Mindrolling with Raghu Markus

Kiley Jon Clark joins Mindrolling and introduces us to his amazing work with the homeless - not only offering them food and love but also teaching meditation practice on the streets and in the shelters. Kiley tell his transformational story from an addictive cowboy lifestyle to the Buddhist path. He tells the a magical story of meeting his Tibetan teacher Lama Tulku Tsori Dechen Rinpoche who liter...

Raghu has a deep chat with Reggie Ray, one of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s first American students. Reggie shares some very personal moments with Trungpa Rinpoche that illuminate some of the unique qualities of this amazing being: “In the beginning, naive me would go down to the picnic tables and see Rinpoche sitting alone and I’d sit down next to him and it was like I had just sat down next to the...

Raghu is joined by Pete Holmes, Duncan Trussell and Sharon Salzberg in Maui for a  wonderfully entertaining, humorous and enlightening podcast. Duncan talks about a euphemism for God and how we are constantly barraged by the word “God” - which triggers something negative inside us that’s been cultivated throughout our lives. How do we deal with the skepticism and doubt that accompanies a lot of sp...

David chats with Dr. Linda Bender, an advocate, author and educator in the sacred connection shared by humans, animals and nature. Dr. Linda talks about the reality of our connection to all animals - the root word of animal is "animus" which means soul. Dr. Linda says, “When we name and have a relationship with that being - be it a dog or a cat - we recognize that being as an individual - we get t...

Rabbi Rami Shapiro joins Raghu and David and gives us a little roadside assistance for our spiritual journey. Rabbi Rami certainly reflects the Mindroller’s central theme which is Neem Karoli Baba’s edict of “All One” - there is only One emanation of the Divine. Rabbi Rami says, “To me, religions are like languages - no language is true or false: all languages are of human origin - each language r...

Lama Tsultrim Allione joins the Mindrollers for a deep chat about our current disturbing world events - how do we as world citizens see how we can help to heal, and how do we get right perspective within ourselves? Part of the path of a Bodhisattva (Sanskrit term for anyone who, motivated by great compassion, has a spontaneous wish to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings) is no...

Roshi expounds on the transformation of doubt, rootlessness, suffering and meaninglessness into a true “refuge of truth.” At this time of the horrific terror events in Paris, Beirut and Mali, how do we come to terms with severe crisis, either individual or societal? How does the Romantic poet John Keats’s “negative capability” fit into this unavoidable, desperately difficult dynamic of living? Ros...

Early 70’s adventures in the East, leading Michael Daner overland through Europe to Afghanistan and eventually India. What was going on here? This mindboggling journey could never happen now, given the state of the world, but back then, it was a scenario starring many so-called hippies and genuine smugglers, some yearning for the exotic, some desiring money, money, money, and some - Michael, in pa...

Mindrollers and friends in Manhattan, with a far-ranging conversation about the incredible scrolls of St. Issa in Tibet and India; Maharaji telling the Westerners to meditate like Christ; the dismissal of mysticism by modern organized religion; David being accused of black magic by Evangelicals, Raghu being dragged into a “men’s group”; tales of sixties Rajneesh followers copulating in the kitchen...

What is real love?  What isn’t?  The Mindrollers turn for inspiration to HH The Dalai Lama and the super intense poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who said “For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks”…talk of cultivating inner spaciousness as the ultimate antidote. Jumping off from a Tricycle article, David confesses Johnny Depp envy while Raghu remembers the...

The Mindrollers challenge a Zen sentiment that teachers are expendable, passionately citing life-transforming personal teaching guidance encountered by both of them. They move on like madmen to the bizarre concept of stool replacement banks for micro biome worries – will Amazon ever offer “good” stool on sale? Once again, we analyze the entropic dangers of too much social media creeping into every...

Embrace everything - bad and good, pleasurable and horrible. Chris’s new book, Everything Mind, comes out today. R & D talk with him about its prescient premise that everything – the whole kit and caboodle – from Trump to Ramana Maharshi to the suffering migrant millions to the iPhone 6S Plus - is a legitimate part of the spiritual reality: G-d, The One, whatever, and that this is a necessary and...

Ecstatic kirtan singer/violinist Jahnavi Harrison is with us on the podcast. She tells her unique life story - as a child raised at the 700 year old Bhaktivedanta Manor home in the Hertfordshire countryside. Beatle George Harrison (no relation) had donated the estate to ISKCON, the Krishna movement, in 1973.  Jahnavi talks of her devotional trajectory from being a child brought up in idyllic rural...

Ram Dev (Dale Borglum) of the Living Dying Project explores surfing the edge of the heart approaching consciousness transformation, in life…and death. Who dies anyway? How do we change annihilation fear to being right here, still confidently in the heart chakra? “All fear is fear of death” he maintains, “being trapped in separateness” and how the deeper fright is resistance to death rather than de...

Experience John Lockley’s journey into authentic shamanism after intense and intensive training and initiation.  How did a South African Irishman become a real  Xhosa sangoma - “dreamer”?  What is a shaman anyway?  John talks with R & D about using your dreams to heal your deepest psyche’s wounds and traces his path from soldier/medic to Zen to yoga to Nature-master medicine man.  He tells us in d...

“My yellow in this case is not so mellow” Jimi Hendrix sang. Is it ever cool to be angry? R & D’s wary warnings about the seductively enjoyable taste of anger. Maharaji’s words about anger’s reality, with the crucial caveat to never throw anyone out of your heart. Raghu’s anger is analyzed by… Raghu. David recalls learning to love right wing friends, especially conservative William F. Buckley Jr....

Uber useful conversation with wisdom writer Sylvia Boorstein: her clear and helpful grasp of present-ness… her words on true mindfulness cut with goodwill…her thoughts on thoughts, seeing them as always potentially co-operative and not so bad after all.  Making friends with the present is just that, even if it startles you, “relax, take a rest, calm down” – R & D listen, interrupt, and have a fine...

Gelek Rimpoche is our honored guest.  A reincarnated tulku, a lucid and unpretentious disperser of essential knowledge, Gelek is a treasured being we are so lucky to have in the U.S.  Because of the ruthless Chinese invasion, Gelek was forced to leave his beloved homeland in 1959.  Tibet’s tragedy became our great fortune.  Hear what he has to say about wiping out negative emotions and achieving e...

The Mindrollers with Duncan Trussell and Noah Lampert host our panel guests from our Indiegogo event. Brian, Brian and George. We get an idea of their awakening triggers, pretty heavy ones at that- and they shine a light on the importance of intention. We all talk about practice and how difficult it is to motivate daily unless you are really up against the wall! Duncan admits to his fall down on l...

Forgiveness wisdom from George Pitagorsky (Balaram) who demonstrates the huge upside of being able to authentically forgive, and how forgiving often benefits the forgiver maybe even more than the forgiven. Is it weakness for a Holocaust victim to embrace one of her tormentors? Wasn’t it incredible for the afflicted Charleston families to espouse forgiveness immediately? George, via both Dzogchen (...

R&D travel down diverse roads to happiness, encountering on the way 50 years since Dylan’s Newport electric war cries; Aristotle’s eudaimonia; Jefferson’s iconic requisite declaration; the crazy off-ramp into consumerism and “the cycle of escalating desire”; Andy Puddicombe’s mega mindfulness app; Google’s Chade-Meng Tan…and the rewards of real seva. Check this out, Pharrell… See Privacy Policy at...

Raghu and David bring up a very timely topic - prison reform. BJ Wasserman and Jared “Gagan” Levy discuss Inside Circle, a nonprofit organization that helps prisoners and parolees heal from the inside. We talk about “operational transformation” of men in Folsom prison as a model for the entire prison system. Robert Allbee, founder of Inside Circle, created a concept for the word “spirit” or “God”...

Can we learn to become a Bodhisattava, and what is a Bodhisattva, for G-d’s sake? Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s simple yet brilliant instructions on this path of treating everyone as your “guest”…plus chat about meditating away the neurotic “escape routes” polluting our inner calm, and reactions from both Raghu M. and Ramana M. about being attacked by angry hornets. Finally, David’s thoughts on an ir...

Mindrolling through the toll of role playing; the dark art of Trumpism; the Rolling Stones revisited; the Karmapa chanting; spiritual practice as heart/mind rehearsal; the dis-ease of the wandering mind; the magic of Biocentrism & intelligence preceding matter; the amazing Swiffer...plus thoughts on suicide’s sides, Jimmy Carter’s lust in the heart, and the generosity of our listeners…listen… See...

Thupten Jinpa, HH The Dalai Lama’s English translator, is our truly honored guest. Anyone who has been present at any one of His Holiness’s live events knows how vibrant and deep Jinpa’s translations always are. Jinpa’s new book, “A Fearless Heart: How The Courage To Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives” totally knocked out the Mindrollers, and we are so very pleased to visit with him on the p...