Call and Response with Krishna Das

Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond. Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD January 2, 2021 “You’ve got to have some courage when it comes down to it. Don’t let anybody tell you what to do that doesn’t feel right to you. Don’t do that to yourself. Listen to your heart. If it feels right? Fine. If it doesn’t? Fine. More than fine. Just listen to yourself. You know better than anybody else what you want to do, and if you’re not doing what you want, how will you get what you want? You’ll always be hungry and never feeding yourself. Desires are not bad. They are not meant to be destroyed. They are meant to be transcended. That’s a very big difference.” – Krishna Das Thanks for coming today. This pandemic reality of isolation and distancing from other people, on one hand, it’s very difficult. On the other hand, if we pay attention, we can actually feel close to people without the bodies having to be in the same place, and that’s big thing because, in reality, we are all together all the time, and in fact, we are one body. Maharajji used to go like this, you know. “”Sab ek.” All one. This is not something that we have to convince ourselves about, you know, or try to talk ourselves into believing. There’s no need to try to, what’s the word, anyway, force ourselves to believe anything. What we need to do is find a way to actually experience this stuff directly. Otherwise it won’t help us in the deepest way. Our knee jerk reactions to daily life will continue endlessly until we actually find a way to move more deeply into our own being. But that being is the same being, that sense, that very fine, subtle sense of just being here, so to speak, where just existing is the same in everyone. It’s actually where we truly live, but we are so attached to our thoughts and emotions and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and the programming we received entering into this life, and the programming we have coming from, endless lifetimes of nonsense. It’s not easy for it to wind down. So, if we feel called to it, we can start paying attention to stuff and start practicing letting go. Letting go is the one thing we can do. Letting go is not pushing away. When I say, “Let go,” like say, you’re feeling like shit, right? Okay. So, “I want to let go of this,” but what are you going to do? You’re going to pick it up and put it over there. Where is it, you know? It’s not something you can grab onto and kill, or move, or dissolve, or evaporate. But what we can do is notice how stuck we are, and we notice that we are stuck, and in that moment of just noticing that we’re stuck, we’re not that stuck. Of course we get stuck again immediately, but that’s why we add a practice to our lives, any practice, repetition of the name, coming back to the feeling of the breath, any type of practice that forces you to pay attention. Tightrope walking over a raging fire will definitely make you pay attention. You won’t be thinking about, you know, what that person did to me and what I’m going to do to him. You’ll be thinking of not falling in the goddamn fire. So once we recognize that we are on fire already, then we want to cool that down. We’ve already fallen into the fire. You know, the Buddha gave a sermon called “The Fire Sermon,” very early in his teaching, and he said, you know, “Hey monks, guess what? The eye is on fire with seeing. The ears are on fire with hearing. The tongue is on fire with taste.

Call and Response Ep. 73 | Ease of Heart Q: Two years ago, you used the phrase, “ease of heart” and I was like, “Whoa,” that’s it. That’s what I got. That’s what I need. That’s what I always needed. And so, I carry it, in my head, you know, all day, kind of. It goes in and out of my mind. Then today when I was coming, I thought, “I don’t know if I really know what you think it is.” “You can’t cure anger with more anger. You can’t cure hate with more hate. The only transforming power in the universe is Love and real Love means… Listen to me, as if I know… Real love means accepting things as they are and including them.” – Krishna Das Q: Hi. So, I heard you speak like two… KD: Where you? Q: I’m here. Two years ago, you used the phrase, “ease of heart” and I was like, “Whoa,” that’s it. KD: I used the part… what? Q: Ease of heart. KD: Ease of heart, yeah yeah. Q: And I was, “Whoa, that’s it.” That’s what I got. That’s what I need. That’s what I always needed. And so, I carry it, in my head, you know, all day, kind of. It goes in and out of my mind. Then today when I was coming, I thought, “I don’t know if I really know what you think it is.” KD: What? Q: I don’t know if I really understand what it really means to you, but I think it’s what you were just talking about, right? KD: Yeah. Q: Ok. That’s all I needed to know. KD: It comes from the Metta, the Metta Loving Kindness Meditation practice, which was originally given by the Buddha to some monks. He had sent some monks to meditate in a forest and they went to the forest and they tried to meditate but the tree spirits were causing trouble for them and harassing them. So, they came to the Buddha and they said, you know, “Give us a weapon to defeat these angry spirits that are giving us a hard time.” And the weapon the Buddha gave them was the Loving Kindness Meditation and it transformed the whole forest, of course. That’s the only way. You can’t cure anger with more anger. You can’t cure hate with more hate. The only transforming power in the universe is Love and real Love means… listen to me, as if I know… real love means accepting things as they are, and including them. Like, once again, a heart as wide as the world. And so, this practice is really great and right near here in Barry, Massachusetts is IMS, the Instant Meditation Society. Insight Meditation Society. And they teach, they teach that practice there quite a lot along with Vipasana also. But Metta is its own practice and it comes in that phrase. So, it starts off, they teach you four phrases, four phrases, and one is, “May I be safe, may I be happy, may I have good health and may I live at ease of heart.” “At ease of heart in this world and with whatever comes to me.” And you’re asked to offer these phrases to yourself. And the first couple of days of the practice, they describe the whole thing to you and they give you these phrases and they’re doing now and the meditation practice is to sit there and not to struggle with your mind and your thoughts, but to sit there and offer these phrases to yourself, to repeat them, not automatically or mechanically, but to try to connect with them. You know, “may I be safe.” “May I be happy.” “May I have good health and may I live at ease,” and on and on. So, after two days I was ready to commit suicide. I couldn’t feel a damn thing. I was just like getting harder and harder and more destroyed. I was like flipping out. And then they say, now take the phrases and offer them to what they call the benefactor, which is somebody who’s always been on your side. Maybe your grandmother, maybe somebody or a teacher who’s just always been there. Certainly, usually not your partner. Somebody who’s really always been there for you. And then offer the phrases to that person, and you know, in like, in a half an hour you’re flying because you bring that person to mind and of course, “May you be safe,

Call and Response Ep. 72 | Family Troubles, Chant Etiquette Q: I was curious if you could speak to having family members that are making choices that seem not helpful for them. “People are going to do what they’re going to do. There’s not a lot we can do about that. We wouldn’t want anybody telling us what to do and the first step is letting them be who they are, you know? And hopefully, if you are with them in a way that’s not judgmental or you know, they might feel comfortable enough sharing with you what they’re going through and in that process they can open up a little bit. But if you’re going to be the enemy, there’s no way they’re going to be open.” – Krishna Das KD: Hi. Q: Hello. KD: Hi. Q: Ok. Hi. KD: Ok. Q: I was curious if you could speak to having family members that are making choices that seem not helpful for them and… KD: Or you. Q: Definitely not for me, I know. I might be about me. But I don’t know if you have some sort of… reaching to people who are not reachable at the moment from family members. KD: Yeah, well, first thing we say is, “If you want to know how your spiritual practice is going, visit your family.” Nothing will show you your stuff as quickly as that. You know, yeah. People are going to do what they’re going to do. There’s not a lot we can do about that. We wouldn’t want anybody telling us what to do and the first step is letting them be who they are, you know? And hopefully, if you are with them in a way that’s not judgmental or you know, they might feel comfortable enough sharing with you what they’re going through and in that process they can open up a little bit. But if you’re going to be the enemy, there’s no way they’re going to be open. It’s not easy, because we want them to be happy and we think we know how they’re going to be happy and we think we know that what they’re doing is not, you know, good for them but, you know, they don’t know that. There’s a rule in India about grandparents. This is how grandparents have to behave in India. You know, you don’t say nothing and I’m a grandparent now and I try to follow that rule. I mean, you know, I know my daughter, I know where she got her stuff from.  Hello.  You know? So, how can I get, you know, what can I say? You know? I could just try to be available if anyone is interested, which is almost never. So, if that’s going to hurt me, I mean, if that’s going to make me crazy, that’s not fun. It makes her mother crazy. Ha ha ha. Which I like. No, I don’t. Much. So, you know, it’s a letting, you’ve gotta, you know, but on the other hand, you know, you want someone to feel that they care for them. That they’re cared for by you, regardless of what they’re doing, you care for who they are. So it’s a tricky thing, you know. We get caught in our own wantings for people. On the other hand, you have to think, you have to use your own, you have to trust your own intuition about situations. There are times when you just have to, you know, where it might be helpful to put your hand up. “Stop, now.” Or “Not here.” You know? You have to, if you can create some boundaries that they agree to respect, that’s a big thing, if the boundaries aren’t angry boundaries, you know? It’s not easy because nobody did that for us, right? I mean, not for me. Not my house. I wasn’t allowed to have boundaries so I grew up, it was very hard to learn how to say “no” and it was even to learn how to say, “thank you,” was hard. Because where was I? Who was I? Where was I standing to do that? You know? So, to make boundaries is, but it’s hard. But you know, if someone feels you’ve always been on their side, even if you haven’t been overly, you know, then they can come back at a certain point. You might be there. It might be good. But I’m sure people know better than me, so read a book or something. There must be books about this stuff. Q: Hi. KD: Hi. Q: First I want to say,

Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond. Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD November 21, 2020 “Whenever you think of it, just take a couple of breaths and let go. You’re washing dishes, take a breath and let go. You’re watching TV. Take a breath in the commercials. If there’s no commercials, just pause the thing, take a breath and then start again. Practice letting go. Practice just letting go.” – Krishna Das Hi, everybody. Good to be with you again. It’s getting cold and people are stuck inside, which makes it even harder to wade through the mud of the mind, of the thoughts. It’s a good time to practice, and it’s just too easy to be swept away the tides of mental bullshit and the stuff that goes on and on and on and on, and the circular obsessive thinking that goes on all the time. We have to make an effort to release ourselves from that. And when it’s so intense like this, it’s almost easier because it’s so apparent how out of control we are. And actually, we’re always out of control, but we can be aware by remembering to look and remembering to remember. That’s all you can do. You can’t transform yourself. You can’t move to another planet. You know, all we can do is bow to the endless flow of nonsense that goes through our heads, and practice letting go of it. That’s all. That will change the way we live inside of our lives. And that’s what all the practices are about, ultimately. Every path leads to the same goal because the goal is reality, and that’s what lives within us as our own true being. So, just to continue to pay attention, to continue to remember, to let go, as the day goes on, you know, every time you just remember, just release for a minute, you know, even in the middle of something you’re doing just take a breath or two and let it be. Q: I am so, so pleased to be here today. Thank you for this opportunity. I’m from Maryland, and found you, I would say, actually, because of this situation that we’re under; home and tinkering around with Ram Dass, and I found you singing on a piece of his, Heart As Wide As The World, and I just was completely enamored. Yeah. Most people find me by mistake. It was, but a beautiful mistake. Yeah. Maharajji trips and then they fall in it. That’s what happens, you know? Oh, that’s great. That’s really great. Well, the thing I wanted to ask you about is this notion of surrender. And I feel, for me, sometimes we can distinguish it as surrender. It’s almost like a physical experience, like a relaxing, like you say, you know, giving it up, letting it go. And you also speak about finding, I don’t know, I can’t think of how you say it right now, but you know, yourself inside, and I’m wondering if those two things are similar in some way. There was a great Saint in India, not too long ago, named Ramana Maharshi, and he lived in South India and when he was a young boy, not that young, he was probably 16, He stayed home from school one day because he was feeling a little sick and he felt he was going to die, and he was perfectly healthy, but he felt, “I’m going to die.” And for some reason it didn’t upset him. He just said, “Well, what’s this going to be like?” And he laid down on the floor. He was alone in the house. He laid down on the floor and he clenched up his body and just wanted to see what, what not breathing would be like, and you know, what, if the body becomes like rigor mortis, and what was happening, actually, his consciousness was leaving the body, leaving the physical plane.

Call and Response Ep. 71 | Life Is A Teaching “There’s nothing in this world that doesn’t have some dissatisfaction associated with it. Either you have what you don’t want, or you don’t have what you want, or you have some combination of the two. Or, you just recognize that everything is like that… That’s the way it is. You can’t squeeze water from a stone.” – Krishna Das Where were we, oh, yeah… So, India, you know, you walk down the street, you see Durga Travel Agency. You see Krishna Insurance Agency. Sri Ram Carding Agency. Everything is, they’ve got everything, it looks like everything’s Holy until you look a little closer. But in America, you know, we don’t have the… spirituality has infused the culture of India for many thousands of years. Now, who knows what’s going on but at least… but here, our own culture, Western culture’s a few hundred years old, right? Right? Hello. Hello? Anybody home? Am I right? I don’t know. I think so, right? The cultural, so-called cultural revolution or whatever? No, that was something else. The Age of Enlightenment. Ha. What a name, huh?  So, you know, it’s a few hundred years old and it’s based on the world of the senses and sense perception, intellectual understanding of all that. As far as India, as the East is concerned, that’s a very narrow bandwidth. A very limited understanding of things. But my point is that, here in the West, being born as who we are, with a very Westernized sense of self, sense of ego, so to speak, when we do these practices, we should understand or we could understand, I don’t like the word “should” because I never liked anybody to say that to me. “You ‘should’ do this.” And I’d just do the other thing. Absolutely. The exact opposite. Which is why Maharajji never told me to do anything, except “go away,” which I didn’t do. Which is why He told me to go away, because He didn’t want me to go away. But He knew that, you know, how it goes. So, yeah. It would be good if we understood that adding chanting, that we should see practice as adding a new, adding something new to what’s already in our lives. And it’s something that doesn’t necessarily have to be understood intellectually to a great degree. You have to kind of understand why it is you’re doing what you’re doing, but how it works is not, is not, can’t be known in a conceptual way by the intellectual understanding because these practices work under the radar. And that’s an important thing to keep in mind because a lot of times we’ll do practice and we’ll be like, “I’ve been meditating for 18 minutes, I don’t feel a damn thing. Oh, there’s something. Hm. Oh, yeah. Ok. That’s nice. Oh, wait. Where’d it go? Oh my goodness. This is no good. I can’t do this. Wait. Maybe I can.” So, that’s our meditation practice, right there, pretty much. We think. We think. We think. We think. We think. So,  what we understand, what we can realize when we add a spiritual practice through our daily lives, that practice is designed to release us, little by little, from the tyranny of our thoughts and our emotions and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves all the time. The 24-7 kind of critique that goes on all day and all night. And these practices have the ability to do that, whether we understand how they work not, which we really can’t understand. Like, we don’t, if you’re sick and you take an antibiotic, you may not understand how it works, but it worked. Then it screwed up your intestines, but at least it saved you from pneumonia, you know. That’s a good thing. What is the sense of having intestines if you’re dead? That doesn’t make any, that’s not useful. It’s going to be quite an afternoon. Anyhow, so the chanting, that’s why, the way I share this practice is really the way I do it, which is really, I really don’t try to manipulate myself and my emotions into having some particular kind of experience. Like, I don’t try, I’m not trying to get all ecstatic, or all blissful. You know?

Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond. Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations with KD November 7, 2020 “Do what you can do to let go. It doesn’t have to be while you’re sitting down, cross-legged pretending to meditate. That’s not it. All day long, just let go. “I’m doing it again. Ok. Ram Ram.”   Just be at ease. Try to be at ease with life as it is, and then you’ll be at ease in the next moment and the next moment and next week and next month. Right? It’s inner strength. You have to cultivate that.” – Krishna Das MORE FROM KRISHNA DAS: Harmonium Tutorials: https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/harmonium-tutorials/products/harmonium-tutorials Online Courses with Krishna Das: https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/courses Online Shop for books, videos, music and more: https://krishnadasmusic.com/ FULL TRANSCRIPTION: Hi, everybody. Welcome to the world. The resolution of any issue or any question that we have in our own minds is always to quiet down and listen to our hearts, feel our hearts, feel what our deepest feelings are. There’s a lot of panic, a lot of anxiety these days, a lot of fear, but that fear does not touch us. It does not touch our true nature. So, the quieter we can become, the less reactive we can become, the better it is, and to keep acting out of unconscious knee jerk reactions is very, it is not a good way to go. It creates more and more suffering for everyone around us and for ourselves. So, in that sense, everything we do for ourselves, we’re also doing for all other beings, because ultimately there are no other beings. We are all one. Maharajji said this, over and over. “All one.” There is only one, and we are the cells of that body of one. Everything we need to know comes from within. The one thing that we can share with other people are the techniques of accessing that place within us, techniques to help us release our delusional beliefs about ourselves, that we’re no good, that we don’t deserve love, that we’ll never be okay, that this life is meaningless. All these types of negative atmospheres exist within us. They are not who we are, but we believe them for so long that we take them as real. They’re as real as our ego is. So, our ego is made out of all these delusional beliefs, because the separateness, which we call ego, is also delusional. It’s not true. Ultimately it is not true. And yet, that’s where we live for most of our whole lives. We live in that place of separateness and self-centered actions. But when you recognize the true self, who are you going to hurt? Who are you going to manipulate? And for what reason? The difference between Maharajji and almost all of the other yogis and saints that I’ve met is that there was no manipulation. He didn’t need anything from us. He didn’t want anything from us. He had recognized his true nature, which is our true nature. And he allowed us to enter into a field of love that was inconceivable to us. And his presence is here. He’s here now. He’s always here, but we don’t turn towards him. We don’t turn towards that place of love, and so we spin and spin and spin and spin and spin around. There’s no way to find presence or Being. It’s not like something buried in the ground that you can dig and fi...

Call and Response Ep. 70 | When the Student Is Ready, The Teacher Will Come Q: Is it simply just, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, because some of us, I don’t have access to Ram Das except by video and I don’t have access to Krishna Das except every ten years when he comes to Atlanta, so my question is, do you have any suggestions for those of us that live out on the rural area, is it simply, focus on your spiritual technologies and realize that you’re going to be the same person looking in the mirror only with a different perspective? “You know, the Guru, the issue of a Guru is very, it’s a big story and but, Westerners and everybody, we subtly want somebody to do it for us and whether you have a Guru or don’t have a Guru, nobody’s going to do it for us. We have to do it for ourselves. So, that’s the deal. Nobody can chant for you. Nobody can make you pay attention.” – Krishna Das MORE FROM KRISHNA DAS: Harmonium Tutorials: https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/harmonium-tutorials/products/harmonium-tutorials Online Courses with Krishna Das: https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/courses Online Shop for books, videos, music and more: https://krishnadasmusic.com/ FULL TRANSCRIPTION: KD: So, yes, you have the mic yet?  Pass it up here. Hi. Q: Hi. I’m Sarah and I was one of the fortunate few to come up and get a picture and a hug last night and I was wondering… KD: Did you take a shower? Q: Not since last week. Boy. So, I’m curious, is the performance or the singing, the chanting that you did last night, does that prepare you for all the wanting and the needing or does it feel like that to you to see all these people wanting just a hug and a picture with you, does that fill up your soul more? Or do you kind of have to prepare for that experience? KD: No. It’s not like that at all. I feel like I’m sitting in my living room with my family, basically, except for some people. You know, it’s just love. There’s nothing to prepare for. It’s nothing like that at all. And it’s not a performance, so there’s nothing going on. We’re sharing our practice. We’re sharing the moment. And that’s the whole deal. Yeah. Good. You got it? Q: May I ask a question? KD: Yes, you may. Q: Well, thank you for being here. KD: You’re welcome. I tried to be somewhere else but I couldn’t do it. Q: I’m here now, formally I live out on the West Coast of our country, about 2 hours West of Seattle almost in the Pacific Ocean. KD: Wow. Beautiful out there. Q: I recently, or I hear your message today that we’re here and when you’re, when the student is ready, the teacher appears and I have my spiritual technologies that I’ve been able to access in my rural area. We just got our first yoga teacher about eight years ago in my town because I was too busy to be a yoga teacher myself. My question is this, first, let me confirm with you, I saw a post that my sister sent me about you and it said, and you’ve already used the “F” bomb in here, so I know I can use these words without embarrassing people, but your statement, and I want to make sure it was you who said it, you said, “30 years ago I woke up and saw an asshole in the mirror, and today I got up and I saw the same asshole.” And I wonder, when we don’t… KD: Sounds like me. Q: It does sound like you and so, and so, my question is… KD: But I don’t hate that asshole as much as I used to. Q: Ok, good, because my exposure to Ram Das was when I was a young hippie girl, started traveling around and people had torn pages out of his book, Be Here Now,

Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond. Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD October 24, 2020 Hello. Namaste everybody. How are you doing? Let’s take a minute to just calm down and deepen and expand into this heart space that we all share. Everything exists within this vast space, this presence. This is Being, not the verb, but the noun, “Being,” and when we chant, when we repeat the name, we are turning towards this presence. So, here is where we are, and why we do practice is to recognize where we truly are, which is in our own true Being.  It’s a vast, vast presence, inside of which we all live. Everything is within this presence. This presence is eternal and spontaneously present, this moment, always. And it’s only our thoughts, our emotions, our attachments and aversions that block our access to who we truly are. So, it all comes back to remembering. At first, we remember to remember to look, and eventually we actually remember this presence. We re-recognize, we re-cognize this presence. It’s like coming home after being away for a long time. When you first get home, after being away, you fall down on the bed or into a chair and everything let’s go, and you’re just happy to be home. You forget where you’ve been. You don’t think about where you’re going. You just relax into yourself. When we do practice, it is not important to be evaluating how we’re doing. We’re simply planting seeds, so to speak. We don’t stand over them to watch and see if they’ve grown yet. We plant the seeds, and then we plant another seed, and another, and then we go about our day, and those seeds grow. That action of coming home again, again, and again, keeps working on us through the day, and the magnetism, or the gravity, of our true nature becomes more and more real to us. All the names that we chant are the names of this place that we live, in which we live, our own true nature. All the different names, all the different traditions, all the different lineages, all the different practices, they’ve only been brought to this world to bring us home. So, whatever you’re attracted to in terms of practice, follow that. See where it takes you. Listen to your heart. If you don’t trust yourself, what will you do? Even if you listen to advice from someone, a teacher, a yogi, a saint, whatever, you’re listening, you’re evaluating, and you’re seeing if you relate to that in your own being. So, if you don’t trust your own feelings, you’ll never be able to trust anything or anyone. It’s not something that’s easy to live in for us at first, but because it is true, because our hearts do know, it’s inevitable that, as we practice, as we live, as we learn, as our hearts are purified of our attachments and aversions, this is where we move into our own self, our true self, which is the self of all, which is the great self of all, this fast presence. Q: HI there, KD. First of all, I want to thank you very much for the email that you sent me. You probably get hundreds of them, so you might not remember. I remember. You did.  Yeah, it helped soften a very unquiet mind since I left the hospital from, septicemia is what I had, but what you said in the email about Ram Dass and how he felt through those first, I think you said two years, might not have been, that he just lost all sense of everything, I lost all sense of everything during that time, and that feeling of being lost was, well, it hit me like a train. I thought, wow, I’m a pretty spiritual person, I thought, “Yeah, you know, I can, you know, taken in by ambulance,

Call and Response Ep. 69 | Maharajji’s Passing, India, Joya Q: How did you take losing the physical form of your Guru? And how did you cope with it?  “When He did leave the body, I was destroyed. Because the only place I ever felt loved was with Him. That kind of love, I never felt it anywhere and now it was gone. Why live? What’s the sense?  You know? I mean, we find reasons to stay alive, but we don’t really believe there’ll ever be any real, real happiness for us.  That’s how it felt for me. For a long time.” – Krishna Das Q: My name’s Christian. KD: Hello. Q: How did you take losing the physical form of your Guru? And how did you cope with it? KD: I didn’t cope with it. I just lost it totally. I had become very attached to His physical presence. He kept me in India two and a half years, pretty much longer than any of the other Westerners. He kept me with Him for two and a half years. Then one day, He looks at me and says, “Ok, go back to America.” “What? I’m just learning Hindi.” “Too bad. You have attachment. You have to go.” So, I went back and then after a few months, He wrote to me, He had somebody write to me and said, one day He looked around and said, “Where’s Krishna Das?” The guy who knows everything. So, somebody said, “Baba, You sent Him to America.” “No. Tell Him to come back. I want to hear Him sing. I want to hear Him sing.” So my friend wrote to me. “You’ve got to come on back. You’ve got to,” you know? So anyway, long story short, I didn’t make it back in time. So, when He did leave the body, I was destroyed. Because the only place I ever felt loved was with Him. That kind of love. I never felt it anywhere. And now it was gone. Why live? What’s the sense?  You know? I mean, we find reasons to stay alive, but we don’t really believe there’ll ever be any real, real happiness for us.  That’s how it felt for me. For a long time. So then, He left the body in 1973. In 1984, I went back to India. I was in pretty bad shape. I had been strung out on cocaine, freebase cocaine for a year and a half and I had just gotten over that but I was pretty fragile, pretty freaked out. And I thought, “All right, I’ll just go back to the temple. I’ll just go in my room and sleep for a month,” you know? So, I get to the temple and it turns out it’s Durga Puja time, which is this ten-day ceremony honoring the Goddess Durga and they do a fire ceremony every day with the “swahas” and everything. It’s really great, you know? So, I get into the temple and everybody’s “Oh, Krishna Das, you’ve come. This is so good. Come, you’ll sit with us in the puja.” Really? And you can’t say, “No.” They love you too much. So instead of hiding in my room and sleeping, all day long I sat in the goddamned puja with this hot fire, “Swaha” into the fire, sweating with ashes and dirt all over me, you know? Sitting up. I hadn’t sat cross-legged for ten years and now it’s like… aargh. I can’t tell you how horrible it was. It was indescribably horrible. So, there was a morning session and an afternoon session. And there was a couple hours break in between the two sessions, but you had to fast all day, by the way, you couldn’t eat until the last session was over. Terrific. You know? So, and then, so during that break, at the end of the morning session, everybody would come from the yagya shala, the place where the fire is, the sacred fire, they come up to the front of the temple where Maharajji’s cot was, and we’d do aarti, we’d sing this hymn and wave the lights and then everybody would go rest for a couple of hours before the next session. So, four or five days into it, everybody comes up from the fire and we do this puja and I’m just standing there like this, you know? All right. When’s this over. I’m going to go lie down, ok. So, while I’m standing there, the chant was over and everybody bowed down, you know, like this, and then everybody left except one old lady had put her head down on the tucket and she didn’t get...

Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond. Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD September 26, 2020 “Obstacles are always there. They’re either obstacles or they’re opportunities. It’s up to you how you take it. And always, you have to ask yourself, is what I’m trying to do what I really want to be doing? That’s the main thing. It’s not what you do. It’s why you do what you do. That’s what important. I mean, we have to learn to really listen to ourselves about what we really need and really want in life, and how do we want to go through this life? How do we want to spend our time? What do we want to get? In what way? What’s the best thing I can do for myself and others that I meet?” -Krishna Das Hi everybody. How are y’all doing? If you’re here, you’re doing okay. Q: Hi, Krishna Das. KD: HI. Great to be here. Yeah. So, I don’t have a question, but I felt like I just needed to show up in the space, or in my heart, or something. I’ve been getting, staying up till 12 to 2 on a Thursday for the satsang and it’s been amazing, and spending more time with horses, that was something that came up the last time I asked a question on Zoom. So, there’s, I’m sort of quiet, you know, so I just, I felt, I think it was important just to try and you know… Yeah, you know you can watch the Zooms, the Thursday nights replays? It’s not the same, because even like where I live, it’s not so private, but like, it’s fine, but I’m singing quietly. Everyone else is asleep and I’m there with the light off, and it’s just like, bliss. I can’t explain it. I just have two hours of, I just feel so happy ,and then not much sleep or anything, and a lot of hard work the next day, but just like no problems, which is kind of strange, actually. Actually, that’s your true nature. No problems. No problem. Yeah. The problems are in our mind and the way we interact with everything, but our true nature is perfectly okay, always, and that’s where we really live. So, we’ve been, because of our stuff, we were locked out of our own house, you could say. We’re like, living on the lawn of our own house, and instead of a bathroom, we have a porta-potty and a bucket to take a bath in and, you know, and the bed’s out there on the lawn, and we don’t even know there’s a house there, and then if we did, we wouldn’t know where the key was. Yeah. But I feel like I’m kind of, maybe I’m on the porch? And that, and then it’s like, “Oh, it’s so different.” It’s sort of like, I could surrender a little more, but it’s a bit like, “Is this okay?” Like, am I allowed to feel this okay? What do you think? Yeah. I feel it. Yeah. Well, you don’t need to be allowed, actually, but we do need to allow ourselves. That’s the thing. Yeah. And that’s okay. I mean, growing up in this modern world, none of us have been allowed to be ourselves. We become identified with all the programming that, put into us from every possible direction. So, we need to allow ourselves to be at ease with whatever is there, because that’s our true nature. It is at ease. It is okay. And it’s hard to recognize that because we’re, it’s like we’re in free fall, and we’re grasping, we’re trying to hold onto something that breaks off, and it breaks off, it doesn’t work, but if you just lay back into it, it’s perfectly okay. For me, it comes down to Maharajji, because emotionally,

Call and Response Ep. 68 | Maharajji Stories I just wanted to ask if you could please share your most favorite experience of spending time with Maharajji. Thank you. “You know, He knew everything. Oh, Jesus. Every single thing. He knew how many times you chewed your toast in the morning. He knew what you were going to do 50 years from that moment. And He loved you completely. Totally. Every part of you.” – Krishna Das Q: Hi Krishna Das. My name is Chad and I just wanted to ask if you could please share your most favorite experience of spending time with Maharajji. Thank you. KD: I don’t know. One time I walked to the temple from, the town’s about a three and a half, four hour walk over the mountains, and I was practicing my Hindi. Over and over I was saying this, trying to learn how to say, “Maharajji, my life is in your hands.” And I was saying it over and over in Hindi, like, for hours, a big moment, you know? So, I got to the temple and I was up, coming down the ridge and I saw He was sitting all alone on His tucket, on His bed. I ran into the temple, I came. I ran up to Him and I said, “Maharajji, your life is in my hands.” He went, “Get out of here, go on, Jao.” Q: You said it in Hindi though. KD: Yeah, I said it in Hindi. I said it backwards. Another time, you know, He would get up, you know, He walked like a kid. He’d like, bounce from one leg to the other. He looked like He was ready to fall over. So, people would put their hand out. And He would take somebody’s hand and walk with somebody. So, one day, I always, I happened to be right in front of Him when He stood up. So, I put my hand out. And He looked at me and He laughed and He grabbed my hand and we went walking to the back of the temple and then He stopped and let go of my hand and He took a couple of steps, so I took a couple of steps, and then He looked at me and He said something I didn’t understand, and then He took a couple of steps, so I took a couple of steps and then again, He said something and He took a couple of steps and I took a couple of steps and then He just looked at me like this, and He squats down and He pees. He just wanted like 18 inches to take a piss and I wasn’t going to give it to Him. Ah, Divine Love. Those are the moments that, you know, it wasn’t all the other stuff. It was those moments where it was just too amazing, you know? One time, so after I met Ram Das, I told you last night if you were there, how I came into the room and, you know, I understood that whatever it was that I was looking for in the world was real. It could be found. It was a big thing. So after that, I actually began to dream about Maharajji and all I’d seen was a little black and white picture that Ram Das had, but I dreamt of Him, you know. So I’d had this dream long before to India, where I came back to my elementary school and I walked into the gym where we used to have school plays and used to play dodge ball and you know, do square dancing and all the stuff that people on Long Island did. And there on the other side of the gym, on the stage was, Maharajji was sitting on the bed, on a cot, and next to Him, standing behind Him was this guy with a white shirt and a dhoti, a cloth, and a black vest and he was standing behind him. And I came into the room and I fell down and I did what they call “danda pranam”. I just full out on the floor like this with my head like this. And I was just praying. I was saying, “Please, let me feel something. I have to feel something. Please let me feel something.” This is in my dream. And in my mind’s eye, I saw Him get up and walk down the stairs at the edge of the stage and come over to me and He put His hand on the back of my head and I started to calm down, calm down and as I was calming down, this bliss started to run through my body like, you know, it was unbelievable and it was getting stronger and stronger and stronger and I thought, “I’m going to die” and at that moment,

Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond. Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD September 12, 2020 “Siddhi Ma once said, ‘In this age, God comes as medicine.’ So, you take medicine, you try to go to doctors, you do the best you can for your health, but you have your mental and emotional and spiritual health too, and you have to spend time on that, and there’s no quick medicine for that. Over time, you develop the faith to accept whatever comes the best way you can, and to keep giving those fears back to God, you know, offering them, you know, offering those emotions and trying to break the glue and dissolve the glue that those emotions come with. – Krishna Das Hi, everybody. Some of you are becoming regulars. This is very scary. Yeah, well, we’re still here. That’s one thing. That’s the main thing. When you’re not here, there’s nothing you can do. So, it’s good to be here. The past is gone. The future has not yet arrived. This is it. This is the moment that we have, to meet the next moment, which is just like this moment. This is the moment when we can make some effort to calm our asses down, and to try to be less reactive, and to, like they say in India, “bhajan karo” Remember.  “Remember” is the key to everything. Remember to remember. And then when you remember, what do you remember? You try to remember the love that lives within you, within us, and that has many different forms for us. Each person has their own version of that love and vision of that love, and the names of God are the names of that love. It’s not a name of something outside of your true nature. It’s not something else. It’s not something other than you are, but, actually your true name on the deepest level, ultimate reality. In relative reality, there’s “me” and there’s others, but ultimately, like Hanuman says to Ram, “When I don’t know who I am, I serve you. When I identify with my soul, you are the whole, and I am a part. But when I know who I am, you and I are one.” So, that’s a statement of reality. It’s not something you have to beat into your head to try to believe, because the limited conceptual mind could never wrap itself around that. It’s not something that needs to be believed with blind faith. It’s something that has to be experienced, or at least moved towards in our daily lives, and ultimate reality, oneness, means that we are all a part of that one, all of us, even the people we don’t like, and so, what we want to do is learn how to treat everybody well, but that also means learning how to treat ourselves well. Like that guy said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And that’s a big thing. If we could do that, the world would be a different place immediately. Immediately. But we can’t do that. It’s not easy for us to give up our defenses, our stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, all the lifelong. So, that’s what practice is about. Practices about learning to release that stuff. Let go of it. Weaken the glue that holds our sense of self to those miserable thoughts and feelings and emotions. Okay. See you next week. Hi. Q: Hi. I’m here because I’m singing a lot of kirtans in this COVID period. I’m very happy, and I can’t stop singing kirtans. I thank you very much, and I’m in a very good place now because I turned, in my life, in some reactive things I was making, and it’s a very big change for me. So, I want to sing more, and it was very difficult for me. It’s very difficult to do that. Wonderful. Keep singing. Just keep singing. And you know,

Call and Response Ep. 67 | Siddhi Ma, George W. Bush and Learning to Trust Yourself [Photo: Josefine Barrett] Q: I had an experience in India with Siddhi Ma. I felt very graced to be with Her before She left Her body and Siddhi Ma is a Saint in India and I was just wondering if you would be willing to unpack some memories from your time with Her and just share a quick story or something about Her. “She was my Ma. She was my Mother. She saved my ass so many times, you have no idea. One time I said to Her, “Ma, should I meditate?” And She said, “Krishna Das, in 40 years with Maharajji, not once did He ask me to meditate.” She said, “What do you like to do, meditate or chant?” Duh. It never occurred to me that doing something I liked could be good for me.” – Krishna Das Q: Ram Ram. KD: Yeah, same to you. Q: My name is Will and I was just wondering, I had an experience in India with Siddhi Ma. I felt very graced to be with Her before She left Her body and Siddhi Ma is a Saint in India and I was just wondering if you would be willing to unpack some memories from your time with Her and just share a quick story or something about Her. KD: Siddhi Ma was one of Maharajji’s great great great devotees. She was really a great Saint in Her own right and She took care of all of us for 30, more than 30 years after Maharajji left the body, more than 40 years after Maharajji left the body. She was my Ma. She was my Mother. She saved my ass so many times, you have no idea. One time I said to Her, “Ma, should I meditate?” And She said, “Krishna Das, in 40 years with Maharajji, not once did He ask me to meditate.” She said, “What do you like to do, meditate or chant?” Duh. It never occurred to me that doing something I liked could be good for me. You know? Don’t look down… that’s where I grew up, you know? If you like it, it ain’t good for you. So that was mind blowing.  Then She said, you know, and here was a really interesting thing. It’s a kind of a deep thing but I’ll share it with you. She said, “The higher states of consciousness,” which is supposedly what we’re looking for, “Can not be created or can not be precipitated by personal will.” So, think about that. You, we can’t make it happen. The higher states of consciousness. She said, She said Maharajji said that. And He said, “When one is ready, they come naturally.” And how does one ready one’s self? Loving everyone.  Feeding everyone. And remembering God. Serving. Love, serve, remember. That’s what He used to say. Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems counter-intuitive that thinking about others was going to be good for me, but it turns out that that’s the way it is. Very strange. Because once again, like we started, we’re so stuck in our stories about ourselves. And we think about ourselves all day long. All lifelong. It’s ridiculous. And we never really pay attention to other people. And we don’t treat others very well for the most part. We treat others as they’re something that’s supposed to make us happy. And if they’re not doing that, to hell with them. So, that guy I just spoke about, He had some good ideas, you know? And one of them was, “Do unto others as you would have them…” If we could treat other people the way we, ourselves, want to be treated and do nothing else but that, our whole lives would change in an instant. Think about all the ways you turn people off all day long and look away from people and judge people and hurt people. Just because. That’s what we do. But you think it’s easy to treat people the way you want to be treated? Try. It’s not easy. That’s what practice is for. To help us. Give us the strength to treat other people the way we want to be treated. And then our lives change because it’s not all about “me” all the time. The burden of “me” is such a heavy goddamned thing to be carrying around. It lightens up. We don’t sit at home grinding it out. “What am I going to do?

Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond. Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD December 19, 2020 “Wherever we are, we are always held in this vast presence, which is our own true nature, and which is the nature of the divine. A real love. Spiritual practice is our way of beginning to remember how to see this space, how to turn towards it again and again, and by turning towards this, we let go of our stuff. We release our thoughts. We release anything that’s between our seeing what is right here all the time.” – Krishna Das Hello everybody. If you’re here, we’re still here. If you’re not, well, I hope everything’s okay wherever we are. So, as we sit here, we’re aware of a lot of things, our bodies, our thoughts, different sounds that we hear. But for a moment, just become aware of the space in the room that you’re sitting. This space is not a thought. It’s not a sense input. It’s not an emotion. It’s something we are aware of without any help from our senses or thoughts or any concepts about what is this and what this isn’t and who am I and what am I and all that shit. This is just a space. Now expand that space to the sky. Just see yourself sitting in the space of the sky, the sky that we feel, this vast space that we sense without our senses. This is like our nature. It’s like our soul. Everything happens within this space. It can’t be anything outside of this space. The space is everywhere. I hear a plane flying through the sky inside of this space. When we’re lost in thought, when we’re caught in emotional distress and pain, when we’re lost in pleasure, we lose the awareness of the space. Stuff comes and goes like birds flying through the sky, like clouds through the sky. But we are this awareness, this space, and when that space is obstructed by our stuff, we suffer, we’re limited. We’re glued to our stuff. The space is presence, with a capital “P,” being with a capital “B,” and anything we’re thinking about it, isn’t it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not here. Wherever we are, we are always held in this vast presence, which is our own true nature, and which is the nature of the divine. A real love. Spiritual practice is our way of beginning to remember how to see this space, how to turn towards it again and again, and by turning towards this, we let go of our stuff. We release our thoughts. We release anything that’s between our seeing what is right here all the time. This is Maharajji, always present. This is Hanuman. This is Ram. This is Krishna. This is the essence of all those great beings, and it’s also our essence. The only difference is their awareness is not obstructed any longer. They’re free. All of our practice is to loosen up the way we hold on to our stuff, where we identify with that stuff and allow us to sit at ease in this presence. We don’t have to make this up. This is who we are. Ram Dass called this, “Loving Awareness.” Loving awareness. One time, he and I were sitting together after breakfast in Maui at the house, and we started having a great conversation, deep conversation, but surrounded by a lot of space. We’d say something and then there’d be long silences, 10, 20 minutes maybe. And it just so happened I was recording it. I think towards the end, we said, “Wow, this was really intense.” And he said, “Yeah.” I said, “You know, I think I recorded it.” And he said, “Yeah, we could call it Dick and Jeff’s journey to Soul Land.” Dick and Jeff’s journey to Soul Land. Okay. Well, let’s examine all the bullshit that we use to beat ourselves...

Call and Response Ep. 66 |Find Out Who You Are Q: I started thinking, I don’t have a Guru in form, maybe I’m not doing something right. What if the practices won’t be as beneficial because I don’t have a Guru? “What you’re looking for is your Self. Your true Self. Rama, Krishna, Radha, Sita, these are the Names of that Place inside of you. There’s no reason to manufacture anything or visualize anything other than to be present and the Name itself will reveal your deeper places as you go deeper into the repetition of the Name, as your thoughts allow you to.” – Krishna Das Q: Hello. KD: Hi. Q: Hi. Thank you so much. KD: Ok. Q: My question, I’m Katie, and I starred in a movie called… KD: You’re who? Q: Katie. KD: That’s me. Q: I know, right? KD: Are we one? Q: I think that’s were supposed to be right, maybe? KD: No, you blew it. We’re not one. Q: Crap. KD: Ok. Q: I always do that. KD: You didn’t really blow it because we really are one. Q: Ok, so my question is twofold, the first part is, yesterday you talked about the practices opening your heart and really, you do this, paraphrasing, “to love the world so that you can really…” KD: Did I say that? Q: Maybe not exactly but in a way. KD: Oh yeah, ok. Q: So you can give this love to Maharajji and I was like, at first I was going along with it and then when you said, “To give it to Maharajji,” I was like, I was like, “Oh, he’s not just loving to like, love me, he’s doing it for something greater.” So, I got caught up in that. And so, then I started thinking, I don’t have a Guru in form, maybe I’m not doing something right. What if the practices won’t be as beneficial because I don’t have a Guru? So that’s part one. KD: That’s part one? That looked like part 10.   Somebody else remember this? Did you write this down? We’ll go back and start at the beginning, ok?  Why don’t we just, can we deal with one? Q: yeah. KD: Because one’s like, huge. Q: Ok. KD: And tomorrow come back for number two.  Or next year or whatever. What was, ok, start at the beginning. So, ok, so you misquoted me five times in the first five things you said, which was very nice of you, thank you. Q: Paraphrased, sorry. Not direct quote. KD: Well, ok, you paraphrased somebody else because I never said that shit. Q: Ok. Something about the practices, you wanted to open your heart, right? Or learn to love the world? KD: Well, ok. Q: And to give that, and you do this so you can give your love to Maharajji. KD: No. Q: Ok. KD: That’s where we go wrong. Q: Ok. KD: It’s a misunderstanding. And because, first of all, ok, hm.  Jesus. What I was talking about, why I sing, I sing to enter more deeply into the Presence of Love. Ok?  For me, I call that “Maharajji.” You don’t have to call that “Maharajji.” But that’s how I got the hit, right? So, for me, He is that love that’s everywhere all the time. It’s not a guy. You know? Not some dude with a blanket. So, but I know that if I say it that way, it’s easily taken just the way you took it, you know, and I kind of apologize for that because I didn’t mean to say that you have to love Him that way, otherwise you know, you’re not going to make it. It’s not like that at all. These great Beings, Rama and Sita, Radha Krishna, Hanuman, these great Beings are manifestations of the love that is who we are also and that who everybody is. And the love in which the universe floats, so to speak. So, when I chant, I’m trying to, by doing the practice just the way I described it to you, when I notice I’m not paying attention, I come back, try to give myself fully to the practice as much as I can, I’m moving more deeply into that open space of love which is everywhere and everybody. Everybody’s inside of that. But we’re identified with the little meat puppet, right?