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 November 21, 2020

“Whenever you think of it, just take a couple of breaths and let go. You’re washing dishes, take a breath and let go. You’re watching TV. Take a breath in the commercials. If there’s no commercials, just pause the thing, take a breath and then start again. Practice letting go. Practice just letting go.” – Krishna Das

Hi, everybody. Good to be with you again. It’s getting cold and people are stuck inside, which makes it even harder to wade through the mud of the mind, of the thoughts. It’s a good time to practice, and it’s just too easy to be swept away the tides of mental bullshit and the stuff that goes on and on and on and on, and the circular obsessive thinking that goes on all the time. We have to make an effort to release ourselves from that. And when it’s so intense like this, it’s almost easier because it’s so apparent how out of control we are. And actually, we’re always out of control, but we can be aware by remembering to look and remembering to remember. That’s all you can do. You can’t transform yourself. You can’t move to another planet. You know, all we can do is bow to the endless flow of nonsense that goes through our heads, and practice letting go of it. That’s all. That will change the way we live inside of our lives. And that’s what all the practices are about, ultimately. Every path leads to the same goal because the goal is reality, and that’s what lives within us as our own true being.

So, just to continue to pay attention, to continue to remember, to let go, as the day goes on, you know, every time you just remember, just release for a minute, you know, even in the middle of something you’re doing just take a breath or two and let it be.

Q: I am so, so pleased to be here today. Thank you for this opportunity. I’m from Maryland, and found you, I would say, actually, because of this situation that we’re under; home and tinkering around with Ram Dass, and I found you singing on a piece of his, Heart As Wide As The World, and I just was completely enamored.

Yeah. Most people find me by mistake.

It was, but a beautiful mistake.

Yeah. Maharajji trips and then they fall in it. That’s what happens, you know?

Oh, that’s great. That’s really great. Well, the thing I wanted to ask you about is this notion of surrender. And I feel, for me, sometimes we can distinguish it as surrender. It’s almost like a physical experience, like a relaxing, like you say, you know, giving it up, letting it go. And you also speak about finding, I don’t know, I can’t think of how you say it right now, but you know, yourself inside, and I’m wondering if those two things are similar in some way.

There was a great Saint in India, not too long ago, named Ramana Maharshi, and he lived in South India and when he was a young boy, not that young, he was probably 16, He stayed home from school one day because he was feeling a little sick and he felt he was going to die, and he was perfectly healthy, but he felt, “I’m going to die.” And for some reason it didn’t upset him. He just said, “Well, what’s this going to be like?”

And he laid down on the floor. He was alone in the house. He laid down on the floor and he clenched up his body and just wanted to see what, what not breathing would be like, and you know, what, if the body becomes like rigor mortis, and what was happening, actually, his consciousness was leaving the body, leaving the physical plane. And he became fully enlightened in that moment, a 16 year old boy, without ever doing any sadhana in this life. Of course, in previous lives he had done incredible amounts of practice. But, in that moment he was completely enlightened, and 50 years later he would say, “My state of mind had never wavered from that moment to this.”

From that moment on, he was completely immersed in oneness, in the one, in reality. He became fully enlightened, what they call, becoming a jnani.  And people came. And he went back to school and, you know, obviously he didn’t fit in anymore. And after a few days, his brother had given him some money to pay a fee at the school for him.  And so he writes a note to his family. He said, “This is leaving. Don’t bother to search for it. PS, I owe you three rupees,” or something like that.

And he wandered off. He didn’t know where he was going really, and he wound up at the foot of this sacred hill called Arunachala, in a town called Tiruvanamalai, and at first he sat. There was an ancient temple there at the foot of the hill. He sat around at the temple, but people were bothering him, because he was just immersed in samahdi. He was just gone, you know. And so, then he found underneath the temple, like an area that was dug out and he just went down there, and he just sat there with scorpions stinging him and snakes going over him and ants, eating his body. For years, He just stayed in there, and people began to bring him little bits of, the pujari of the temple started to bring him bits of food and stuff like that and would put it in his mouth because he wouldn’t communicate or move.

Finally, he just, you know, everybody started to recognize him as not just like a crazy kid, but a great being. And he kind of moved up the hill, and finally later, when he got older, he came down from the hill and an ashram was started around him. All the time, He’s just being. He’s not doing anything, you know.

And he would talk. He didn’t talk much, but when he was asked a question, he would respond usually, Usually, with words. Sometimes with words, sometimes without, but whatever he said was so dynamic and so absolutely clear and concise and right on. It’s extraordinary to read His stuff, which was collected by other people because he didn’t write down anything. He didn’t collect his things. He didn’t give lectures, nothing. He just was being.

So there’s so many great things. Here’s one thing, about surrender. Now, maybe this takes a little bit of suspension of disbelief, but let me just read you this.

“The ordainer controls the fate of souls in accordance with their prarabdha karma, which is the amount of karma to be worked out in this life.” It’s not all your karmas. It’s just a little bit of karma that this life is about, to work out. “Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen, will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain in silence.”

And by silence, he means, “Being. Presence. Reality.” What underneath. The space around all our thoughts and emotions and stories which we believe. All that stuff, all the time.

“I’m who I am. I know who I am. I know where I’m going. I know my people are here. I know what my house is,” and all this stuff. Maybe, but it’s the space around all that.

So, the point about surrender is, you can’t control or change what you’ve done in the past and what’s happened in the past, and the future is not here yet. So, there’s nothing to do about that either. All we have is now, and how we live in this moment is where we find what our so-called work is. Who do we think we are? Where are places that we’re stuck and we judge ourselves and others? Where’s our greed? Where’s our shame? Where’s our fear? Where’s our anxiety? Where’s our selfishness? All that stuff. That’s what we have right now. Now, how do we live with that? How do we deal with that?

Ramana Maharshi said there’s two ways to deal with that. One way is to ask “Who is experiencing all of this?” and question, “Who am I?” You know? “I’m experiencing this. Okay, well, who am I? Well, I’m me. Well, who said that? Who’s thinking that? Well, I am . Who is that ‘I’?” It’s a way of kind of backing into it. A way back in, But the other way is to accept it as it is, and for devotees or people who are attracted to the path of devotion, you would say that “everything in my life is there to teach, is there because it has to be there, and my attitude should be, what do I learn, what can I learn from all this?” And so, you accept it as teaching. So, if you have a guru, you simply say, “This is what my guru has left for me.”

And so, you don’t try to push it away or kill it or reject it or change it even. You try to just be with it and release again. Release. And that’s what we’re training ourselves when we chant. We simply repeat the sounds, which they call the names of God in India, the divine name, these sounds, and we pay attention. And when we notice we’ve been gone, we’re already back, we pay attention again, and then we notice we’re gone and we come back again, and again, and again, and again, and again.

So, your work is about what you just said, which is the chanting.

It’s hardly work, you know, I could be pumping gas.

Yeah, but what you’re what you’re expressing to people. So, before you said that thing about chanting, my question was going to be, well, how do I remember to do that in the moment? Because I, you know, as a human being, I get all wrapped up in how I’m feeling about something. Right?

Don’t we all? All everybody ever does in this world is think about ourselves. That’s all we do.

Yeah, absolutely. No question about it. So, you’re suggesting then that the chanting gives me, shall we, almost like an outlet for the not remembering? So, if I’m in a situation where I’m not actually chanting, right? And I get annoyed. For me to remember in that moment to do the releasing, might happen might not happen,