Call and Response with Krishna Das

Call and Response Ep. 58 Life On The Road, Everyone is Your Teacher Q: Do you use people, just in general that come up in your life, as your teacher? “The more at ease you are with yourself, the more you’re willing and able to be at ease with anything that comes to you because it doesn’t force you, it doesn’t push a button that closes you down. So, that’s hard work. That’s how life is our teacher. Are we closing down? Are we protecting ourselves? Or distancing ourselves? Are we judging? And we do all the time. It’s natural. It’s human.” – Krishna Das KD: Yeah. Q: I was just wondering what your preference of music is other than singing kirtan. Do you like rock and roll or country music? KD: I’m an old fart, you know? Steely Dan, Ray Charles, Van Morrison. I like Eminem. I don’t know. I like a lot of stuff. I like jazz. I like rock. I like classical. I like a lot of stuff. I don’t listen to much music, because when there’s finally a moment when nobody’s calling on the phone or trying to get me to do something that I’m actually… it’s just such a blessing. Q: Thank you. KD: You’re welcome. There’s a lot of good music out there, but I don’t know what it is.   Q: Hi. KD: Hey. Q: I’m from Long Island, too. KD: Congratulations. Q: Thanks. KD: Your next birth will be better. Q: Thank you. My question is, I saw your tour schedule for the next, I don’t know, six months. I’m looking at you up there and over there… KD: Oh, I’m up there, too? Q: Yeah you’re right there. KD: I’m everywhere. It’s amazing. Q: I just wanted to know, my son is actually on the road touring with a band right now and he’s having a lot of trouble figuring out how to balance taking care of himself and being on the road and I’m actually asking you how you do that when you’re on the road. Because you have a such a huge schedule coming up. KD: You know, me being on the road is like being in an ashram, for me. You get up, have some breakfast, go to soundcheck. You sing. Go back to the hotel. Snack a little. Go to sleep. Get up. Pack your bags, get on the plane, get to the hotel. Go to sleep. It’s either eating, singing, traveling or sleeping. It’s like an ashram. That’s it except for the traveling. You know? When I get back to my room and I close the door and there’s nobody there, praise the Lord. That’s just so great, you know? But when you’re young, you don’t get back to the room before you take a few hits or a few drinks or you know, you go down to the bar to see who you can meet. You’re creating your own stuff and it’s difficult. It’s very difficult. You have, we don’t, we’re not trained, taught how to take care of ourselves, so when you’re on the road and you’re touring like that it can be really crazy. But, if you’re asking me, it’s not like that anymore. So, your son is in a band, you say he’s traveling? Q: yes, but he did pack his yoga mat. KD: That’s good. He can kind of use it as a pillow.   Q: Hi. KD: Where are you? Hi. Q: Hi. I listened to some of your other, oh, it’s really weird hearing myself in this… anyway, I’ve heard a lot of your other teachings, like, via Spotify… KD: Could you not say “teachings” please? It just freaks me the hell out… Q: Ok. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. KD: Just say, “stuff” or something like that. Q: Your stuff that you talk about, when you talk about relationships KD: Oh, here we go. Q: I know, I’m like the one that’s going to say it. So, like, there’s something you said, like, “Relationships are like, you do your business and I do mine.” KD: That’s a quote. I didn’t say it. Q: That’s a quote. Well, it’s a quote you said. And I just find that, like with, like relationship with like a man or a relationship with your mom, or a relationship with you know, whoever you have in your life and some people are, 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 June 18 2020 “My understanding is that everything in our life is a result of karma, and it’s like waves coming in off the ocean and they crash over us. If we fight with those waves, we create more karma. We are reacting against them. If we allow them to just crash over us, the energy dissipates. So, the way to meet the way we live every day is what’s important, the way we meet every day and every moment that arrives.” – Krishna Das Namaste. Hi everybody. Welcome back, even though we didn’t go anywhere. I hope everybody’s doing well and holding up in these times, very intense times. This is when the practice that we do and have done comes to our rescue and lessens the intensity of the negative emotions and panic and anxiety and fear.  It gives us an opportunity to be more aware and to release that stuff again and again, so it doesn’t push us around too much.  And of course, for me, the chanting is the main practice that I do. Just looking for a poem I wanted them to read to you. I don’t have it with me, but is it’s a Rumi poem. Rumi was an incredible Sufi Saint. He wrote extraordinary poetry, unbelievable, ecstatic poetry, loving poetry. This one poem goes, so this guy was praying and his lips grew sweet with the praising of the Lord, “Allah, Allah.” Then a cynic comes by and says to the guy, “Why are you praying? Have you ever gotten an answer?” And the guy thought, “No, I never got an answer.” So, he quit praying. That night he fell into a deep confused sleep, and in the dream, he saw the guide of souls surrounded by a green foliage. “Why did you stop praying?” The guy says, “Because I never got an answer.” And the guide says, “The calling out is the answer. You hear the whining of that dog in the distance, crying for its master? That’s the connection. The crying out is the connection.” And he says, “There are love dogs that no one knows of. Give your life to become one of them.” Give your life to cry out so deeply for the love and for the praise and for the love of the Lord, in that ecstasy of oneness. The calling out is the answer, the response. That switches it around, doesn’t it? We think we’re doing this because we want something, but actually, we’re being pulled within and our response to the pull, our hearts turn within. That’s the calling out. That’s the chanting. That’s the praising. That’s the prayer. In the 1800s in India, there was a great Saint named Rama Krishna Paramahansa. You might’ve heard of the book that was written about him called, “The gospel of Ramakrishna.” That was one of the first books that I read about this stuff and it blew my mind. In the book, well, I don’t even know if it’s in that book, but I saw a quote from him about the practice of the repetition of the name, which is what my Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, always encouraged us to do. Love everyone, serve everyone, and repeat the name. Remember God. So, Rama Krishna said that every repetition of one of these names is a seed and, you know, the seed of an Oak tree is very, very small, but inside of that seed, there is extraordinary potential. So, inside these seeds that we plant of the repetition of the name is extraordinary potential, and he says that, the seeds of the repetition of the name may get caught by the wind and blown around, and they may get caught on the roof, land on the roof of an old house, in the middle of the jungle. And in those days, the roofs were made sometimes from clay tiles that were baked in the sun,

Call and Response Ep. 57 Where Do Thoughts Come From, Suffering, Favorite Chants Q: I’ve been coming to see you for many years and the last time I came after I left, there were just these uncontrollable tears for days, for weeks, like someone a sponge and tears were coming out and it felt like grief. And sometimes, when we’re together, when we come here I feel like, collectively there’s that energy of grief and I don’t know if it relates to suffering, you know, it seems like all humans are trying to avoid bad feelings and suffering, and like that’s the thing we push away. “We’re already being called and when we, when we call out, we’re actually just calling back. When we chant here, we think we’re doing it. We think we made the decision to come here. We made the decision to sit in here instead of going for a walk on the beach. We made the decision to do this, do that. That’s our reality. There might be another reality which is that we were brought here and we were forced to sit down by our own hearts and made to chant because that’s what’s going to connect us. And that’s what we really want inside is to be connected to that love. “ – Krishna Das Q: Hi. When you chant the song, “Saraswati,” I get that feeling, this like, incredible feeling like you fall in love and then I can’t listen to the chant because I spend the whole time saying, “Oh, I love this chant. I love this chant. I want to hear it, I want to hear it. Then I miss it, and then they have to play it over and over and over again. KD: Could be worse. Q: But it’s like insatiable. Like it’s a desire that like something pumps and I don’t know what it is and I’ve tried to listen to that chant with all the same words in a different chant and it doesn’t create the same feeling. It’s only that chant, that time. And so, it’s interesting to me why, like it’s not the words, it’s not the vibration, what it, it’s a crazy desire… and I hardly ever hear the chant because I spend so much time in my head saying, “Oh I love this so much, I love this chant, I want to hear it again and again,” and then I miss the chant. Do you know what I mean? KD: Luckily we have a tape loop. Just put “repeat” Q: Over and over again. But how is it that some of the… it’s the same words, you’re the same singer, you’ve sang it different ways, different times, it doesn’t have the same effect but that one, it’s like, “Just take me now.” You know? It’s that kind of feeling, you know? So, how… what are the differences… what’s happening there? KD: How am I supposed to know? Q: You sang it. KD: So, I sang it. That’s all I did. That’s all I did. I sang it. That’s all I know. The rest of it’s your stuff. Q: But when I hear it, like when you explained that you saw your guru, it’s the same feeling. If that song was, I would be there. KD: Lock yourself in a room for three weeks with just that chant and see what happens. You might just levitate right out the window. If you do, come see me though. I’d like to know. That’s a good thing. Don’t worry about why, so much. Don’t worry about why. Why’s not necessary. That’s just actually resistance to going into it more. Just keep letting go and hearing it, letting go again and hearing it. Letting go… ok, eventually you’ll be through with that and you’ll be hearing it again. That’s all you do. That’s the practice. That’s great. You’ve found something that really pulls you, that your heart really responds to. That’s a wonderful thing. Don’t spend all of your time thinking about why or how or what is this and how did this work and why is it this way and it doesn’t work that way… Q: That’s what I do, yeah. KD: Those are what you call “the things you let go of.” Again and again and again and again. And little by little, you’ll just, you’ll be there. We’re so used to not being here. You don’t understand. From the moment we wake up til the moment we like, crash at night, we’re just gone. Gone,

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 June 11 2020 “All the questions that you asked, they’re all issues that you can become aware of yourself. Don’t give up your practice. Deepen your practice as best you can. Keep it going. Remember, it’s not about what you’re feeling at the time of practice, necessarily. Keep it going whether you’re feeling any devotional feelings, whether you’re angry, whether you’re sad, whether you’re tired, do your practice. Do your practice. It’s the way. If we don’t plant those seeds, those fruits will never grow for us. So, regardless of how difficult it becomes in the world, regardless of what’s going on in your life, try to remember to remember, as often and as deeply as you can. “ – Krishna Das Namaste. I hope everybody’s okay. Nice to see you again. Of course, I can’t see you, but it’s good to be together again. As this pandemic continues, as we stay more isolated in our homes, as so many things seem to be blowing up in the world around us, it becomes more and more important to cultivate the ability to take refuge in our own hearts. And these chants that we’re doing lead us into that place within that is shelter from the storm. Whatever we do in the world, we want to do it well and we want to be able to accomplish our goals, but if our motives are confused and subject to what they call “The Three Poisons,” which I’m not exactly sure what they are, but it’s certainly selfishness and desire-driven motivation and the delusion, and we can’t accomplish what we want. So, by learning and training ourselves to take this refuge of this time to move inside, we are able to overcome the obstacles within us. And when we can overcome those obstacles, we can be more effective in the outside world. It’s a natural situation. The less fear we have, the better we’ll be able to interact with people, other people and situations as they arise. The rest, the less selfishness we have, self-centered actions, thinking only of ourselves, the more we’ll be able to accomplish in the world, the more people we’ll be able to help and the more we’ll be able to help ourselves. So, it’s very important to cultivate this practice, any practice. And for those who don’t understand that there is a way to find refuge within, there’s nothing but continued suffering and frustration and trying to squeeze water from a stone. So, the best thing we can do is to learn how to take care of ourselves, and at the same time, that expands to include everyone, because we’re all connected. When we go within, we can feel that connection with everyone and everything. It’s not something you have to think about up here. It’s something you directly experience. I mentioned the three poisons before that we are subject to in our dealings with our own stuff, and they are officially; ignorance, attachment and aversion. I’m not sure about that, actually, but it’s close. Something like that. Delusion for sure. Not seeing the way things really are. And then second, acting only out of self-referenced behavior, things that benefit ourselves in one way or another, where we are the center of the universe, and then attachment and aversion, which is clinging things and pushing things away. Q: I’m afraid and sad that I can’t help others as before, because I must self-quarantine to protect the body. How can I still protect others if it’s risky to protect myself and then to be physically present? And if they are too young or intellectually can’t understand? Well to everything,

Call and Response Ep. 56 Hearing the Name, Chanting the Name, and A Talk About Gurus Q: Thank you for being here. I want to know about your Guru. “That Body died in 1973. So, does that mean that for these last years, these last, what, how many years is that? 46 years? That He’s been gone? He’s not available? I don’t have Him anymore? Is that what that means? Because that’s what it would mean if a Guru was a physical body. Gone. But that’s not the case. He’s more present to me now than He was when I was sitting in front of His physical body.” – Krishna Das Q: What about the idea of humming the chants throughout the day? KD: Humming the chants? You mean, without the words? Why? Why? Q: It just seems to come natural. KD: Well, you think imagining doing headstand is the same thing as doing it? Do you? Ok. There’s your answer. But even when you’re humming, your mind is hearing the chant, right? Yeah. That’s ok. As long as you’re paying attention to what you’re hearing in your head. That’s the mantra going on inside. That’s fine. You don’t have to necessarily sing out loud. Take the mic. Q: Isn’t that the idea of what to do other than your hour in the morning? KD: Hour? You do an hour? Wow. I do three minutes. Q: No. Whatever it is in the morning your practice is. If this is in your head during the day, that’s the idea? KD: That’s not the idea but that’s good. The thing about doing it out loud is that it adds another way of paying attention. It helps you stay more centered, that’s all. It doesn’t always have to be. The idea is to just be aware of the Name. So, when you sing it, you hear it and that’s awareness. When you hear it in your mind, when you’re repeating it mentally, you hear it mentally. But it’s harder to hold on to that, at least at the beginning. Otherwise, there’s no problem. Ok? Anybody? Oh, it always takes so much to get you people here to talk. We should give you coffee. How about coffee? Want some coffee?  Let’s all go down to Starbuck’s for tomorrow’s session.   Q: Can you be present and connected to the One, the Divine and still have thoughts? KD: Can you? I don’t know. I’ll let you know when I get present and connected to the Divine. Maybe next week. Thoughts are not going to stop coming, but they’re not going to grab you once you’re really connected more deeply to your Being. The thoughts will just flow through like birds through the sky. They may poop on you a little bit, but they’re not going to hold you. So, there’s less, you don’t identify with them immediately like we do in our daily lives. But, if at that moment you’re thinking, “Wow, I’m not really attached to that thought”, you were attached to that one. So, when a kid is playing, when a young kid is playing, do you think they’re going like, “Wow, I’m really playing, this is fantastic. I’m totally into it.” No. They’re just totally into it. Those metta thoughts and that that that that… it’s not existing. They’re present, totally involved. And that’s what it’s like when you… you’re not going, “Wow, I’m totally involved. This is fantastic. I’ve finally made it.” Next. You know? Not that. Q: Thank you. Q: Yeah. As soon as there’s something you notice, as soon as you notice you’re back, you come back to yourself again. Whatever it is, whether it’s when you’re driving in a car, hanging out or talking to people, the minute you notice that you’re kind of like, “Oh, I’…” you just woke up for a second and then you’re gone again. You can’t old on to that, because you didn’t do it. It’s underneath the you that wants to hold on. You just notice it, let it be and then you’re gone again until it happens again. But doing these practices, all the practices, any practices that brings you back to what you’re doing and where you are, that creates this, this automatic response, this wake-up response that happens all the time during the day.

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 June 6 2020 Namaste everybody. Can you send some chai over from India? I didn’t bring my tea this morning. I’m a train station. Only best jive. So nice to see you all. And anybody have anything to say? How are you? I’m doing good. How are you? Good morning, I guess. Thank you. It’s a little early for me to be a good morning person. I don’t go to sleep till like three or four. And then when, when everybody gets up and go to sleep, right? My question, I have at least two questions because I’ve been waiting for a long time, like past giant chats. So the first question was that Ron does in his, one of his talks, he said that eventually not having something turns out we more interesting than having something. Not getting what you want. Turns out to be more interesting than getting what you want. This is what I’m Gracie will cause wishful thinking. Um, yeah. So then your question is what my question is, what So what is the question again, is that I wanted you to know, I can interpret that in my model of thinking, but I, because you are more aligned to who Ramdas was, so you can probably better explain what he meant by that, because I, in my set of morality and the set of values, I can interpret. But I need to know what you think of that. I think he was talking from a point of view of spiritual practice. When you deny yourself something that you want, or you don’t take it, then you see all your stuff immediately. You start thinking obsessing about it. Then you start thinking about it. It brings up everything in you that wants to grab onto something. Uh, I think that’s really what he meant. It wasn’t, it was pretty, uh, pretty Maharaj Maharaji used to say you want it, don’t take it like that. So of course who’s, who’s capable of that, not me and most people, but when you don’t immediately take something that you want and you go for instant gratification, when you don’t do that, you see your reactions, you see how attached you are to something, how much you’re invested in trying to grab something outside of yourself in order to get it. So I think it’s just a practice issue, not really in terms of daily life and going through the day and relationships, but with people and things, but in internally, if you don’t immediately go for something and grab it, you see the part of you that continually obsesses about it and wants it and can’t let go. And then you start dealing with that place with yourself and that’s good work. It’s good work. So the second question was about the prayer and it says that yet read the So that probably means that wherever there is a key than four by one and a mile deep probably shows themselves in one form or another. So in your 50 years of gluten, has anybody ever come up to you and said that they might have seen Maharaji in any form? You know, people who have their astral eyes open, so to speak, you know, there and can see other planes of consciousness. They always tell me that whenever I sing to her edgy comes and sits right next to me and plays with me and laughs and pushes me around and everything while I’m singing and stuff like that. But I don’t see them. I don’t have those experiences. It’s nice to hear that. Even if it’s a fantasy, I like it. I’ll take it. That’s all. That’s all I can work upon. You know, I sang in through phenomena, like at the  a couple of years I saw that. Yeah. It’s amazing. I was so shocked. They invited me.

Call and Response Ep. 55 The Practice of Chanting “As much as we like to think that we’re running the show, it’s always those little epiphanies, those things that (we) all of a sudden understand or all of a sudden, we just recognize something or we know something. It doesn’t come from the outside. It comes from within. It feels right. And if there’s one thing that the spiritual path is about, more than any other thing, or if there’s one thing that the spiritual path requires before anything, it’s that we learn to trust ourselves.” – Krishna Das Oh, I thought it was a rooster. It’s a baby. Hello baby! He wants us to keep singing, but that’s just too bad. Because you can sing and sing and sing but if we… what do we do when we’re not singing? What happens to us? We sink.  You don’t sing, you sink. So the issue is, what do we do the other 23 hours of the day when we’re not doing practice? How do we go through that time? How do we live in our lives and how do we find a way to do that in a good way? That’s one of the issues. Life is an issue. When I first went to India, and I had just really gotten there, I was up in the mountains and the town I was staying in had a beautiful crater lake up about 7,000 feet. Beautiful, in the Himalayas, and at one end of the lake there was a very ancient temple to the Goddess Durga. So, at night, I was walking around, and around the lake and I was passing that temple and I heard this chanting coming from inside. I just stopped. I couldn’t move. I had never heard anything like that, certainly not in the temple on Long Island. Thank you, that was for you. So, and I was just struck the intensity of the chanting, at how powerful it was and how everybody was completely in it, you know? And I just felt, all of a sudden, I just knew that this was something that I could really do. Something I could really give myself to. You know, some years before, I was up in the mountains in New Mexico and, at the Lama foundation for the winter with Ram Das and we heard that there was this artist from New York who had gone to India and learned how to meditate and now he was living just down the mountain from us in, North of Taos New Mexico. So, a bunch of us went down to visit him and we went into the room with him and we sat there for a while and everybody was asking questions. I kind of hung out in the back. I wasn’t talking because I was listening to everything. And after an hour or so, we were leaving and I was the last one out the door and he grabbed my arm as I was going out the door 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.” And, you ever see like, in those taxidermy shops, you know, the squirrels on the wall? Like this? That’s what I felt like. He nailed me to the wall. Because that was the thing that was killing me, you know? I could never really do whatever I was doing. I was always… I could never really give myself to what I was doing, 100%. Not even 10%. I was just too scattered or whatever and I just didn’t know. I just didn’t know how to get into things. And I can remember that day just like it was yesterday and it was just a few years ago. Like 50.  So, when I was outside that temple that night up in the mountains and I heard this chanting, that’s what I knew immediately. That this was something that I could really do. So, I was just standing there and some guy was walking in and he kind of grabbed my arm and he said, “Come in, come in, you must come, you must come.” He dragged me in and I sat down with these guys in the temple and they were just wailing. It was unbelievable. And they came, “Come sing, sing, sing.” I didn’t know what they were singing, you know? Later, it turned out it was the Hanuman Chalisa. I didn’t realize that until much, much later. It was a Tuesday night, which is Hanuman’s day. So, that was the beginning and after that, everywhere I heard chanting,

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 June 4 2020 “We have to find a way to help implement the changes that have to come in our society, the changes that we hope will correct the imbalance of power and the devastating way that people of color are treated and hurt and abused and victimized. We definitely have to find a way to help make that happen, but we can’t allow our actions to come with negative emotions, if we can help it. It’s very hard, very hard, but that doesn’t mean you don’t do what you do. You do whatever you can do to help.” – Krishna Das Namaste. Welcome back. Hope everybody’s okay, feeling good physically and hopefully able to deal with all the emotions flying around inside and out. Believe it or not, It’s said that human birth is the best place to be to do work on ourselves, to actually achieve peace, find liberation from suffering, enter into the place within us that is real love, find compassion for ourselves and others and find a way to live in this world in a good way. Because they say that in human birth, we’re right in the middle, between the lower forms of birth and the more subtle planes, and they say in either one of these places, it’s impossible to do practice, because in these two places, we are too consumed with experiencing the fruits of our karmas. In the heaven worlds, in the subtle planes, it’s very pleasant.  In the hell worlds, in the lower realms, it’s not very pleasant to say the least. That’s what they say. But here in this world at this time, we have the opportunity to get a vote how we respond to the world around us and how we respond even to our own stuff within us. But somehow, we have to find a way to get the strength, to release the emotions, the feelings, the knee jerk reactions that we have to everything that we come in contact with, because for the most part, all day long, every day of our lives, we are responding blindly with no mitigating factor of consciousness or awareness to the things that show up in our awareness, in our consciousness. So, the idea is how do we get a vote and why do we want a vote? We want a vote so that our own actions won’t create more suffering for ourselves and others. So, in this situation that we’re in now in the world, which seems very intense, it’s a very good mirror for us to look within and see our reactions, see the causes of our suffering, and then we can expand that awareness to the outside world, to social action, to living in the world and to dealing with the issues in our culture and our politics and in the way we treat other beings. So, the way that I find that space to, when I’m lucky, not react blindly and instantly to everything that comes towards me, is through chanting. Because in chanting, we start repeating one of these mantras, one of these names of God, and then the deal we make with ourselves is that when we notice that we’re lost and not paying attention, we come back. We let go of whatever we’re thinking about. We don’t try to figure it out. We just let it go and we come back, again and again and again and again and again and again, and as time goes on, we begin to feel more comfortable being more present. We’re released from that obsessive flow of constant evaluation and judgment, constant flow of emotion, negative emotions, positive emotions, everything that pushes us around. Little by little we’re released from being the slave to that, and then we can extend that feeling to others and our own actions will extend that feeling in our relationship to every one of our situations in our lives. Same, same,

Call and Response Ep. 54 Guru Puja Meditation “Every inhalation you’re drawing away the pain and suffering of all the Beings around you, all over the universe, actually, because you have, the center of your heart is the open clear light of freedom. It’s not any kind of a trap. It’s not any kind of a prison. It’s a prism through which all this is completely swallowed up into the vast infinite energy of love in the universe, of all the Krishnas and all the Ramas and all the Everybodys, Buddhas and the Kalkis from the future who conquer all darkness and sadness and injustice and suffering. And you triumph. Your inhalation draws that in and you triumph over it and your bliss triumphs over all that mass of sadness. It does not burn you out.” – Robert Thurman Bob: Let’s meditate something. Can we meditate something? KD: Yeah, please. Bob: Ok. So, please go into meditative mode. In this light I’m moved to ask you to meditate something. And, this comes from the Guru Puja but I won’t read it. I’ll just, from the Guru Puja. The Guru Worship. Mentor Worship. Ok. So, please go into meditative mode. And in meditative mode, take a look at yourself to find your true self. And when you do that, when you use your mind to look back into your own face, what will happen to you is you won’t be sure who you are, if you look properly for yourself. You will find a certain uncertainty about, are the tip of your nose? Are you your face as it looks this morning? Are you your face as it was 20 years ago or 10 years ago or 2 years ago? Or are you something else? Do you have an angelic face inside? Are you, etcetera… You’ll feel a kind of vein like that if you really look intently into yourself to find your self. You’ll feel an uncertainty and if you do it strongly you’ll feel even a little nervous, anxious, maybe insecure, like “who am I?” A sort of Ramana Maharshi sort of routine. And just let yourself melt. Use that uncertainty to kind of melt your self-image about yourself. And as you’re self-image about yourself melts, your picture of the world around you will melt, can melt. You know? Your imagination that you’re in this room in Massachusetts and this and that and Kripalu and this and the other and whatever and just let go of it all. And then, imagine yourself in the best way you might want to be. On a mountain in Tibet. Sitting with Shabkar. Looking at another mountain with the billowing clouds on top of it. Beautiful. With shining sun, blue sky, rainbows in some parts of the vast view that you’re seeing and you’re feeling really alert, you don’t bother, like who you are, you’re in your best feeling and you’ve seen this vision in your mind’s eye. And then you see sort of like He did, His guru on top of that cloud. You see your Guru and if you don’t have a particular Guru, you think of, you could think of a Buddha, you could think of Krishna, you could think of Rama, you could think of Neem Karoli Baba, you can think of anybody you want, whoever you feel moved by, whoever, if they were there on that cloud, you would feel really excited. You know? Like, when you meet some celebrity or some really super person that you love and you’re just in their space and you get all like, keyed-up, you know, and you just feel like that, some amazing person even you don’t know that. A lama or some imagined lama. It doesn’t matter. And that person is sitting there smiling radiantly at you like Shabkar’s guru is smiling at him. And you just imagine that being is there. Like Obi Wan Kenobi’s like a light being. Like a pure light phenomenon. And you can have many beings there if you like. If it’s Jesus that you like, if it’s Moses, if it’s, if it’s Muhammad, if it’s, whatever it is you just… they’re all there together. Krishna. And really there, you know? Or Sita. Or Shakti. You know? Mother Teresa. It doesn’t matter. Because they’re all there and you can have a host up there on top of that cloud formation,

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 May 28, 2020 “Any mantra will work for you if you do it, and any mantra you do will work for you, but we bring so much to the practice, our hopes and fears, our anguish, our desires, all our emotions. We bring our fractured will and a million little pieces. We can’t even do one round of mantra without, you know, thinking about 4 million other things. So, it’s not the mantra’s fault. It’s our fault. It’s our situation. Let’s not blame ourselves because we are who we are, but it’s our situation. It’s very hard to do practice.” – Krishna Das Welcome back or forward or upside or downside.  We’re here again. And, we get a chance to hang out together. If you’ve sung with me before, you know that I always start with a prayer that I introduce as an invocation to the love that lives within us, as who and what we truly are. And, what I’m going to do today is I’m going to tell you the translation of that prayer and tell you what it’s about. It is a prayer to Hanuman, and in India, Hanuman is considered to be the perfect servant of God, of Ram He has no agenda of his own, only to serve Ram’s agenda, which is also very simple, which is compassion for us. To help us overcome our suffering, our negativity, and of course, in the story of the Ramayana, Hanumanji helps Ram win the war against Ravana and his demon hordes, the personification of evil and negativity and selfishness, and if you don’t know the story of the Ramayana, it’s a very wonderful story,  and, one of the, one of the two great Indian, well, I don’t want to call it a myth because it’s supposed to be real… It happened at some point many, many thousands of years ago. So, Hanuman is, you know, Maharajji used to say to us, “Who is Hanuman?” And we would give him all the pat answers, you know, “The perfect servant,” this and that. And then He would say, “Nay, Hanuman is the breath of Ram, the breath of Ram, the breath of God.” The breath is very powerful.  You know, in the Greek rendering of the gospels, the new Testament, which was written a hundred years after Jesus left the body, it was one of the first times that it had been written down what is now and later was translated as “holy spirit,” in the Greek, it’s “holy breath.” And the breath connects us to life. It connects our bodies to life. Without breath, we have no life. Without prana, we have no life. And the life of our soul is connected to the Paramatman, the Supreme Being, the Supreme Soul through the breath of God, which is Hanuman. And as that breath moves through us, it cleans our hearts, it removes obstacles from our path. It destroys our suffering and mitigates all kinds of calamities and stuff like that. So, I’m going to read you the translation of this prayer. Much of it has to do with the stories of Hanumanji from the Ramayana, and much of it is description of his qualities, which on the deepest, deepest, deepest level are our own qualities, are the qualities of our real, our warrior hearts to overcome all limitation and merge with love, fully. This is called the Hanumat, the Sri Hanumat Stavan. I bow to the son of the wind, which is the name of Hanuman, a fire to consume the forest of evildoers, destroyer of the darkness of ignorance and whose heart resides Sri Ram, the holder of the bow and arrows. I bought to the son of the wind, the abode of immeasurable strength, possessing a body’s shining like a mountain of gold, a fire to consume the forest of the demon race. The foremost among the wise, abode of all virtues, chief of monkeys and the most,

Call and Response Ep. 53 Devotional Poetry of Shabkar and Remembering Geshe Wangyal “Don’t be sad. Look at the mind that feels sadness. The guru is not other than the mind. It is the mind that remembers the Guru. It is the mind into which the Guru dissolves.” – Shabkar KD: Saint John of the Cross wrote, “In the beginning, the Father uttered one word. That word is His Son and He utters Him forever in everlasting silence. And it is in silence that the heart must hear.”  The Father uttered one word. That word is His Son and He utters Him forever in everlasting silence. And it’s in silence that the heart must hear. Good morning. What? What?  So, this, you know we’ve been talking a little bit about devotion and how that it lubricates the connection to our true nature. It makes it, it helps us access that place. What you love, what we love we will think about. It will be with us and so there was very great yogi in Tibet named Shabkar who was also, He used to sing these songs of teaching songs and this is a poem or song that He wrote. He said, “I was in retreat. One day at noon, when the sky was clear, I walked to the summit of the hill above my cave and I sat there alone. Toward the North, I saw a pure white cloud billowing over a mountain peak like milk boiling over. At that moment, the memory of my precious Guru overwhelmed me and I sang this song of longing. To the North, a single white cloud surges over mountain peaks, white as overflowing milk, when I see this, I think of my Guru’s kindness. Beneath that distant cloud rise the solitary heights of auspicious hermitage. The way my master once lived in that excellent retreat place comes back to my mind. When I think of His kindness, tears well up in my eyes and sorrow in my heart. My mind is dazed, my perception uncertain. All is hazy and unreal. How wonderful if He were here again. I am but an ordinary man, a man with scant devotion, but I still long to meet Him once again. The master dwells now in absolute space and His miserable son is left behind in the mire of samsara. When I see the myriad flowers blooming in the meadows, I remember the sight of my true Guru, then I could see Him in person, inspired. Now, I can’t. As I think of Him over and over again, the Master’s presence fills my Heart. As I listen to the cuckoo’s gentle call, I remember hearing the true guru’s voice, the satguru’s voice, so deep and sonorous. Then, I could listen to His melodious speech. Now I can’t. I think of Him over and over again and the Master’s presence fills my heart. As I see the rising sun spreading radiance all around, I remember the Satguru’s wisdom and compassion. Then, He tenderly cared for me. Now that time is gone. As I think of Him over and over again, the Master’s presence fills my heart. I remember going to see Him, having been away for months or years, the warmth of His welcoming smile comes back to my mind. No matter in what direction I go, I think of the Master. No matter in what solitary place I stay, I think of the Master. No matter what signs I see, I think of the Master. Always. And in all times I think of my true Guru. As I sang this plaintive song, the cloud continued to swell until it took the form of a heap of jewels. At the top, in a tent of five colored rainbow lights, my true Guru appeared performing a graceful dance, His hands in the gesture of protection. He was more resplendent than ever, peerless in loving kindness. He smiled radiantly and spoke these words in a voice like Brahma’s, ‘Noble son, you who are like my heart, do not despair. Listen to your father’s words. We, father and son, who came together by the power of past prayers, are inseparable in the state of luminous absolute nature. Son, from now on, let the length of your practice be the length of your life. Wander from place to place in solitary mountain retreats. By practicing austerities, may you help all fortunate Beings. Don’t be sad. Look at the mind that feels sadness.

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD May 21, 2020 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. “Nobody’s testing you, nobody’s judging you and nobody’s keeping score. Do what makes you feel good.” – Krishna Das So, the repetition of the name. People always ask me, you know, what do these names mean? What does your name mean? It means “you.” You, as you are known by other people in this world and mostly by yourself, too. I’m me. But these names come from within us and they were brought out into this world by great beings who realized the truth, realized real love, were liberated, are free from suffering and stayed in this world, that came to this world to help us find a way to be free from suffering. So, these names come from within us and the real meaning of these names is our own true nature. Just like you are Frank and there’s Frankness in everything you do, and you call out “Frank, Frank, Frank,” and its just, “Yeah, Frank,” you feel really Frankie. So, when we call out “Ram Ram Ram” or any one of these names, there is a response, an awareness opens up within us.  Most likely, most of us, including myself, aren’t able to actually recognize that awareness at this point, recognize that place within, even though it’s always here. There is nowhere else it could be except here, but we’re not here. Well, we are here, but we don’t recognize that. So, through this practice gradually, but inevitably that place within us is uncovered. It’s not something we get from doing the practice. It is something we uncover within ourselves through the ripening process that we call spiritual practice. “Jai Jai Ramakrishna Hari” doesn’t have anything to do with the Saint who lived in India in the 1800s. Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Ramakrishna Hari is a form of Krishna, a form of Vishnu that is a murti, a form of God that lives in a temple in Southern India in Pandharpur. And it’s a very unusual form. Not only do people see it as Krishna, but some people also see it as Ram. They had that direct experience and the great saints who created that temple and created a culture around that around that temple, they came up, this mantra was revealed to them, Rama Krishna Hari. Hari, not Hare, but Hari, Rama Krishna Hari. So, it’s a beautiful mantra. Every repetition of one of these names is a seed, a seed that we are planting within ourselves in the garden of our hearts. And those seeds will grow just like a tiny little seed can have a huge Oak tree inside of it, the potential inside of it, so does every repetition of one of these names have that same Shakti, that same potential to manifest God. So, since every thought and action is karma, when we’re doing this, one thing is we’re not creating other karmas. And they say that the repetition of the name is totally sattvic, totally pure, that there’s no negative aspect to it at all. It can’t be negative. There can’t be any negative reactions or karmas that are created from the repetition of the name. So, since you have to do something, cause we’re all very busy, why don’t we plant the seeds that will develop and grow into what we’d like to experience in our lives, which is happiness, joy, peace, truth, reality. So, you repeat these names, you do this practice, you don’t have to have any intellectual understanding of the meaning of the names. It’s not required. You can have that. Yes. All of these names have stories out of which they’ve sprung here on this planet, in this world. Kali, Durga, Krishna, Shiva, Ram Hanuman, Ganesh,

Call and Response Ep. 52 Reincarnation, Sci-Fi Buddhism and Devotion   “He encouraged us to love everyone, serve everyone and remember God, which is to repeat the Names of God. Japa. Ram Nam. Yeah. I always wanted Him to tell me what to do, you know? Give me some like, practice, some mantra. Some “this” that I could do, you know? But He was never, He never encouraged us to do spiritual practice for the sake of our own spiritual benefit, so to speak. He said, “Think about others.” And really, to tell you the truth, I didn’t get it, you know? “What is He talking about? What do you mean, think about others? What about me?” It takes a while to get with the program. Really, it does.” – Krishna Das   Q: You said something about good health is… KD: Hard to find? Q: Yeah, that’s true. The joy of your, all of your cells living in harmony, something along those lines, I didn’t get it down right. Bob: Yes, yes. That’s right. Q: That’s it? Bob: Yes, your life force, your health, is joy and bliss in your system. Q: Ok. Bob: It’s the nature of reality in your system, exerting itself in your system. This is the new orientation we’re cultivating is that reality is joy. Q: Right. Bob: Love is joy. Because love means, the wish for the happiness of the Beloved is what “love” means in these traditions and how can it wish to have happiness for the Beloved if it doesn’t have happiness itself? Right? In other words, ok? Q: Without making this, you know, a story rather than a question, this has been a lot, my husband has stage 4 lung cancer and he has gone past his expiration date. He’s supposed to be dead now. But he gets out there and he walks the dog every day and then he goes, he rides the exercise bike for 70 minutes and it makes him happy and he comes home happy, and the doctors are saying, “Well, it’s your physical health that’s keeping you alive.” And that one statement just kind of like, whoa, it’s not just that, it’s the attitude. And thank you all. Bob: Ok. Q: Could you just say a few more sentences about what I asked you during the break? When we were talking about, you know, going through the transformation of this life to the next life and I know in Buddhism that you can come back as everybody’s mother, or you can come back as a flea or you can come back as a preta… Bob: Yes Q: And my thought is if you’re being reborn in the human realm, you’re here already having some compassion so it would appear to me that you would want to, people would naturally continue in a higher state. So how do people fall back so they’re in that cyclical of going down again? Bob: Well, I think the traditional religious interpretations about that tend somewhat, Oh, that’s really interfering with your head. Ok, we have to get that a little bit away, that’s terrible. Ok. So, they tend to overemphasize the danger of deteriorating in one’s embodiment and, which connects to, which is, I think they overdo that, I think. And this connects to the fact that they so much appreciate the evolutionary achievement of becoming human because it’s really extraordinary in the way that… Buddhist biologists would see, for example, how you would move from being a tigress or a lioness towards some less violent embodiment, would be that lioness that was waiting, chasing the herd of antelopes and saw a really juicy slow-moving pregnant one, really juicy, and sort of all, like, puffed up from being pregnant, and then had a subliminal sense of identification because of having had pups herself and then decided to let it go and swerved and jumped on a stringy old disgusting hobbling old much less delicious one, but enough to feed herself and her family. So how many tigresses, lionesses would have such an impulse, such an empathetic impulse based on not having watched nature movies on PBS? And so that kind of thing, that then teaches,

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD May 16, 2020 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. “It would be good to try to find a way to relax. I know that sounds very prosaic, but it’s a very big thing. And that means releasing thoughts, feelings, imaginations about the future. It means releasing a lot of the negativity and betrayals and viciousness of our growing up from the past and allowing yourself to be here just a little bit, you know,… you’re not going anywhere. And certainly, in this this particular situation with the virus, we’re not going anywhere anyway. So… it’s a good time to recognize how clearly you see the things that are floating around in your awareness. “ – Krishna Das Good morning. It’s getting hot out here in New York. I don’t know where you all are, but it’s hot here. Oh, something… Nina: So, Krishna Das, actually I have one question. I’ll just get it in here while people raise their hands. Last night, on talk with David Nichtern, KD spoke about what a real guru is. Is it possible to go deeper into this topic, especially how to cultivate ability to have a knowing that comes from the heart rather than thinking that comes from the mind? Or as Carl Jung, as per the Carl Jung quote, “Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling.” ******* Well, you know, we have to deal with reality, which means we have to deal with where we are at and these ideas if of perfect this or perfect that, that’s not what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with a big mess of stuff inside of ourselves. We’re dealing with, we can’t find the ground, we don’t know who we are, we don’t know where we’re going. Our feelings are, are at odds with each other, with, with each all the time. You know, one has to begin to quiet the mind a little bit, or at least begin to pay attention to all the nonsense in our heads. If you don’t pay attention to it, we can never release it. We’re not going anywhere. You know, there’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing to achieve. We shouldn’t see this as an ambitious enterprise, you know? We’re trying to find out who we are. We’re trying to experience a deeper reality within us. And it’s all within us. The guru is within our true nature. The self is within. In fact, they say guru, God and self are not different. They are the same. So, the real guru is not outside of us, even though he or she might appear in a body at some point if we need that and if we’re ready for that, and if that is what’s going to be best for us. You know, you’ve got to understand, a real guru has no personal agenda whatsoever. They’re only here because we don’t know anything about anything. And they’re here out of compassion for us. And also, they’re here out of the recognition that we are one, we are all parts of one being, little fragments of light that haven’t found their way back home. So, a real guru is available to us to help us find our way home. You can’t make that happen. You can’t make yourself come home. You can only allow yourself to come home. And that’s, to do that is to learn to trust your heart, and little by little, yyou do experience the difference between thinking, thinking and knowing. Knowing usually comes as a, as a, just a very simple knowing. Sometimes it’s like an epiphany where we’re like, you know, it’s like a thunderbolt, but other times it’s just all of a sudden, you’d be going through your day and you’ll recognize some reality.

Call and Response Ep. 51 Guru “Any yogi or yogini who develops ability to concentrate and become mindful, pushing that mindfulness to deeper and deeper levels, discovers the Realm of Infinite Love, the Realm of Infinite or Immense Love, Immense Compassion, Immense Joy and Immense Equanimity within themselves. So, they have all the heavens in themselves.” – Robert Thurman Bob: I was just kind of thinking of like, “Where’s my Guru?” You know? “I need a Guru. I want to get serious now, so I want a Guru.” So, people feel that way. KD: Yeah. Bob: And that’s good that they feel that way because, in one sense, it is a good thing to think that there’s some way of being that is higher than the way one habitually is and that someone exemplifies that and that person can maybe help one develop dimensions in themself, that there are, that will be new for them, that will be greater how they habitually think of themself as. So, you know, when you said, apart from yourself, but then what you found through the inspiration of your teacher was dimensions in yourself that you didn’t know that were there because your habitual thing was to think of yourself as not having those dimensions. Right? Like, you know, someone asked me earlier about the four immeasurables, as they’re called, which I decided to translate now as “immensities.” KD: Immensities? Bob: Yeah, because “immense” means “immeasurable” you know, but it’s a more nice word, you know? “Immeasurable” sounds kind of like, “Oh gosh, I couldn’t swallow it,” or something whereas an immensity is an immensity. So, immense love, immense compassion, immense joy and immense equanimity and those are in Indian cosmology, they are four ways of carving up the layers of the heaven of the pure form. And the Gods Brahma and others dwell in the highest level of equanimity, one, which can also be subdivided into sixteen different levels of heavens and the highest one is called Akanishta. KD: Akanishta. Bob: “Not smaller than anything else.” That literally means, “Akanishta.” “Not lesser than anything.” And, that’s where Brahma hangs and the big deities there, all those deities in the form realm have no gender differentiation. They’re all, they’re not exactly hermaphroditic, but they have male and female elements and they don’t have, you know, differentiated genitalia, for example. They don’t have ordinary like desire realm bodies. That’s why it’s called the Realm of Pure Form. And then it’s taught to people in terms of like, cosmology, like, there’s these heavens there. But any yogi or yogini who develops ability to concentrate and become mindful, pushing that mindfulness to deeper and deeper levels, discovers the Realm of Infinite Love, the Realm of Infinite or Immense Love, Immense Compassion, Immense Joy and Immense Equanimity within themselves. So, they have all the heavens in themselves. Not necessarily, it’s not like chakras. It’s like mental mind states and especially if they are, you know, not grasping at the pleasure of those Realms, because when you feel immense love, you feel blissful yourself, of course. You wouldn’t have immense love if you didn’t feel already blissful that you want, that the bliss wants to overflow, where you want to love everybody, you’re capable of loving everybody because you’re feeling so filled with bliss. So, the bliss itself isn’t you, but by letting go of it you want to send it to everyone. Right? So, you find all those heavenly planes in yourself. The Being that is unfortunate in that view is the one who wants to stay and grasp that state and then they become reborn as a deity of that realm, actually. They leave their meat puppet body. They get stuck in some heavenly plane or another. And then once you’re in a heavenly plane then you’re sort of complaining about the other immigrants to your heavenly plane. And you’re like, “Oh, there’s some yogis came from America, and all those American yogis are so annoying.