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....

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’...

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 energ...

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 awar...

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...

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 te...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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 fo...

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 k...

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 fo...

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 pro...

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 th...

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD May 14, 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. “Listen, everybody’s doing the best they can. Period. Even you’re doin...

Call and Response Ep. 50 Sadhus, and Nirvana in Samsara “For Maharajji, everybody was His near and His dear. Everyone. And in order to stay in that space, you couldn’t hold on to your stuff. It had to go.” – Krishna Das KD: That reminds me of this story. One time, a wandering sadhu came to Kainchi and came to see Maharajji and he, he was, he didn’t have much stuff. He had like, a pot, a water pot,...

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD May 9, 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. “These are all the names of what lives within us as who we are. Already. It&#...

Call and Response Ep. 49 | How KD Met Robert Thurman “It was a wild time. There were a lot of… the Westerners in India, everybody would go to see teachers, different teachers and then when the seasons changed, all these different people would meet in the cities on their way somewhere else and exchange information and this kind of stuff and then you would go off in a different direction and it was...

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD May 7, 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. “All we have is what’s in front of our faces, which is the ups and downs of l...

Call and Response Ep. 48 | Hanuman, Mrs. Hanuman, and Time Machines   “When you attain that oneness, you’re also one with all Beings in all moments of time, past, present and future. So, because, after all, time is like a space, it’s like a subtler space than space is. You know, time, it’s a space of time, a space of duration, of continuum. Right? And so, everything is past and future. So, when yo...

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD April 30, 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. “Ram Dass, my best friend, one of my best friends, long-term spiritual fri...

Call and Response Ep. 47 | Hindu-Buddhist Connections and A Short Discussion of Hatred “Once it reaches India, the vajra idea, that’s when it’s coming from, central asia, chariot warriors and so on. They were kshatriyas, you know? But when it gets into India after some time, it comes to mean this infinite, stronger than the thunderbolt is this infinite energy of love and that infinite energy of lo...

Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD April 25, 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. “You know, there were people, there were gurus in India, Beings in India t...

Call and Response Ep. 46 | The Meaning of Ram “When you shape divinity, your notion of the Divinity, by saying ‘Ram Ram Ram’ and use the Name for ‘joy’ and ‘enjoyment’, ‘Ramaniya’, ‘to be enjoyed in that form’, you know, it’s a gerundial thing, ‘to be enjoyed,’ ‘Ramaniya’ means. And then, you are saying that, this great power that I want to merge myself with out of my devotion, I want to connect t...