Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Email | RSS
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: What are the four fruits of life?
KD: Artha, Kama, Dharma and Moksha. Wealth, or those kind of things. Kama which means your desires get fulfilled. Dharma, the dharma. Teachings. And Moksha, liberation. Those are the four fruits of life. The four things that we, the four fruits of life, of a good life is to have those four things. And Hanuman not only gives liberation, they say, this is a, I wish I had written, somewhere I had this Sanskrit of this, but 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. Hunger for, you have to eat, right? It’s also a desire, to eat. But it’s also a need, so He gives us food. He creates, it’s like Maharajji, when He would bless us, He blessed us in so many ways, He changed our lives. For instance, my life is very, a 99% possibility that if my life had gone a certain way, I would have been dead by 23 or 24. That’s the way it was going. But because I came in contact with Maharajji, everything changed. I was able to avoid certain situations that would have ended my life and in fact, my life was transformed so that, for instance, I always wanted to be a rock and roll star, right? I wanted to be in a band, a musician. If I had stayed in the band involved with those people that I was, I would be dead now. So, here’s my life. It has a similar form, but it’s for a whole different reason. I’m in a band. Hallelujah. I’m in a band. I’m singing. I’m a big star. In a very small world. Who cares? But it’s not all about me. The whole motivation for doing this is to find myself. Not to manipulate other people into having a minute of pleasure that’s going to end in two seconds. It’s a totally different thing. It may even look the same, except the words are kind of weird. So, it’s all His blessing. He just did that. Boom. Next. It all changed. That’s the way, that’s Hanuman. That’s what He does. It’s not a renunciate path. You don’t have to sit at home, tie yourself up, take cold showers forty times a day. Don’t look at tv. Don’t eat anything but celery. It’s not about that. It’s about living fully and getting into life. Really. It’s about overcoming all those fears that we have and really getting out there and living. I told this before but one time, I was sitting with Him in this apartment building, in this town in Mumbai. We had trailed Him to Mumbai and captured Him. So we were sitting for many hours, all day, every day. We’d sit. And He’d just lie on the bed. He’d sit up, then He’d lie this way, then He’d lie this way. Then He’d sit up. Then lie this way. And I would just sit, you know, looking at Him. That was my job. I just couldn’t take my eyes off Him, right? Then all of a sudden He sat up, really tense and He looked at me, He said, “Courage is a really big thing.” What’s going to happen? And so there was one Indian devotee there who said, “Oh, but Baba, God takes care of His devotees.” “Courage is a really big thing.” And then He laid back down and went to sleep.
So, you know, you really need a lot of courage to push through the places where we’re very stuck. But we get the strength to do that from practice. That’s how it works, together, they work together. The more we practice letting go of our thoughts and coming back here, letting go, coming back, letting go, coming back, we’re loosening up the bondage that thoughts put us in. Because we believe everything we think. We wake up one day, we feel like shit, we believe it. You know? It’s not necessarily true. But we believe it. It may not be true, but we believe it. And if we believe it, then we’re stuck in it. That’s our prison. You can only let go at that point. You can only notice you’re caught, you can’t stop a thought, you can’t kill a thought. Where is it? Where did it come from? Where did it go? You can only notice you’re thinking and come back to the, to Ram or to whatever you’re doing, whether you’re watching your breath or repeating a mantra. And that’s training, that’s mind training. That’s what it’s called. That’s what we’re doing. There’s another thing happening in that room which was very far out, so I’d been in India about three or four months and Maharajji ran away from us, we didn’t know where He was, so we went to Bodhgaya, which is the place where the Bodhi tree is, where Buddha was enlightened, and we were going to do these meditation courses there, and while we were, probably between the courses, there was a couple of days between a course, I went to visit this old Lama that we heard about who was staying in the Tibetan Dharmasala, His name was Kunu Rinpoche and somebody said, He’s a really big Lama, a really high Lama, we didn’t know anything about Him, so we went to see Him, we walk in this room, right? And there’s this little Lama sitting on the bed, you know? He’s got no teeth and He’s very funky, unshaven and He’s sweet and He smiled at us, you know? And we sat down and He, He wanted to give us mantra. So He said, will we take a mantra? We said, “Of course.” We couldn’t’ understand a word He was saying. What mantra is this? Finally we got it. Ok ok. And it was actually the mantra we sang with Tulku Sherdor. So then we sat for awhile and, and He reached into His, He pulled out this little leather pouch from inside His jacket and He opens it up and He took out seeds from the Bodhi tree that had been blessed, you know? That had, puja and prayers had been done over these seeds for God knows how long. He takes it out and He gives us each a seed, so I went to put it away, because I wanted to save it and keep it and put it on my altar and He saw me and He said, “Eat it, now.” So I took the seed and I ate it. Oh. See, I don’t have the tooth there because of that seed. Anyways, so I ate it and then we left. This was in December 1970. So, we did five meditation courses, one after the other, with like a break of a day and a half between them. And now, in late January, or early February 71, that’s when we took off in the bus from, you know, I don’t know if you know the story of the bus, you’d better read it because I ain’t telling it. So, it’s Ram Das’s books and my book, so we get on this bus and we’re on our way, we’re going to go to Delhi to try to find Maharajji, it’s a big Mercedes bus that somebody had driven across from somewhere in Europe and taken people to India. So he offered us a ride back to Delhi, so we did, so on the way. Ok, I’ll tell you the story. So on the way back to Delhi, so on the way back to Delhi, Danny Goldman, who was with us, he had left Bodhgaya for a few days and gone to the Mela in Allahabad. A Mela’s what, like a Kumbh Mela you’ve heard of. This wasn’t a Kumbh, but it was a Mela, every January, January February there’s a Mela at this place. So he went there and there millions of sadhus and people and all kinds of stuff going on. And he came back to finish the courses with us and then, we’re on our way to Delhi, he said, “Why don’t we just drive there and see the Mela going on?” So, we wanted to, Ram Das was kind of the boss, so, and as the eldest, you know, he wanted to get to Delhi and find Maharajji and that’s all he wanted. He didn’t want to see the Mela, but there was a lot of discussion going on. Everybody was putting their two cents in. “You know, we’ll go. We won’t stay long. We’ll spend one night. We’ll go. We’ll come back.” Finally after like hours of wrangling, we decided we would drive there, just like an hour off the road, drive there, take a look around and get back on the road and get to Delhi by night time. Fine.
So, we’re driving along and the bus turns off towards Allahabad and we reached the site of the Melaa and there was no one there. Everybody had gone home. Mela’s finished. Two weeks before, there were 20 million people, literally. And now, three. And a dog. So, we’re driving through this field, right? Now it’s all just like sand and we’re going to turn the bus around and head back to Delhi, but Danny said, “You know there’s a Hanuman temple over there in the corner of the field, why don’t we just go see Hanumanji and then we’ll go to Delhi.” So the bus goes in that direction and right along the edge of the field there’s a walkway and the bus is going this way, and walking in the other way, were these two people. One of them was Maharajji. The other was Dada. And they were walking in the opposite direction that the bus was going and He didn’t look up. He did not look up at the bus but He says to Dada as the bus is going by, “Oh, they’ve come.” And it just so happened that one guy in the bus noticed Him. We almost drove past Him. He didn’t say, “Hi I’m here.” No, He just kept walking. Someone said, “There’s Maharajji.” The bus stops. We all run out. “Oh, they’ve come.” That was the big thing. So, then they said, they got on this little cycle rickshaw and they asked, they told us to follow the rickshaw, so there’s this huge fancy shiny Mercedes bus following this tiny little cycle rickshaw throught he streets of this tiny little village. And the rickshaw stops out in front of a house and Maharajji and this gentleman who we hadn’t met yet, get out and walk into the house, and the bus stops and we kind of get out of the bus, looking around, now what? So, a lady comes out of the house, and says, “come. Come in. Come in. Come to take your lunch.” And we said, “But there’s 25 of us.” “Oh, yes, Maharajji woke us up this morning and told us to prepare lunch for 25 people. That you’d be coming.” This is true. It happened. I was there. Now, you, if I had any karmas at all, that would have been enough to blow my brains to bits. End of story. Enlightened. He knew everything. He’d brought, the whole drama of “who, should we go? Should we go? No, we don’t want to go. I mean, there was some juice in that. Why should we go? We’ll go, we’ll get to Delhi.” For hours, we went on like that. Finally, Ram Das said, “Ok, look, we’ll go and we’ll just see it and we’ll go.” Who was making that decision? Who? Was it written? Sir? Yeah, ok. Thank you. You just answered your own question.
But we thought we were deciding so we made the decision that we made but were we really deciding? We think we were but in retrospect, it might not have been that way. To put it mildly. All right, so, we spend a few days there and then we were sent away. Two years later, two years later, a lot of coming and going all around India, we were with Maharajji here, we were with Him there, He disappeared, He’s here, He’s all over the place. Two years later, I found myself in Mumbai with Maharajji and I was in that room I just told you about, and He was lying on the bed doing this, doing that, and I was sitting there staring at Him. All of a sudden, He sits up and He goes, “Give me the seed the Lama gave you.” I did not know what He was talking about. What seed? What Lama? “Give me the seed the Lama gave you. Give me. Give me.” I said, “Baba I don’t know what… ohhhh. Baba… he made me eat it. I ate it.” And then He goes, “Very good.” He said, “Good. Now you’ll be enlightened.” Then He went back to sleep. Do I look enlightened to you? Hallelujah. Well, so what? You know? What was that? Someday.
But anyway, so things like that were happening all the time. And after a while, when you live in that kind of environment, your brain just stops working. You know? It just says, “Enough of that. Forget it.” And you just get more present. And you get more open to things more in the moment because you’re living, you’re surrounded, you’re having Satsang, real Satsang. People gathered together in the name of Truth. That’s what it is, Satsang. And when you’re in that kind of Satsang, it lifts you up into it. It changes your brain, the way your brain works. That’s what this is, this weekend, this is Satsang. We’re all part of this process, all of us doing, singing together, doing all this stuff, it affects everybody, the whole vibration, the atmosphere is good, with a capital “G”.
Suggestions for your practice: Devi Sadhana | Sri Ram Kirtan Sadhana
Call and Response podcasts are made possible by the Kirtan Wallah Foundation
Your support via direct donations go toward offerings such as this series, new teaching materials, as well as the the compilation of all of KD’s work on the Path, for the purpose of sharing it with everyone in a variety of media. Kirtan Wallah Foundation is also be able to offer assistance to organizations around the world, whose efforts are in alignment with the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba. For more information about the work of the foundation you can visit our blog for recent updates as well as sign up for our foundation news letter.
A note about your donation:
Donations can be made via Paypal below and are tax deductible under 501c3 guidelines. If you prefer to give via a check, please send your donation to Kirtan Wallah Foundation | 35 east 4th Street | Apt #1 | Brooklyn, NY | 11218. We thank you in advance for your generosity.
