Ram Dass Here And Now

Ram Dass hosts his long time Buddhist friends- Jack Kornfield, Catherine Ingram and Wes Nisker at his home in Maui for an intimate chat on their first meetings - the gathering of the "soul pod" - In the early 70's these westerners took in the essence of Hinduism and Buddhism from the East, deepening their understanding of true nature, and brought it back to the West. The group also discusses "spir...

The whole design of your incarnation is like an incredible computer program that sets you into the exact life situations to move you forward towards true awareness. It’s all perfect. Every part of the birth you are taking is part of the unfolding of the karma you need to burn through. There is not one experience you are having or could have or have had that is not part of that process. See Privacy...

The meaning of honoring Shiva is to give space to ALL of the forces of the universe. To recognize them all, to allow them to be, to not try to shove anything under the rug. It's all Grace: sickness, fatigue, pleasure, pain, there's nothing left in my life other than the teachings that bring me into union with the Divine. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice...

All spiritual practice ultimately becomes the preparation of your body, your heart, and your mind to receive God. The path of going into God, in truth, is not an easy path. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Desire is a trap; desirelessness is liberation. Desire is the creator; desire is the destroyer. Desire is the universe. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Our Journey is towards simplicity and quietness - to a kind of joy that is beyond time - a journey where we leave behind all our models of who we are. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You build your life so that every moment is the moment of death and rebirth. Because life and death become so intimately involved with one another and finally they merge, it's the eternal present. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

At the moment of orgasm, you transcend your separateness and there is a moment when you merge together. For most people that is the direct route to a spiritually transcendent state. What you learn to do in a lot of yoga forms is awakening the sexual energy, not to the point of orgasm - but just to the point where you draw the energy up the spine into the upper chakras, and you use your partnership...

The more evolved you become spiritually, the less boundaries there are between my energy and THE energy. When your energy is used in a way that is destructive, meaning that it creates suffering to you and other people and creates pain of separation, you want to keep working to move that energy in other ways, to create a more compassionate environment. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privac...

Can we take anticipated future suffering and turn it into something that enriches the present moment? For those of us who want to approach future suffering with some degree of equanimity, mindfulness and open heartedness, the earlier we start, the better.    The more we come into the presence of these phenomena, working with these struggles even though they are not ours yet, the more we will have...

The Guru as a separate entity only exists within the illusion of separateness - the minute “it" has worked to awaken you - “it" ceases to be anything. It’s a self destruct mechanism. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When you are no longer laying trips on anyone, not judging, or discriminating individual differences, you become the environment in which the optimum growth is available to all human beings you come into contact with. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Most people in society are pushing away experiences that indicate that they have an identity on other planes of reality, in order to hold tightly to the plane of reality that they are comfortable with. A liberated being is someone who has moved out of the reality that they initially thought was the absolute reality in their life, into subsequent realities. They are then liberated from being stuck...

"Loving kindness is the spirit of friendship toward yourself." - Sharon Salzberg "Interdependence is not romantic, but it's the truth of things - that our lives have something to do with one another." - Sharon Salzberg See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There are tools and techniques that one can make use of to have a happier life - and these tools do not require a belief system. It’s about the possibility of re-training the condition of the mind in a way so that old patterns of pushing away or holding on can be challenged and relinquished into a whole new way of relating to our experience. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Cali...

The process is realizing that you and I exist on more than one plane of awareness simultaneously and on one plane suffering stinks, and on another plane suffering is grace. And the question is, "Can you balance those two things in your consciousness?" See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What's awesome is the amount of energy that is available to a human being. The paradox is, as long as you are a somebody you are dealing with a finite amount of energy that is able to function through somebody-ness. Only when you become nobody can you be one with universal energy.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sel...

Our journey is about totally embracing life, but doing it with non-attachment. By embracing the ten thousand horrible visions and the ten thousand beautiful visions, you go through the doorway of nature to go beyond nature at the same time as being fully in it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do we bring spirituality and business together? How do we bring sustainability and justice into business? We must fulfill our roles to use them as vehicles to become free. Ram Dass uses the Social Venture Network and their honest social action as examples of conscious business practices. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#...

How can we look at our life experience in a way that liberates us from suffering and liberates those who we come into contact with from suffering? We begin to see our life experiences as Grace - as a set of opportunities through which we can become free. The predicament is that as you awaken you realize you have been the perpetrator of the conspiracy you got caught in. See Privacy Policy at https:...

We have built such a habitual structure of self definition on this plane of reality. That is the model you impose with your self definition of separateness. What does it take to bring about the full transformation so that you dance in your separateness without being entrapped by it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-se...

Community is when human beings come together in the shelter of each other. We are a community of beings acknowledging the dual intention of working on ourselves as an offering to others, and working with others as a way of working on ourselves. Our lives are training sessions to turn ourselves into instruments of true kindness and compassion. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Cal...

Ram Dass realized that the Western religious traditions weren't profound enough to connect people to their inner selves, they didn't provide man with the wisdom necessary to know inner peace and fulfillment - so he traveled to the East and connected with yoga (union with God). After encountering yoga he was able to come back into the Western traditions and hear the inner message. For instance, the...

Ram Dass interviews Trungpa Rinpoche at the Dharma Festival in 1973. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ram Dass talks about his relationship with the great Tibetan Lama, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Includes detailed moments with Trungpa and Ram Dass at different events and venues in the early 70’s where Trungpa was teaching- the methods he used with his students and the dismay of many who were offended by his unusual behavior and teachings that were enigmatic to say the least. Ram Dass delves into a...