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Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das | Special Edition – Mocha Lattes and Samadhi
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“Stuff comes, stuff goes. But the more we practice remembering to let go, remembering to release and come home, come back home to ourselves, the less dependent we are on outside things for happiness, for joy, for pleasure, for peace of mind. We all look out there. Even we think God’s out there like some little blue baby flying up in the sky. That’s there to remind us to look. Everything is in here. Everything.” – Krishna Das
Cover photo: Via Arngrímur Fannar
TRANSCRIPT:
My guru had a very great disciple named Siddhi Ma, who was with him for 40 years. She was extraordinary. Now, when we used to sit with… My guru’s name was Neem Karoli Baba. We used to call him Maharajji. We used to sit with him, and he would look at us, he would say, “I have the keys to the mind. I could turn your minds against me.”
We would go, “No, don’t do that.” He would laugh, “Ha ha ha.” You know? But he meant it.
He used to say, “I’ll transfer you. Transfer ho jayega.” And he did. You know, he dragged us there, and he transferred us back home.
But anyhow, so many years after he left the body, I said to Siddhi Ma, I said, “Ma, Maharajji said he has the keys to the mind. So, to me, that means that I am where he wants me to be, where he’s put me, wherever that is.” That’s where, wherever I am, that’s where he has put me. Whatever I’m thinking, whatever I know, whatever I don’t know, that’s his business. He put me there.
So, I said to her, “Is it all his doing, or is it grace, or is my effort required, right?”
This is the famous question, grace or effort. She said, “Krishna Das, it’s all grace, but you have to act like it isn’t.”
That’s such a great answer. It’s all done. There’s no time. There’s nothing. Who we think we are isn’t who we are. That’s just thoughts. We’re all enlightened beings who forgot. But how do we remember?
Some effort is required because we think we are who we think we are, and that’s total insanity. But that’s the deal. You think you’re you, I think I’m me, so we’re fucked. Right from day one. But you can’t stop those thoughts. How do you stop those thoughts? You can’t stop a thought. It’s not like you’re going to shoot it while it goes by.
You practice letting go. That’s the kind of effort that’s required. Practice releasing the thought and coming back. And so, we add something to our daily life that we can come back to, like a mantra or the breath, something that is going to be there, and we know it’s going to be there. And as soon as we notice that we’re gone, we come back to that.
And that builds up this muscle called “the letting go muscle.” I discovered that. No one discovered it before me. “Letting go muscle.” It’s not something we’re taught to do. Nobody in my life growing up had anything to do with being here or letting go. Nothing. It was hold on to as much as you can, or as long as you can. Break your hands holding on to shit. Right? Relationships? Torture.
Stuff comes, stuff goes. But the more we practice remembering to let go, remembering to release and come home, come back home to ourselves, the less dependent we are on outside things for happiness, for joy, for pleasure, for peace of mind. We all look out there. Even we think God’s out there like some little blue baby flying up in the sky. That’s there to remind us to look. Everything is in here. Everything.
Maharajji once said, “Go on, sing your lying Ram Ram. One of these days you’ll say it right once.” And he said, “Say it when you’re angry, say it when you’re tired, say it when this, that.” Because if you don’t, if we don’t plant the seeds of the things we want, where are they going to come from? Nobody’s planting them for us. We have to plant those seeds.
That’s the good news and the bad news. Nobody can do it for us. Yeah, yeah, a great saint can kind of turn the light on for a second so you can see there’s a door, but we have to walk to that door because the light goes off again. But we know there’s a door now. That’s a different thing.
I’d been in India for two and a half years, and, he had actually kept me there. All the other Westerners had to go home. He sent me… I was going to have to go home too, but at the last minute, he sent me to one of his devotees who was a chief of police somewhere, and he stamped my passport, so I had another year.
So, then I’m sitting with him one day in a apartment building in Bombay, in Mumbai, and he looks at me and says, “America jao. Go to America. You have to go.” I said, “But I’m, I’m just learning Hindi.”
“Too bad. You have to go.” And he said, “You have attachment there.” Now, when I left America in August 1970, the previous yuga, I gave everything away. I sold my guitar, my car. I gave my jeans away. I was out of here. I was never coming back to the West. I didn’t tell my parents. But that was the deal. I never thought I would come back to the West. I was so at home in India. So, when he tells me, “You have attachment there,” I think, “What is he talking about?”
Now I know. Every single thing that’s happened, every thought I’ve had, every single thing that’s happened to me from that moment to this moment is what he was talking about There was so much stuff inside that had to come out, that had to be worked through, lived through, survived. Couldn’t happen in India. Also, I was so sick, it was ridiculous, you know. I had hepatitis. I had every kind of parasite known to man. Fun, you know. Yeah.
And it took a long time to kind of get with the program You know, we have this subtle program going on in us, some of us, that we’re trying to make ourselves like a better version of ourselves, a version of ourselves we could like, you know? One time I was at one of his old devotees’ houses and, it’s a long story, but it was at the Kumbha Mela in 1989, and we were going to stay in the mela at a camp… because I’d been hanging out with this baba who was 163 years old.
Really, he was. I remember one day he looked at us and said, “You’re from America, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember when Lincoln was shot?” And he goes, “Oh, no, no, no, you wouldn’t remember. We read about it in the paper,” he said. He really was 163. His older guru bhai was 250. You might have heard of Deora Baba. You ever hear of him?
Anything? He was over 250 years old, and this was his younger guru brother. He was 163. So, he had sent one of his sadhus to the house to lead us into the mela because otherwise we would never find him. And this guy was so full of himself. He was so, it was horrible. He was just so, so Dada, who… The old devotee grabs me. He takes me into the back room where Maharajji used to stay. He closes the door. He opens up this, cupboard. First, he reaches down under the cupboard and gets this key, and he opens the cupboard, and he reaches down on the bottom floor, the bottom shelf, and he pulls out something wrapped in old, funky, dusty newspaper, right? And he opens it up, and he holds it in front of me, and it’s this funky, cheap, rusty lota. You know, a lota is one of those metal cups that they… a small pot that they carry water in and do stuff. And he holds it up in front of me. He goes, “Do you see? Do you see?”
And I said, “No, Dada, I don’t see.”
“Do you see?”
And his eyes are like… He’s freaking me out, you know.
“Do you see? Do you see?”
I said, “No, Dada, I don’t see.”
He said, “You don’t have to sh…” He said, “Maharajji left this for me the last time he was stayed here. Do you see?”
“No.”
And he goes to me, and he says, “You don’t have to shine.” And he wrapped it up, put it on the shelf, locked the cupboard, put the key down.
You don’t have to shine. How much of time do we spend in our lives trying to shine in one way or another? So much time, so much effort, so much of our self-worth is tied up with trying to shine for one reason or another. You don’t have to shine.
We think if we shine, you know, we’ll attract stuff to us, these things we want. Maybe, but they don’t last. Because sooner or later the plug comes out, and you can’t shine forever. It’s hard work shining. That doesn’t stop us.
Q: Hi. I’m curious what Maharajji was like as a businessman.
KD: A businessman?
Q: Yeah, like finding balance in that area of life.
KD: I don’t know he did any business at all.
Q: Oh, I thought… Did he sell fruit? Or… I thought I heard… Like as a father, I’m just curious about like the balance there.
KD: He was just a sadhu. He had nothing. Although he inherited… His father was a landowner, and he inherited all this land, but he had left home when he was 10, I think. His mother had died, and his stepmother also had a son, and she didn’t feed him. She wanted her son to inherit everything. So, he just ran away at ten.
But he was engaged, first to a village girl, and later on, they found him when he was like eighteen or nineteen, and they brought him home, and he got married and had a family. But he never really, he didn’t stay around much. His daughter told me that he stayed around until she left for college. And the weird thing was he would stay in the house mostly, and sadhus would come and knock on the door, and they would ask to talk to him. How did they know he was there? It was weird.
But no, he didn’t do much business. In fact, in the summer of ’72, when I was living in the temple with him, at one point, he would go up on the roof of the Dharmsala in the back, and he wouldn’t let anybody come. And after he got to the roof, these two guys would drive up in a car. They’d come over the bridge, they’d walk into the temple, and they’d go right back to the back of the temple, up to the roof. They’d talk with him for a while, and then they’d leave. They wouldn’t look at anybody, wouldn’t even talk anybody. Years later, we found out that was his son and his nephew, and they were coming for instructions.
What to plant, when to plant, what to do this, what to do that. You know. So, he took care of business, but kind of not like usual people.
For instance, one of his old devotees told me they were, they were driving in a Jeep, and they stopped by this jungle. And the two of them got out of the Jeep, and they walked through the jungle to his village. When they got out of the Jeep and started walking, Maharajji was wearing his dhoti and a blanket. When they got to the village, he was wearing a uniform of the village headman, which he was the village headman. And he would walk, walked around, and everybody was waving, “Hey, how you doing? What’s up? Yeah, cool. See you around. Okay.”
And then they left, and halfway through the jungle, the guy looks again, and he’s wearing his dhoti and blanket again. I mean, what kind of business is that? You know?
One time there was this guy comes, this very poor man came, and he and his friend came. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but Maharajji says to him, “Oh, you want to be rich? Okay.” So, he pissed in a cup, and he gives it to the guy to drink. “Drink this, you’ll be rich.” So, the guy’s drinking the piss, and his friend says, “Come on, give me some of that. Give me some of that.” So, he gave his friend about half of the cup, right?
And the guy drank it. That guy became the richest, one of the richest guys in India. I don’t know what happened to his friend. Imagine if he drank the whole cup. Jesus. I mean, stuff like this was happening all day. It’s totally insane, you know. But he did take care of business, but it was everybody’s business he took care of.
I mean, everybody who came to him got something, whether you knew it or not at the time. That’s what he did. That’s what he did. That’s why he was here, to help people.
We didn’t know any of that stuff. We didn’t know he had a family until later. When we came back after he left the body, I was walking down the street in Vrindavan. Somebody said, “Oh, you see that guy in that car? That’s his son.” I said, “What?” So, I went over and I said hello, and he said, “Oh, you people are… you Westerners, you people are his real children. We didn’t know anything about him.”
They didn’t know.
Literally, he was in control of your mind. But you weren’t afraid because there was so much love. I mean, it wasn’t like anything to be afraid of. But whatever thoughts you had, you know, you kind of had to get used to that. It was weird. But after a while, you just kind of went with the flow, and everything was cool
Q: I have a question. But also, maybe just some thoughts. Because I’m curious as to your thoughts on bhakti and how we practice kirtan and singing, but also, like, this feeling of separation when we are chanting to yearn, like this. This yearning feeling I felt here all night. We’re singing and singing together. But then at the same time, we’re also cultivating the divine. And I’m just curious, how do I marry the idea of yearning for the divine? How, how do you cultivate or how do you marry the idea of yearning for the divine, but also realizing “I am the divine” and we’re all… Like, I’m just curious about the separation and the non-separation, and just your ideas on that.
KD: You don’t have to think about it. In terms of when you say, “I am the divine,” no. The one who’s saying isn’t. That’s the me. The ego saying, “I am the divine.” It’s a nice phrase, and it’s positive thinking. It’s better than thinking, “I’m a piece of shit.” But it’s not going to help you too much because you can’t maintain. It’s not rooted in anything real. It’s just another thought. But the practices of releasing that thought, you actually begin to touch that place inside of you that is, and the yearning or the longing is the saving grace. Without that, we’d just be watching serial killer murder mysteries all the time. But with that, it forces us to look for something and to try to find something real.
So, the separation hurts, but it’s only temporary, but it does hurt. But you can’t think your way out of it. You know, you can’t think your way out of a prison that’s made of thought. Every thought is the prison.
It’s nice to think, “I am the divine.” I mean, it’s cool, you know? Wear a T-shirt, “I’m the divine.” But you have to take that T-shirt off at night, or when you take a shower anyway.
So those things, those things are helpful at times because positive thoughts definitely take up space, and they don’t allow negative thoughts to come. But that’s like, you know, it’s the same level as the thought. What we want to do is recognize that we’re not present when we’re thinking. We’re thinking about this, we’re thinking about that. You’re still here, but you’re not aware you’re here. So, you just start your practice going, watch your breath, slow down, calm down. Sometimes you feel that sadness, and there’s a lot of reasons for sadness, you know?
Nobody told me at the beginning of this that it wasn’t required. Because I was depressed my whole life, you know? I used to mope around all day. You know what moping is? Do you mope here? Good. I should move here. I spent my whole life moping around, you know? And one of the fruits of practice is that you spend less and less time in negative states of mind, which you don’t notice.
But if I think back, I think, “I don’t mope as much as I used to.” I miss it. Don’t you miss it? You know, “Ah, fucking shit. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” you know? It just feels so good. But you don’t miss it, because what’s gone, what’s not there as much is that judger, the evaluator. “How am I now? How am I now? How am I now? Am I okay? Am I okay? Do we need more of this? I need less of that.”
That’s where the suffering comes from, the constant evaluating ourselves with- from our heads. And it will never cure anything, and it’ll never make anything go away. The sadness, there’s a lot of different reasons that we’re sad, you know. We have our emotional stuff. We’ve been beaten up by life enough times to feel it. But even that is something that is not our true nature. That’s covering up our true nature. So, the more we can practice and practice letting go, even if it’s just for a few minutes a day, that letting go thing starts to work by itself, you know.
And you don’t have to actually attack the sadness. If it’s emotional stuff and depression, you don’t have to attack it. You can be with it, and the less you fight it, the less control it has over you, which is one thing. One of the Tibetan lamas I study with, he talks about the handshake practice. It’s like he, he says, “There’s no use trying to fight with these negative emotions. But when you notice one coming, when you notice something coming, you go, “Oh, hi. Weren’t you just here yesterday? Oh, yeah. Well, how are you doing? Come on in. Have a seat.'”
Because the minute you notice the feeling, it’s not in you the same way. It can’t grab you the same way. But it does take a little bit of working on it, And the main work you do is when you do your practice. The rest of the day, you do the best you can. You try not to kill anybody. You try not to beat yourself up. There’s a lot of things you can try, but it’s the moments when you’re actually paying attention. Make a deal with yourself that, for the next period of time, I’m going to…anything I’m thinking, I’m going to let go. Anything I’m feeling, I’m going to release it and come back.
See, the problem, we don’t do that because we expect that we’re going to be levitating in ten minutes, you know? You know, “Wow, this is a really good meditation. I ought to write it down,” you know?
Yeah. No. You just sit, you do your thing, and you live your life. You do the best you can not to create suffering for yourself or for the people we meet.
The funny thing about spiritual practice, it’s not about “me.” It’s not about me. It’s just not about me.
What did that guy say? “Do unto others?” “Treat other people the way you want to be treated.”
If we could do that, what kind of a world…. In a second, this would be a different world. But no, we want bliss. “I want ecstasy.” You know, “I want to do this, I want that there.”
So do some drugs. Get over it. But when you sit, sit. Be there.
There’s so much nothing, it’s incredible. It’s so deep, but it isn’t me-ness. It isn’t about me. Your life isn’t even about you, but we think it is. We think, think, think, think, think it is, all life long, and then we keep going. So, with that sadness, try not to fight it, you know? And don’t be afraid of it.
It can’t hurt you. It may not be very pleasant, but it’s not always there also. So don’t be afraid of it. But we’re afraid of it. We’re afraid of those things, you know? I mean- I don’t know how much you know about me, but I’m pretty crazy.
Never mind. But anyway, ultimately, it can’t hurt you. And if you’re not afraid of it, if you kind of be with it, don’t try to solve it, don’t try to push it away, and don’t be afraid of it. Let it be what it is, and it’ll come, and it’ll go. Even the pleasures come and go. Even the things we want to hold on to, we can’t hold on to.
So, the things that make us feel bad also don’t last. But the deeper we can, the more we can commit to a practice on a regular basis… You’ve got to do it every day. I mean, even if it’s three minutes of just turning everything off for three minutes and just sitting there like a lump, that’s a good thing, because we are being washed away down the river towards the, the waterfall, and there’s not much we can do unless we start to pay attention.
And it doesn’t take much. It just takes developing a new habit, because the old habits are driving us crazy, literally. But we can develop new habits. It’s not easy. It’s not easy because there aren’t a lot of people helping, you know, supporting us, which is why satsang or sangha is very important.People who are looking for the same thing. But don’t go to an ashram. There’s nothing worse than an ashram for politics. I’ve been to a lot of them. Believe me, it’s the last place you want to go. It looks good for a few minutes, and then you see, you know, people who are sitting up a little straighter than other people, walking with a little bit of this and that, you know.
Oh, God, get out of there as fast as you can. Not every ashram, but almost every ashram. Especially if there’s not a realized being there. If there isn’t a realized being, it’s just another fucking insane asylum. So if you like that, fine. It’s up to you.
I’ll hear about that, I’m sure.
But really this longing It’s the thing that ruins your life, but it saves your life too, because nothing will ever be enough, ever, for more than, you know, a couple of minutes, if it’s really good. Nothing’s going to be enough, so get over it. Nothing’s going to be enough. Things are okay for short periods, but they don’t last. That’s what this world is. They don’t last. If you expect them to last, you suffer. Very simple. If you don’t expect them to last, you can watch them come and go. You can enjoy them when they’re here, and you can feel okay when they go. But we get glued to stuff. We get glued to stuff. We want it to last forever. We are not even going to last forever.
First of all, our bodies are going to go, and then this thing that people call ego, which is nothing but thoughts, once the body goes, poof, that’s gone too. But the heart, the mind, the soul, so to speak, that goes on. But it doesn’t look like you and me. It’s the source of all the different forms that we take over many lifetimes. Stuff don’t last.
What does last is this longing, and it gets mixed up with emotional pain and emotional suffering. But even that is touching this, the reality that we need to find something deep, deeper than our thoughts, deeper than our emotions. Which is not hard to do because it’s in there. It’s covered up. All we have to do is uncover it. It’s not like you’re getting something you don’t have. Everybody has it. It’s looking out of your eyes right now, hearing through your ears, feeling through the skin, tasting through the tongue. Everybody is exactly the same looking out of their eyes. The presence within each one of us is exactly the same. But we think we are who we think we are.
What are you going to do? That’s the way it is.
So, when we chant, we simply come back to the sound of the mantra, or the name, as you call it. That’s all that’s required. You don’t have to imagine anything. You don’t have to create everything in your mind. You don’t have to judge it. Is this good? Is this bad? You just come back again, and again, and again, and you can always come back. You can always come back. You can always let go, but it takes a little getting used to that, what that feels like.
Q: Hi. It’s an important question for me, for my son, so I wrote it down before. Krishna Das Ji. Yes. Thank you very much for being here. My son has been living in India. It’s exactly to the day I was in Vrindavan for three years ago.
He is, practicing Hare Krishna for, has devoted his life for six years or yeah, he’s been in India pretty much for six years.
KD: Who? Your son?
Q: Yeah. My son, yes. Yeah. Okay. And it’s, I mean, it’s transformed him in so many ways. It’s given him everything. He says it’s the highest high he’s ever had, and he’s tried a lot of stuff. I’ll get back to my question. So he’s a devoted to Krishna, and he’s been, he’s given everything he has, or at least he thinks so, he has. Lately, he’s been feeling very discouraged, like devotion hasn’t brought him what he’s hoped for, and he has yet to find a spiritual teacher and to be initiated.
KD: He, he hasn’t been initiated?
Q: No.
KD: And he’s in Vrindavan still?
Q: Yes. Okay. Yeah. he’s a bit different socially and sometimes struggles to find his place, but his devotion is very deep. Do you have any guidance for someone who wants their heart to, who wants to keep their heart open and maintain the trust of the path, even when it feels like devotion is unseen?
KD: Are you asking or is he asking? Are you asking for him?
Q: Well, I spoke to him today, and I just felt, there was a mystic that said he was going through a very hard time unusually, and I called him. Sure … and it was true. And he just said that I just… I felt like he was almost giving up, you know? It’s something that has given him everything. Absolutely everything, and all of a sudden, he just feels like he’s unseen, and it’s…
KD: So, he’s not officially in ISKCON?
Q: Yes. Well, yeah. He is in ISKCON.
KD: He’s in ISKCON?
Q: Yeah.
KD: But he hasn’t been initiated by…
Q: No.
KD: I thought you had to be to be.
Q: No. No. He’s been servicing a, what he thought would be a spiritual master, but somehow this didn’t quite fit, I guess.
KD: Well, I couldn’t really give specific advice for him, but I do know one person who I would certainly suggest that he go see if he wants to. His name is Sacinandana Swami.
Q: I’ve heard, I’ve heard him speak too.
KD: Yeah, he’s a German Swami, and he’s a god on earth as far as I’m concerned. He’s my good friend. He’s unbelievable. He’s totally good. No bullshit, no nastiness, no manipulation, no business, no nothing. He’s the real thing. And whether he’s going to initiate your son or not, I don’t know. But if your son has issues regarding…
He’s not an ISKCON either, Sacinandana. He’s left ISKCON.
Q: Okay.
KD: He does his own thing.
Q: Yeah. Okay. But, I think that could be a good thing for my son too.
KD: Yeah. Yeah. He’s, he’s just joy. He’s a wonderful being. Really is. Okay. And, he doesn’t pay me to say that either. So he’s not in Vrindavan now, unfortunately. But if you, I’ll give you a, an address to get in touch with him. With his secretary.
Q: Yeah. But I mean, I understand it. Giving yourself so… Your heart, everything. I mean, spending hours and hours and hours in service and service and service and living, owning nothing, having no money and it doesn’t seem like he’s going forward, no matter how much. And he’s really… This is his everything. And I’m so afraid that if the bottom falls out, where is he left then, you know?
KD: Yeah, well, maybe he should come home and get a job. Leave that Krishna shit in India. Find a girlfriend, get married, have a house.
Q: I’m not going to tell him this.
KD: Don’t ask me then.
Well, yeah, okay. So, it, this wouldn’t be… I can’t know what, who he is or what he’s going through from here, but let him get in touch with Sacinandana Swami, because that’s a path that he seems to be on, or wants to be on, and he’s the real thing. He’s a good being. He’s a very, very good, good person, and nothing bad could happen to him from that. So yeah. If you come later, I’ll give you the address.
Q: Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
KD: Sometimes when the bottom drops out, the bottom drops out. I dropped out on me a few times. But it ain’t fun.
Q: I was wondering, I might maybe have at least three questions. Start with the first.
KD: Okay.
Q: These mantras are Sanskrit words. Yes. And I am one of those that, you know, I haven’t delved into Sanskrit.
KD: Me neither.
Q: You neither?
KD: I don’t know anything about Sanskrit.
Q: Okay. But do you understand the words, what they mean?
KD: The few words I know, I know.
Q: Okay. So, my question is, does it really matter if it is a Sanskrit word or just a word that doesn’t mean anything that is being chanted? Does it mean anything? Could it be a gibberish word?
KD: Okay. Sanskrit is called a revealed language. What that means is, they say… And that’s what I say when I don’t know what I’m talking about. I say, “They say.” They say that it actually comes from reality, and that the sounds themselves are the thing itself.
If you could be, one-pointed and really get into it, you could get the thing itself from the sound. Some languages aren’t like that, they say. The meaning of the stuff that we sing here, what they call the names of God, the divine name, the meaning is beyond the conceptual mind.
Although there are storylines attached to these names, Rama, Krishna, Kali, Durga. They all have a storyline. You could say a myth or a story, a legend, but that’s not what the real, the deepest meaning of the sounds.
Like St. John of the Cross said, “In the beginning, the Father uttered one word. That word is His Son, and He utters Him forever in everlasting silence, and it is in silence that the heart must hear.”
That’s a Christian way of talking about it. But these sounds come from a place that’s deeper than our thinking and our emotions. They’re like doorways into a different, a deeper state of being.
Q: So, in your opinion, you go deeper into the state of being, chanting these Sanskrit words versus words that have no meaning. You go deeper…
KD: I don’t chant anything that doesn’t have any meaning, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Q: Like these words don’t have any meaning for me when I hear them, you know?
KD: Well, you don’t know the meaning, but they have a meaning. They have a connection to reality, which we don’t have at this point, which we’re not aware of at this point. So even though you don’t know the meaning…
When you take medicine, you don’t know how it works, but it works. So, this is medicine. It’s not necessary to understand that Rama was this guy who was a king, whose wife got kidnapped, who beat up the demons and all that. That’s not necessary. That meaning is not necessary. It’s fun for some people, some people it’s not. But the name of Rama, the name of Krishna, Kali, Shiva, Shambo, all those names, they were brought into this reality by beings that experienced what they are, by a human being of some kind that brought it to us as a path to get deeper into our self.
So, that doesn’t guarantee that if you sat and went Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, like, you know, like in India you, you can walk around and these sadhus come up and they say, “Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, give me some money, give me some money. Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram.” You know, that kind of Ram’s not going to help anybody.
And some people change, “om mani padme hum” to “om money, give me some.” You know, that ain’t going to help anybody. But, it might make your pocket a little heavier or something.
What we would like is to be released from this obsessive flow of thought and self-judgment and self-hatred and self-loathing- … which we can’t find a way to get free of. The repetition of these names will, over time, help us free ourselves from that kind of stuff, whether you know the actual meaning or not.
Because the real meaning of these names is you. It’s who we, we are underneath all the stuff we think. But to get underneath that stuff, you have to do something. It ain’t going to just happen by itself. So.
Q: People who don’t want to chant or just don’t trust, to let their voice be heard.
KD: Yeah, it doesn’t have to be vocal. It can be mental.
Q: But, yeah, it’s the same effect, just doing it mentally?
KD: Except that it’s a little bit harder to pay attention to, because when you sing out loud, you there’s breath, the body, the ears hear. So, there’s more to hold on to. Yeah. But it… otherwise, there’s no difference, as far as I understand.
Q: And my last question is samadhi. Is it possible to reach samadhi … chanting?
KD: Yeah, sure. No problema. Yeah. But what is samadhi? There are many different types of samadhi, different levels of samadhi.
But the answer is still yes. But, you know, there’s this great story of this yogi who is living by the river, has a nice hut by the river, and he sends his disciple down to the river to get some water. And while the disciple’s gone, he goes into what they call nirvikalpa samadhi, and it lasts like thirty years. And he opens his eyes, and he looks around, and the hut is gone, the disciple’s got grown children, you know, the whole thing. He says, “What’s going on here?” Because that type of samadhi is like sleep almost.
And Ramana Maharshi talks a lot about, well, he doesn’t talk a lot about anything, but he does mention that. Talks about the difference of sahaja samadhi, which is the natural state, and nirvikalpa samadhi, which is temporary. And when you’re there, no karma is burned in that state. It’s like, they say it’s like time off almost, you know. It’s like a kind of a sleep. I’ll take it though. I mean, if anybody wants to give me some of it, I’ll happy to take it.
I was in the jungle once in a place called Amarkantak, and with that Baba I told you about who was 163. And we went on a, a walk through the jungle, and we’re walking down the banks of the river, and there was a small little fenced-in place, like maybe twenty feet this way, with a little fence and a little hut.
And there was this beautiful old yogi sitting in front of the hut. And we said hello to him, and he said hello, and he realized that, who the Baba was that I was with, the old guy. And he said, “Oh, thank you for coming. I’ve been wanting to meet you for so long.” So, they were talking for a while, and this guy told the Baba I was with, he said, “You know, I’ve been going into samadhi for so long that I’ve instructed my disciples not to bury me or burn me until the ants move in.”
He said, “When the ants move in, you know I’m gone.” In the meantime, it was like, but he apparently he’d been going like for long periods of time, days and days, just not breathing, just, you know, in this kind of trance state.
But, You know, you can’t get a good mocha latte when you’re in that, you know?
Q: Have you reached that state?
KD: Mocha latte? Yeah. Definitely. Many times a day.
Yeah, no, I’d rather have a mocha latte than be asleep for a month. Thank you. You’re welcome. Thank you.
