Taking time to look back and move forward. Conversations With KD episodes are derived from the recordings of KD’s online events from his home during the 2020/ 2021 days of social distancing and quarantine from the onset of COVID and beyond.



Call and Response Special Edition – Conversations With KD September 26, 2020

“Obstacles are always there. They’re either obstacles or they’re opportunities. It’s up to you how you take it. And always, you have to ask yourself, is what I’m trying to do what I really want to be doing? That’s the main thing. It’s not what you do. It’s why you do what you do. That’s what important. I mean, we have to learn to really listen to ourselves about what we really need and really want in life, and how do we want to go through this life? How do we want to spend our time? What do we want to get? In what way? What’s the best thing I can do for myself and others that I meet?” -Krishna Das

Hi everybody. How are y’all doing?

If you’re here, you’re doing okay.

Q: Hi, Krishna Das.

KD: HI.

Great to be here. Yeah. So, I don’t have a question, but I felt like I just needed to show up in the space, or in my heart, or something. I’ve been getting, staying up till 12 to 2 on a Thursday for the satsang and it’s been amazing, and spending more time with horses, that was something that came up the last time I asked a question on Zoom. So, there’s, I’m sort of quiet, you know, so I just, I felt, I think it was important just to try and you know…

Yeah, you know you can watch the Zooms, the Thursday nights replays?

It’s not the same, because even like where I live, it’s not so private, but like, it’s fine, but I’m singing quietly. Everyone else is asleep and I’m there with the light off, and it’s just like, bliss. I can’t explain it. I just have two hours of, I just feel so happy ,and then not much sleep or anything, and a lot of hard work the next day, but just like no problems, which is kind of strange, actually.

Actually, that’s your true nature. No problems.

No problem. Yeah.

The problems are in our mind and the way we interact with everything, but our true nature is perfectly okay, always, and that’s where we really live. So, we’ve been, because of our stuff, we were locked out of our own house, you could say. We’re like, living on the lawn of our own house, and instead of a bathroom, we have a porta-potty and a bucket to take a bath in and, you know, and the bed’s out there on the lawn, and we don’t even know there’s a house there, and then if we did, we wouldn’t know where the key was.

Yeah. But I feel like I’m kind of, maybe I’m on the porch? And that, and then it’s like, “Oh, it’s so different.”

It’s sort of like, I could surrender a little more, but it’s a bit like, “Is this okay?” Like, am I allowed to feel this okay?

What do you think?

Yeah. I feel it. Yeah.

Well, you don’t need to be allowed, actually, but we do need to allow ourselves. That’s the thing.

Yeah.

And that’s okay. I mean, growing up in this modern world, none of us have been allowed to be ourselves. We become identified with all the programming that, put into us from every possible direction. So, we need to allow ourselves to be at ease with whatever is there, because that’s our true nature. It is at ease. It is okay. And it’s hard to recognize that because we’re, it’s like we’re in free fall, and we’re grasping, we’re trying to hold onto something that breaks off, and it breaks off, it doesn’t work, but if you just lay back into it, it’s perfectly okay.

For me, it comes down to Maharajji, because emotionally, I don’t feel okay myself, for most of the time. I don’t feel at ease with myself. I don’t feel at home in my own self, but when I remember him and who he is to me, and when I enter into his presence more deeply, then I just naturally relax, because my experience with him and my relationship with him is that he is everything that I want, I am trying to see in myself, you could say. That way. So, I have that. I have that.

People have asked me, “Do you ever lose faith?”

And I say, “Well, I have very little faith in myself, but I don’t lose faith in him.”

I understand. When you were in Dublin, I was at the kirtan, and I hugged you afterwards, and it was it was a game changer, like total, just like stepping into another world, but that’s my point of reference. So inside, it’s not great, but when I remember what that felt like, then it’s never sort of being on my own. It’s never on my own. There’s always a presence.

Yeah. That’s true. And that presence is really you, looking in the mirror and seeing yourself.

That’s far out. Oh, my God.

Because there’s dust on the mirror, most of the time we don’t get a clear look at our face.

No, I was like creosote, you know?

Yeah. That’s nothing. Good. A little Creosote is no problem. But creosote keeps the bugs away, you know that right?

That’s true yeah.

So there’s no more bugs, you can take the creosote off.

Okay. Very good.

Yeah. Good. Well, nice to see you.

Yeah. Nice to see you. Thank you.

Take good care, huh?

Q: Ram Ram, KD. KD, I just wanted to ask you your fondest memory of Siddha Ma?

Of Siddhi Ma? I’ll tell you a story, and it’s not a story about Ma. It’s a story about Maharajji that Ma told me. Actually, she had Jaya, her disciple, tell me.

It was in 1995 in the temple in Kainchi. I was a not doing very well, and I sent a message to Ma saying that I wanted to talk to her. So, a couple of days later they came to get me and she, Ma had come out and was sitting in the back of the temple, in the ashram part of the temple. Things were being prepared for the Bhandara, the June Bhandara, and so she said, “What is it?”

And I said, “Ma, you know…”

I don’t know if you know my whole story, but you know, Maharajji had called me to come back to India. He had sent me home and then he had somebody write to me telling me to come back, but I didn’t get there on time because of my own stupidity and Tamasic nature.

So, I said, “Ma, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from not coming back to see Maharajji.”

This is already 23 years later, 22 years later.

And I said, “I feel like there’s a knife in my heart, and I can’t take it out.”

So, she was quiet for a minute, and she said something to Jaya, and Jaya said, “Ma asked me to tell you this story…”

Everybody was in Rishikesh, at the temple in Rishikesh, and they had made plans to go to South India for the winter, and they had 40 reservations on a train from Delhi to Madras, to Chennai, and just before, a few hours before they were getting ready to leave, all the devotees, Jivanti Ma had another heart attack. She was having heart attacks regularly. Not major ones, but small ones. But she had a heart attack, and she could barely breathe, and then, “What should we do? If we cancel the reservations, we will never get more reservations in time,” and so they all decided to go. Of course, Jivanti Ma wanted to go also.

So, they helped her get into the car and she could barely breathe, and all the way, had to drive from Rishikesh to Delhi to catch the train. So, they drove all that way. For everybody that doesn’t know, it’s probably a minimum seven hours of driving and the roads are about as good as they were before the Roman empire.

So, they get to the old Delhi train station and JIvanti Ma can’t walk So, they carried her on a dandhi. Underneath the tracks there’s a tunnel that you can walk through that goes up to each of the tracks, and that’s only used for the luggage, the bearers and the police and stuff like that. They carried her underneath the tracks and up to the platform and into the train and into the compartment, and they helped her into her berth, the sleeping berth, and the train takes off.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, Siddhi Ma needs to use the bathroom. Now, for those of you that don’t know, on these, in these train cars there are bathrooms at either end of the car, and you walk down the hall to the end of the car, and then you make a turn which goes out to the door, out of the train, but then you make a quick right turn to the bathrooms. So, middle of the night, Siddha Ma needs to use the bathroom. So, Jaya walks with her.

First, they went to one side of the train, one bathroom, and it was really dirty. So, they turned around and they went, walked down the long walkway to the other side of the train car to use the other bathroom. When they turned the corner at the end of the hallway, they were facing the door outside the train, and there, huddled down at the foot of the door was a, she used the word “fakir,” which is a word, it essentially means like a Sufi or Muslim Saint. She did not say “Sadhu.” She said, a “fakir,” because he had a black blanket or black shawl around him, covering his head, and you couldn’t see his face. He was looking down. And when they turned the corner and came in front of this fakir, he, still looking down and his face covered, he goes like this, “Jai.”

“Jai” means “hail,” “victory,” or “respect.” Jai.

So, Siddha Ma goes like this, bows to him, and then she goes into the bathroom. So, then Jaya comes back and she says to the Baba, she said, “Baba, do you know this woman?”

And again, still covered, completely covered, He says, “She is the mother of the universe.”

And Jaya goes, “Whoa.”

But then Siddhi Ma comes out of the bathroom, and once again, she pranams to the Baba, and walks back with Jaya to the compartment. Now Jaya decides that Jivanti Ma has