Call and Response with Krishna Das Ep 78 | Real Happiness and Becoming a Good Human

“So, the cards are stacked against us in terms of finding any kind of peace of mind. But that’s just the way it is. That’s this world at this time. That doesn’t mean we can’t find it, but it means one has to start paying attention. One has to start looking at one’s self and trying to figure out what you want, what we want. What do we really want? And on one hand, in some way, finding out what we really want is our spiritual practice. It’s not just when we sit down to meditate or calm ourselves down or do some asana or whatever we do. That’s part of it. That’s a method. Why do we do those methods? So, we can have a good life. And so, we can have the strength to become a good human being.” – Krishna Das

There’s a place in our hearts, in our Being, it’s not in our Heart, it’s like, not here or here or here or here or there, where it’s ok. Where everything’s fine. Where it’s all right. Where there’s a core of a feeling of wellbeing. It’s ok right now. Not later. Not when your hair looks better. Right now. And we’ve lost that connection to that place. So, we’re, everything we do is, we’re trying to find that feeling. But it’s not out there. It’s not in anything you can get or hold onto or let go of. It’s who we are. But maybe you notice, we think a lot. Have you noticed that? No? Oh. Ok. Let me say something else then. I wonder if the Giants won today. What do you think? Or are you a Jets fan? Who’s a… they both suck. Give them some time. And then when they win, I’ll be all right. What if they play each other, like today, will I be all right or not all right? You know, there’s never going to be a time when you get it all up here. We’re never going to figure it out. It’s not figure-out-able. Finally, you just stop trying to figure it out and you get tired of trying to make it all right and then, guess what? Then, you notice that it’s all right, but you know, you have to be really obsessively crazy out of your mind trying to make it all right for a long time. Which most of us qualify for. And you know, I’m not making this up. This is what I experienced directly when I was with these great beings in India. They weren’t trying to make it all right. It was just all right. As we are. That’s really hard. Because nobody told us that, you know? Not our parents, not our teachers, not our friends. Nobody told us it was all right. One time, I was sitting in the back of the temple with Siddhi Ma, who was Maharajji’s great disciple, and the eldest son, no, the eldest grandson of a family, the Tiwari family, a very close family of devotees of Maharajji, the eldest grandson was getting married. He was the first one of the generation to get married. So, all the cousins and brothers and cousin brothers and cousin-sisters and sister-cousins, if you know India, some of them don’t even know each other, they all came to get blessings for the marriage, and I was sitting back there and all like, 15 or 20 of these younger people were there and I was just sitting there and I was watching them. There was so much love and affection between these relatives. I don’t know about you, need I talk about my relatives? Anywhow, and I was astounded, I mean, I just, I was just like, I couldn’t believe how much sweetness and joy there was with these kids and Siddhi Ma saw me and She said, “See, Krishna Das? You see? You see what you missed by being born in America?” Ain’t it the truth.

I mean, really, you know.  All of Western culture is basically dedicated to fucking us up. That’s what it’s here for. And we’re doing that. Our, all of us, collectively, all of our karmas, debts, this is what we created. The world we create every day over and over. Dedicated to keeping us asleep and unhappy and unfulfilled, because we’ve been trained, and we’ve been taught to believe that we’re going to find that thing outside of our self, whatever shape or form it is, animate or inanimate, a real person or whether it runs on batteries. We’ll find it, and it will make it all right.

Gonna be a fun day.

And, it never makes it all right. It gives us a little pleasure, which releases a little tension, and that’s nice, but that passes, right? Pleasure and happiness are two different things. If you have pleasure, there’s always an opposite of pain. Either the pleasurable experience goes away, or a painful experience goes away and then becomes pleasurable. So, if the pleasurable experience goes away then there’s dissatisfaction. It’s called, “The Pairs of Opposites.” And if you look at life, you can see that. If there’s fame, there’s always shame. If there’s loss, there’s always gain. There’s always two things like that. But happiness, happiness is in that feeling of ok-ness, lives inside of us already. It might be in here. Let me see. Is this going to give me eternal ok-ness? Depends on how high a dose it is. Nice. Temporary pleasure. So, yeah. So, then, you know, if you’re doing some spiritual, so-called “spiritual practice”, look at your motivation. Why are you doing it? One time, I was living in San Francisco and I had this little closet, it was a house with other people, I had a big closet where I could go in and sit down and meditate and I wouldn’t be bothered by anybody. So, I went in, closed the door, lit the candle, lit the incense and then I sat down. Before my ass hit the cushion, I went, “Oh shit.” Because I saw my motivation for meditating. I recognized it was to create a “me” that I could like. Right? Somebody I wouldn’t give such a hard time to like I do all the time to myself. So, then I said, “Shit,” and I left the closet. Now, if I’d stayed in that closet… but I didn’t. But I saw my motivation was self-hatred. So, what can come from self-hatred. Just more nonsense. So, when we sit, when we sing, when we do asana, when we do any kind of, whatever spiritual practice means to you, don’t try too hard. Be with it, you know? Just be with it. You’re not going to be able to take your mind and hold it on one thought. That ain’t going to happen. Not living in New York City or anywhere else on this planet. Very difficult to do that. It takes a lot of serious effort to concentrate the mind that way and it takes a lot of willpower and it’s probably beyond most of us to do that. It’s certainly beyond me to do that. But when I sit, or when I sing, I can notice when I’m, it allows me to notice when I’m gone. And then I just come back. Then I’m actually already back. So, you’re sitting or you’re singing. “Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram,” and you wonder if you set the recorder to get the Giants game, so you can watch it when you get home. “Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram” “Shit did I do that, I don’t know, man, I’m so stupid, I couldn’t do that. Oh. Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram.” That’s what it’s like and that’s what it’s going to be like. There’s no button to find that’s going to make that go away. Little by little, actually, we can calm our asses down, but it takes some regular intention and some regular practice to do that and we’re really busy.  All of us. We have busy lives full of all kinds of stuff. So much input from so many directions. So, the cards are stacked against us in terms of finding any kind of peace of mind. But that’s just the way it is. That’s this world at this time. That doesn’t mean we can’t find it, but it means one has to start paying attention. One has to start looking at one’s self and trying to figure out what you want, what we want. What do we really want. And on one hand, in some way, finding out what we really want is our spiritual practice. It’s not just when we sit down to meditate or calm ourselves down or do some asana or whatever we do. That’s part of it. That’s a method. Why do we do those methods? So, we can have a good life. And so, we can have the strength to become a good human being. I’m sorry.

Didn’t anybody tell you, you were human beings? That’s what this is about.

What are you, trying to become a good Martian? You’re not from Mars. Human. Earth. That’s it. That’s the deal. You’re gonna go somewhere else? Where? How? Or you think you’re going to go to some nice blissful heaven world? Forget about it. It doesn’t last either. The only thing that lasts is what and who we really are. And that’s already here. That’s inside of us. That’s looking out of our eyes right now. We don’t see what’s looking out of our eyes. We only see what we see. We don’t see the consciousness, the being, the awareness that is doing the seeing. We’re surging out of our senses towards objects and all we see are the objects, the stuff. And our thoughts are stuff, too. We don’t see who we are. So, as we do these practices, as we start to overcome some of our crazy neurotic programs, we start to calm down a little bit and we stop giving ourselves such a hard time. If we weren’t giving ourselves such a hard time, like if I wasn’t having a thought, “Krishna Das, you’re such a piece of shit, you can’t do anything.” If I wasn’t having that thought, where would that thought be? In the whole universe, it wouldn’t be there. So, if we weren’t constantly telling ourselves, “We’re not enough,” or “We’re too much,” or “We’re this” or “we’re that,” those thoughts wouldn’t be anywhere We wouldn’t be a prisoner of that thought. So, practice means learning to let go of that stuff. Training to let go. Now, it’s not easy to just let go without finding, without bringing in another object that you begin to orbit around. So, maybe you watch your breath. You know, you’re going to be breathing no matter what else you’re doing, so, it’s always there to watch and it’s always there to come back to. So, that’s a great thing. That’s why it’s such a fantastic practice, just being with the breath. You don’t have to make yourself breath. “Ok, now what do I do? No what? Oh.” It just happens. So, you can just be w