Summary: Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD April 09, 2020<br> <br> 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.<br> “One has to set boundaries. They have to be healthy boundaries and we’re not really trained to do that. We’re not really trained. We’re not trained, as children, to have healthy boundaries. Our parents tend to step all over our boundaries and not respect us. We’re trained to do that in life. So, it’s very difficult. So, when we talk about letting go, let’s first talk about it as practice. So, while we’re actually doing the meditation practice, while we’re chanting, that’s when we train ourselves to let go, because we’ve added the mantra into our consciousness and we’ve agreed that we’re going to try to pay attention to that. So that helps us be aware when we’re lost in thought. When we become aware that we’ve been gone, we’re actually already back. We come back to the mantra again. The rest of the day we try to be kind and compassionate and good to ourselves as well by setting healthy boundaries.” – Krishna Das<br> Satsang is so important. You know, Buddha asked one of His disciples, I think it was Ananda, once, “Ananda, what’s the most important thing in spiritual life?” And I think Ananda answered to Him, you know, “You are. The Buddha. Without you there’s no life at all.”<br> Buddha said, “No, Ananda. Satsang or Sangha is the most important thing. The community of seekers.” The community of Beings who have gone to the other shore, so to speak, and yet remained here for us so that we would know what’s possible, so we would get a taste. And then the group of us who are trying to find where our asses are actually meeting the ground.<br> So, company is very important. The company you keep is very important. And, it’s something that one has to keep paying attention to in life, no matter how far along you might think you are.<br> One time, in Allahabad at Dada’s house, who was a great old devotee of Maharajji, I guess I was reverencing him a little too much, you know. So, at one point, he stopped and looked at me. He said, “Krishna Das, I may be a step or two ahead of you and you may be a step or two of someone else,” he said, “but we’re all on this shore. We’re all on this side of the ocean of samsara, this side of the world. Only He’s gone beyond. Only Maharajji has gone beyond.” So, what does it matter? You know? One has to live in one’s heart as best as one can and try not to take everything so personally. We all take everything so personally, as if it was aimed at us. But really, if we really look, we see that what we thought might be aimed at us or even caused by us in some way or degree, is really just someone’s suffering bursting out of them in all directions. It’s another person’s unhappiness, anxiety, fears, shame. Something motivating, creating that anger or that nastiness that happens in life. But we take it all so personally so it’s very hard to release it, you know? Very hard to release it. Very hard. And especially when we’re locked up like this with people, even that we love. Things get antsy every once in a while. So, we just have to keep letting go. That’s the whole thing. Letting go, letting go, letting go. Letting go allows us to be the best people we can be. It doesn’t mean “not engaging.” It means being able to really engage. Letting go of our subjective bullshit, our completely personal subjective version of reality. When we chant, we’re training ourselves to keep coming back to the sound of the Name, the sound of the Name.<br> Let me see if I have something here that I want to read to you.<br> “When a mantra is repeated, if one watches the source from which the mantra sound is produced, the mind is absorbed in That.”<br>
