Call and Response with Krishna Das

“We don’t know who we are. We don’t know what we really are. We don’t know what’s looking out of our eyes. We don’t know what’s experiencing the things we experience. We just experience, we wake up, drink some beer, go back to sleep and drink some more beer. That’s all we do. So, if we don’t know our Self, how are we going to know guru? How are we going to know God? Well, when your karma is ripe,...

Given that we often refer to our minds as a wild monkey, that thoughts come up that we have no control over, it seems that, to be held responsible for thoughts that come up, that are not coming up because we intend them to come up, if there’s no intention, are we really responsible for the karmic consequences of our thoughts? “You don’t have to believe blindly in karma… you’re not required to beli...

Call and Response Ep. 22 Meditation and Moping I don’t like the outside silence leading me to the stuff in my head. But when I feel it with the chanting, I feel like, movement, and I process things. So I’m wondering, is there a difference for you between what we call meditation and now I think mindfulness and I’m wondering if you think there’s a difference between like, mindfulness, meditation, ma...

SPECIAL EDITION – Call and Response Podcast – Creativity, Spirituality & Making a Buck David Nichtern is a senior teacher in the lineage of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. This tradition combines a contemporary, secular approach to meditation with the ancient practices and philosophies of Tibetan Buddhism. David has created and taught meditation teacher trainer programs worldwide. He has...

{Photo by Krishna Das, Auckland Harbor July 2018} Ep. 21 Longing, Ripening and Dada Vaswani The other people who met Maharajji talk about is the experience of His unconditional love, as you said once, “His unbearable love,” and my guess is that for many people, certainly who’ve not had the experience of Baba in the body and who maybe don’t have… my guess is when you speak of that, many people wish...

SPECIAL EDITION – Call and Response Podcast – Graveyard Talks With Sacinandana Swami Sacinandana Swami was born in Germany to an affluent family and, for 42 years, has been a practicing monk in the bhakti tradition. Over the years, he has significantly contributed to the way modern practitioners of bhakti engage in contemplation and meditation. He is a well regarded teacher of spiritua...

Ep. 20 ~ Compassion for Abusers I know the basis of all this is we’re One, we’re Love, we’re Compassion, we enfold. And then I go home and I’m on the periphery of a group that deals with abused animals. And I really have a hard time putting together “We are One, We are Compassion” with how do I go about treating the abusers.  Now I know what I want to do, but that would put me in jail. I’m stuck i...

Ep. 19 ~ Spiritual Love and Worldly Love I wanted to ask if you could talk a bit about your relationship with Maharajji and maybe the difference between love as we know it in the sense of a romantic relationship or relationships, and the love you felt when you were with Maharajji. “He (Maharajji”, being completely free of subjectivity, would mirror what we needed to see for us, what we wanted to s...

Ep. 18 ~ How To Develop Faith Tell me a little bit about how your faith… and trust in the universe that happened over time… how did it develop for you? How do you develop faith? “The mind can’t conceive of what’s not a thought. Emotions can’t feel anything that’s not a feeling, an emotional feeling. The body and the senses can’t receive anything that’s not a sense input. Faith and grace, they have...

Ep. 17 ~ Grace in The West How do we, in the West live the way you speak of? The way we all want to in our hearts? We need money in this culture… We can’t walk around, as you said, with a wraparound, shoeless and in the East you can.  So…. it’s so difficult, how do we compromise in the West? Or, how do we recover peace in the West when we strive for the Eastern culture? “Once, I was having a dream...

Ep. 16 Spiritual Practice and the State of the World How do we live a spiritual life in today’s political climate? “When Maharajji was around physically…  something was going on, some upheaval, political problems, and one of His devotees came to Him and said, “Oh, if there was only a king like King Janaka”, who, in the history of India, was an enlightened King, you know? “If there was only someone...

Ep. 15 ~ Our State of Mind Is Everything How does one’s state of mind color one’s world view? “I remember the first rainy season. Oh, everything was wet. The bed is wet. The hair was wet. The clothes were wet. You sat down, it was wet. You stood up, it was wet. You got on the bus, wet came down on you. There was no place it wasn’t wet. For three months, I was like… And then, I remember like the se...

Ep. 14 ~ KD Chats with Bob Thurman Robert A.F. Thurman recently retired as Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in theDepartment of Religion atColumbia University,President of theTibet House U.S., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization,Time magazine chose Professor Thurman as one of its 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing h...

Ep.13 ~ Remembering  Bernie  Glassman Roshi Bernie Glassman, an American Zen Master affectionately referred to as “Bernie,” was a vibrant character who had a significant influence on American dharma. Along with being a Zen master, was also an aeronautical engineer, a social entrepreneur, an interfaith activist, and a clown.  Bernie left his body in late 2018.  In this episode, KD shares his recoll...

Ep.12 ~ Krishna Das chats with Lama Surya Das Krishna Das chats with Lama Surya Das, one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, and a long-time friend. In this interview, the conversation between KD and Lama Surya Das touches on the subjects of spiritual practice, retreat, death, mindfulness, compassion and more. At 55:20 , KD and Lama Surya Das chant the Buddhist mantr...

Ep.11 ~ Well Being “One time, an old lady came to Maharajji, and she said, “Baba, show me God. Show me God, Baba.” And she was all emotional. Baba said, “Ok, Ma. Not now. Go away.” So later, at the end of the day, see she had come from a local town, and at the end of the day, she had to catch the bus back to her family, so at the end of the evening, she comes back to pranam to say goodbye to Mahar...

Ep.10 ~ Selfless Service One time, Mr. Tiwari, my Indian father, was sitting with Maharajji. Maharajji said, “So, you’re a brahmin, you’re supposed to know everything. What does Krishna teach in the Gita?” So now everybody, if you ask that question, they basically say, “Selfless Service,” right? So, he knew it was a setup, but he said it anyway. “You miserable brahmins, misleading the people. Only...

Ep.09 ~ Surrender Surrender happens by grace. It’s not an act of personal will. That might be a hard thing to understand because we don’t, you know, grace is such a foreign concept to Westerners, but you know, Ramana Maharshi said, “If you ask the thief to be the policeman, there will be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.”  That’s the thing about surrender. If you ask your eg...

Ep.08 ~ Perceived Liberation  “I don’t know. You know, I’ve read a lot of stuff, I’ve been taking teachings from a lot of different types of schools of philosophy, of practice. They say that liberation is being able to live in your natural state, the natural state. On the Hindu side, it’s called sahaja samahdi, the easy natural state. In Tibetan Buddhism, it’s called Mahamudra or Zogchen or Rigpa,...

Ep.07 ~ Four Fruits Of Life “Hanuman not only gives liberation, frees us, but in the process of freeing us, He allows us to satisfy the desires that we need to have satisfied to move on.”– Krishna Das Transcription: Q:  In the practice that we’re doing, it’s said, “the Four Fruits of Life?” KD: Yeah, I let that out, didn’t I? The other day, when I was talking about Sri Gurucharana Saroja Raja. Q:...

Ep.06 ~ The Atheist Mind  “The clouds come and go but the sky is always here, so, you can’t disbelieve the sky when you see everything going through it. You may not be able to see the sky, but you know it’s there.”– Krishna Das Transcription: Q: I heard someone say on a podcast once, “I’m a Hindu and a Jew, and 50 percent of the time, I’m an atheist.” And I thought, yeah, that’s me. And the longin...

Ep.05~ Judging and Acting “You don’t have to judge. Judging means you’re seeing that person as evil. Or bad. And you’re not seeing that that person, just like you, is a result of many different things in that person’s life. Most people who abuse, have been abused. Right? Does that make them bad? It just makes them victims. Victims become victimizers. Not 100% but to a large degree. Most of what we...

Ep.04 ~ Desire and Willfulness “Most of everything we do in life is designed to shine us up a little bit, so people will like us and look at us and appreciate us more and we get some attention, some affection. You know? But we don’t have to shine. We really don’t have to. So, if you’re noticing all the ways you’re trying to shine, that’s good. Otherwise how can you let go of that stuff if you don’...

Ep.03 ~ Bearing Witness Unconditional love, it’s a word, it’s a phrase, it’s hard to connect with that. Unconditional love. Just think about the sun. It shines evenly all the time on everything. On the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the high, the low. It shines on those miserable people who kill people and murder people and treat people like shit and it shines on the people who care...

Ep.02 ~ How Does love Relate to Life  That’s the other thing that happens, you also start to accept all the parts of your life a lot more easily. All the shadows. You know, the shadows, if we don’t see them, they just keep pushing us around and they don’t go away by themselves. They must be looked at, they must be released, consciously released to some degree. So, when Maharajji sent me back to Am...