love, I love finding, you know… I just love saints. You know, I love the beings that, that shine so much. It’s great. That’s very inspiring. Just knowing that they’re here is very inspiring. Because we get, you know, we see the world going down the toilet and we wonder is there any use or any hope and how could it get like this? But there are beings who know exactly what’s going on, who are doing what has to be done. And it’s all… Maharajji used to say, “It’s all perfect.” It’s a hard one. That’s a really hard one. Ram Dass wanted to take his van and go be a, like an ambulance out in in Bangladesh when all this bad stuff was happening. Maharajji said, “Ram Dass, don’t you understand? It’s all perfect.” That’s really hard, because people are suffering. That means suffering is also perfect, but we don’t like suffering. So how could it be perfect? Well, that’s a good question. So that’s very inspiring to me. And the only thing in the way for me, is me. So, I’m working on it. I’m not in a particular hurry, but I’m working on it. Time goes by though. Things happen.     The post Call and Response Podcast Special Edition | Saint Junky [https://krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/call-and-response-podcast-special-edition-saint-junky/] appeared first on Krishna Das [https://krishnadas.com].

Call and Response Podcast Ep. 86 | Faith & Courage

Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das Ep 86 |Faith & Courage “I think of spiritual life as a ripening process more than anything else. You plant the seeds and as time goes on, they grow, and they literally change you from the inside. They change your experience. They change how you see yourself. They change how you go through your day. As these seeds that we ourselves plant along, with the grace to plant them in the first place, they change the way we navigate our lives. They change how we see other people. It’s like you’re born and there’s no sun and you grow up and it’s dark all the time, and you think this is the way it is because it’s always been that way. This is the way it is. And then, the sun starts to rise, and a little light comes into the world and all of a sudden everything looks different.” – Krishna Das Any questions or anything? Anybody but Robert. I’m not qualified to answer his questions. Okay. I’ll be brave. Give him the mic. Give him the mic. I’ll be brave. Robert had a question. Let me take a deep breath here. RS: It’s a very simple question. KD: I’ll give you a very simple answer. RS: (Someone I know) is in India right now, and he texted me a photo of the Hanumanji at the Lucknow Neem Karoli Baba Temple. Ha. RS: So, I wondered, and he was saying that Babaji had spent some time in Lucknow. I knew he spent time in Allahabad, , I knew he spent time in Brindavan, but I didn’t know about Lucknow. KD: Oh sure. RS: If you could tell me about Lucknow. Is that an easy enough question? KD: I think that’s okay. I think I handle that. Maharajji spent a lot of time in up UP, Uttar Pradesh, it was called, at and now it’s also, called Uttaranchal, the mountains. He was mostly, most of the life that we saw of him was in UP, Lucknow, Khanpoor, Aligarh, He was everywhere it seems. There’s a very old temple, a Hanuman temple in Lucknow, in Aminabad, a very ancient Hanumanji temple, and he used to spend a lot of time there. It used to be outside of town and now it’s… but Tiwari told me an interesting story. He said before this temple was built, there was an old Hanuman temple right by the river near this, the new temple, and he and Maharajji were walking by there, and Maharajji said to Tiwari, “Okay, do your puja here, your Shiva puja, right now.” Now, this means like three and a half, four hours of puja, and he had no book. He had to do it all by… But Tiwari said, “No, I’m not going to do that.” “I said, ‘Do it! You do it, what I say.” “I don’t care what you say, I’m not going to do it.” “Why?” He said, “Because the minute I sit down, you are going to run away. And you run away. You’ll leave me sitting here, and once I start my puja, I must finish. So, I’ll be sitting here for four hours by myself.” “Nay nay. I won’t run away.” “Yes, you will.” “I won’t.” “Yes, you will. Okay, promise me.” He held his ears like this. This is like cross my heart and help to die in India. And they sat down, and Tiwari started the puja and Maharajji sat down, and He sat there the whole time right next to him and Tiwari’s doing the puja. The other thing about it, Tiwari’s puja guru was also a very great saint, and he told Tiwari that when he did pu    ja, he had to do it at the top of his lungs. And his voice was something like a chainsaw. Oh God, it was incredible, but like a chainsaw. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Okay. But anyhow, so, this was right by the end, the last minute, the last “Om,” and Maharajji lept up, and said, “You miserable shit. You made me stay here and I have to have so much to do!” And he ran away. And that was right down below where the temple is now. There was an old Hanumanji there. He had so many devotees from Lucknow and all those places. Kanpur… The man who was the manager after the temple was built, the first manager of the temple, had been the head jailer of Central jail in Agra. His name was Mahotra, and whenever somebody needed to be kind of, reigned in, Maharajji said, “I’m sending you to Central jail.” And he would send him to the Lucknow Temple, to this guy. Maharajji had his own room in Central jail in Agra, his own cell that was kept empty for him. And he used to just go in there and they’d lock him in, but they’d find him walking around all night, and one time there was this, he had a devotee who was a really big dacoit, a bad guy, a criminal, and who had two guns, one registered with the government and one unregistered, which was for killing people. But he could sing the Ramayana, the Ramacharitamanasa very beautifully. And he had his own village in the jungle. It was like, he was like a king in his own village, and so he finally got caught and he was in central jail. So, Maharajji went there, and He said to him, He goes up to his cell and he says, “I know you’re planning to escape. Don’t do it. Because if you escape my other devotee, who’s the head of the jail, will lose his job, and who’s going to support his family? Don’t do it.” So, the guy literally didn’t escape, and one year later he was pardoned, and he was released forever. That’s faith. Because he could escape. He could. He was a really powerful bandit, a big guy. The way these people, I mean, this is how we learned about him. We watched how the Indian people, we observed, how they interacted with him, how they saw him. The reason we have the Hanuman Chalisa is because we saw they saw him as Hanuman. They Worshipped Maharajji as Hanuman himself. And look, I’ve said before. We used to come to the temple every day. And they would give us this little yellow booklet with a picture of a flying monkey on it. I had like at least a hundred of these booklets in my room when finally, one day I said, “What is this?” Right? And they said, “Oh, it’s a hymn to Hanuman.” Oh. So, I thought, wow, if we learn this, we could sing it to Maharajji. We knew he wanted to spend more time with us, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. And we thought, okay, if we learn this, we’ll be able to sing to him and he’ll like that. And that’s exactly what happened. And here we are. We’re doing it now. It all came from that little yellow booklet and that one little thought that he finally got into my thick skull. But his old devotees, the Pukka devotees, the older ones, they worshipped him as Shiva. There was one guy, a very poor man who came from Aligarh. His name was Vishwambhar. I will never forget this guy. He used to come with a basket full of Puja articles, the trays and the plates and the lamps and the things in the ghee and everything. And he’d come outside Maharajji’s door and he’d prepare everything and he’d just stand there and wait. And Maharajji would be inside. He’d be saying, “Oh, he’s here and he’s got this and that. And he brought this and that. And he brought this kind of Prasad and that kind of Prasad.” He said, “Oh, I won’t go out. Okay, I’ll go out. No, I won’t go out. Okay, I’ll go.” So, he’d come out, and this guy, he would do his puja and he’d be weeping, right? I mean, it was such an extraordinary sight. And he’d be doing his puja and chanting these mantras and weeping. Weeping. And finally at the end, he’d start doing the Arati and he’d, he would just go into Samadhi, and he’d just be standing there like that. And then he’d be kind of crazy. He came up to the westerners and say, “Who are you people? Are you the gods who have taken forms to be with Maharajji? Who are you?” And Tiwari was like that, my Indian father was like that. He’d been with Maharajji for 40 years. The first time he met him, he was a school kid, maybe about eight years old. Maharajji had started coming, showing up in the hills, but he was kind of hanging out in the jungle, and he wouldn’t be with any adults, but he would come to see the school kids and he would do acrobatics for them and they would give him their lunches and stuff like that so he’d get something to eat. But he used to be able to put his arms on the ground like this and do a full somersault without picking his arms up, like whoop. And the kids, so, the kids would give him stuff to eat. That’s nothing. Sai Baba used to take his intestines out and wash them and put ’em back in. Shirdi Sai Baba. He’d take his arms off and put them back on. I mean, if it’s a dream, you can do whatever you want in your dream. It’s a dream for them. Q: You’ve been talking about the faith that you witnessed around you there. Yeah. Q: But could you talk about the evolution of your own faith? Because when you first arrived, you couldn’t have had much faith and then somehow you got to a point where you would do what He told you to do. Could you talk about that evolution? Let me think about it. It’s interesting. I was just on Maui, where Ram Dass lived the last 20 plus years of his life, and we were very close for many years, over 50 years. I first met Ram Dass in the winter of ’68-‘69. He was living at his father’s place in New Hampshire, and I heard about him from my friends, and I went to see him. And I walked into the room where he was sitting. He was sitting on the bed, and the bed was on the floor, and he had his eyes closed. He was leaning against the wall, and I walked in the room and without a word being spoken, without eye contact, the minute I walked into that room, something happened inside me, and at that moment I knew that whatever it was I was looking for was real. It was in the world and you could find it. That was the beginning of the rest of my life. And I was just on Maui, and I went to the house, Ram Dass’s house. It’s still there. There’s some people living there, keeping it together. And I went up to his room where we used to sit for hours, and I sat in the chair that I used to sit in, right next to his chair where he would spend a lot of time because he, after the stroke, he couldn’t walk. And I closed my eyes, and I was just sitting there and I thought, “Wait a minute. This is no different than the way we used to sit together.” And it was so strong, the presence, the feeling, that I opened my eyes to see if was there, because he was so there, that what I felt was so, strong. And that feeling that I had at that moment was exactly the same feeling that I had in 1968 when I walked in that room. That presence which I felt for the first time in that room with Ram Dass, the first time, which I felt in India with Maharajji and after he left the body, whenever I was not too stupid and busy to pay attention, it was there. And I saw that had been with me, unchanging, all these years. It had never changed. It was perfect as it is, and it never came and went. It was always here. I never thought of it as faith. That word kind of makes Westerners nauseous, but, the trust that I have, that the presence is with me all the time, even when I forget, is probably the biggest gift that I got from him. One time I was sitting with him in a Parsi apartment building in Mumbai, in Christmas, 1972, and he was sitting on the bed and he would sit up, he’d lie down, he’d sit up, he’d lie down, turn this way and turn that way. I was just sitting on the floor doing my practice, which was like… All I did was want to stare at him, because all the beauty of the universe was wrapped up in that blanket. It was like, my eyes did not, they wouldn’t go anywhere else. They just wanted to be right there. At one point, he sits up like this and he looks at me and he says, “Courage is a really big thing.” And there was an Indian guy there. He said, “Oh, Baba, God takes care of his devotees.” “Courage is a really big thing.” And he laid down and went back to sleep. I was like, “What’s going to happen?” But there have been times in my life that all I had was the vaguest, most distant memory of that moment, and it was just enough to kind of make it to the next moment. The faith thing, it’s my experience that no matter how close I’ve gotten to being destroyed by one thing or another, every time I would fall off the cliff, he’d move the cliff and I’d fall on my face, instead of 10,000 feet to my death. That just happened so many times. But a funny thing happened when I first met him physically. It was confusing because I was feeling him everywhere all the time after that first meeting with Ram Dass and then after traveling around with Ram Dass in the States for a year and a half before going to India. He was huge. And then I saw this little guy in a blanket, and I thought like, “Wait a minute, how does all that fit into that blanket?” I don’t know. It was like, how does this work? I got really confused. But I got over it. I got over it and I got completely attached to the body and I forgot about the space. So, that took a lot of getting over. I don’t know. It’s not much of an answer, but when you go, the more you go through and survive, you can start to trust that you’re going to make it, regardless of how you feel. Sometimes it feels like you’re not going to make it, but we’ve all survived so many difficult situations in our lives and we’re still here. Maybe we could relax a little? I don’t know. What do you think? Fear is a big thing. Fear is very crippling. But fear itself never hurt anybody. It’s a feeling that comes and goes. There’s reasons it arises in us for sure, but the more we get used to letting go of whatever pulls us away from whatever we are thinking about or concentrating on, every time you come back, it’s training, it’s mind training, and you get more used to what it feels like not to be lost in dreamland, or absorbed in thoughts, or thinking or planning, or the past. I mean, every moment is either that everything, it’s either that you’re thinking about the past or imagining the future or judging how you are now. So, it gets easier and easier to notice the more you, the more practice you do, to notice when you’re gone. Of course, when you’re really gone, you don’t notice until you’re back. But how does that happen? Shri, Ram, Jai, Ram, and you’re thinking about, “Oh man, what’s on Netflix tonight? Yeah, right. Okay.” Oh. How did that happen that you notice you weren’t paying attention? That’s a great moment. Because we’re not doing that. We’re gone. And yet, oh, we woke up. So, if you understand a little bit about cause and effect, nothing can happen without a cause. What could the cause be of waking up? We must have planted seeds of waking up already or we’d never wake up. So, that’s the work we’ve already done, coming into fruition and waking us up, bringing us home. But don’t think about it too much. But it’s there. You notice, you come back. I mean, I remember once I got asked to sing at this teacher training for this yoga studio. So, I showed up and the teacher who was going to train these poor people started haranguing them. And there were pictures of all the deities on the wall, and this person was going, “If you don’t know what all these, every one of these beings are, you’ll never be a good yoga teacher.” I wanted to commit Hara Kiri. I just wanted to get out there. I couldn’t, but there was nothing I could do. Man, the deities is who we are. It’s our true nature, home base. And we’re always home, but we’re not paying attention. So, all we have to do is train ourselves to let go of what’s taken us away, and come back. Let go, come back, let go. When you let go, you are back. You don’t have to then find back. You notice, you’re gone, you’re home. And then you try to stay with the sound of the name if that’s what you’re doing, or with the flow of the breath or whatever, but you can’t. The personal will can’t do that. You’re gone again, then you wake up, then you’re back, and you stay with the sound, but you’re gone. You just watch it happen again and again, over and over. And little by little you, you’re not gone so, long. That’s over time. One of the definitions of meditation is becoming familiar with getting used to being here. Someone asked Ramana Maharshi, what’s the result of Raama Japa, the repetition of Raam’s name? He said, Raa is reality. Ma is the mind. Their union is the fruit of Raam. Japa, utterance of words is not enough. The elimination of thoughts is wisdom. So, the reality, when the mind merges with that reality… mind is an interesting word. So, what we usually call mind is just thoughts. The mind is like the sky and the thoughts are like birds flying through the sky. The birds are not the sky. The mind is the awareness in which all of that happens, in which we’re always present, inside of that space. There’s no place we could ever be except here, but our stuff pulls us away all the time, all day long, all life long, and then… next life. Q: Thank you, KD. Q: Thank you, first of all, and Nina and Robert, everyone for being here. You mentioned how in that experience with Ram Dass, you saw or felt what was real, and that was that everything you wanted could exist. And like beings like Maharajji, Neem Karoli Baba are love, I’ve heard you say. And they remove the dirt from your eyes so you can see your true self. And these things are, in my experience, easier around beings like yourself and Nina and Robert, and so on. And you mentioned how quickly we forget and fall off this mountain, and Grace will, you fall on your face instead of to a horrifying death. What can we do to maybe fall off that mountain less often? Like, this is easy because I can walk down the road and Krishna Das is live in front of me and chanting in a room with people. But by the time you leave, I’m picking up a six-pack, and hitting the weed showcase in Woodstock sounds good. Why is it so easily that we forget and like neglect things that feel so, in harmony and like chakras balanced, good. Just keep doing this and then before I’m out the door, I forget everything you said. KD: That’s just who we are and there’s nothing to do about it. You have to be you. Inside of that, you are waking up slowly at your own speed. You can’t go faster, and you can’t slow down either. It’s happening at its own speed. It is a question of what you want. If we really wanted to be awake and present, really wanted, we would be, but we’re very conflicted. We have all kinds of things we want, so many programs running. You want this, you want that. But yeah, you take a little bit of that on the side, too. You’ve got to be you, but you’ve got to learn to love that, too and accept that’s who you are and just not fight it. No sense fighting who you are. But when you cultivate a practice, if we don’t plant the seeds of the things you want, we won’t get them. They don’t, the seeds don’t come from Outer space. They come from within us. The seeds of paying attention, the seeds of the repetition in the name, the seeds of coming back to the breath, the seeds of the mantras. This is what we can do to help ourselves. All those practices, all those things. Reading the books about the saints, how they lived, what they did, getting that kind of inspiration in our lives. There’s so many videos about so many Great Saints, but I watch Korean serial killer movies. Hello? I could be watching a video about the 16th Karmapa, but I’m watching a Korean serial killer movie. That’s me. What can I do about it? Well, when it’s over, when this 49 episode thing is finally over, I’ll never watch another one. I’ve said that a few times. It’s just who I am. It’s okay. But inside of that, at the same time I’m still doing a little bit of practice once in a while, and inherent in everything you said is a lot of self-judgment. And as long as you believe everything you think, you’re fucked. Just like the rest of us, we believe everything we think. Excuse me, why? Well, we do. And the thoughts, they’re showing up in this moment from the past or from, they’re like waves coming off a big storm in the far-off ocean of time, and now they arrive here and we think we’re thinking, and then we think we’re not thinking. So, we’re just becoming aware of the thought in this moment. And you go, “I’m thinking.” No, you’re not. You’re just glued to that thing, identified with it temporarily until it dissolves. But those programs, those repetitive thoughts and unconscious ways that we limit ourselves and judge ourselves and criticize ourselves and all that stuff, we’ve really been trained well to do that. So, it takes time to unwind that stuff. It just does. And really, I think of spiritual life as a ripening process more than anything else. You plant the seeds and as time goes on, they grow, and they literally change you from the inside. They change your experience. They change how you see yourself. They change how you go through your day. As these seeds that we ourselves plant along, with the grace to plant them in the first place, they change the way we navigate our lives. They change how we see other people. It’s like you’re born and there’s no sun and you grow up and it’s dark all the time, and you think this is the way it is because it’s always been that way. This is the way it is. And then, the sun starts to rise, and a little light comes into the world and all of a sudden everything looks different. That’s what happens on the inside. Everything starts to look different, naturally, as we release our stuff because it is different. It’s not how we think it is. We are completely involved, more or less, with our subjective version of ourselves, and life, and people around us, and our judgments, the likes and dislikes. The third patriarch of Zen said, “The great way is not difficult for those with no preferences.” Okay, well next. So, yeah. So, anyhow, that’s the deal. So, you just have to chill. Everything that you think about yourself is something you think about yourself, but you do, and you believe it. We all do. That’s what makes us, that’s where we share the same kind of bandwidth, mostly. We can drive on the same roads and stop at the red and go on the green. We share a bandwidth, and as time goes on, it does change. So, before we get there, Sri Ramakrishna, who was a very great saint in the 1800s, he talked about how the repetition of the name works. He said every repetition of the name is a seed, and just like a tiny seed can have a huge tree in it. So, does every repetition of the name have reality in it. And he said, the seeds of the repetition of the name are caught by the wind and they’re blown around. And some of those seeds land on the roof of an old house in the jungle somewhere. Right? And they get stuck between the clay tiles on the roof, and then time, seasons, snow, rain, sun, everything. Years go by, and the tiles begin to soften a little bit as time goes on. And when they get soft, the seeds start to grow, and the roots of the seeds start to grow. The seeds of the repetition of the name, they start to grow, and they destroy the roof of the house, and they keep growing, and they destroy the walls of the house. He says, that house is who we think we are, our version of ourselves, our subjective, delusionary, separate self, and that separate self was created by Karmas. The house was built for certain reasons, but when the walls of the house are gone, there’s only open space. Nothing is lost. You recognize your oneness with the whole universe. You’re no longer limited to the house, which is who we think we are in this, that house. But you notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, you’ll feel like this, or you’ll feel like that, or it’ll be blissful or anything like that, because it doesn’t matter. That’s not the point of it. The “what it feels like,” the experiences that might come as the house is being dissolved and broken down, and at the end there’s no walls. There’s no version of a “me” anywhere left. You’ve recognized reality. So, that’s why you simply plant the seeds. You do your practice, and you live your life in the best way you can. And we try to treat other people the way we would like to be treated. That’s one thing, one possible thought to keep in mind as we go through our day, in terms of how we meet each moment, how we meet each person that arrives in our lives. Because if we could treat other people the way we would like to be treated, the world would be a different place immediately. But it takes tremendous awareness and strength to be able to do that. It takes a lot of practice, a lot of work on oneself to release oneself from the grip of likes and dislikes and wants and all that stuff, to be freed from that so that you can be present. It’s something that takes time and dedication. When singing the divine name becomes continuous, all other thoughts cease and one is in one’s real nature, which is invocation or absorption. We turn our minds outwards to things of the world and are therefore not aware that our real nature is always invocation. That’s from Ramana Maharshi, also. “Invocation” really means clinging to one thought, to the exclusion of all others. That’s the purpose of it. It leads to absorption, which ends in self-realization or to surrender.   Coming to America and the Vindhyavasini Q: I was curious about what your re-entry was like for you, when you came back from India to the United States? KD: Last year you said? You mean the first time? Q: And how you kind of found your… Well, my philosophy at that time… “Well, he’s sending me back, all right, fuck it, I’ll party.” My idea was to get as far out on the limb as I could, and just before it broke, to come back to him. So, I got out on the limb as far as I could go, and just before it broke, He left the body. Talk about fucked. I was fucked forever. And I spent the next 21 years hating myself. That’s how I came back. It took a long time to get over that, because he actually wrote to me, He had somebody… One day, He looked around, he said, “Where’s Krishna? Das?” The guy who knows everything. They said, “Baba, You send him to America.” “Nay. Tell him to come back. I want to see him. I want to hear him sing. Tell him to come back now.” So, I got a letter. It’s a long story, but I didn’t go. I betrayed… just like that, like nothing. I betrayed the love of my life as if it was nothing. I was so lost and so immersed in my own shit that I didn’t even know what I was doing, but just like that. “I love him. I’m such a great devotee. I sing to Him,” and in a split second, I betrayed it as if it was nothing, and I had to live with that for a long time. Just part of the show. Anybody?  Oh, hi. Q: So, part of my rehabilitation from being strictly raised Irish Catholic has been following the teachings of Ram Dass, particularly his teachings about unworthiness and worthiness, and through my kind of contemplation about this, I’ve discovered it really shows up as self-hatred and self-loathing, and how this is stemming from the kind of indoctrination of fear by, really, the western religions, in my case, Catholicism. And in kind of investigating this, I found that the Eastern religions don’t, or just Eastern cultures, don’t really experience this phenomenon of self-hatred. There’s this story that Sharon Salzberg tells that she had an opportunity to ask His Holiness a question. And so, she asked him, what do you think of self-hatred? And his Holiness answered, “What’s that?” KD: Q: Yeah. And so, what I’ve noticed is that the Eastern traditions have a much deeper sense of honoring and regard for the sacred feminine, which the Western traditions do not, and there’s rampant denial and repression of the sacred feminine and of women in general. And so, as you just spoke about your own experience with self-hatred, I can assume that you’ve had some experience with overcoming it. KD: I’m an expert. Q: I’m just wondering how your, one, your relationship with the sacred feminine on the subtle plane evolved as you hopefully overcame your self-hatred, and two, how your relationship with women on the physical plane may have changed as you overcame self-hatred. KD: That’s a big chunk. Okay. One something at a time. First of all, there’s another story about His Holiness the Dalai. Lama. These Christian missionaries came to see him, and they said, your Holiness, what’s your idea of sin? And he thought for a minute, and he said, “That’s kind of a Christian thing, isn’t it?” They don’t have that. Paap. The word for sin usually is paap, which means to burn. Correct, Robert? Robert Svaboda:   Not exactly. KD: Not exactly. Tell… Robert Svaboda: well, what you’re thinking of is paschat tapam, which means burning with regret. Paap is just a word that basically means karma that is unwisely performed. KD: Yeah. Okay.  Which you suffer from. Robert Svaboda: Which you suffer from. KD: So, yeah, there’s no real concept like that, like original sin… Robert Svaboda: I mean, there’s plenty of guilt in India, but there’s no word for guilt in India. KD: A lot of times Indian people will come to talk to me and, oh boy, it is just how did, there’s a whole different family structure. The issues are not exactly the same as ours. But a lot of it has to do with our relationship with our physical mothers. Once a couple was having a problem and they came to Maharajji and he said to the guy, “Just see her as your mother.” He said, “I hate my mother.” He, “What? What did he say? What did he say?” Westerners are really strange. Early on, when I started getting interested in this stuff, I was very much into Kali. I really loved, I got very attracted to the idea of Kali and the Goddess and Durga, and Maharajji made me the pujari of the Durga temple also, for a while. There was a new temple he had built in the courtyard to Durga, and they brought in a pujari, but they caught him stealing the money in the donation box. They sent him home and brought in a second guy. They caught him stealing the money. So, they brought a third guy. They caught him stealing the money. So, the Temple Trust came to Maharajji and said, “Baba, we can’t find a priest or Pujari that won’t steal.” “My priest won’t steal.” “So, who’s that?” “Krishna Das.” So, that was my qualification. Guru is everything. Guru is male, female, and beyond all that. He could be the sweetest, sweeter than the sweetest mother. He was a mother to us and a father, and everything, even still, and then when he left the body, Siddhi Ma was there. She took care of us for so, many years and actually there’s a story. Near Allahabad, there’s a place called Vindhyachal, the Hill, Vindhyah Hill, and on that hill, there’s an ancient temple to Vaishnavi Devi, Vindhyavasini, Durga Devi, the form of Vaishnavi Devi who lives on this hill, this very sacred place. So, one time, Maharajji and Siddhi Ma and others were in a car and they were on their way up there to do Puja at the temple. But it got late in the day. They started late, and so the temple was going to be closed by the time they got there. So, halfway up, Maharajji says, “Pull over.” So, they pulled the car over and he gets out of the car and Ma was sitting in the back. He opens the door, he sits down on the ground, and he took all the utensils for the puja that they were going to do to the Murti on the hill. And he worshiped Siddhi Ma as Vindhyavasini Durga Devi. And the temple that he built in Kainchi, which is where Ma lived, is in Vindhyavasini,  Durgadevi. That’s one of her forms. So, living with Ma, being with Ma was extraordinary. This, it’s hard for me to talk about it, because for 30 years she didn’t want anybody talking about her, and now she can’t stop us. But still, it doesn’t come out easy. But she was so great with the Westerners. She never judged us. She always loved and supported us and helped us, and we were really stupid. I mean, the level of stupidity that we were functioning under was… is…  extraordinary. Forget “was.” But she never said a word, and she knew everything, and she just loved us. And that love, that love was more important than the blood in our veins. But still, the programs are running, they don’t go away so fast. The glue that holds us to that stuff is super, super, duper glue. But over time, it dissolves. And we no longer believe that shit about ourselves so much. In fact, I can actually tell that I mope around less than I used to. Really. I mean, I was born a moper. I spent my whole life moping around, but I hardly mope around now. I miss it. I really do. There’s something to moping around. Sometimes I do it just for fun, like, “fucking-a god damn piece of shit.” I mean, it’s like a home base, but I don’t go there very much anymore. My mother came to India after I’d been there for two years. I was in the living in the temple with Maharajji, and one day He looks at me and said, “Is your mother coming to India?” I said, “My mother? No.” Right. Okay. Later that day, a message arrives from town. Your mother called. She wants to talk to you. Oh, shit. So, I went to the town, and I called the local operator that called the town operator that called the county operator that called the national operator that called the international operator that booked the call. It took like 12 hours, “Hi mom.” “I want to come to India.” I said something to my mother that, if my daughter said it to me, I would lock her in a room and give her food once a week. I said, “I have to ask my guru.” “What? Why’d you say? What?” “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I said, “Maharajji. My mother wants to…” “Let her come.” So, she came. She had an idea. She’d seen pictures of Maharajji, because I sent some pictures back to my sister and everything. So, she had an idea that Maharajji’s nose was the same as her father’s nose, and she was going to come to India to see if that was true. Yeah. So, the whole time she was in India, she looked like this. I had to leader around. It was amazing. So, but it was good for us. So, we spent like 10 days in the hills seeing Maharajji every couple of days, and then we had to go down to the plains, she wanted to see the Taj Mahal and a couple other places. So, coming out of the temple. So, the temple is kind of below the road.  There’s the road and you go down these steps and a bridge across the river, and then you walk down into the temple. So, we said goodbye to Maharajji and we walked out up the steps, and we’re up on the road, and I opened the door to the car for her to get in, and she turns and she looks back down into the temple. And Maharajji was just sitting on the tucket and she completely, she burst out crying. She exploded in tears, and I had to catch her so she didn’t fall. And I had to like, pick her up and kind of get her into the car. She totally lost it. She just was weeping. She just broke in half, and she cried for like an hour as we were like, driving down. It was amazing. She never knew what that is, but she, at that point in her life, she was still drinking. She was an alcoholic. And I think she went through like three rehabs before she stopped drinking. And then, when I’d be singing in the city, sometimes people from Long Island would stop and pick her up and bring her into the city, and they would ask, they’d say, “You met Maharajji?” And she’d start talking and she’d be like, but she couldn’t maintain that, but the hook went in, and that, that hook will never come out. So, it, it was interesting. She wasn’t a happy camper. But by the end of her life we had pretty much worked most of this stuff out. I told her to bring the best cashmere sweater she could find, right? So, she brought this beautiful sweater, and she brings it over, and Maharajji starts abusing the the Indians. “You miserable shits. You never bring me anything. This woman’s come all the way from America. Look what she’s…” He puts on the sweater, and they loved it. I mean, it’s teasing. Not really abuse, but you know, all the pictures of Him with the blue blanket. This is one of the most pictures that you see. There’s a red turtleneck, a maroon turtleneck he’s wearing. That’s my mother’s sweater. Is it there? No. I have no pictures of Him around here. Bob said he was going to put some pictures up. Bob used to come by the temple because he had a Volkswagen bus. He had to drive people to the hospital in Nanital from Almora, and he drove by Kainchi a number of times while we were there, while Ram Dass was there, but he never came in because he was mad at Ram Dass, and so he never saw Maharajji. Yeah. It’s a long story from the old acid Davis at Millbrook, and Ram Dass was… it’s a long story, but he was mad at Ram Dass, so he never stopped and went in the temple and he drove by it like this. Wow. Talk about regret. He regrets. Q: Thank you. It’s interesting that you just mentioned Bob Thurman being in India, because I was just wondering, although it’s, you can see that your hearts are in the same place as if you discuss with one another, just your different approaches and of your sacred practices between Bhakti and Tibetan Analytical Buddhism. KD: Was that a question? Yeah. I was wondering if you discuss it with one another. I just haven’t heard you talk about a different angle. KD:I take a lot of Buddhist teachings. A lot of Buddhist teachings. I go to a lot. I have, there are lamas I’ve been studying with for years. Q: So, you’re still doing that? Okay. I didn’t realize that. KD: Because, the Hindus or the Indians, they worship the car. You know, they do puja, they wash the car. The Buddhists, they tell you how it fucking works. When it breaks down, you can fix it. When the car breaks down in India, they just do some more puja and then it goes. But the Buddhists know how to fix the engine, the brakes, everything. Q: I didn’t realize that. Okay. KD: Well don’t take it to heart. One day Maharajji grabbed my book. Let me see what happened. Oh yeah. He grabbed my notebook. I had two notebooks, a diary, and then I had a notebook where we wrote out prayers and stuff from different traditions, so, he grabs it and he opens it up and he says, “What’s that?” He didn’t, supposedly he didn’t read English, right? He says, he goes down, stops at this one page. “What’s that?” And I looked. I said it was this Buddhist prayer. The song of Mahamudra. I          said, it’s Buddhist. He said, “Translate some.” So, I couldn’t. So, the Indian guy there, he translated. He goes, “Teek. Correct. Very good.” I went, “What? What? What’s he talking about?” So, then he keeps going through the book and He, we had made these postage stamps, like a page of postage stamps of him, these little… he come across one of these stamps and he goes, “Who’s that?” I said, “Baba, it’s you.” “No! Buddha.” Interesting. And so, so many of us have done Buddhist meditation courses and things.  And there’s another little story. So, the previous Karmapa, the 16th Karmapa, the head of the Kagyu sect, was an extraordinarily great Being. He was really special. And Maharajji had, there was a Westerner, Larry Brilliant, Dr. Larry Brilliant, who Maharajji sent forth to ultimately eradicate smallpox in India. They went all around India, inoculated everybody. It took years, but they, but it was Maharajji who got him doing that. So, at one point they had gone all through India and inoculated everybody. And now they were going around again to check and make sure there were no outbreaks of smallpox. And they were in Sikkim and they went to visit the Karmapa. And Karmapa said, “What are you doing?” And Larry told them, and He said, “Oh, no problem. The king is my disciple. You’ll be able to go wherever to check everything.” And then he says to him, “What’s your spiritual thing? What do you do?” We never knew what to say because all we did was sit around with Maharajji and eat and sing. It wasn’t like we did anything. So, how do you tell somebody that? So, he just, he took out a picture of Maharajji, and he hands it to the Karmapa. The Karmapa goes, “Oh, the teachings of all Bodhisattvas are the same, even if they appear different.” And then he points to his altar, and he says, “You see those statues? Mahasiddhas.” He points to the Mahasiddhas, then points at the picture. “Mahasiddha.” And then couple of days later, he asked Larry and his wife if they wanted to take refuge. There’s a ceremony where you take refuge in the Triple Gem, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. It’s an initiation of sorts. So, they said, sure, yeah. But actually, on the day they went up on the roof and there was a whole Puja and an altar. Larry got nervous and he says to the Karmapa, he said “Your Holiness, do I have to give up my Guru?” And he said, “No, I’m going to give you refuge in your Guru, the way I give refuge in the Buddha. I’m going to give you a refuge in your work, the way I give you refuge in the Dharma, etc.” Like that. So, same. One thing. There was also a Lama that Maharajji met who had escaped from Tibet after the Chinese, and he was just wandering around. And he took care of him for two years. He called him Tibeti Baba and he made sure he had a place to stay and everything. And one day, early in the morning, Maharajji is banging on his door. He opens the door. Maharajji said, “Don’t listen to them. Whatever they say, don’t listen to them.” And then he went away. Lama doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Later in the day, the Lama’s guru’s brother arrives at this place to bring him back. His guru was now in Darjeeling, I think it was. And he wanted him to come back because he was his meditation master. He ran the retreats. So, the Lama comes to Maharajji and said, “Baba, they wanted me to come back.” And Maharajji said, “Don’t go. We love each other so, much. Don’t go. We’ll stay together our whole lives.” He said, “But Baba, he’s my guru.” “You must go. If you don’t go, your sadhana won’t bring fruit.” So, the Lama says, “But Baba, we’ll meet again.” Maharajji says, “Yeah, we’ll meet again. But after you die.” We’re so, hard on ourselves, we Westerners. We, whatever we are, we’re so, hard on ourselves. It’s not easy to let go of that. It’s so, ingrained in us, but we’re so busy being distracted and busy, and avoiding real love and not letting it, allowing it to show up in our lives. But through the repetition of the name, everything is accomplished. So, whatever else you do, try to remember that. Just like me in the middle of a serial killer movie, I remember that for 10 seconds or less. It’s a guarantee. Really, what else can I tell you? It’s a guarantee. He said that. He meant it. He knows what he’s talking about. Through the repetition of the Names, everything is accomplished. So, whatever else you do, what other practices you do, keep in mind that you can always do this practice. You don’t need to be initiated. You don’t have to wear holy clothes. You don’t have to stand on one leg. You don’t have to be vegetarian. You don’t have to give up serial killer movies. Nothing is required except the repetition of the Name. And then anything else you want to do is good. And all the names are the names of the One.     The post Call and Response Podcast Ep. 86 | Faith & Courage [https://krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/call-and-response-podcast-ep-86-faith-courage/] appeared first on Krishna Das [https://krishnadas.com].

Call and Response Ep. 85 | Dada Mukerjee, Maharajji, and the Practice of Ram Naama

Call and Response Ep 85 |Dada Mukerjee, Maharajji, and the Practice of Ram Naama “When we chant, when we repeat the names mentally, physically, or when we even hear the names being repeated, when we chant, all we have to do is come back again and again to the sound of the name. We don’t have to manipulate our emotions to feel anything special. There’s no failing and there’s no getting anything. You simply come back, because you’re coming back to a flow, a living flow of grace.” – Krishna Das So, the story goes like this. Maharajji was staying in Allahabad at Dada’s House, which wasn’t really Dada’s house. It was Maharajji’s house, and it really was, because Dada had been living in a small apartment. Let me tell you about Dada. Dada was a communist economics professor, and he had absolutely no interest in religions and spiritual things at all. He was a good person, but he had no… his wife and auntie and mother, who lived with him, they were all into all that stuff, but he had no interest, and he had a group of friends who also had no interest in that stuff. So, one day he and his friends were sitting around drinking their tea, and his wife and aunt were getting ready to go outside to leave the house. So, Dada said, “Where are you going?” And they said, “Well, there’s this small house across the street that we hear this saint comes and visits, and we’ve been waiting, and we heard he’s there. So, we’re going to see him.” “Good. Go.” So, they left, and they came back in about a minute and Dada said, “What happened? Why are you back?” And his wife said, “Well, we walked into the house. It was a small mud house and a dark room. Couldn’t see very well…” So, they kind of had to bend over and come in the room, and just before his wife was sitting down, the Baba there said, “Jao, go.” But she said, she tells Dada, “I couldn’t believe he really wanted us to go. We just came. So, I sat down, and a minute later he looked at me and called me by my name.” “Kamala, go home. Your husband’s friends are waiting for their tea.” How he knew her name is also a mystery. So, this piqued Dada’s curiosity. So, the next day he goes across the street with them, and they walk into this little mud house. And as soon as they walk in, the Baba gets up from the cot that he’s sitting on, grabs a hold of Dada’s hand and starts walking across the street to Dada’s house, dragging Dada along behind him. And he says to Dada, “From now on, I’ll be staying with you.” Okay. Right. You just pulled up to the Stop-and-Shop, and you came out with your groceries and some homeless guy comes up to you and says, “From now on, I’ll be staying with you,” as he gets into your car? I don’t think so. But Dada being Dada, and India being India, this Baba comes in and sits down and the people from across the street all come to this house now, and all the other devotees start showing up and the Ma’s go into the kitchen. They start cutting fruit and prasad is served. And the whole thing starts. And it continued. However, that house was owned by a relative of Dada’s, and after a year or so, or some period of time, Maharajji started telling Dada, “You’re going to have to leave this place. You need to get a house. You need to get a house.” But they had absolutely no money. They were dirt poor. Dada used to tutor. Like I said, he was an economics professor, but he used to tutor students and stuff just to make enough money to live. So, every time Maharajji came and said, “Do you have a house yet?” Dada didn’t say anything. So, finally Maharajji says, “Okay, I’ll build it.” And so, this house was built and Dada was moved into it with his family. And from that point on, Maharajji came there to that house and it was a bigger house with a big sitting room, and over time, Dada gradually became a devotee. And he’s written two books that are really lovely. One is called “By His Grace,” and the other is called “The Near and the Dear,” in which his premise is that he didn’t learn anything from Maharajji at all.  He learned how to become a devotee from the other devotees who were already pukka, who already knew how to do it. And it’s a wonderful book. It’s really good. However, one year Maharajji goes off on a pilgrimage with Siddhi Ma, Jivanti Ma, and Siddhi Ma’s husband, who had become a very close friend of Dada’s. And they went to Calcutta, and they went up to Dakshineswar. Now, when Dada was a young boy, he had come home from college in the summer, and in those days, you could buy a day pass on the public transportation, and you could go as many places as possible in one day. So, in order to say that he had gone there, Dada had decided to go to Sri Ramakrishna’s Temple in Dakshineswar, this Kali temple where Sri Ramakrishna, who was a great saint, had lived, not because he was interested, but because it was a tourist place now. So, he went there and he pranamed to the Murti. Then there was a courtyard. I haven’t been there, but I think there’s nine Shiva Temples, It’s a small little mandir. It’s like this high, each one with a Lingam, and it’s a big courtyard. It’s the middle of the afternoon. It’s probably 120 degrees. But in order to say that he’d done it, Dada goes in front of each one and he goes like this, and then he goes to the next one. He goes like this, and then he goes to the next one. He turns around and there’s some bulky gentleman standing there saying to him, “Come, I’ll give you a mantra.” And Dada says, “I won’t take your mantra.” “Yes, you’ll take it. You’ll take it and you’ll do it.” “No, I won’t. I won’t do it.” And then this Baba says, “Yes, you’ll do it. You’ll do it after you do your Gayatri.” So, Dada was shocked. The Gayatri mantra is… when a Brahmin boy is initiated, he gets a thread and the Gayatri mantra. Now, Dada had been initiated by his father, who died very shortly after his initiation. So, in order to honor his father, he did the Gayatri mantra every day when he took a bath. But it wasn’t a spiritual thing, it was just to honor his father. How this Baba knew what he was doing? He said, “You’ll do it after your Gayatri.” So, Dada said, “Okay, give it to me.” So, this Baba tells him this mantra. Dada turns around, pranams to the Murti. He turns around again. Nobody there. Wow. A huge courtyard. I mean, just gone. So, he thought, “This is very strange.” So, now maybe 30 years later, Maharajji is traveling with this group, and they go to Ramakrishna’s Temple and as they go there, they walk by the courtyard and Maharajji casually points, and he said, “See there. That’s where I gave your Dada his mantra.” Dada had no idea. He never connected that event with Maharajji, but he did that mantra every day because he said he would. So, one time in Allahabad, during the time of one of the melas, one of the great gatherings, the festivals at Prayag, where the three rivers come together, a very sacred place, Maharajji left early in the morning, and he told Dada that he would meet him there on the banks of the Ganga in the evening. So, that evening, Dada goes to Prayag, and he’s walking around on the banks of the Ganga looking for Maharajji. It’s nighttime, and he has this young servant boy with him, and they’re walking. They don’t see anything. Where’s Maharajji? They don’t know. And the servant boy is getting anxious and says, “Dada, we should go back. Maybe Maharajji has gone there. We should go back. We should, it’s late.” And Dada was just standing there, and he wouldn’t go, but he was also concerned because the boy was so upset and this and that, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a boat appears right in front of them, and Maharajji is on the boat, and he says, “Dada, what were you doing? What are you doing?” And Dada wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t say anything. “Tell me, what are you doing? Why are you here? Why are you here?” He said, “You said you would meet me here. So, I stayed.” “Why didn’t you go back? It was late, then you didn’t see me. Why didn’t you go back?” “You said that you would come. So, I stayed.” “Oh, and what were you doing? What were you doing?” Dada was quiet. “What were you doing?” Finally, he said, “Tell me.” He said, “I was taking Ram’s name.” “Ah.” Maharajji goes, “Ram nam karne se sab pur ho jate hain.” From going on repeating the names of God, everything is accomplished. And he said this to us many times. And this is somebody who actually knows what’s going on in the universe. This is not like a chai wala on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 14th Street, although you never know. So, through the repetition of the names, everything is accomplished. I mean, how difficult is that to understand, word-wise? Very simple, right? You do this, then that. However…Personally, I mean, it’s now more than 50 years since I heard that. If I really believed it, if I had the karmas to believe it, if I didn’t have all the tamasic nonsense in my emotional body, what else would I be doing but Raam Naam all day long? So, that’s what I ask myself. So, Maharajji didn’t teach much. He didn’t give lectures. He didn’t write books. He basically said that the Westerners were qualified for the five limbed yoga. Eight limbed yoga, right? Ashtanga yoga. This is Paanchtanga Yoga. Eating, drinking tea, sleeping, gossiping, and wandering around. This was the yoga that we Westerners were qualified for. Unfortunately, I think it’s true. He used to say to us Westerners, he said, “You can get everything from devotion.” He said, “You don’t need yoga.” And even, one time I asked Siddhi Ma many years later, I said, “Ma, should I meditate?” I’ve taken a lot of meditation courses with Tibetan Lamas, Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, all this really powerful, big-time stuff, and I like to fool myself and pretend I know what it’s about. So, I said to her, I said, “Ma, should I meditate? Or should I chant?” She said to me, “What do you like to do?” Hello? My mother never told me that what I’d like to do would be good for me, but this Ma, my real Ma… And then she said something very interesting. She said, “Krishna Das, in 40 years with Maharajji, not once did he ask me to meditate. He asked me to do Japa, to remember the name, to repeat the name, and to serve others. But he never asked me to meditate.” And she said, “Maharajji said that the more subtle, higher states of consciousness cannot be brought about with the use of personal will.” In other words, you can’t. It’s like Ramana Maharshi said, “It’s like asking the mind or the ego to kill the mind or ego. It’s like asking the thief to be the policeman. There’ll be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.” The ego, the will that comes from the sense of a separate self, the “me” will never do what’s necessary to dissolve itself fully. It wants to live, it wants to keep its separateness, which in some of the, like in Dzogchen meditation or in Mahamudra, it isn’t the use of the will. It’s a different type of meditation, also. So, it’s interesting. Now I want to… Robert’s not the only one who can read stuff. I want to read stuff. Where are you? Not that. So, we were talking this morning. Robert was talking about surrender in different contexts. But here’s what Ramana Maharshi said. One of the things. I’m going to read you a few things. “Surrender to Him and abide by His will. Whether he appears or vanishes, await His pleasure. If you ask Him to do as you please, it is not surrender, but a command to Him. You cannot have him obey you and yet think that you have surrendered. He knows what is best and when and how to do it. Leave everything to Him. His is the burden. You have no longer any cares. All your cares are His. Such is surrender.” This is Bhakti. This is devotion. It’s a nice idea, but how do you do that? How do we give up? How do we let go of our stuff?  How do we let go of all the things? Like Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was saying: your stories, all this stuff, all the things you think you need, that you want. How do you let go of that and really turn it, really let it be? So, when we chant, when we repeat the names mentally, physically, or when we even hear the names being repeated, when we chant, all we have to do is come back again and again to the sound of the name. We don’t have to manipulate our emotions to feel anything special. There’s no failing and there’s no getting anything. You simply come back, because you’re coming back to a flow, a living flow of grace. Like Robert said the other day, these names are the sound form of reality, of what’s beyond form. And so, as we become more and more familiar with letting go and returning, letting go, and returning to the name, to the sound of the name, every time we come back, it’s a very big thing. Most people, like I’ve said before, they get born, they graduate high school, they drink some beer, and they die, and that’s it. They’re not here for one second in a whole lifetime. So, if we’re at all involved in this situation, it’s because our own karmas are blossoming right now in our lives, bringing us to this place where we might be able to move towards our own hearts in a new way, in an ever-deepening way. Here’s another quote. “The guru is within. Meditation is meant to remove the ignorant idea that he or she is only outside. If he be a stranger whom you await, he’s bound to disappear. So, what’s the use of a transient being like that? In order to receive the grace of the guru, one of two things must be done. Either surrender yourself because you realize your inability and need a higher power to help you, or investigate into the cause of the misery by self-inquiry, and so, merge in the Self. Either way, you will attain freedom from misery. God or guru never forsakes the devotee who has surrendered himself.” Sometimes it seems like surrender might feel like driving a car with a blindfold on. Scary. But the reason that we have Saints, the reason that we know about these great beings, is because they have cultivated an attachment that keeps them here in physicality, and that attachment is compassion. They have no agendas. There’s nothing left. They don’t need anything. They’re finished. But because they know that there’s only one of us, and if there’s one person that thinks that they’re separate, then there’s no real freedom yet. There’s only one being here. We’re all parts of that. And if one of us is hurting, we’re all hurting. And they know that in a way that’s beyond what we could understand. They experience that directly. Maharajji, every minute of every day, He was taking suffering from people. He was giving. There’s a prayer to him called the Vinaya Chalisa. “Vinaya” means “to beg,” or what’s another word, Robert, for “Vinaya?” “Plead.” Like to plead or beg. To ask for something a polite way. “And you wander like a God distributing alms to all you meet.” And this was like Maharajji. Everywhere he went, he was giving things; children, jobs, curing people from diseases, twenty-four-seven. And the thing about these great beings is that they have hearts as wide as the world. So, at the same time that they can feel and experience our suffering, it doesn’t destroy them. There’s nothing in there to take it personally. Like I told you the other day.. did I tell you? I don’t know where I was. I told somebody. When I was going to kill myself in India, in the Temple, Maharajji, He said to me, “You can’t die. Only Jesus died the real death.” Because he never thought of himself. There was nothing in there, no person in there thinking about themselves. That’s the real death. And these great beings have died that real death. They’re only visible because we need them. And the more we understand that, the more we trust, the more we can trust life itself, that it’s leading us in the right direction. And that’s hard to do, especially if you read the papers. It doesn’t look like that in this world. Here’s another one. “Place your burden at the feet of the Lord of the universe who accomplishes everything. Remain all the time steadfast in the heart, in the transcendental, absolute. God knows the past, present, and future. He will determine the future for you and accomplish the work. What is to be done will be done at the proper time. Don’t worry. Abide in the heart and surrender your acts to the divine.” One way or another, we have to lay our burden down. We have to lay this burden of this delusion of feeling that we’re separate from other beings. Like right now, everybody sitting in this room probably thinks they’re different from the person sitting next to them. I mean, it’s reasonable, isn’t it? It looks, they look different, but what’s inside of each one of us is exactly the same. What’s looking out of our eyes, hearing through our ears, feeling through our skin, tasting in the tongue, smelling through the nose, what’s doing, that’s all the same in each being. That presence, that awareness, consciousness is the same. That’s one. There aren’t two of that. There’s one in the whole universe and world. Our true nature is that, and these names that we chant are the names of that place. So, as we get more familiar with letting go, coming back, letting go, coming back, we move more deeply into our own hearts, into our own being. Here’s a tough one. “The ordainer controls the fate of souls in accordance with their Prarabdha karma.” Prarabdha karma, which is the amount of karma to be worked out in this life. “Whatever is destined not to happen, will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain in silence.” And when he says “silence,” it doesn’t mean physical silence. It means the silence of the Self, the peace of being. So, it would be nice to even just touch that for a minute. Forget about remaining in it all the time. But that’s an interesting one.  Most of us think we’re running our show. It gives me a good laugh sometimes. Like when I stub my toe, my day is ruined. What show am I running? So, ultimately the first and most important thing for us to do is to learn how to let go, is to quiet the mind a little bit, is to move out of the flow, the crazy flow of daily life, of daily worldly life, which is full of stuff and buttons that are getting pushed all day long. What we like, what we don’t like, what we want, what we don’t want, what we have, what we don’t have. This is like a whole sphere of stuff that we’re born into, and we die. But we, inside of those few years that we’re here, we can find a way to be in it, and not of it, but it means some type of practice has to be done. It just doesn’t happen. You can trip and fall in it, but it’s not too often that happens. And so, for me, the chanting has been an ever-deepening experience. There doesn’t seem to be a bottom to it. It’s always, every time I sit down to chant, it’s different, and the same in a way, but also, it’s ever deepening. One gets more and more familiar with the feeling of just being here and letting go again and again to whatever pulls you out of this or that. So, this mantra, this sloka is to Hanuman, “that Mahadev, that great God Mahakala, the eternal goodness, the blissful one who bestows liberation by allowing seekers to merge into his own state, as well as bestowing the enjoyment of all one’s cherished objects of desire.” So, this is not a renunciate path, this is a path of honoring the desires that you have, and allowing the desires that are good for us to come to fruition. We’re hungry. We’re born hungry. We have all kinds of hungers and a certain amount of food has to be eaten, otherwise we die. And not all food is physical food. We have desires. We have desires for certain things, and sometimes you just have to get those things in order to complete something. And this sloka talks about Hanuman as being the force that actually makes it possible for us to get those things. And when I was with Maharajji, I was twenty-three years old. The only job I ever had was like, driving a school bus around here in Kingston, and most of the Westerners there were around the same age. There were a few actual adults there, but very few. None of us had lives. We hadn’t done anything. I look back and I think, “Whoa, this is really interesting,” because I, not only had I not done anything, I didn’t want to do anything. I wanted to stay in India for my whole life. And there were other people also. I, did I tell you about where was? Did I tell you the story about my friend who was standing on the steps in Kainchi? I’ll tell you again. So, I saw a friend of mine standing on the steps in Kainchi. She had just come back to India with her husband for the first time after Maharajji left the body, since Maharajji left the body. And we were singing Chalisas at the temple, and I noticed her standing there just staring at the tucket, the cot that he used to sit on. She was just staring, and I thought, “Whoa, what’s going on over there?” And after we finished singing, she came over to me and she said, Krishna Das, I think you’re one of the few people who could understand what I’m going to tell you.” I said, “What?” She said she was standing there on the spot, looking at the tucket where he used to sit, and she remembered standing in that very spot watching Maharajji, and she remembered thinking, this is 30 years before, she remembered knowing that she was home. She finally made it, and she’d always be right here. And she looked at me and she said, “What happened?” Transferred. We were dragged there, and then we would drop-kicked back into our lives and all the desires. When Maharajji sent me back to America after two and a half years… He kept me in India. He got my visa extended twice, I think. When he sent me back, “You have to go. You have attachment. You have attachment.” And I said, “Baba, I’m just learning Hindi.” “Too bad. Jao.” I said, “What attachment?” I gave everything away. I gave my jeans away. I sold my guitar, my car. I had maybe one small little cardboard box in the basement of my mother’s house with some holy books. That’s all I had left. I was never going back to America when I left. My program was “America… finished.”  What attachment was he talking about? Now, I know. Every single thing that’s happened to me from that moment to this is what he was talking about. Every single thing. Every single thing. Some of them cannot be spoken of here, but every single thing. That’s what he was talking about. And he could see it all. I mean, it was all sitting there for anybody to see, just all these uncooked seeds, these desires that just had to be worked out one way or another. India’s not the place to do that. It gets tricky. I’ve had friends who’d stayed in India a long time, and they get stuck in certain ways. They can’t quite get through some of their stuff. It’s not the place to work out certain karmas. New York on the other hand… So, this thing about trust is a really big thing. There’s so, many reasons not to trust life, the way things are in the world right now and the way people are suffering and the violence and the wars, but trust is what we need inside. We need to trust the process that we’re going through. We need to trust the love and beauty that’s in our own hearts when everybody’s telling you “no.” When everything you read is telling you, “no, you can’t do that, you can’t trust, you have to do this, you have to do that.” That doesn’t mean that we have to expose ourselves to danger. We need to take care of business and do what we have to do. But when it comes to the internal life, our internal work, our spiritual work, we have to find a way to unwind all that stuff and release all that stuff that we carry in our bodies, in our subtle bodies, all the emotional, all the betrayals, all the broken hearts. We have to find a way to let that stuff heal by releasing it again and again. Because the stories we tell ourselves, they go on and on just by themselves. We sit down and all we do is think. So, until you add an anchor, until you put an anchor into the ocean, the ship’s just going to get blown around. So, the anchor is some practice, some object of concentration and a mantra, your breath, something else that you can come back to, and you cultivate that a little bit every day. You don’t try too much because then the ego gets involved and you start trying too hard and then you fuck everything up. A little bit, more times a day. Every time you remember, just let go and then you’re gone again. Then you remember and you let go. Try not to let go when you’re at a red light because you know it’ll turn green before you can pay attention again. Somebody will wake you up. So, when we have something to come back to, after a while begins to feel like coming back home. There’s a shift that happens. The reason I’m chanting today is because Maharajji forced me to chant. He ordered me and the Westerners. After he kicked out the Kirtan Wallahs, he ordered the Westerners to sing. So, we had to sing all day long. We couldn’t even see him. It was like hell, it was horrible. Hare Krishna my ass, all day long. It was just, whoa. But because of that, I was forced to sing through every possible state of mind that could fucking arise. And they did. But I had to keep singing. Right now, you’re going to go home. You don’t have to keep singing. TV goes on, the 4,062 channels. You never have to turn it off, one channel to the other. We don’t have the space to go through what we have to go through to finally settle a little bit. You have to face, you have to feel that boredom. You have to like, sit in it. You have to allow it to be, and watch it dissolve. You have to go through the anger and then the memories of how many times you’ve been hurt and how many of “this one didn’t love you,” and how many of “this one took you away.” And all this. You have to sit there with it. You can’t push it away. You have to sit there with it, and you have to sing through it, chant through it. You can’t push it away. And then you think about, I mean… When I started thinking about my girlfriend back in America, Hare Krishna, and then I went, “Wait a minute. She broke up with me.” It went from one to the other and back and forth, this, but Hare Krishna kept going, and eventually something actually happened. Nobody.. who knew? really, you understand? I wasn’t doing it as… I was doing it because he told me to do it, not because I thought anything was going to happen. And after like, 400 years of Hare Krishna, I’m not going to tell you exactly what happened, but something happened and there was a shift and I understood how it works. But you have to find that yourself. You have to have that experience. And it only comes if you’ll do the practice. You have to surrender to the fact that you need to do the practice, whatever practice is to you. It can be anything that works like that. But really the simplest thing is watching your breath. I mean, you’re not going to imagine that you’re going to go bodily to heaven just by watching your breath, but when you say Rama Rama Rama, you think, “Oh, this is so, good.” Oh yeah, bullshit. So, watching the breath or bringing the name in with the breath, but the point is don’t try to make something happen. Your job is simply to pay attention, no more and no less. And it’s not easy. It’s ridiculously simple, but it is not easy. Nothing is required, except to pay attention to what you’re doing. And from that, everything else becomes possible.   Faith & Courage Any questions or anything? Anybody but Robert. I’m not qualified to answer his questions. Okay. I’ll be brave. Give him the mic. Give him the mic. I’ll be brave. Robert had a question. Let me take a deep breath here. RS: It’s a very simple question. KD: I’ll give you a very simple answer. RS: (Someone I know) is in India right now, and he texted me a photo of the Hanumanji at the Lucknow Neem Karoli Baba Temple. Ha. RS: So, I wondered, and he was saying that Babaji had spent some time in Lucknow. I knew he spent time in Allahabad, , I knew he spent time in Brindavan, but I didn’t know about Lucknow. KD: Oh sure. RS: If you could tell me about Lucknow. Is that an easy enough question? KD: I think that’s okay. I think I handle that. Maharajji spent a lot of time in up UP, Uttar Pradesh, it was called, at and now it’s also, called Uttaranchal, the mountains. He was mostly, most of the life that we saw of him was in UP, Lucknow, Khanpoor, Aligarh, He was everywhere it seems. There’s a very old temple, a Hanuman temple in Lucknow, in Aminabad, a very ancient Hanumanji temple, and he used to spend a lot of time there. It used to be outside of town and now it’s… but Tiwari told me an interesting story. He said before this temple was built, there was an old Hanuman temple right by the river near this, the new temple, and he and Maharajji were walking by there, and Maharajji said to Tiwari, “Okay, do your puja here, your Shiva puja, right now.” Now, this means like three and a half, four hours of puja, and he had no book. He had to do it all by… But Tiwari said, “No, I’m not going to do that.” “I said, ‘Do it! You do it, what I say.” “I don’t care what you say, I’m not going to do it.” “Why?” He said, “Because the minute I sit down, you are going to run away. And you run away. You’ll leave me sitting here, and once I start my puja, I must finish. So, I’ll be sitting here for four hours by myself.” “Nay nay. I won’t run away.” “Yes, you will.” “I won’t.” “Yes, you will. Okay, promise me.” He held his ears like this. This is like cross my heart and help to die in India. And they sat down, and Tiwari started the puja and Maharajji sat down, and He sat there the whole time right next to him and Tiwari’s doing the puja. The other thing about it, Tiwari’s puja guru was also a very great saint, and he told Tiwari that when he did pu    ja, he had to do it at the top of his lungs. And his voice was something like a chainsaw. Oh God, it was incredible, but like a chainsaw. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Okay. But anyhow, so, this was right by the end, the last minute, the last “Om,” and Maharajji lept up, and said, “You miserable shit. You made me stay here and I have to have so much to do!” And he ran away. And that was right down below where the temple is now. There was an old Hanumanji there. He had so many devotees from Lucknow and all those places. Kanpur… The man who was the manager after the temple was built, the first manager of the temple, had been the head jailer of Central jail in Agra. His name was Mahotra, and whenever somebody needed to be kind of, reigned in, Maharajji said, “I’m sending you to Central jail.” And he would send him to the Lucknow Temple, to this guy. Maharajji had his own room in Central jail in Agra, his own cell that was kept empty for him. And he used to just go in there and they’d lock him in, but they’d find him walking around all night, and one time there was this, he had a devotee who was a really big dacoit, a bad guy, a criminal, and who had two guns, one registered with the government and one unregistered, which was for killing people. But he could sing the Ramayana, the Ramacharitamanasa very beautifully. And he had his own village in the jungle. It was like, he was like a king in his own village, and so he finally got caught and he was in central jail. So, Maharajji went there, and He said to him, He goes up to his cell and he says, “I know you’re planning to escape. Don’t do it. Because if you escape my other devotee, who’s the head of the jail, will lose his job, and who’s going to support his family? Don’t do it.” So, the guy literally didn’t escape, and one year later he was pardoned, and he was released forever. That’s faith. Because he could escape. He could. He was a really powerful bandit, a big guy. The way these people, I mean, this is how we learned about him. We watched how the Indian people, we observed, how they interacted with him, how they saw him. The reason we have the Hanuman Chalisa is because we saw they saw him as Hanuman. They Worshipped Maharajji as Hanuman himself. And look, I’ve said before. We used to come to the temple every day. And they would give us this little yellow booklet with a picture of a flying monkey on it. I had like at least a hundred of these booklets in my room when finally, one day I said, “What is this?” Right? And they said, “Oh, it’s a hymn to Hanuman.” Oh. So, I thought, wow, if we learn this, we could sing it to Maharajji. We knew he wanted to spend more time with us, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. And we thought, okay, if we learn this, we’ll be able to sing to him and he’ll like that. And that’s exactly what happened. And here we are. We’re doing it now. It all came from that little yellow booklet and that one little thought that he finally got into my thick skull. But his old devotees, the Pukka devotees, the older ones, they worshipped him as Shiva. There was one guy, a very poor man who came from Aligarh. His name was Vishwambhar. I will never forget this guy. He used to come with a basket full of Puja articles, the trays and the plates and the lamps and the things in the ghee and everything. And he’d come outside Maharajji’s door and he’d prepare everything and he’d just stand there and wait. And Maharajji would be inside. He’d be saying, “Oh, he’s here and he’s got this and that. And he brought this and that. And he brought this kind of Prasad and that kind of Prasad.” He said, “Oh, I won’t go out. Okay, I’ll go out. No, I won’t go out. Okay, I’ll go.” So, he’d come out, and this guy, he would do his puja and he’d be weeping, right? I mean, it was such an extraordinary sight. And he’d be doing his puja and chanting these mantras and weeping. Weeping. And finally at the end, he’d start doing the Arati and he’d, he would just go into Samadhi, and he’d just be standing there like that. And then he’d be kind of crazy. He came up to the westerners and say, “Who are you people? Are you the gods who have taken forms to be with Maharajji? Who are you?” And Tiwari was like that, my Indian father was like that. He’d been with Maharajji for 40 years. The first time he met him, he was a school kid, maybe about eight years old. Maharajji had started coming, showing up in the hills, but he was kind of hanging out in the jungle, and he wouldn’t be with any adults, but he would come to see the school kids and he would do acrobatics for them and they would give him their lunches and stuff like that so he’d get something to eat. But he used to be able to put his arms on the ground like this and do a full somersault without picking his arms up, like whoop. And the kids, so, the kids would give him stuff to eat. That’s nothing. Sai Baba used to take his intestines out and wash them and put ’em back in. Shirdi Sai Baba. He’d take his arms off and put them back on. I mean, if it’s a dream, you can do whatever you want in your dream. It’s a dream for them. Q: You’ve been talking about the faith that you witnessed around you there. Yeah. Q: But could you talk about the evolution of your own faith? Because when you first arrived, you couldn’t have had much faith and then somehow you got to a point where you would do what He told you to do. Could you talk about that evolution? Let me think about it. It’s interesting. I was just on Maui, where Ram Dass lived the last 20 plus years of his life, and we were very close for many years, over 50 years. I first met Ram Dass in the winter of ’68-‘69. He was living at his father’s place in New Hampshire, and I heard about him from my friends, and I went to see him. And I walked into the room where he was sitting. He was sitting on the bed, and the bed was on the floor, and he had his eyes closed. He was leaning against the wall, and I walked in the room and without a word being spoken, without eye contact, the minute I walked into that room, something happened inside me, and at that moment I knew that whatever it was I was looking for was real. It was in the world and you could find it. That was the beginning of the rest of my life. And I was just on Maui, and I went to the house, Ram Dass’s house. It’s still there. There’s some people living there, keeping it together. And I went up to his room where we used to sit for hours, and I sat in the chair that I used to sit in, right next to his chair where he would spend a lot of time because he, after the stroke, he couldn’t walk. And I closed my eyes, and I was just sitting there and I thought, “Wait a minute. This is no different than the way we used to sit together.” And it was so strong, the presence, the feeling, that I opened my eyes to see if was there, because he was so there, that what I felt was so, strong. And that feeling that I had at that moment was exactly the same feeling that I had in 1968 when I walked in that room. That presence which I felt for the first time in that room with Ram Dass, the first time, which I felt in India with Maharajji and after he left the body, whenever I was not too stupid and busy to pay attention, it was there. And I saw that had been with me, unchanging, all these years. It had never changed. It was perfect as it is, and it never came and went. It was always here. I never thought of it as faith. That word kind of makes Westerners nauseous, but, the trust that I have, that the presence is with me all the time, even when I forget, is probably the biggest gift that I got from him. One time I was sitting with him in a Parsi apartment building in Mumbai, in Christmas, 1972, and he was sitting on the bed and he would sit up, he’d lie down, he’d sit up, he’d lie down, turn this way and turn that way. I was just sitting on the floor doing my practice, which was like… All I did was want to stare at him, because all the beauty of the universe was wrapped up in that blanket. It was like, my eyes did not, they wouldn’t go anywhere else. They just wanted to be right there. At one point, he sits up like this and he looks at me and he says, “Courage is a really big thing.” And there was an Indian guy there. He said, “Oh, Baba, God takes care of his devotees.” “Courage is a really big thing.” And he laid down and went back to sleep. I was like, “What’s going to happen?” But there have been times in my life that all I had was the vaguest, most distant memory of that moment, and it was just enough to kind of make it to the next moment. The faith thing, it’s my experience that no matter how close I’ve gotten to being destroyed by one thing or another, every time I would fall off the cliff, he’d move the cliff and I’d fall on my face, instead of 10,000 feet to my death. That just happened so many times. But a funny thing happened when I first met him physically. It was confusing because I was feeling him everywhere all the time after that first meeting with Ram Dass and then after traveling around with Ram Dass in the States for a year and a half before going to India. He was huge. And then I saw this little guy in a blanket, and I thought like, “Wait a minute, how does all that fit into that blanket?” I don’t know. It was like, how does this work? I got really confused. But I got over it. I got over it and I got completely attached to the body and I forgot about the space. So, that took a lot of getting over. I don’t know. It’s not much of an answer, but when you go, the more you go through and survive, you can start to trust that you’re going to make it, regardless of how you feel. Sometimes it feels like you’re not going to make it, but we’ve all survived so many difficult situations in our lives and we’re still here. Maybe we could relax a little? I don’t know. What do you think? Fear is a big thing. Fear is very crippling. But fear itself never hurt anybody. It’s a feeling that comes and goes. There’s reasons it arises in us for sure, but the more we get used to letting go of whatever pulls us away from whatever we are thinking about or concentrating on, every time you come back, it’s training, it’s mind training, and you get more used to what it feels like not to be lost in dreamland, or absorbed in thoughts, or thinking or planning, or the past. I mean, every moment is either that everything, it’s either that you’re thinking about the past or imagining the future or judging how you are now. So, it gets easier and easier to notice the more you, the more practice you do, to notice when you’re gone. Of course, when you’re really gone, you don’t notice until you’re back. But how does that happen? Shri, Ram, Jai, Ram, and you’re thinking about, “Oh man, what’s on Netflix tonight? Yeah, right. Okay.” Oh. How did that happen that you notice you weren’t paying attention? That’s a great moment. Because we’re not doing that. We’re gone. And yet, oh, we woke up. So, if you understand a little bit about cause and effect, nothing can happen without a cause. What could the cause be of waking up? We must have planted seeds of waking up already or we’d never wake up. So, that’s the work we’ve already done, coming into fruition and waking us up, bringing us home. But don’t think about it too much. But it’s there. You notice, you come back. I mean, I remember once I got asked to sing at this teacher training for this yoga studio. So, I showed up and the teacher who was going to train these poor people started haranguing them. And there were pictures of all the deities on the wall, and this person was going, “If you don’t know what all these, every one of these beings are, you’ll never be a good yoga teacher.” I wanted to commit Hara Kiri. I just wanted to get out there. I couldn’t, but there was nothing I could do. Man, the deities is who we are. It’s our true nature, home base. And we’re always home, but we’re not paying attention. So, all we have to do is train ourselves to let go of what’s taken us away, and come back. Let go, come back, let go. When you let go, you are back. You don’t have to then find back. You notice, you’re gone, you’re home. And then you try to stay with the sound of the name if that’s what you’re doing, or with the flow of the breath or whatever, but you can’t. The personal will can’t do that. You’re gone again, then you wake up, then you’re back, and you stay with the sound, but you’re gone. You just watch it happen again and again, over and over. And little by little you, you’re not gone so, long. That’s over time. One of the definitions of meditation is becoming familiar with getting used to being here. Someone asked Ramana Maharshi, what’s the result of Raama Japa, the repetition of Raam’s name? He said, Raa is reality. Ma is the mind. Their union is the fruit of Raam. Japa, utterance of words is not enough. The elimination of thoughts is wisdom. So, the reality, when the mind merges with that reality… mind is an interesting word. So, what we usually call mind is just thoughts. The mind is like the sky and the thoughts are like birds flying through the sky. The birds are not the sky. The mind is the awareness in which all of that happens, in which we’re always present, inside of that space. There’s no place we could ever be except here, but our stuff pulls us away all the time, all day long, all life long, and then… next life. Q: Thank you, KD. Q: Thank you, first of all, and Nina and Robert, everyone for being here. You mentioned how in that experience with Ram Dass, you saw or felt what was real, and that was that everything you wanted could exist. And like beings like Maharajji, Neem Karoli Baba are love, I’ve heard you say. And they remove the dirt from your eyes so you can see your true self. And these things are, in my experience, easier around beings like yourself and Nina and Robert, and so on. And you mentioned how quickly we forget and fall off this mountain, and Grace will, you fall on your face instead of to a horrifying death. What can we do to maybe fall off that mountain less often? Like, this is easy because I can walk down the road and Krishna Das is live in front of me and chanting in a room with people. But by the time you leave, I’m picking up a six-pack, and hitting the weed showcase in Woodstock sounds good. Why is it so easily that we forget and like neglect things that feel so, in harmony and like chakras balanced, good. Just keep doing this and then before I’m out the door, I forget everything you said. KD: That’s just who we are and there’s nothing to do about it. You have to be you. Inside of that, you are waking up slowly at your own speed. You can’t go faster, and you can’t slow down either. It’s happening at its own speed. It is a question of what you want. If we really wanted to be awake and present, really wanted, we would be, but we’re very conflicted. We have all kinds of things we want, so many programs running. You want this, you want that. But yeah, you take a little bit of that on the side, too. You’ve got to be you, but you’ve got to learn to love that, too and accept that’s who you are and just not fight it. No sense fighting who you are. But when you cultivate a practice, if we don’t plant the seeds of the things you want, we won’t get them. They don’t, the seeds don’t come from Outer space. They come from within us. The seeds of paying attention, the seeds of the repetition in the name, the seeds of coming back to the breath, the seeds of the mantras. This is what we can do to help ourselves. All those practices, all those things. Reading the books about the saints, how they lived, what they did, getting that kind of inspiration in our lives. There’s so many videos about so many Great Saints, but I watch Korean serial killer movies. Hello? I could be watching a video about the 16th Karmapa, but I’m watching a Korean serial killer movie. That’s me. What can I do about it? Well, when it’s over, when this 49 episode thing is finally over, I’ll never watch another one. I’ve said that a few times. It’s just who I am. It’s okay. But inside of that, at the same time I’m still doing a little bit of practice once in a while, and inherent in everything you said is a lot of self-judgment. And as long as you believe everything you think, you’re fucked. Just like the rest of us, we believe everything we think. Excuse me, why? Well, we do. And the thoughts, they’re showing up in this moment from the past or from, they’re like waves coming off a big storm in the far-off ocean of time, and now they arrive here and we think we’re thinking, and then we think we’re not thinking. So, we’re just becoming aware of the thought in this moment. And you go, “I’m thinking.” No, you’re not. You’re just glued to that thing, identified with it temporarily until it dissolves. But those programs, those repetitive thoughts and unconscious ways that we limit ourselves and judge ourselves and criticize ourselves and all that stuff, we’ve really been trained well to do that. So, it takes time to unwind that stuff. It just does. And really, I think of spiritual life as a ripening process more than anything else. You plant the seeds and as time goes on, they grow, and they literally change you from the inside. They change your experience. They change how you see yourself. They change how you go through your day. As these seeds that we ourselves plant along, with the grace to plant them in the first place, they change the way we navigate our lives. They change how we see other people. It’s like you’re born and there’s no sun and you grow up and it’s dark all the time, and you think this is the way it is because it’s always been that way. This is the way it is. And then, the sun starts to rise, and a little light comes into the world and all of a sudden everything looks different. That’s what happens on the inside. Everything starts to look different, naturally, as we release our stuff because it is different. It’s not how we think it is. We are completely involved, more or less, with our subjective version of ourselves, and life, and people around us, and our judgments, the likes and dislikes. The third patriarch of Zen said, “The great way is not difficult for those with no preferences.” Okay, well next. So, yeah. So, anyhow, that’s the deal. So, you just have to chill. Everything that you think about yourself is something you think about yourself, but you do, and you believe it. We all do. That’s what makes us, that’s where we share the same kind of bandwidth, mostly. We can drive on the same roads and stop at the red and go on the green. We share a bandwidth, and as time goes on, it does change. So, before we get there, Sri Ramakrishna, who was a very great saint in the 1800s, he talked about how the repetition of the name works. He said every repetition of the name is a seed, and just like a tiny seed can have a huge tree in it. So, does every repetition of the name have reality in it. And he said, the seeds of the repetition of the name are caught by the wind and they’re blown around. And some of those seeds land on the roof of an old house in the jungle somewhere. Right? And they get stuck between the clay tiles on the roof, and then time, seasons, snow, rain, sun, everything. Years go by, and the tiles begin to soften a little bit as time goes on. And when they get soft, the seeds start to grow, and the roots of the seeds start to grow. The seeds of the repetition of the name, they start to grow, and they destroy the roof of the house, and they keep growing, and they destroy the walls of the house. He says, that house is who we think we are, our version of ourselves, our subjective, delusionary, separate self, and that separate self was created by Karmas. The house was built for certain reasons, but when the walls of the house are gone, there’s only open space. Nothing is lost. You recognize your oneness with the whole universe. You’re no longer limited to the house, which is who we think we are in this, that house. But you notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, you’ll feel like this, or you’ll feel like that, or it’ll be blissful or anything like that, because it doesn’t matter. That’s not the point of it. The “what it feels like,” the experiences that might come as the house is being dissolved and broken down, and at the end there’s no walls. There’s no version of a “me” anywhere left. You’ve recognized reality. So, that’s why you simply plant the seeds. You do your practice, and you live your life in the best way you can. And we try to treat other people the way we would like to be treated. That’s one thing, one possible thought to keep in mind as we go through our day, in terms of how we meet each moment, how we meet each person that arrives in our lives. Because if we could treat other people the way we would like to be treated, the world would be a different place immediately. But it takes tremendous awareness and strength to be able to do that. It takes a lot of practice, a lot of work on oneself to release oneself from the grip of likes and dislikes and wants and all that stuff, to be freed from that so that you can be present. It’s something that takes time and dedication. When singing the divine name becomes continuous, all other thoughts cease and one is in one’s real nature, which is invocation or absorption. We turn our minds outwards to things of the world and are therefore not aware that our real nature is always invocation. That’s from Ramana Maharshi, also. “Invocation” really means clinging to one thought, to the exclusion of all others. That’s the purpose of it. It leads to absorption, which ends in self-realization or to surrender.   Coming to America and the Vindhyavasini Q: I was curious about what your re-entry was like for you, when you came back from India to the United States? KD: Last year you said? You mean the first time? Q: And how you kind of found your… Well, my philosophy at that time… “Well, he’s sending me back, all right, fuck it, I’ll party.” My idea was to get as far out on the limb as I could, and just before it broke, to come back to him. So, I got out on the limb as far as I could go, and just before it broke, He left the body. Talk about fucked. I was fucked forever. And I spent the next 21 years hating myself. That’s how I came back. It took a long time to get over that, because he actually wrote to me, He had somebody… One day, He looked around, he said, “Where’s Krishna? Das?” The guy who knows everything. They said, “Baba, You send him to America.” “Nay. Tell him to come back. I want to see him. I want to hear him sing. Tell him to come back now.” So, I got a letter. It’s a long story, but I didn’t go. I betrayed… just like that, like nothing. I betrayed the love of my life as if it was nothing. I was so lost and so immersed in my own shit that I didn’t even know what I was doing, but just like that. “I love him. I’m such a great devotee. I sing to Him,” and in a split second, I betrayed it as if it was nothing, and I had to live with that for a long time. Just part of the show. Anybody?  Oh, hi. Q: So, part of my rehabilitation from being strictly raised Irish Catholic has been following the teachings of Ram Dass, particularly his teachings about unworthiness and worthiness, and through my kind of contemplation about this, I’ve discovered it really shows up as self-hatred and self-loathing, and how this is stemming from the kind of indoctrination of fear by, really, the western religions, in my case, Catholicism. And in kind of investigating this, I found that the Eastern religions don’t, or just Eastern cultures, don’t really experience this phenomenon of self-hatred. There’s this story that Sharon Salzberg tells that she had an opportunity to ask His Holiness a question. And so, she asked him, what do you think of self-hatred? And his Holiness answered, “What’s that?” KD: Q: Yeah. And so, what I’ve noticed is that the Eastern traditions have a much deeper sense of honoring and regard for the sacred feminine, which the Western traditions do not, and there’s rampant denial and repression of the sacred feminine and of women in general. And so, as you just spoke about your own experience with self-hatred, I can assume that you’ve had some experience with overcoming it. KD: I’m an expert. Q: I’m just wondering how your, one, your relationship with the sacred feminine on the subtle plane evolved as you hopefully overcame your self-hatred, and two, how your relationship with women on the physical plane may have changed as you overcame self-hatred. KD: That’s a big chunk. Okay. One something at a time. First of all, there’s another story about His Holiness the Dalai. Lama. These Christian missionaries came to see him, and they said, your Holiness, what’s your idea of sin? And he thought for a minute, and he said, “That’s kind of a Christian thing, isn’t it?” They don’t have that. Paap. The word for sin usually is paap, which means to burn. Correct, Robert? Robert Svaboda:   Not exactly. KD: Not exactly. Tell… Robert Svaboda: well, what you’re thinking of is paschat tapam, which means burning with regret. Paap is just a word that basically means karma that is unwisely performed. KD: Yeah. Okay.  Which you suffer from. Robert Svaboda: Which you suffer from. KD: So, yeah, there’s no real concept like that, like original sin… Robert Svaboda: I mean, there’s plenty of guilt in India, but there’s no word for guilt in India. KD: A lot of times Indian people will come to talk to me and, oh boy, it is just how did, there’s a whole different family structure. The issues are not exactly the same as ours. But a lot of it has to do with our relationship with our physical mothers. Once a couple was having a problem and they came to Maharajji and he said to the guy, “Just see her as your mother.” He said, “I hate my mother.” He, “What? What did he say? What did he say?” Westerners are really strange. Early on, when I started getting interested in this stuff, I was very much into Kali. I really loved, I got very attracted to the idea of Kali and the Goddess and Durga, and Maharajji made me the pujari of the Durga temple also, for a while. There was a new temple he had built in the courtyard to Durga, and they brought in a pujari, but they caught him stealing the money in the donation box. They sent him home and brought in a second guy. They caught him stealing the money. So, they brought a third guy. They caught him stealing the money. So, the Temple Trust came to Maharajji and said, “Baba, we can’t find a priest or Pujari that won’t steal.” “My priest won’t steal.” “So, who’s that?” “Krishna Das.” So, that was my qualification. Guru is everything. Guru is male, female, and beyond all that. He could be the sweetest, sweeter than the sweetest mother. He was a mother to us and a father, and everything, even still, and then when he left the body, Siddhi Ma was there. She took care of us for so, many years and actually there’s a story. Near Allahabad, there’s a place called Vindhyachal, the Hill, Vindhyah Hill, and on that hill, there’s an ancient temple to Vaishnavi Devi, Vindhyavasini, Durga Devi, the form of Vaishnavi Devi who lives on this hill, this very sacred place. So, one time, Maharajji and Siddhi Ma and others were in a car and they were on their way up there to do Puja at the temple. But it got late in the day. They started late, and so the temple was going to be closed by the time they got there. So, halfway up, Maharajji says, “Pull over.” So, they pulled the car over and he gets out of the car and Ma was sitting in the back. He opens the door, he sits down on the ground, and he took all the utensils for the puja that they were going to do to the Murti on the hill. And he worshiped Siddhi Ma as Vindhyavasini Durga Devi. And the temple that he built in Kainchi, which is where Ma lived, is in Vindhyavasini,  Durgadevi. That’s one of her forms. So, living with Ma, being with Ma was extraordinary. This, it’s hard for me to talk about it, because for 30 years she didn’t want anybody talking about her, and now she can’t stop us. But still, it doesn’t come out easy. But she was so great with the Westerners. She never judged us. She always loved and supported us and helped us, and we were really stupid. I mean, the level of stupidity that we were functioning under was… is…  extraordinary. Forget “was.” But she never said a word, and she knew everything, and she just loved us. And that love, that love was more important than the blood in our veins. But still, the programs are running, they don’t go away so fast. The glue that holds us to that stuff is super, super, duper glue. But over time, it dissolves. And we no longer believe that shit about ourselves so much. In fact, I can actually tell that I mope around less than I used to. Really. I mean, I was born a moper. I spent my whole life moping around, but I hardly mope around now. I miss it. I really do. There’s something to moping around. Sometimes I do it just for fun, like, “fucking-a god damn piece of shit.” I mean, it’s like a home base, but I don’t go there very much anymore. My mother came to India after I’d been there for two years. I was in the living in the temple with Maharajji, and one day He looks at me and said, “Is your mother coming to India?” I said, “My mother? No.” Right. Okay. Later that day, a message arrives from town. Your mother called. She wants to talk to you. Oh, shit. So, I went to the town, and I called the local operator that called the town operator that called the county operator that called the national operator that called the international operator that booked the call. It took like 12 hours, “Hi mom.” “I want to come to India.” I said something to my mother that, if my daughter said it to me, I would lock her in a room and give her food once a week. I said, “I have to ask my guru.” “What? Why’d you say? What?” “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I said, “Maharajji. My mother wants to…” “Let her come.” So, she came. She had an idea. She’d seen pictures of Maharajji, because I sent some pictures back to my sister and everything. So, she had an idea that Maharajji’s nose was the same as her father’s nose, and she was going to come to India to see if that was true. Yeah. So, the whole time she was in India, she looked like this. I had to leader around. It was amazing. So, but it was good for us. So, we spent like 10 days in the hills seeing Maharajji every couple of days, and then we had to go down to the plains, she wanted to see the Taj Mahal and a couple other places. So, coming out of the temple. So, the temple is kind of below the road.  There’s the road and you go down these steps and a bridge across the river, and then you walk down into the temple. So, we said goodbye to Maharajji and we walked out up the steps, and we’re up on the road, and I opened the door to the car for her to get in, and she turns and she looks back down into the temple. And Maharajji was just sitting on the tucket and she completely, she burst out crying. She exploded in tears, and I had to catch her so she didn’t fall. And I had to like, pick her up and kind of get her into the car. She totally lost it. She just was weeping. She just broke in half, and she cried for like an hour as we were like, driving down. It was amazing. She never knew what that is, but she, at that point in her life, she was still drinking. She was an alcoholic. And I think she went through like three rehabs before she stopped drinking. And then, when I’d be singing in the city, sometimes people from Long Island would stop and pick her up and bring her into the city, and they would ask, they’d say, “You met Maharajji?” And she’d start talking and she’d be like, but she couldn’t maintain that, but the hook went in, and that, that hook will never come out. So, it, it was interesting. She wasn’t a happy camper. But by the end of her life we had pretty much worked most of this stuff out. I told her to bring the best cashmere sweater she could find, right? So, she brought this beautiful sweater, and she brings it over, and Maharajji starts abusing the the Indians. “You miserable shits. You never bring me anything. This woman’s come all the way from America. Look what she’s…” He puts on the sweater, and they loved it. I mean, it’s teasing. Not really abuse, but you know, all the pictures of Him with the blue blanket. This is one of the most pictures that you see. There’s a red turtleneck, a maroon turtleneck he’s wearing. That’s my mother’s sweater. Is it there? No. I have no pictures of Him around here. Bob said he was going to put some pictures up. Bob used to come by the temple because he had a Volkswagen bus. He had to drive people to the hospital in Nanital from Almora, and he drove by Kainchi a number of times while we were there, while Ram Dass was there, but he never came in because he was mad at Ram Dass, and so he never saw Maharajji. Yeah. It’s a long story from the old acid Davis at Millbrook, and Ram Dass was… it’s a long story, but he was mad at Ram Dass, so he never stopped and went in the temple and he drove by it like this. Wow. Talk about regret. He regrets. Q: Thank you. It’s interesting that you just mentioned Bob Thurman being in India, because I was just wondering, although it’s, you can see that your hearts are in the same place as if you discuss with one another, just your different approaches and of your sacred practices between Bhakti and Tibetan Analytical Buddhism. KD: Was that a question? Yeah. I was wondering if you discuss it with one another. I just haven’t heard you talk about a different angle. KD:I take a lot of Buddhist teachings. A lot of Buddhist teachings. I go to a lot. I have, there are lamas I’ve been studying with for years. Q: So, you’re still doing that? Okay. I didn’t realize that. KD: Because, the Hindus or the Indians, they worship the car. You know, they do puja, they wash the car. The Buddhists, they tell you how it fucking works. When it breaks down, you can fix it. When the car breaks down in India, they just do some more puja and then it goes. But the Buddhists know how to fix the engine, the brakes, everything. Q: I didn’t realize that. Okay. KD: Well don’t take it to heart. One day Maharajji grabbed my book. Let me see what happened. Oh yeah. He grabbed my notebook. I had two notebooks, a diary, and then I had a notebook where we wrote out prayers and stuff from different traditions, so, he grabs it and he opens it up and he says, “What’s that?” He didn’t, supposedly he didn’t read English, right? He says, he goes down, stops at this one page. “What’s that?” And I looked. I said it was this Buddhist prayer. The song of Mahamudra. I          said, it’s Buddhist. He said, “Translate some.” So, I couldn’t. So, the Indian guy there, he translated. He goes, “Teek. Correct. Very good.” I went, “What? What? What’s he talking about?” So, then he keeps going through the book and He, we had made these postage stamps, like a page of postage stamps of him, these little… he come across one of these stamps and he goes, “Who’s that?” I said, “Baba, it’

Call and Response Podcast Ep. 84 | At Home With KD, May 7 2020

Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das Ep. 84 |At Home With KD, May 7 2020 “All we have is what’s in front of our faces, which is the ups and downs of life. So, you have to learn to deal with those situations in the best way… and there’s no God outside of your Self, your true Self. And that true Self is the same in every Being. So, if you treat other people the way you would like to be treated, you won’t have any problems at all.” – Krishna Das “Ram nam karne se sab pura ho jata” My Guru used to say that to us quite often. “From going on repeating these Names, everything is accomplished. Everything is accomplished.” A very simple statement. Easy to kind of just say, “Oh, yeah, ok,” but I’ve been thinking about that, or trying to truly believe that for 50 years or so. 40 Years. 45 years. So, if I truly believed that what He said, that from repeating these Names, everything is accomplished, I would probably be giving more of myself to the practice as I’m doing it. But, you know, we have our own karmic predicaments that we live in. Very distracted lives. Very fast lives. Although it’s a little bit slower these days. Although we can fill it up with stuff quite easily. I remember many many years ago, before I went to India I was up in the mountains of New Mexico with Ram Das at the Lama Foundation for about a month in the winter. It was fantastic. And every day we would spend many hours meeting together, singing, talking, meditating. And we heard about this New York artist who had moved out to New Mexico and lived just down the hill, down the mountain from where the Lama was, and he had been to India and he knew how to meditate. This was Big Time. So a group of us went down to meet with him, to see him. And we spent a couple of hours with him, talking to him. I just sat in the back of the room, listening. And as we were leaving, I was the last one to go out the door. As I was about to go out the door, he grabbed my arm and he looked at me and he said, “You. You have to find out why it is you can’t give yourself 100% to whatever you’re doing.” Oh. He nailed me to the wall. That was unbelievable. That was in 19-, the winter of, let’s see, ’69. That’s what? 50 years ago? I can still feel his hand on my arm. You know, if we look at ourselves, we notice how difficult it is to be fully engaged in something. We’re not talking about watching a movie where you’re fully lost for as long as the movie’s on or some kind of entertainment, but whatever you’re doing, being fully engaged. Not thinking about the future, not the past, not this and that, not the chatter that goes on in the brain all the time, but truly present. Truly present and aware. So, I’ve been working on that a long time. Or, at least noticing how little of myself I really can give to each moment. So, when it comes to chanting or a practice that you do regularly, you create a situation where you’re training yourself to let go and come back. Let go and come back. Over and over again. It doesn’t, it’s not about up here. It’s about in here. And it’s not an intellectual process. It’s not a learning process. It’s a training process. So, little by little your Being gets familiar with these sounds, with these Names in this case, and you begin to relax into the Name. And the Name, as we come to know it, has been brought into this world by a Being who has fully realized the reality of that Name, the reality of what is Named, and has brought that Name into this world for us as a practice, as a doorway into that Name, into the reality, which is our own true nature, which is our soul. The love we’re looking for exists within us. It lives within us. We look outside ourselves in the outside world. We look for it everywhere and we don’t find it. We don’t find it until we look within. It’s not like you look with your eyes within. It’s not like that. It’s moving more deeply into ourselves by releasing the stuff that holds us and takes us away again and again and again. That naturally moves us within. Letting go again and again. And we don’t have to make this up. We don’t have to manipulate ourselves. We don’t have to be looking for anything specific, any kind of experience. Once we know who we are, we’re wide open. Everything is here and now. Everything exists within us. We’re so achievement oriented in the West. We’re in such a hurry because everything is done so quickly here. But that’s not how we find ourselves. So, anyhow let’s take some questions for a while. Q: Who was Neem Karoli Baba’s spiritual master and what were some of the practices they would do? KD: We don’t know. We don’t know who His gurus were. We have no idea. He never spoke about it. He had some… We hear stories, when He was very young, He went to this ashram, that place, He met this guy, that guy. But nobody really knows that we ever spoke to, ever told us anything definitive about that. He never spoke about it. He never had pictures up of this and that, you know?  He was very much believed to be a manifestation of Hanuman himself. I don’t even know what that means. You know, we use all these words, all these words that we bring, we learn from India or from the spiritual path, but we don’t really know what these words mean. But, the lineage that He seemed to be a part of was a Ram lineage, the lineage of Ram and Hanuman. But more than that we don’t know. We know that He, He spent many years in a cave, in caves. There were two small caves, well, one big cave in a town called Neeb Karori, which is where He got His name, the Baba from that town, that village. I visited there and it was a very small village, a very funky village and they told us not to leave the temple, especially at night. You needed to be very careful. Apparently, there’s a lot of murders in that part of the country. But that’s where He decided to build the cave. The villagers dug out a cave for Him in this field, or it was, I think, in the jungle at the time. Later on it was cleared. And nobody knew that He was there. And He was existing on, existing on one glass of milk a day, which, this old village lady used to bring to Him. And then, she died and so He was starving. Nobody knew He was there. So, the story goes that He picked up His chimta, which is this metal tong for moving fire around, moving the logs around, and He threatened Hanuman. He had a little murti of Hanuman that He had in the cave. He threatened Him. He said, “You’ll starve me so I’ll beat You.” And apparently, the next morning, there was milk outside the door.   Q: Do I draw any inspiration from Eddie Vedder with my vocal style? KD: Excuse me. Eddie Vedder is a kid. I’m 20 years older than him. No, I mean, he’s great. In fact, I think his wife said something to somebody I knew, that she reminded me of him. No, I love Eddie Vedder, but I just sing. I don’t have a vocal style as far as I know.   Q: How do I remain focused on God when I have to deal with the ups and downs of life? KD: If you have to ask that question, you don’t know what God is, where God is or who God is. So, you can’t be focused on God, because you don’t know. We don’t know. All we have is what’s in front of our faces, which is the ups and downs of life. So, you have to learn to deal with those situations in the best way and there’s no God outside of your Self, your true Self. And that true Self is the same in every Being. So, if you treat other people the way you would like to be treated, you won’t have any problems at all. Calm yourself down. Calm your mind down little by little and find a way to get through the day without falling on your face too many times, or creating negative karmas by being angry at people and hurting others and hurting yourself. There’s no God out there. The God that you’re looking for is within us and until you learn how to be kind to yourself in a real way, which is to give yourself a break and learn to trust your own intuition about where to look for these deeper realities, you know, you need to do some practice. And  you need to treat others the way you want to be treated.   Q: Towards the end of your film, One Track Heart, you use a word. Someone said you were giving something to people. I tried looking it up but I found only something… KD: Yeah, Maharajji had asked me to be the pujari or the priest of the Durga temple that He had built in Kainchi in the courtyard and I had to distribute the charanamrit. That means the nectar of the feet, which is the water that was used to wash the feet of the Goddess in the pujas, in the rituals. Yes, it is water, but it’s blessed water because it was used in the ritual. So, distributing that charanamrit was a way of distributing the blessings of the ritual that the other pujari did. I just watched. “Charanamrit” is the name.   Q: I need advice on suicide. KD: You mean how to do it? I can’t help you. I needed advice, too, you know? I was going to jump in the river and kill myself. I was having a nervous breakdown in Kainchi, right there in the temple. Maharajji was there and it’s a long story. It’s in my book, Chants of a Lifetime.  It’s in that book. But the short story is that I was completely flipped out and I was going to kill myself and He called me over and He said, “What are you going to do, jump in the river?” And He laughed. “Ha.” He said, “Worldly people don’t die.” Us. Worldly people. People who are attached to this world and to the ego. “Worldly people don’t die. Only Jesus died the real death.” What? “Why? Because He never thought of Himself. He gave His life for His people. He never thought of Himself.” So, the idea is that, all we do is think about ourselves and suicide is not going to change that. You go from this body to some other body and the karmas that you have, that you can’t deal with now, you won’t be able to deal with later, either. So, the best way is to try and find a way to be in this world in a good way. Whatever you have to do to find some peace of mind, you should do. Counseling, therapy, antidepressants, whatever works for you. And that’s what you should do. You should dedicate your life to finding a way to live here. Because you got born here for a reason. We all did. And what’s in our life is what we have to deal with and there’s nowhere we can go to get away from that. Suicide is not going to change that. You’re not going to have this body but you’re going to have another one and who knows what it’ll be? It might not be as good.   Q: These days I have to wear a police radio by my ear while I’m on duty. KD: That doesn’t sound like too much fun. Q: I have to listen and talk to others and write, etcetera. Any suggestions about how to not ignore the least urgent but to include? KD: Once again, it’s all about when you’re not on duty, what you do. It’s about developing a practice that helps keep you in line as the day goes on. You just pay attention to what you’re doing. You do the best job you can do. Don’t try to… give yourself 100% to what you’re doing. Whatever it is. Just do the best that you can. And do that when you’re doing your practice, too. I’m sorry I can’t really get into that one.   Q: What’s your advice on sannyasa, to dedicate one’s heart and mind totally in service and surrender to God and also does Guru have to have a physical form? KD: Absolutely not. Guru doesn’t have a physical form. We see it that way because that’s what we’re attached to, a physical body. A Guru is never identified with the physical body although a Guru might take a body to help us if it’s necessary for us, but Guru, God and our true nature, the Self, the Soul, are not different. And, you know, these days it seems like there’s Gurus on every corner, but those are not Gurus. Those are not Satgurus. Those are not real Gurus, true Gurus. They might be teachers, they might be more advanced than us. But a Guru, a real Guru is something else entirely. So, you can read books about some of the real Gurus; Swami Nityananda, who was Muktananda’s Guru; Shirdi Sai Baba; and my Guru, Neem Karoli Baba; there are many, Sri Ramakrishna. Read those guys. Read how they lived. Read what they said. Read how they got through the day. What did they do? That’s how you get a feel for what a real Guru is. They don’t do business.   Q: Can you get the grace of the Guru even though He isn’t in the physical form, through Bhakti? KD: Of course, absolutely. Of course. Grace is always here. We’re just not paying attention. We are not paying attention. It’s raining everywhere all the time but we can’t drink until we cup our hands. So practice, devotion to practice, the path is what trains us to cup our hands to get the water that we need to drink. Absolutely. No question. Grace is all the time. And the other part of that question is surrender. What is sannyasa, to dedicate one’s heart and mind? That’s wishful thinking, that’s what it is. You know, that’s wishful thinking. Good luck, you know? It’s not so easy to do, you know? You’ll go to some cave, you’ll put on orange clothes. You’ll just have a big ego about having orange clothes and thinking you’re more humble than other people. Give yourself a break. Live in this world like you are now and don’t let your neurosis fuck you up and make you think you have to go be a sannyasi because you’re too scared to deal with your shit. There’s no where you can go where your shit is not going to be right there with you. Deal with it. Find a way to live with it. Find a way to love yourself. That’s sannyasa. Clothes, initiations don’t do anything unless you’re ripe and if you’re ripe, you’re ripe. You would know it.   Q: How do you know if your difficult, painful, stressful life situation is part of your dharma? KD: Well, it’s certainly your karma… Q:  and you stick with it all through ups and downs and pain and sorrow or if it’s time to make a change? KD: I have a feeling you’re talking about relationships, because you can’t change your life. You can change the people in it and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that if you, if you find yourself in a situation that is causing you pain and causing others pain and it’s just not working, you certainly can find a way to make something work for you. You know, we grow up thinking relationships are going to make us happy. We get turned on by somebody and we so-call “fall in love” and we fall in love and we are in a relationship. Relationships are busines. You give, you take, you give, you take. When somebody stops giving, you freak out. When you stop taking, they freak out. So, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to find a more peaceful way to be in the world but you can’t avoid, by changing the external circumstances you can’t necessarily, necessarily make yourself happy.  So, whatever you do, you should do with as much kindness to yourself and others that you can do, whatever that means to you. You’re the only one who knows.   Q: How does it feel to offer the chants without the large energy you’re used to in the church or in a theater? KD: It feels fine. Better than robbing banks. I’m having a good time. I’m singing and you’re singing. That’s good. You know, because we’re attached to the physical body, because we’re attached to the physical body, we think we’re here and other people are somewhere else. That’s only one way of looking at it. In the space of the heart and the sky of the mind, we’re all within that and when, certainly when we’re doing practice, we’re all tuning into that space together and it’s all about doing the practice and if I was missing the energy of the people, I would notice that and I would let go and I wouldn’t be missing it anymore. You keep coming back to the chant. Anything you think about it, you keep letting it go and coming back. So, for me it’s not, I mean it’s very different on many levels, but it’s also very much the same. Q: I feel my devotion scattered over many aspects: Christ, Kali, Hanuman; and it keeps spreading over more. What are your thoughts over devotion: many aspects versus one aspect with full attention? KD: The more the better. More love is good. You’re overthinking this. It’s the love that’s important, not the object. The object is allowing you to release that love feeling in your own heart. When the whole universe becomes objects for you to release that love feeling then you’re enlightened. So, keep going.   Don’t stop with Christ and Kali and Hanuman. Keep going until every Being you see turns you on and no beings turn you off. It’s all good. It’s all good.   Q: Much has been said about being mindful of the company you keep. Do you think it presents in issues in relationships or detours one’s path with relationships, in relationship with them when they have no spiritual path of their own? KD: Maybe. But maybe not. If you’re in relationship with somebody, that’s the karmic imperative for the moment. That’s what’s there in your face. How it got there is irrelevant, but it’s there, so you have to be with that. And yes, the Buddha said that satsang or sangha is the most important thing in the spiritual life because our hearts are so hesitant and fearful and challenged that if we surround ourself with spiritual friends it can help us open up but it can also be completely negative because what we think is spiritual might not be spiritual at all. And the reasons you might move into an ashram or a so-called ashram or some kind of spiritual community might turn out to be very negative. Like you’re trying to hide from yourself so you want to go be with a group of people who turn out to be hiding from themselves. So, it’s all about learning to trust yourself and following your heart and yes, it’s difficult if somebody doesn’t understand what you’re doing, but you know, we probably don’t understand it. I once got an email from a friend of mine who said she and her husband were about to get divorced, and I said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Why is that?” And she said, “Well, you know, I play your music all over the house; in the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room and he just hates it.” I said, “Turn it off!” You know, what do you need to do that for? Turn it off. So she did and they’re still happily married.   Q: As a householder mother, how can I attain moksha? KD: Be the best householder and mother that you know how to be and sooner or later you will be enlightened. There seems to be theme here today about trying to get away from stuff. Trying to and not accepting what’s in your life as the given, or what you have to deal with. You can’t change things. It’s not so easy to change. If you go off to a cave, you know, you bring everything with you, in your mind at least. So, it’s a question of seeing God in everyone and everything, even the people you don’t like. Even the people, especially the people who give you a hard time. There was a wonderful lama who was going on a long journey in Tibet and He had to take an assistant with him to help. He was a very old Lama. And so He picked this guy, this young Lama in the monastery who was the most difficult person in the world, just really difficult. And all the other Lamas said, “Why did you pick him? You’re going to go on this long trip with this guy?” He said, “Exactly. He’s going to teach me patience.” We don’t want to learn. We don’t want to transform our own negative thinking. We just want to change the outside world. But that doesn’t work. It does not work. What we need to change is the way we engage with the so-called outside world and so-called other people, and that’s what practice is about.   Q: Can you talk about how the music you make connects with your practice? I’ve noticed select melodies reoccur throughout the chants and I’ve been fascinated by how they might empower each other. KD: Really? You know, if you have a good melody, you just use it to death. The music is part of the practice. It’s a way of transmitting the Name. If I sat here and went “Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram. Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram.” I don’t think many of you would hang out much and neither would I. So, the music is, you know, when a child is sick you have to give it medicine, so you hide the medicine in a sweet syrup. So, the music is that syrup and the Name is the medicine. Music will not cure us of our suffering. It could calm our minds down a little bit but it’s the Name which has the power to transform our lives and change the painful into living reality. So, it’s the Name that’s the medicine.   Q: Years ago, you said something at a concert in Brazil that never left my mind. You were talking about Jesus and said He lost himself in love. Can you talk a little bit more about this state of the soul? KD: Well, you know this happened in India with Maharajji. This Canadian guy came to see Maharajji for the first time and he didn’t know, you know, Maharajji didn’t talk about meditation and spiritual practice and stuff like that. He didn’t talk about those things. He just fed you more than you could ever eat and told you to go away. So, this guy comes and Maharajji says to him, “What do you want? Why did you come?” And he thought he should give a spiritual answer. So, he said, “Well could you teach me how to meditate?” “Get out of here. Go in the back with the other crazy people, the westerners. Go on, go.” And as the guy is going, walking into the temple, into the back of the temple, He says, “Just meditate like Christ. Go on. Go.” So, he came to the back and we were all back there. Ram Das was there and others and we were debriefing him because we debriefed everybody. “What did He say” and “What did you say” and “What did He say?” And then he said, “You know, He told me to meditate like Christ.” What? What does that mean. So later on, Maharajji came in the back to hang out with us and Ram Das said to Him, “Baba, you said to meditate like Christ. How did He meditate?” So, it seemed like Maharajji was about to answer the question, but instead He just kind of stopped and His eyes closed and He sat in front of us completely still. It was like the earth stopped turning. It was so powerful. The vibe was so powerful. And after a couple of minutes, two tears came down his cheek, you know and He just shook His head and He opened His eyes and He said, “He lost Himself in love. He lost Himself in Love. That’s how He meditated. He never died. No one understands. He lost Himself in Love. He’s One with All Beings.” That wasn’t what I was taught about Jesus. So, it was very shocking and very beautiful. Very moving. Very moving.   Q: Did you ever ask Maharajji when you were sitting with Him or listening to Him, “What is there after this life? And what is the purpose of this life? Do we just come here and do what?” KD: Yes. No. We didn’t talk to Him about those things. He didn’t talk about those things. He didn’t teach like that. When we were sitting with Him, we understood what the purpose of this life is. It’s to merge in love and to live in that love all the time and that means including everyone in it. Everyone. You can’t have any shadows. You can’t leave any shadows behind you. You have to follow that longing you have to be free of suffering and that leads you on to the path, to relieve yourself of suffering and then you start to recognize everybody’s suffering. So, you try to do your best to help whoever you can and learn how to be kind to yourself and others. We’re here to become good human beings. There’s no place else to go. This is it for now.   Q: What’s the connection between Maharajji and Sombari Baba? KD: Now Sombari Baba was a very great Siddha who lived in the hills of India. I think He left the body. I’m not exactly sure when. I think maybe in the 1920’s. Something like that. And Maharajji, when He had His places, when He came to the hills in the 30s and 40s and 50s, He picked certain places that He built temples and a few of them were places where Sombari Baba had lived. He was a very great Siddha and “Sombari” means “Monday.” And Monday is Shiva’s day in India and He would do bhandara every Monday. Feed people. He was a great Sadhu. A great Siddha. I don’t know what their real connection is, but I know that Maharajji respected Him greatly. And Kainchi, the temple in Kainchi where I lived, is built, the Hanuman temple is right in front of, it wasn’t even a cave, it was just under a ledge of rock where Sombari Baba had His sacred fire, His fire, for a long time. And Maharajji built the first Hanuman temple right there in front of that in that place.   Q: How did I know this was my path in life? KD: I’m not sure yet, but I think it is. I don’t even know what it is. And why did I go to India? I went to India because I felt pulled there. I felt tremendously pulled there. I wanted to go there more than anything. I just had to go. Had to go. So, I went. And in my mind, I was never coming back to America. I gave everything I had away. I sold my car, my guitar, gave my jeans away. I was gone. I had a couple of boxes of stuff in my mother’s basement but, you know, I didn’t think I was ever coming back. And then, after two and a half years, He sent me back. That’s why I’m here.   Q: Can you please kindly explain how to adopt forgiveness and move on in life? Some mistakes are blunder and are difficult to be forgiven.   KD: Yeah, forgiveness is a big thing. The sting of being betrayed and being hurt is something that is very hard to let go of. Very hard. But you know, on one hand, if we really look at the people who betrayed us and hurt us, we can see that their actions, just like our actions, are coming out of our own suffering and just like we’ve hurt many people without wanting to, it’s a very similar situation for other people. They hurt people out of protecting themselves, out of all kinds of reasons and yeah, and we take everything so personally. So it’s very painful. Very hard. But it’s a very powerful practice, trying to forgive. Trying to forgive… and we’re so involved with “me” and protecting “me” from pain that it’s very hard to forgive people who have crushed us, you know?  But that’s why we do practice; to get strength, to do whatever we have to do to allow our hearts to unfold again and again and again. Because that’s how we get strength. It’s very hard to forgive ourselves, too, truly, for hurting all the people we’ve hurt. But I think once we can forgive ourselves a little, then we can forgive other people a little bit, too. Not easy, Not easy.   Q: My memory of events from 50 years ago is uncanny. Do you remember everything in your life that clearly? Or is there just some special way that you’re preserved. KD: I can’t remember my name half the time. I don’t remember what happened 10 minutes ago or yesterday, but things that happened with Maharajji, I can remember so much but Oh My Goodness, so much is gone. You know, like for instance, some years ago, about 15-20 years ago I was, I found my diary from India and I opened it up just at random and I read in the diary, “Today Mahrajji looked at me and this other Westerner, Balaramdas, and He said to the Indian people sitting there, ‘these boys are my disciples.’ And He put ash on our tongues and our heads and said, ‘these boys are my disciples.’” I didn’t remember that. I didn’t remember that. How do you forget something like that. But I did. I had forgotten it. I forgot it for like 20 years. So, the funny thing, being with Maharajji, it was like a dream. It was a different kind of reality. Things happened and you were aware of them but you didn’t grok them in a certain kind of way. Later we would talk about things and we would go, “Wow, did that happen? Oh, yeah.” So, but there’s so much of it I don’t remember from, you know, spending so much time with Him in certain periods. So much would happen in a one hour darshan. You could never, you know there’s a really nice book called “Love Everyone.” Parvati Markus who was with us in India put this incredible book together from the diaries from a large number of us who were there at the time. And it’s called “Love Everyone” and it kind of reconstructs a day, the days with Maharajji and how He played with people and interacted and it’s really fantastic. “Love Everyone” is the name of the book. Q:  So, are we to love the corrupt liars and evil-doers?  I try every day to practice Metta Meditation and there’s great resistance I encounter with this.  How would Maharajji advise? KD: Well, He would say, “Love everyone.” Love everyone. When Ram Das was very angry at the rest of the Westerners, you know, he felt that we’d, we had kind of stolen Maharajji from him in a way. Because we were taking up all the time and he had to share Maharajji with all of us. Of course, he did that by talking about Him when he came back from India the first time. But he was, Maharajji was working with Ram Das’s anger.   So, one day Ram Das walked to the temple over the hills, about a four hour walk, and he was furious with the Westerners. Furious. Really. And he walks into the temple and we were… Maharajji was sitting on one side of the courtyard and the Westerners were sitting in a line opposite Him.  He was feeding us. He was having us fed. So, Ram Das walks into the temple and one of the Westerners gets up with a plate of food and offers it to Ram Das and Ram Das takes it and throws it in his face, right there in front of Maharajji. Maharajji goes, “Ram Das, something wrong? Come here.” So, Ram Das goes over to where Maharajji’s sitting and Maharajji says, “What’s the matter?” And Ram Das says, “I can’t stand impure things in people. And I can’t stand the impurity in my own heart.” And Maharajji looks at him and says, like this, He says, “I don’t see any impurity.”  Then he looks at Ram Das. He said, “Ram Das, love everyone and tell the truth.” Ram Das says, “Maharajji, the truth is, I don’t love everyone.” “Ram Das, love everyone and tell the truth.” So, he understood that he was going to have to get with the program as soon as possible. So, evil-doers.  It’s a tough one. You know, I’ve told this many times, but back in the days when George W. was President, I wasn’t very fond of him. Not that I knew him, but I thought he was basically a bad guy. And one night I was going through the channels on the tv and I hit CNN and they were showing George W. going to meet the first group of widows from the Iraq war. Right? It was at some school in Florida, a public school, and he was walking down the hall towards this classroom where these women were waiting for him and the cameras are following him and he’s walking down the hall. “Yeah, I’m the President, hey.” “Hi Joe, hey Frank. How are you doing?” Walking down the hall all full of himself and he walked into this room. This was all live on television. He walked into this room and took one look at these women and he burst out crying like a baby. I couldn’t hate him anymore. In that moment I saw that this guy was the pawn of different political interests, different business interests. He made deals, all to achieve the Presidency, which was his desire, and he started this, started or whatever, got into this war where so many people were killed all because he was the pawn of all this inner and outer vested interest, his own desires for fame and what he owed, that he was going to have to pay for this, too. There was no escape from the karmas. None. Ever. And to tell you the truth, that didn’t make me happy. I didn’t, in my heart I didn’t want to see him suffer but I saw that he was going to suffer because he didn’t know any better and he had no idea what he was doing in the greater of scheme of things. He caused so much suffering, or was the primary cause, or the transformational cause of so much suffering. And he, himself, would have to pay for that. It was inevitable, but I didn’t want to see it. In my heart, I didn’t want to see him suffer. So, you know, I think as we learn to give ourselves a break and as we give some space to those negative places in ourselves and we see how hard it is to truly be caring and meet people in the best way, then we begin to give others a break, too. Even the worst people. It’s not something you can… It’s so emotional, and there’s no question when you’re in the emotions there’s no, nothing you can do about it. But, in the greater scheme of things, everyone has to pay, has to experience the fruits of their own actions. So, are we going to create more suffering with our own anger? Because we will have to pay for that ourselves. And our own hatred? So, it’s not just thinking of others only. It’s also recognizing that our own actions will be, we’ll have to pay for those karmas as well. So, I don’t know if that’s clear, but it’s complicated. That’s for sure. And you know, one time, Maharajji was sitting with one of His very old Indian devotees. Of all the devotees, this man was the sweetest, sweetest. Oh, he was so sweet. And he was sitting around with Maharajji and Maharajji pointed to him and said, “He was my enemy in our last birth.” What? What? “My enemy in our last birth?” “Enemy” means “enemy.” Right? So, that’s intense. So, who knows who anybody is, you know? We just, all we do is judge people by our own subjective standards and subjective understanding. So, it’s tough. It’s very hard to deal with those negative forces in a way that doesn’t create more karma for us, ourselves, as well.     The post Call and Response Podcast Ep. 84 | At Home With KD, May 7 2020 [https://krishnadas.com/podcasts/call-response/call-and-response-podcast-ep-84-at-home-with-kd-may-7-2020/] appeared first on Krishna Das [https://krishnadas.com].