Call and Response with Krishna Das

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Call and Response Podcast Special Edition | Mocha Lattes and Samadhi Aug 03, 2026

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Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das | Special Edition – Mocha Lattes and Samadhi SPECIAL OFFER:This special edition comes with a special offer from our friends at SoHum Mountain Healing Resort ~When life moves too fast, the body and heart begin to whisper for rest. Ayurveda is the science of life, teaching us how to live in balance with our true nature. SoHum mountain healing resort offers Ayurvedic Pancha Karma detoxification retreats in a calm, supportive environment.You can learn more at SoHumhealing.com and use the code KrishnaDasPK2026 for $500 off on your PanchaKarma retreat! “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…

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Call and Response Podcast Special Edition | Figuring Out What Works Jul 10, 2026

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Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das | Special Edition – Figuring Out What Works This special edition comes with a special offer from our friends at SoHum Mountain Healing Resort ~When life moves too fast, the body and heart begin to whisper for rest. Ayurveda is the science of life, teaching us how to live in balance with our true nature.SoHum mountain healing resort offers Ayurvedic Pancha Karma detoxification retreats in a calm, supportive environment. You can learn more at SoHumhealing.com and use the code KrishnaDasPK2026 for $500 off on your PanchaKarma retreat! “It’s interesting because in the old days, before radio, Newspapers were the only way people got their news, and to do that, they had to go out and get it in the morning or get it delivered. So, whatever happened from one morning to the next morning, twenty-four hours, was nobody knew, right? Then came radio, and I was reading about how much it changed life. It completely changed the world, radio, because now you could go like this and hear what was happening as it’s happening, reported every hour and this and that. Now, it’s like we’ve got a chip in our brain, and we’re getting twenty-four seven, three sixty-five, you know? I don’t know if that’s useful in any way whatsoever, but each one of us has to figure out what works for us, you know? But don’t– I wouldn’t beat yourself up for not reading the news. There’s other things you can beat yourself up for, I’m sure. Much more juicy and much more real and much more, you know, hurtful.” – Krishna Das TRANSCRIPT: Q: Jai Shri Ram, Krishna Dasji. My question is, so, when I sit alone doing nothing and- KD: How can you do that? You’re never doing nothing. You’re just wasting time … Q: Just wasting time, right? KD: So, there’s a big difference. Q: Yeah. KD: Doing nothing would be fantastic. But how do we do that? Go ahead, sorry. Q: No. S,o I have zillions of thoughts in my mind besides all the comfort, food, shelter, basic necessities that we have, right? And it feels empty from inside. And when I follow spirituality, chanting, going to the temple, all the rituals, it fills me up from the inside. KD: It what? Q: It fills me up from the inside because I am empty, right? KD: So, it fills you up from the inside even though it’s from the outside. The temple is not inside, it’s outside. Q: Okay. KD: So, it fills you up on the inside from going to the outside. Q: Yeah. KD: How does that work? Q: So, my question is, so, to you that when you sit alone and not chanting, not remembering anything, and you have had discussions with different gurus, different spiritual leaders, et cetera, right? So, what’s your thought in the mind? Any learning, any teachings that you want to share? KD: When’s the next game from the UConn’s women’s basketball? That’s my only thought about anything at ever… any time What do you care what I think? It’s what you think that matters. And you say you have millions of thoughts. I don’t see millions of thoughts. You have one thought, me, me, me, me, me, me. Everything revolves around that. So, when you notice you’re thinking, what do you do? You let go and you come back to the name. That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to figure it out. It’s impossible to figure it out. And it doesn’t matter what anybody else says about what they feel. It’s what you feel that’s important. So, when you say you get filled up– when you say you’re empty, you’re not empty. That’s a feeling, and it’s not like there’s nothing there. No, there’s a feeling of being empty. That’s a big feeling. So, let it go or just start the name going along with the so-called emptiness and see what happens. You have to do something at those moments. If you want, you can do something, which is to remember the name and try to pay some attention to it. Don’t try too hard, but just gently try to remind yourself that you’re actually here. And when you become aware of the feeling, you’re aware of the feeling, so, you’re not the feeling, right? In that moment, you’re feeling empty. I’m empty. I’m empty. I’m empty. No, you’re feeling emptiness. You’re aware of that feeling. There’s a separation. There’s you and the feeling. So, you come back to the you side again and again Good luck. Q: I am a little, a little nervous here. KD: Me, too. I have no idea what you’re going to say. Q: I’m going to I’m going to do some nervous rambling before I ask my question. And I just want to say, I grew up in a Hindu family, and my parents are pretty religious, and we used to go to the Masonic Temple where they set up their Hindu, you know, temple there when I was, eight years old. KD: Where? Q: In Flushing. KD: Flushing. Q: On, next to Main Street. And I used to think “Who is this flying monkey god, this cartoon?” KD: That’s what I think all the time. Q: And all the years of growing up, I just, poo-pooed, you know, Hinduism. And finally, about five or six years ago, I got into Ram Dass and Neem Karoli Baba and you. And it was 2020 during the COVID epidemic, and I just… I’m a writer. I like to write, and I wrote a short story, got published. You’re in it. And, and I would love for you to read it. I’d love to send it to you. KD: Okay. Q: But basically, I want to thank you and Ram Dass for, teaching this Hindu respect for Hanuman and coming back to, you know- her. KD: Thank you. Q: And I want to ask you, in all seriousness, I’m the mother of a, a primary caregiver for an adult with autism, and I want to know what Neem Karoli Baba would say. He has severe autism. What he would say about individuals that are born here… I’ve come to peace with, you know, who my child is, and he’s special and he… It could be part of my karma and… KD: It’s his karma, for sure. Q: What would Neem Karoli Baba say about it? KD: I have no idea. Yeah. But ask him next time you see him. I don’t know what he would say. It’s unimaginable to me what he would say because I’m not him. I have a friend who teaches yoga. She had an autistic child herself. So, she developed this yoga program, asana practice for kids like that, and she always plays the chants for the kids, and they zone right in, you know what I’m saying? But then she said to me, “But when it speeds up, they get, they get nervous, and they kind of…” So, that’s why I made that last CD called Peace of My Heart. It doesn’t speed up. It’s just, boring, you know, the whole thing. That’d be a nice thing to play for him because it’s steady and easy, and it’ll allow him to kind of zone right in. Q: Yeah, I’ve played your music for him, and he loves it. KD: Good. Yeah. just love, you know? That’s all, and just more of it every day. Q: Hi KD. So, 10 years ago I came across the Ram Dass book, Be Here Now, and 10 years later, now I’m here flying from Brazil. My wife flew us here just to see you. KD: Wow. From where? Which place? Q: São Paulo. KD: São Paulo. Q: And I was there in your workshop as an attendant, and I learned something from you. You said something that it really, you know, carried, which was when you left India and came to the States, you heard from your beloved that you should or you would sing for people, but it took you 20 years to do so. And I’m struggling with something that I feel deeply in my heart that I should be doing for the past eight years. So, when I heard you saying that, I was “Well, if it took, if it took him 20 years, I mean…” KD: 21 years. Q: 21 years. Okay, so, you know, I still have a lot of time to, to go. KD: Yeah. Good. So, chill. Q: But in the same way, if you heard from your guru, and yet you still, took 20 years, what chance do I have? Because I don’t have my… I have my own feeling, intuition. So, what I want to ask you is, looking back, why do you think, what was holding you for that 21 years and what did change? When did you realize, or what action did you take, did you take to actually, you know, be here for us now? Thank you. KD: Well, it took really recognizing that I wasn’t going to make it if I didn’t start to sing with people, period. That was it. I had an epiphany that if I didn’t start singing with people, I would never be able to clean out the dark shadows in my own heart. So, if it was either I did it or I didn’t do it. If I didn’t do it…If I did it… So, I made the choice to start doing it because it was live or die, essentially. It got to that point. So, I wouldn’t say it was much of a conscious decision. It was more like recognizing the way things were, which was if I didn’t do this, it was over for me. You know, I just had a lot of, you know, when Maharajji sent… I’d been in India two and a half years. He kept me there. He got my visa extended and all that. And then after two and a half years, he looks at me, he said, “Okay, time to go back to America.” I said, “What?” “Yeah.” “I’m just learning Hindi.” “Too bad. You have to go. You have attachment there,” he said. I thought, “What is he talking about?” I gave everything away when I left America. I sold my car, my guitar. I gave my jeans away. I had maybe a small little box of books in my mother’s basement. I had nothing in America. I never wanted to go back. What was he talking about? Now I know. Every single thing that’s happened to me from that moment to this moment is what he was talking about. My stuff had to come up, had to come up. I had to live through all kinds of shit, and somehow I’m still here. I have no idea how. But he saved my ass so many times. I don’t know why, but he did. So, you have to recognize what’s important to you. That’s all. But you can’t do it in here, you know? It has to be come from here. You know, that’s all. And it doesn’t matter. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s not the right thing. You don’t know until you try. If you don’t try, you try. You don’t try, you try. Who knows? But, you know, maybe it’s just a trip you land on yourself to make yourself unhappy. We’re good at that. What if you didn’t have that thought? Would you be happy as you are? Don’t answer, please. But you know what I’m saying. Who knows? But let’s see what happens. Let’s see how it goes. Q: Hi. I find myself here curious about breath. I’m curious what you’ve learned from Maharajji or Maa about breath KD: Nothing. Or less. Yeah, no, you know, one thing is, it’s good to keep breathing if possible. Aside from that, I don’t know anything about breath. I remember Shyama, we were in the room with, with Siddhi Maa and Shyama. Siddhi Maa told Shyama to do asana and pranayama. Let’s see if I’m remember correctly. And then Shyama said, “Ma, I can’t do those asanas,” you know. So, Maa said, “Okay, Shyama, just do the pranayama. Krishna Das.” Like that. So, since that moment, I’ve been doing pranayama. Other than that, I don’t know anything. But I do pranayama every day. Q: I will keep breathing for a while. KD: You hope, but I hope so, too. Thank you Is that accurate? Semi-accurate? It’s the way I remember it, which is, of course, the only thing that counts. Q: Hi, KD. Thank you so much for all you do. I had a very simple question. How has the practice of chanting transformed you as a person over these years, and how does it continue to do so, even today? KD: It’s been incredible, just incredible. Now I don’t care that I’m just the biggest fucking asshole in the whole world. Before, I really cared. Now, I don’t give a shit. It’s almost true, too. Q: Hi, KD. Namaste. I’m Siddharth. Me and my wife moved to the States last year, and I come from a city north of India called Lucknow. KD: Oh, I know Lucknow. Q: So, Neem Karoli Baba established a Hanuman mandir in Lucknow in 1960s. And as kids, you know, when we were, growing up, we used to go there. But then we used to listen to the bhajans that were being performed on the temple, you know, inside the temple. It was very recent, you know, during the pandemic that I discovered you, and you happened to just come on my YouTube all of a sudden, out of nowhere. Nobody introduced me to you. You just happened to come on my YouTube, and since then I’ve been following you, and I feel more connected to both Guruji as well as, you know, Hanuman. Even more connected. I have an incident to share with you. So, I lost my mom during pandemic, and that is when I, you know, I found my peace with your bhajans. And a lot of chanting that, you know, we were doing at that time as a family. Before moving to the States, you know, I just thought when we were preparing, you know, to move here, I just wished that, you know, before finally, you know, getting on that flight, I get a chance to visit, visit Kainchi. And you will not believe, just a month before my flight, all of a sudden we made a plan and we visited Kainchi. And it has been magical since then, because you know, I never thought that somebody would call me like that. You know, I have my flight. I have my packing going on, no plans at all, and then we just, you know, get gas in the car and we are on the road, and we are in Kainchi. It has been magical for all of us. And you, I feel that you are the path that has led me to a better devotion, better connection, as well as understanding of all of these things at a level that probably was much superficial to me earlier. Because I used to hear it but then never feel it. Now I feel it. My question to you is, in this world where we are so, busy and we are surrounded by so, many gods, especially in India, as you see it, what is devotion to you? Like my father calls me from India and he’s “Did you pray today?” So, I tell him that I pray, you know, as soon as I get up. I do my stuff. I start my day, and I try to pray, you know, whenever I get a chance. But then he’s “No, but that’s important.” So, what is devotion according to you? does it have a structure? Does it have a format? how do we feel that we are devoted to a person, a god, or a feeling, and then we are not, you know, probably parting ways just because we are so, busy in our lives? KD: You know, Maharajji didn’t make us Hindus. He didn’t make us wear the same clothes. Basically, we didn’t even like each other, you know, the Westerners. Some, you know, there were little cliques, you know? The Indian people would come, and he’d say, “You people, you come here. Oh, you only come for yourselves. Look at these people. All they want is God.” We look around, “Who’s he talking about?” You know? We had no idea what he’s talking… But that’s how he, he said that, you know? And we just wanted to be with him. We just wanted to be in that love. That was our puja, that was our practice. That’s what my practice is right now. Chanting is just another way of becoming, entering into his presence. So, there’s, for me, there’s no particular form for it. But you come from a different culture, and there’s expectations on you from that culture. You just have to see if it fits or not, you know? I don’t think you should let yourself be pushed around and made unhappy by not fulfilling other people’s expectations of what you should be doing. But it’s difficult. I mean, if your father’s going to call you every day, you can change your number. But then he’ll probably get on a plane with a lathi. But yeah, you have to figure out what works for you. Nobody can tell you. Q: And I have one more question. While, you know, after I lost my mom, I changed as a person, and this was not told to me by my brother or by my father or anybody else, but my wife told me. Because we dated for a long time, and then my mother was there, and then after my mother passed away, I got married. So, she tells me that I’ve changed a lot as a person. And then she tells me that, “I think, Sid, you need to address the grief that you have within you.” And I feel that too, that I haven’t addressed that grief because nobody ever talked about how I felt, how I feel till date, and maybe there’s a lot inside me, but then I am just being told that I need to address the grief. And in one of the workshops, or rather in, on the YouTube sessions that you took, I did ask you…

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Call and Response Podcast Special Edition | Fierce Grace in NYC Jun 18, 2026

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Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das | Special Edition – Fierce Grace in NYC This special edition comes with a special offer from our friends at SoHum Mountain Healing Resort ~When life moves too fast, the body and heart begin to whisper for rest. Ayurveda is the science of life, teaching us how to live in balance with our true nature.SoHum mountain healing resort offers Ayurvedic PanchaKarma detoxification retreats in a calm, supportive environment. You can learn more at SoHumhealing.com and use the code KrishnaDasPK2026 for $500 off on your PanchaKarma retreat! “We don’t know what we have to go through. We don’t know why we’re going through it, but we have to get through it the best we can. And so let’s try to have some gratitude for even being semi-conscious about who we are and what we’re doing and what we have, you know?- Krishna Dasphoto: dj Pierce TRANSCRIPT You know, Maharajji said in Hindi, “Ram Nam Karn Se Sab Pura Ho Jata Hai.” From going on repeating these names, which we’ve been doing, everything’s accomplished. That’s, like, ridiculous. And first of all, this is a person who knows what he’s talking about. Okay? And he just gave us a guarantee. Do this, and then that happens. Do we do it? Yeah, between serial killer murder mysteries… sometimes Yeah, that’s our karmas. We, you know, we can’t do what we can’t do. We can’t see what we can’t see, and we can’t feel what we can’t feel. But the great beings who know tell us that if we do this, then that will happen. But you know, this is New York. We don’t give a shit about anything. That doesn’t mean it’s not true. Every time we do something or think something or act in one way or another, we plant a seed that will grow and bring fruit. But wouldn’t it be nice to plant the seeds of the things we want and the things we would like to have? But if we go along blindly reacting to every little thing that happens to us, then we’re not planting seeds of any kind of happiness or love at all. So, sooner or later we have to kind of try to take some responsibility for the way we go through the day. We can’t change the way other people are. I’m not even sure if we can change the way we are, but at least that’s a place to start. Like my friend Robert Svoboda says, “If you don’t deal with reality, it will deal with you.” And that’s very true. So, while we seem to be semi-conscious and seem to be alive and seem to have some agency over how we go through the day, maybe we should try to clean our shit up a little bit. Because if we don’t do it, it’s not going to get done. Every repetition of the name is a seed that we plant in our own hearts, and since all of our hearts are connected and actually one, it’s the best thing we can do for any– at any time for anyone, anywhere. Maybe if I keep cursing, everybody will leave. You’ve got to do something, you know what I mean? There was some, one of those bhajans that says, “I was, I was caught in the rapids helplessly heading towards the waterfalls, and on the shore I saw the guru, and the guru brought me to the shore and saved me.” But if we’re not looking, we’re not going to see anything. But we have to find some space in our daily lives to slow down a little bit, take some time to just feel where we’re at. I mean, forget about meditation. It would just be nice to slow down a little bit, wouldn’t it? But we sit down, “Okay, now I’m going to meditate,” and you immediately get tense, so no meditation’s going to happen. Maharajji said, “If you bring your mind to one point, you’ll see God.” Being God, that’s a whole other thing But I can’t get my mind to… I can’t even see the point where it’s, where it is. And I’ve been pretending to do this shit for so long. What to do? You’ve got to deal with the cards you’ve been dealt with. You got to play with those cards. So yeah, something every day. Got to do something every day. I don’t care what it is. Just sit down for five minutes. Five minutes is enough for you to notice that you’re not there, and if you notice you’re not there, you’re there. But it’s very important to notice, and it’s a big thing to notice because we spend all day long completely lost in our daydreams Me, me, me, me, me, all day long. But it’s hard to overcome the programming. It really is. There’s no question about it. So many programs are running from our childhood, from the place we grew up, the people we met, the teachers we had. So many programs. But even inside of all those programs, we’re here, and we can inflate that presence. Because every repetition of the name does that. It brings us back to our self for just a millisecond. Yeah. Okay. Let’s do some Q&A. That’ll save me from my own mind. Q: What was your favorite part of your recent trip to India? It looked like it was feature rich. KD: My favorite part was that there was always a bathroom when I had to poop. Q: Come on. I’m not accepting that. KD: Have you been to India? Q: Yes. Yes. Yes. KD: Then? Q: Now I understand. Okay. You’re right. And you brought toilet paper. KD: Well, you know, the really, the most amazing part was the chanting with the people there. It was so incredible. I think they think I’m Bruce Springsteen. And that’s fine with me. So yeah, the chanting was so wonderful. And, you know, they kind of… The feeling was like they owned me. You know what I mean? They were yelling out things they wanted to hear. I would say, “Shut the fuck up.” They would just laugh, you know? It was like, “Hello, what’s going on here?” You know? It was so sweet. It was really wonderful. Well, some cranky classical musician wrote something in a paper down in Mumbai, I think. “Why do these, all these Indian people, what’s wrong with them going to hear, like, this Westerner sing?” You know? That’s classical musicians, you know. Just jealous. Q: Hey. Could you talk a little bit about Bhagavan Das and his connection, you know, bringing Ram Dass and Richard Albert, you know, to Neem Karoli Baba and, you know, just your experiences of him? I read his biography recently. It’s crackers. I mean, it’s so crazy. KD: Yeah. I read his book and I said to him, “Yeah, I really learned something, uh…” He said, “Oh, yeah? What?” I said, “I didn’t know you were enlightened.” Yeah. Bhagavan Das is a wonderful character. He’s really incredible. He lived in India for seven years, just wandering around, being like a sadhu and Ram Dass met him up in Kathmandu. And Bhagavan Das hustled him to drive him down to see Maharajji so he could get his visa extended, because he was getting thrown out of India and he had to get an extension on his visa. So he asked– he got Ram Dass to drive him down in this Land Rover that he was, Ram Dass was taking care of. And that’s what led to this moment, you know. So, we have a tremendous debt of gratitude to him for hustling Ram Dass And yeah, I haven’t seen much of him in the last many years. But, I don’t know more about it right now, what he’s doing. I hear he lives somewhere in the Midwest, but I don’t know what he’s doing. He had a bad car accident some years ago. I think he’s recovered now. Q: You and Nina and Elizabeth, Ambika and the band are my daily spiritual companions, and I would hate myself if I didn’t say that. When Ram Dass first encountered the Hanuman Chalisa, he said he thought it would be too complex for Westerners. Now you do events where- KD: He, he was obviously right. Q: But now, you know, all these years later, you do events where invariably someone in the back of the room yells out, “Play the Hanuman Chalisa.” Yeah. So, I’m just curious to get your take on what has happened over this span of years. KD: Well, it proves he wasn’t right about everything. You know, the Hanuman Chalisa was given to us by Maharajji in his own way. In other words, he never said, “Learn this.” But we saw that the Indian people treated him as Hanuman and sang to him, and we wanted to get more time with him. So, we figured if we learned this, then we could sing it to him, and we’d be able to spend more time, and that’s what happened. Maharajji said every line of the Hanuman Chalisa is mahamantra, the name, and that it can remove obstacles and change fate, and it’s a gift that he gave us, a way of connecting to the deepest reality. And it is hard to learn. It’s 40 verses. It takes some dedication, but it’s not that complicated. There’s another chant to Hanuman called the Bajrang Baan, which means the arrow of Hanuman, the weapon of Hanuman. And Siddhi Maharaj told Ram Dass that if he learned that, he would be able to walk again So I recorded it for him, and you know, line by line, word by word. But he couldn’t… He was conflicted, actually, about it. He tried to learn it, but after the stroke, his mind wasn’t really working that well. And he also was in this place of being okay with what was happening. You know, he was okay with the stroke. He accepted it as his karma. Not as Maharajji’s doing, but as his karma. You know that when he first had the stroke, he said, “This is fierce grace. Maharajji gave me the stroke. This is fierce grace.” But when he went to India, the only time after the stroke, Siddhi Ma immediately said to him, “Ram Dass, Maharajji didn’t give you the stroke. He would never do that. The stroke is your karma.” What Maharajji gives us is the strength to overcome the negative effects of that karma and the blessings and the grace to do that, and Ram Dass did that. You know, in the old days, in those early days with Maharajji in the early ’70s with the Westerners there, Ram Dass basically hated the other Westerners because we had stolen Maharajji away from him. He had him all to himself, and then he couldn’t shut up, and then all of us came, you know? So, he was– he had to share us, share Maharajji with us. So one day, Maharajji had said to Ram Dass, “Ram Dass, you’re a saint. You shouldn’t touch money.” So, Ram Dass gave his money to Lakshman, Raghu’s brother, to be his bag man, you know, buy him tickets and food, et cetera. And then he said, “You shouldn’t drive. Give him the keys.” That was me. So, I got the keys to the car, and I got my first name, “Driver.” I thought, “Oh, that’s pretty cool. Yeah.” So then, one day Ram Dass wakes up in Nainital, which in those days we were still staying in the town, and all the Westerners had left. We, you know, I had driven the bus loaded with like 20 people hanging off the Volkswagen bus. And he wakes up alone in Nainital with no money, no car, and he was pissed. So, he had to walk to the temple over the mountains. It’s like four-hour walk, three and a half, four hours, and he’s fuming the whole way. And he walks in the temple, and the guy, one of the guys that he hated the most stood up and handed him a plate of food. We’re being fed in the courtyard. Maharajji’s sitting there, and we’re sitting on the other side of the courtyard, and they’re giving us prasad. So, this guy stands up and gives Ram Dass a plate of food. Ram Dass takes the food and throws it in the guy’s face. Maharajji goes, “Ram Dass, something wrong? Come here.” So, he goes and sits down. “What’s wrong?” Ram Dass says, “I can’t stand impurity in other people, and I can’t stand it in myself.” So, Maharajji looks him up and down a few times, and he says, “I don’t see any impurity.” So, Ram Dass starts to cry. And Maharajji says, “Ram Dass, love everyone and tell the truth.” Now Ram Dass says, “The truth is I don’t love everyone.” Maharajji moved closer, nose to nose, eye to eye. “Ram Dass, love everyone and tell the truth.” So, by the end of his life, that’s the state he was in. It was so extraordinarily beautiful. Really, it was so beautiful. The truth was he really was in that love with everyone. It was so beautiful. But it took him a long time, and he used to say, you know, “The stroke saved me.” He said, “The stroke saved my life.” Because there was a core of stuff in there that he just couldn’t get to, and maybe none of us can get to it, but with him, because of his being kind of an older being in a sense, that core was holding him back, but the stroke just blew it up. It blew it up, and he never, he didn’t have any time off. You know, twenty-four-seven, three sixty-five, he’s in that chair, he’s in pain, he’s got diabetic neuropathy, he can’t move, he can’t this, he couldn’t, you know. But he surrendered fully, almost fully, ninety-nine percent. One time, he used to go into the water on Monday mornings. They used to go down to the beach, and he’d go out in these floats, you know, with these tubes and float in the water, and it was the only time he could be free of the weight of his body, you know? So, I usually caught up with him a little later because I don’t get up so early. I’m walking down to the beach, and I see in the corner of the parking lot, he’s sitting alone in a car, and the door is open to the car, and he’s just sitting there. So, I walk over, and he’s fuming. He’s just like… So, I just stood there, and he looks at me and he says, “I’m a fake, and you’re a fake too.” So, I looked at him, and I said, “Yeah, but we’re real fakes.” He almost fell out of the car laughing so hard. We had a lot of fun together. But really by the end of his life, he was so deep into it. It was so beautiful. So sometimes, you know, we don’t know what we have to go through. We don’t know why we’re going through it, but we have to get through it the best we can. And so, let’s try to have some gratitude for even being semi-conscious about who we are and what we’re doing and what we have, you know? Because most of us have it pretty easy, despite all the emotional bullshit, which we all have. Most of us. Some of us really have, are paying…. I have a very dear friend who’s very, very, very, very, very ill. Just what she goes through in 10 minutes, I don’t think I’ll go through in 20 lifetimes But she knows, she really knows that this is… she’s burning off a lot of negative karmas, and she’s okay with it. She’s so okay with it, sometimes it pisses me off. But she’s really okay with it, and it’s extraordinary, the inner strength that she has to get through the day and not give up. Whoa. It’s amazing. So, you know, all we can do is the best we can do. Q: Hi. You talk a lot about just now being okay with what we’re going through, what’s happening and- KD: I lie. Q: And I think obviously that takes a great deal of surrender. I tend to have control issues, you know, with God, the universe, et cetera, when it comes to, “Hey, where’s my car?” Or, “Where’s my new job?” Or something. Do you have like, a how-to guide to surrender for someone that might have a control issue perhaps a little bit? KD: Get over it. Look around, girl. What are you controlling? Nothing. Absolutely none, not even your thoughts, which is, like, the deepest thing that you are aware of right now, right? So just recognize it. Recognize how silly you are all the time, thinking you’re taking… You, you actually can do something about anything, other than letting go and being present and doing the best you can. It’s a delusion. We have this delusion and, and that prevents us from actually working on ourselves, you know, because when the shit hits the fan, you’ve got to go through it, and you got to have the strength and the courage to do the best you can with it. There’s no option. So, while we’re kind of in this comfortable, semi-comfortable state… “Life’s not that bad. I don’t have any major diseases. I have food. I have a…” You know, we think we’re having issues. Wait till the shit hits the fan, then you see what issues you have. But in the meantime, you can do some practice, and practice letting go and coming back, letting go and coming back, because that’s what you’ll need. That’s what you need now, and that’s what you’ll need now later, because later will be now, later, and you’ll need this then later, now. So good luck Q: Hi, KD. I’m a big fan. Thank you for everything you do, your voice, your existence. And the question I have is, while you’re chanting, w…

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Call and Response Podcast Special Edition | Removing the Triggers May 26, 2026

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Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das | Special Edition – Removing the Triggerscover photo: Lonnie Raffray This special edition comes with a special offer from our friends at SoHum Mountain Healing Resort ~When life moves too fast, the body and heart begin to whisper for rest. Ayurveda is the science of life, teaching us how to live in balance with our true nature.SoHum mountain healing resort offers Ayurvedic PanchaKarma detoxification retreats in a calm, supportive environment. You can learn more at SoHumhealing.com and use the code KrishnaDasPK2026 for $500 off on your PanchaKarma retreat! “Through the name, you can actually remove the triggers for those thoughts. It’s a different practice. but pranayama is very useful in calming … It can calm the mind and the thoughts, slow down the thoughts, and give you a little hit. But there’s no destruction of the thinking mechanism or the triggers for those thoughts. It’s temporary, very temporary. But the name is different. That’s what they say. I can’t prove it to you.” – Krishna Das Watch the video: TRANSCRIPT Q: Hi. KD: Yeah Q: Could you tell us about the saints that you met this summer? KD: No. Yes, I can tell you, you’ll never find them. Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you about one baba that we met. He’s easily over 100. He looks like he’s over 100, too. He couldn’t sit up straight, and it … He was in this … his devotees built, like, a little, small little temple room for him, and he would sit in front of the murti and just give out prasad all day. But we walked in, and then there’s, like, maybe 30, 40 people in this tiny room, people sitting on the floor, talking on their phones, dogs walking through, the ladies stalking the men, coming and going, and it was like, it was like walking through somebody’s living room, you know? And yet … But the guy was sitting there, you know? And, we brought some ladoos, and we held them. He couldn’t pick his head up. He’s, you know, he was just sitting like this, but he took a pinch from each tray of ladoo. And his devotee said, “Oh, he accepted your prasad. That’s very good.” And we just sat down on the bench there for about half an hour and just watched this crazy scene, like a circus, you know, people talking, coming in, the baba sitting there, you know. And then we left. It was great. There was a beautiful banyan tree just outside the little room, right on the banks of this river. So, he must’ve been, like, sitting under the tree for 50 years or so, you know. People started coming to him for this and that, and then they built him a room, a temple, and he just sits there. Fantastic. Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of beings like that all around. And when I was in this place called Amarkantak many years ago, the, the baba I was with was 163, and he was taking us through the jungle, and he was pointing out all these herbs and saying, “You know, this is a cure for this kind of cancer, and this is a cure for that, and this and that, and this and that.” And then there was these little small hills, and he said, “You see those hills?” And he said … I said, “Yeah.” He said, “They’re not hills. Inside that hill, it’s all crystal, and in the center, there’s a yogi who’s been meditating for thousands of years.” Wow. And there were a few of them, you know. He pointed to this one and that one. And then we were walking down the river, and we came to this little area that had a short fence around it, and it was a tiny little ashram, and there was this beautiful baba standing, sitting there, very old, long hair, and very thin, sitting very straight up. And we walked by, and we pranamed to him, and he pranamed to us, and somehow or other he recognized that this baba I was with, who he was. And he said, “Oh, I’m so happy to meet you. I’ve been wanting to meet you for so long,” and, you know, and he told us … He told us two things. He said, “I’ve been going into samadhi for so long these days that I told my devotees not to burn the body until the ants move in.” Okay. Because he goes, “Who knows?” He went weeks at a time. He may not be going … He was not breathing. He’s just gone, you know? And they’ll go, “Maybe he’s dead now? Or wait, did the ants move in? No, not yet. Okay, we’ll wait.” But then he said, “On full moon nights, he’s a … There’s a hill, you know… This is like a little valley with a river, right? And we’re walking down the river. So, on either side, there’s these kind of … So he said on full moon nights, he’s sitting in samadhi facing the river, but from up the hill behind him, he said these two beings kind of float down. One is a male, a yogi about 16 feet tall, and the other one’s a yogini, and she was about 12 feet tall, and they silently float down. And as they pass where the ashram is, they open his eyes so he can see them, and they go down all the way to the river and bathe, and he’s sitting there, you know. And then they come back, and as soon as they pass him, his eyes close again. And he goes back into samadhi. They open his eyes so he can have their darshan. You know, India. It’s just like, what is going on here? Audience Member: You got some real good LSD. KD: Say what? Audience Member: I said you got some real good LSD. KD: Yeah. Yeah, so things like that. Q: So, speaking of samadhi… KD: Where are you? Where are you? Oh, hi. Q: In Flow of Grace, I think you talked about somebody who would, who went in front of you in samadhi, and you said you experienced it once while on LSD and the second time without it. But have you experienced it since then, and can you describe what does going into samadhi and what does that feeling even mean? KD: What, somebody, you’re talking about somebody else? Q: Yeah, in Flow of Grace- Yeah … you said somebody in front of you was teaching you how to go in to meditate and then go into samadhi, and they actually just, like- KD: No, no. Mr. Tiwari was teaching me a prayerd, and he just went into samadhi singing it … Q: Ah. KD: Yeah, that’s it. Okay, Q: Ok, sorry. So can you describe, like- KD: No … what does that mean? I don’t know what it means. I’ve never been there myself, so what can I tell you? Q: But you said you did, right? Like, once, what- KD: Maybe I lied. I don’t know. Or maybe I’m lying now, I don’t know. Q: You’re lying now. KD: You think so? No, first of all, I don’t know. I don’t know what samadhi is. No. I don’t. I’ve had some experiences, but mostly they’re not, describable, actually. There’s been times when I’ve completely disappeared, as far as I know. And then, but I’m still here, so I couldn’t have completely disappeared. So, I don’t know what to tell you. Q: What does disappearing mean? Like, what do you mean when you say, you know, “I completely dis-” KD: You could say “unconscious.” You could say “unconscious,” but it’s not really exactly what it was. But it felt like, kind of… It’s, like, not… It’s like when you go to sleep, but you’re not asleep. You see, that’s why I don’t talk about it. It doesn’t make any sense. Q: Does it happen while doing, the kirtan? KD: It doesn’t happen while driving, as far as I know. Q: Does it happen while doing kirtan? KD: I don’t know. I don’t know what happens when I do kirtan. I’m doing kirtan. You want me to think about it? I won’t. People ask me a lot of times, “What is it, what do you feel when you sing?” How the fuck am I supposed to know? I’m singing. I’m not writing down what happened… what’s happening. Whatever happens, I just let it go. I don’t make a note. Hello, goodbye, Ram, that’s it. And then, but you’re here, that’s the difference. You’re more present. You’re aware of the sound of the name, and, you know, that the bass player’s fucking up again. All kinds of things happening. He can take it. Hello. I woke him up. So, yeah. When you chant, anything you think, feel, if it’s not the name, you just let it go. Because, you see, intellectually, it doesn’t make any sense, because when I say if it’s not the name… okay, the name. But the implication is that that’s just another thing, but it isn’t. That’s the problem with words. You come back home to yourself through the sound of the name, and when you’re home, you’re at ease. Anything can come and go. It makes no difference. You’re home. So, thoughts, emotions, memories, fears, all kinds of things come, but they come and they go. They just flow through. They’re not thinking you. It’s different. It’s just, it’s a figure-ground relationship change, in a sense. You see, this is why we don’t talk about it, because now you’ll think about it while you’re singing. And you’ll think you really should be thinking about it, but you shouldn’t be. You just do it, and whatever you’re thinking, let it go. That’s all. But we think so quickly. There’s so many thoughts that we let go, but we’re still thinking. But that’s why you just keep coming back to the sound of the name. Either outside or inside, it’s still a sound. The silent name is always going on within us, but we have to tune to that. Q: What is the role of other people in all of this? What KD: There are no other people. Q: Well- KD: Okay … Q: We can react to people, we can need people, we can be each other. And in this process that you’re talking about, I wonder how you experience the people around you in the practice. KD: You know, Ram Dass used to talk a lot about roles and souls. Basically, when you say “people,” there’s two levels to “people.” There’s the role of the person, who the person thinks they are. And then there’s the soul. And the soul is the same in every being. There’s no difference between souls. Soul is pure light, pure clarity, pure being, pure awareness. That’s the same in everyone. What’s different is what’s laid over that. So, as we, as you go through your sadhana, your practice, what you see in other people changes, and also what you see in yourself changes. And so how you relate to the people that enter your awareness changes, too. If you’re seeing souls, which is a very advanced state, you’re experiencing oneness, and you might be able to see what that person thinks, who they think they are. But you’re not fooled by that because you see their essence. But until you see your own essence, you can’t see anybody else’s essence. You’re just projecting. But when your essence is open, or when the mirror of the heart is clear of its stuff, then what’s reflected is accurate and deeper than the stuff, because… So, at first, we are always in reaction mode to other people’s stuff. Our stuff doesn’t like your stuff, you know. “But I love you, but my stuff really doesn’t like your stuff, so get the fuck out of here.” But, as you get less attached and identify with your own stuff, you see other people differently. You experience things differently. People who were bothersome before, it doesn’t bother you quite that way. Or who you identified as something before, you don’t see them the same way. You’re not stuck in that reactive mode. It opens up, and there’s much more space in it, and you could call that love. There’s much more acceptance. You can see people’s pain. You can see why they do what they do to each other and themselves, and it opens your own heart, and you no longer judge and react against that because you see how people, what they do, and you see yourself. You know? Okay, we’re pretty… We think we’re on the path. We’re making some effort. All the people… This is a very small percentage of people on the planet doing this. Look what they’re doing. It’s horrific. But they can’t help themselves, and that’s horrific. It’s terrible. But we can barely help ourselves once in a while, and yet we’re ready to judge other people and react all the time. Right? So… not easy. That’s why we cultivate things like kindness and compassion and loving kindness, because something’s going be going on in there all the time. If we just allow those habitual reactive things to go on unimpeded, they just create more of that. So, we try to, through practice, we try to kind of sneak in a little kindness, sneak in a little compassion. We kind of develop different habits of thinking, because it’s just habits all the time. Mindless, stupid, habitual, reactive habits. That’s how we go through the day, most of us, our whole lives. So, what we want to do is create different habits that will bring to us what we want, will free us from that other stuff. That’s what cultivating compassion is about, that’s what loving kindness practice is about, that’s what the repetition of the name is about. Reminding us to come home again and again. Q: Hello. KD: Hi. Q: I have a question about, just the … I guess it’s more like a pragmatic question about arriving at the place that you were just speaking of in yourself, emptying your mind. We have the same thoughts over and over again every day. You know, tens of thousands that are the same as the day before, and letting that go has been really a lot of work for me for many years. And being able to just listen, you know, to nothing. My journey has been through, I think, chanting more than anything, aside from breathwork. And so, I’m just wondering, I don’t know how much breathwork you’ve done in your work with chanting, and how that relates, and if you have any advice on how breathwork and chanting work together, physically as well as just in the sense of letting go. For me, it’s been very helpful, more so than what the deities mean and- KD: So, when, when you mean breathwork, what are you talking about? Q: Well, when we’re chanting back and forth, doing breath holds, like really breathing in, belly breathing, and diaphragmatic breathing, and then holding when, bringing it to the top when, when you are singing, and then out breath when, when we’re chanting outwards- and using the breath to, you know, deepen the chant and allow the thoughts to stop. And just how … has that practice worked for you? Do you know … Like, what do you know about that, and how that works together? KD: I know it ain’t chanting. That’s all I can tell you. Q: You might just do it naturally, because you’re- KD: Yeah, I’m not … I don’t think about that. But breathwork, you can suppress thoughts by calming them, the breathing. But they … You don’t kill them, they just come back. Through the name, you can actually remove the triggers for those thoughts. It’s a different practice. but pranayama is very useful in calming … It can calm the mind and the thoughts, slow down the thoughts, and give you a little hit. But there’s no destruction of the thinking mechanism or the triggers for those thoughts. It’s temporary, very temporary. But the name is different. That’s what they say. I can’t prove it to you. Q: Thank you. KD: But that’s what they say. So, whatever happens, I mean, if you’re chanting the way I chant, I don’t think about anything. I don’t worry about what my breath is doing. I might have to worry about what my stomach is doing, depending on where I’ve been, but, you know, because I have to sing for two more hours before I can get to a bathroom, so. But other than that, it’s pretty much, you know, I don’t really think about it. So, I would, I mean, if you’re … I would experiment a little bit without thinking about breath. Because if you’re thinking about the breath, you’re not remembering the name. You can’t … The mind cannot do two … It’s called “mind moments.” There’s, like, millions of mind moments in the blink of an eye, and the mind can only be in one place at a time, even though it’s, like, a billionth of a second. So, if you’re thinking about breath, you’re not aware of the name while you’re thinking about the breath. You might think you are, but this is a Buddhist, you know, Abhidharma, the Buddhist psychology. They, they, you know, they got it together. They tell you. So, if you’re thinking about the breath, then you’re, you’re not aware of the sound of the name. So, you might want to just experiment a little bit and see how it goes. Q: Thank you. Appreciate it. Q: So, when you were with Maharajji, or the entire group was…

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Call and Response Podcast Special Edition | Saint Junky May 06, 2026

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Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das | Special Edition – Saint Junky This special edition comes with a special offer from our friends at SoHum Mountain Healing Resort ~When life moves too fast, the body and heart begin to whisper for rest. Ayurveda is the science of life, teaching us how to live in balance with our true nature.SoHum mountain healing resort offers Ayurvedic PanchaKarma detoxification retreats in a calm, supportive environment. You can learn more at SoHumhealing.com and use the code KrishnaDasPK2026 for $500 off on your PanchaKarma retreat! “When we sit down to chant, the biggest obstacles are our expectations. We think something’s supposed to happen. Problem is, it already happened. We’re here, but we don’t know it. So, what we’re trying to do is come back home. We’re not looking for any particular kind of experience. You might be looking for bliss or ecstasy, but that actually might be just running away from suffering. And you can’t run away from things, nor can you hold onto things.” – Krishna Das Cover photo: Lonnie Raffray Watch the video: TRANSCRIPT: I remember when Ram Dass, we were at Brighton Bush. This is a long time ago. Soon after the stroke, a few years after the stroke he decided that he would try to talk with a group without smoking dope for the first time in 60 years, or something like that. So he was in total panic, right? “What am I going to say? What do I do?” You know? I say, “Look, just go out and say, ‘we will sit in silence until someone has something to say.’” And he said, “oh, that’ll never work.” I said, “just try it. Just try it.” So, he came out and he said, “we will sit in silence until someone has something…” Everyone, all the hands went up like in about a quarter of a second. He was worried that, you know, nobody would say anything. So, could be nappy time for the Das, too. You never know. Q: So you didn’t smoke today? KD: Huh? Did I smoke today? I, not only did I not smoke today, it’s probably been about 40 years or maybe more… What am I talking about? 50 years. Hi. Q: Hi. I hope this isn’t too silly, but… KD: I hope it is. Turn it up. If it’s silly, I really want to hear it. Q: Okay. I’ve always wondered, after Maharajji gave you the orders to sing, what you sounded like when you first started. KD: You’ll never know. I just… Q: Does she know? You know? KD: No, she doesn’t know. Q: Maybe she can do an impression KD: Somewhere, actually… the first thing I recorded was probably about a year and a half or two years before One Track Heart was recorded. We recorded it out in Taos, New Mexico, and how should I put it? It’s cringe-worthy. It’s so horrible. I can’t even bear to think about it. And even…. you don’t want to hear all this shit. Oh, you do? I even don’t like One Track Heart. I’m sorry. Except for the Devi Puja was very good. Because I can hear my mind, you see> I was thinking, how do you do this? What should I do? And I could hear my mind. Every time I listen to that, it’s like, ooh. But by Pilgrim Heart, that was a whole other thing. And then from then on, God knows what it is, I hope. So, yeah. There’s just so much less in between my ears these days. It’s scary sometimes. Anybody else? Yeah. It’s been a strange… long, strange trip. I mean, Ram Dass and I, in Maui, after breakfast, we would sit at the table together for hours and hours. Everybody else would go away, and we’d just kind of sit in silence, and talk, then silence, then talk. So, one day I turned the phone on… a recording and we sat there for hours. So, when it was over, I said, “you know, I recorded this.” And he goes, “Oh.” I said, “What should I call it?” He said, call it, “Dick And Jeff’s journey to,” what did he say… Oh, “Dick and Jeff’s journey to Soul Land.” Yeah, what a journey. Q: Hello, Krishna Das. I’ve waited 20 years to say this. You’re on my bucket list and I’m sorry, I’m going to tell everybody how old you are right now, but… KD: Don’t be sorry. I’m still alive. Be sorry if I wasn’t. Q: Last year when I realized you were 75, I knew I had to come and see you after 20 years. Because I’m like, “he might be gone!” KD: I’ve got at least 20 minutes left. Q: I wanted to give you a hug. I’m like, “oh my God, you’re still alive. Thank you for breathing. Thank you for continuing to breathe. I know it’s an effort, but make that effort.” KD: I’m actually not any more alive than I was before I had this body, but that’s okay. Q: That’s good. That’s good. Actually, I have a question. I’ve been studying Sikhism, I’m sorry, and I noticed that the name’s Krishna Das… KD: I’m sorry. No, I’m just teasing. Q: Krishna Das and Ram Dass. I noticed that Ros. Was a name that came from the Sikh tradition and I was wondering if … KD: It didn’t come from the Sikh tradition. It just means servant of God. It’s from all the traditions. Q: Okay. KD: All the same. There is Guru Ram Dass, of course, in the Sikh tradition. But the name itself is, it’s just like John or Frank or Tony in English. Q: So, there wasn’t like a significance to why Neem Karoli Baba named you guys Krishna Das and Ram Dass? KD: Well, the significance is that Maharajji is Hanuman. And that’s the Ram, the tradition of Ram, and Das means “servant.” Hanuman is the servant. So, part of that lineage. So Dasses and the non Dasses are all part of that with Maharajji. Q: Thank you. KD: You’re welcome. Was that worth 20 years waiting? Q: One of them, one of the things. Just being in front of you is enough. KD: Oh, really? He can’t pay for that. I mean, how do you get something like that? Q: So, God bless you. Thank you for all your music. Thank you for a lifetime of music. You’ve changed my life, and you’ll continue to change my life for the rest of my life, so I appreciate it. Q: I was introduced to your chanting when I was 12 years old, and then… KD: two years ago? Q: no, no. Oh no, no. 15. And then about five years later I got involved, heavily involved in a spiritual institution where I did kirtan a lot, both leading and just being in the audience, responding, but it was an environment where there was, it was just very damaging and destructive and there was a lot of ego and spiritual bypassing. And now that I’m out of it, I’m feeling that really damaged my relationship to the holy names of all kinds. And I still want, of course, to cultivate a relationship with them in my heart. But as I’m starting to be exposed to kirtan outside of that environment that I was in, I’m just feeling all of the blockages. And I’m wondering if you have any suggestions or advice on how to…yeah… repair that KD: First of all, let’s just think about chanting for a second. When we sit down to chant, the biggest obstacles are our expectations. We think something’s supposed to happen. Problem is, it already happened. We’re here, but we don’t know it. So, what we’re trying to do is come back home. We’re not looking for any particular kind of experience. You might be looking for bliss or ecstasy, but that actually might be just running away from suffering. And you can’t run away from things, nor can you hold onto things. So, when you sit down to chant or remember the name, silently or outwardly, you just… when you notice your thinking, whether it’s positive or negative, or fantasy or fear, you notice it, and you come back to the name. You see, you can always come back. That’s the beauty of the name. You can always come back from whatever you’re thinking. You have to notice that you’re thinking. So, you notice you’re stuck. You have all these negative stories that are going on. Okay, so come back. That’s all you have to do. And the more you do that, the more often we come back, the less glued we are to those stories, and then they’ll eventually, they just come through like Indian food. Right through. But they call it practice for a reason. It’s a repetition of training ourselves to let go again and again. And you might think, “oh, it’s unfortunate that I have all this negativity about the name,” but it doesn’t matter what the negativity is about. It’s not really about the name. It’s about your experience with that group and the names involved with that. But it doesn’t really matter what the subject matter is of the negativity. As soon as you notice that you’re stuck, you’re actually not stuck at that moment. I mean, the mist of the stuck might be around, but you actually, if you’re noticing, you’re no longer that stuck. That’s when you rededicate yourself just to the sound of the name. You don’t push it away and you don’t grab onto the name. You just remember it. You see, inside, everything’s totally cool. It’s just the next bump out, we’re totally fucked. Everybody’s the same, you see. It doesn’t matter what the subject matter is. Everybody’s screwed up, one thing or another, but the letting go is exactly the same for everybody. And here’s the other thing. So, you sit down, you’re going to practice and you, you know, all of a sudden, you’ve got all this stuff going on, and then you notice it. How did that happen? That you noticed you were stuck or that you noticed you were thinking? You woke up for a second. Now nothing can happen without a cause. Can the cause of waking up be “asleepness?” No. The cause of waking up can only be that we planted seeds of waking up previously. So, that’s already working. Underneath what you think you are and what you think you’re doing, there’s a whole karmic flow going on. So, you just keep letting go into that again and again, and you don’t try to push away the negativity. Look at it. Allow it to be. You can really learn a lot. You know, like one of the lamas I study with talks about the handshake practice. He says, “well, okay, you see something comes in, like some negative thing, a negative feeling, and you go, ‘oh, hi. How you doing? I know you, yeah, you weren’t you here just 10 minutes ago? I think you were, yeah. You know,’ so you say, ‘come on, come on in. Have a cup of tea. What do you like in your tea? Poison. Okay, I got some of that. Oh, okay. Never mind. I won’t give you poison. Just come in, have some something. How about sugar? That’s pretty bad for you.’” But the thing is, don’t be afraid. You’re here. Whatever happened, happened, but you’re still here. You’re here now, and 10 minutes from now you’ll still be here now. And tomorrow and next week you’ll be here now. So, it’s just a matter of remembering to let go, and just be. Don’t try to make something happen. It already happened, and nothing we can create in our minds or you know, “I want this kind of feeling. I want to have this.” None that could never last, because we created it. This is why Groucho Marx is my guru. He used to say, “I’ll never join any club that I’m invited to to join.” And that’s perfect, because I don’t want to join anything I can create in my mind, or my emotions. It won’t last. But what last is what is here now, and what will always be right here now, which is our true nature, who we really are. So, it’s good. And then you have resentment for being stuck. But there’s a secret in that, and the secret is, the lesson of betrayal is trust. Not only other people’s betrayal, but we gave ourselves away. So that’s how we learn to trust. We forgive ourselves for being, how should we put it… assholes, and needy and greedy, and wanting this and wanting that, and all the reasons we would join any kind of group, and be attracted to that underneath the surface. We have to forgive ourselves for that, because it’s just like everybody, we’re just like everybody else. But the lesson that we learn, that’s imprinted on us from betraying our own hearts, is learning how to trust that heart, because that’s what you’re doing now. It’s just a little unfamiliar. That’s all. But that’s okay. Q: Thank you. KD: Yeah. I was in a cult myself, you know? So, I know what it’s like. Fun. Q: Thank you. Hi. KD: Hi. Q: Two things. One may be silly. And then the other one’s more practical. The first one is, I think I remember seeing or reading that Maharajji threw fruit at you. KD: Everybody. Q: Right. If you were thinking? KD: Anytime. Q: Anytime? KD: He needed no reason to throw fruit. He wasn’t throwing it at you. He was distributing Prasad in all directions, but if He wanted to, it could hit you right in the head, you know? Q: Okay. Maybe I misunderstood. KD: Yeah, it wasn’t a violent act. Q: Okay. Oh, because then, yeah, I wanted to ask if it worked. KD: Sometimes. No, it didn’t work. It could be a wake up call, you know, like bringing you back from outer space. Because you’re sitting in front of him thinking about, you know, some movie you saw back in New York three years ago. Boom. Q: Okay. KD: But very gentle. I mean, yeah. However, I once got hit in the heart with a hard unripe guava from about 50 yards away by by a baba who was 270 years old. Q: Wow. KD: He hit me, and I turned away from it, and I went, what? And he was so far away I could hardly see him. You know, there were like a thousand people there, like, you know, and Maharajji, you just kind of…. Q: Oh, okay. KD: Soft bananas. Usually not hard. Q: I’m going to update my visual. KD: Yeah. Okay. Okay. And the other question was, I have a family. I have three kids, and many people in my house and I don’t really have like a sanctuary that I couldn’t go to and do this. And so, and I’m from Iceland, so I… KD: That’s what the bathroom is for. Q: True. And I’m from Iceland and I do the Thursdays a lot. KD: Oh, I love Iceland. I’ve been there so many times. Did I see you there? Q: No. KD: No? I love it there. Q: I found you after. But, and so it’s at like midnight or something and sometimes or 11 at night. And so I’ll go for walks in the empty cold tundra with my dog and so I’m walking and moving when I’m listening and chanting. Is that okay? KD: Sure. Any, anytime you remember the name is good. Yeah. You’re planting a seed. You know, if you’re walking on a tight rope, 3000 feet off the ground, maybe you should pay attention more to the rope. But you know, if you fall, the name will be there.So that’s good. Q: Thank you. KD: Where, where in Iceland are you from? Q: I’m from the north, but I live in Reykjavik now. KD: Very good. I loved it there. Q: will you come back? KD: You know, this is a country that the government, they believe in gnomes and stuff like that, you know, and there’s these certain rock formations that they believe these gnomes live in. So, if the government’s building a road, they build the road around the foundation. Not like America where they destroy cities just to put a road up. You know? They move 50,000 people just to make a highway. In Iceland, they go around it like that. It was so cool. Yeah, I had a great time there. I loved it. Was I there twice, or once? I don’t remember. Once maybe. Q: What were we like? KD: We were very nice. Q: I’ve just never seen a harmonium or anything like this there, so I was just curious. KD: This one group, this one spiritual group brought me over. But we sang, I sang in that beautiful new… I think it just built when I got there. Q: And will you come back? KD: Yeah. You know, it is. Iceland is amazing. We went down to the beach, it was like 110 degrees, and then we got into a car, and we drove maybe 15 minutes up to this canyon, and then we got into this machine. It had these paddles, but they’re like 15 feet wide, right? These big paddles going around like this, and we get up on this thing. And it starts going up the mountain. In 10 minutes we were in a blizzard and it was like 30 below. Unbelievable. We went up right into a glacier. It was extraordinary. Within like, you know, 10 minutes, you’re like on the beach, then you’re in a glacier. It was amazing. What a place. Yeah. Good. Q: Thank you. KD: Yeah. Nice place. I love that. Q: I have a Haman Chalisa question. Um, So I enjoy chanting, and like today I loved it, but a lot of times I mumble through certain parts because I just can’t pronounce everything. And when COVID hit, then you talked about th…

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Call and Response Podcast Ep. 86 | Faith & Courage Jan 20, 2026

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Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das Ep 86 |Faith & Courage “I think of spiritual life as a ripening process more than anything else. You plant the seeds and as time goes on, they grow, and they literally change you from the inside. They change your experience. They change how you see yourself. They change how you go through your day. As these seeds that we ourselves plant along, with the grace to plant them in the first place, they change the way we navigate our lives. They change how we see other people. It’s like you’re born and there’s no sun and you grow up and it’s dark all the time, and you think this is the way it is because it’s always been that way. This is the way it is. And then, the sun starts to rise, and a little light comes into the world and all of a sudden everything looks different.” – Krishna Das Any questions or anything? Anybody but Robert. I’m not qualified to answer his questions. Okay. I’ll be brave. Give him the mic. Give him the mic. I’ll be brave. Robert had a question. Let me take a deep breath here. RS: It’s a very simple question. KD: I’ll give you a very simple answer. RS: (Someone I know) is in India right now, and he texted me a photo of the Hanumanji at the Lucknow Neem Karoli Baba Temple. Ha. RS: So, I wondered, and he was saying that Babaji had spent some time in Lucknow. I knew he spent time in Allahabad, , I knew he spent time in Brindavan, but I didn’t know about Lucknow. KD: Oh sure. RS: If you could tell me about Lucknow. Is that an easy enough question? KD: I think that’s okay. I think I handle that. Maharajji spent a lot of time in up UP, Uttar Pradesh, it was called, at and now it’s also, called Uttaranchal, the mountains. He was mostly, most of the life that we saw of him was in UP, Lucknow, Khanpoor, Aligarh, He was everywhere it seems. There’s a very old temple, a Hanuman temple in Lucknow, in Aminabad, a very ancient Hanumanji temple, and he used to spend a lot of time there. It used to be outside of town and now it’s… but Tiwari told me an interesting story. He said before this temple was built, there was an old Hanuman temple right by the river near this, the new temple, and he and Maharajji were walking by there, and Maharajji said to Tiwari, “Okay, do your puja here, your Shiva puja, right now.” Now, this means like three and a half, four hours of puja, and he had no book. He had to do it all by… But Tiwari said, “No, I’m not going to do that.” “I said, ‘Do it! You do it, what I say.” “I don’t care what you say, I’m not going to do it.” “Why?” He said, “Because the minute I sit down, you are going to run away. And you run away. You’ll leave me sitting here, and once I start my puja, I must finish. So, I’ll be sitting here for four hours by myself.” “Nay nay. I won’t run away.” “Yes, you will.” “I won’t.” “Yes, you will. Okay, promise me.” He held his ears like this. This is like cross my heart and help to die in India. And they sat down, and Tiwari started the puja and Maharajji sat down, and He sat there the whole time right next to him and Tiwari’s doing the puja. The other thing about it, Tiwari’s puja guru was also a very great saint, and he told Tiwari that when he did pu ja, he had to do it at the top of his lungs. And his voice was something like a chainsaw. Oh God, it was incredible, but like a chainsaw. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Okay. But anyhow, so, this was right by the end, the last minute, the last “Om,” and Maharajji lept up, and said, “You miserable shit. You made me stay here and I have to have so much to do!” And he ran away. And that was right down below where the temple is now. There was an old Hanumanji there. He had so many devotees from Lucknow and all those places. Kanpur… The man who was the manager after the temple was built, the first manager of the temple, had been the head jailer of Central jail in Agra. His name was Mahotra, and whenever somebody needed to be kind of, reigned in, Maharajji said, “I’m sending you to Central jail.” And he would send him to the Lucknow Temple, to this guy. Maharajji had his own room in Central jail in Agra, his own cell that was kept empty for him. And he used to just go in there and they’d lock him in, but they’d find him walking around all night, and one time there was this, he had a devotee who was a really big dacoit, a bad guy, a criminal, and who had two guns, one registered with the government and one unregistered, which was for killing people. But he could sing the Ramayana, the Ramacharitamanasa very beautifully. And he had his own village in the jungle. It was like, he was like a king in his own village, and so he finally got caught and he was in central jail. So, Maharajji went there, and He said to him, He goes up to his cell and he says, “I know you’re planning to escape. Don’t do it. Because if you escape my other devotee, who’s the head of the jail, will lose his job, and who’s going to support his family? Don’t do it.” So, the guy literally didn’t escape, and one year later he was pardoned, and he was released forever. That’s faith. Because he could escape. He could. He was a really powerful bandit, a big guy. The way these people, I mean, this is how we learned about him. We watched how the Indian people, we observed, how they interacted with him, how they saw him. The reason we have the Hanuman Chalisa is because we saw they saw him as Hanuman. They Worshipped Maharajji as Hanuman himself. And look, I’ve said before. We used to come to the temple every day. And they would give us this little yellow booklet with a picture of a flying monkey on it. I had like at least a hundred of these booklets in my room when finally, one day I said, “What is this?” Right? And they said, “Oh, it’s a hymn to Hanuman.” Oh. So, I thought, wow, if we learn this, we could sing it to Maharajji. We knew he wanted to spend more time with us, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. And we thought, okay, if we learn this, we’ll be able to sing to him and he’ll like that. And that’s exactly what happened. And here we are. We’re doing it now. It all came from that little yellow booklet and that one little thought that he finally got into my thick skull. But his old devotees, the Pukka devotees, the older ones, they worshipped him as Shiva. There was one guy, a very poor man who came from Aligarh. His name was Vishwambhar. I will never forget this guy. He used to come with a basket full of Puja articles, the trays and the plates and the lamps and the things in the ghee and everything. And he’d come outside Maharajji’s door and he’d prepare everything and he’d just stand there and wait. And Maharajji would be inside. He’d be saying, “Oh, he’s here and he’s got this and that. And he brought this and that. And he brought this kind of Prasad and that kind of Prasad.” He said, “Oh, I won’t go out. Okay, I’ll go out. No, I won’t go out. Okay, I’ll go.” So, he’d come out, and this guy, he would do his puja and he’d be weeping, right? I mean, it was such an extraordinary sight. And he’d be doing his puja and chanting these mantras and weeping. Weeping. And finally at the end, he’d start doing the Arati and he’d, he would just go into Samadhi, and he’d just be standing there like that. And then he’d be kind of crazy. He came up to the westerners and say, “Who are you people? Are you the gods who have taken forms to be with Maharajji? Who are you?” And Tiwari was like that, my Indian father was like that. He’d been with Maharajji for 40 years. The first time he met him, he was a school kid, maybe about eight years old. Maharajji had started coming, showing up in the hills, but he was kind of hanging out in the jungle, and he wouldn’t be with any adults, but he would come to see the school kids and he would do acrobatics for them and they would give him their lunches and stuff like that so he’d get something to eat. But he used to be able to put his arms on the ground like this and do a full somersault without picking his arms up, like whoop. And the kids, so, the kids would give him stuff to eat. That’s nothing. Sai Baba used to take his intestines out and wash them and put ’em back in. Shirdi Sai Baba. He’d take his arms off and put them back on. I mean, if it’s a dream, you can do whatever you want in your dream. It’s a dream for them. Q: You’ve been talking about the faith that you witnessed around you there. Yeah. Q: But could you talk about the evolution of your own faith? Because when you first arrived, you couldn’t have had much faith and then somehow you got to a point where you would do what He told you to do. Could you talk about that evolution? Let me think about it. It’s interesting. I was just on Maui, where Ram Dass lived the last 20 plus years of his life, and we were very close for many years, over 50 years. I first met Ram Dass in the winter of ’68-‘69. He was living at his father’s place in New Hampshire, and I heard about him from my friends, and I went to see him. And I walked into the room where he was sitting. He was sitting on the bed, and the bed was on the floor, and he had his eyes closed. He was leaning against the wall, and I walked in the room and without a word being spoken, without eye contact, the minute I walked into that room, something happened inside me, and at that moment I knew that whatever it was I was looking for was real. It was in the world and you could find it. That was the beginning of the rest of my life. And I was just on Maui, and I went to the house, Ram Dass’s house. It’s still there. There’s some people living there, keeping it together. And I went up to his room where we used to sit for hours, and I sat in the chair that I used to sit in, right next to his chair where he would spend a lot of time because he, after the stroke, he couldn’t walk. And I closed my eyes, and I was just sitting there and I thought, “Wait a minute. This is no different than the way we used to sit together.” And it was so strong, the presence, the feeling, that I opened my eyes to see if was there, because he was so there, that what I felt was so, strong. And that feeling that I had at that moment was exactly the same feeling that I had in 1968 when I walked in that room. That presence which I felt for the first time in that room with Ram Dass, the first time, which I felt in India with Maharajji and after he left the body, whenever I was not too stupid and busy to pay attention, it was there. And I saw that had been with me, unchanging, all these years. It had never changed. It was perfect as it is, and it never came and went. It was always here. I never thought of it as faith. That word kind of makes Westerners nauseous, but, the trust that I have, that the presence is with me all the time, even when I forget, is probably the biggest gift that I got from him. One time I was sitting with him in a Parsi apartment building in Mumbai, in Christmas, 1972, and he was sitting on the bed and he would sit up, he’d lie down, he’d sit up, he’d lie down, turn this way and turn that way. I was just sitting on the floor doing my practice, which was like… All I did was want to stare at him, because all the beauty of the universe was wrapped up in that blanket. It was like, my eyes did not, they wouldn’t go anywhere else. They just wanted to be right there. At one point, he sits up like this and he looks at me and he says, “Courage is a really big thing.” And there was an Indian guy there. He said, “Oh, Baba, God takes care of his devotees.” “Courage is a really big thing.” And he laid down and went back to sleep. I was like, “What’s going to happen?” But there have been times in my life that all I had was the vaguest, most distant memory of that moment, and it was just enough to kind of make it to the next moment. The faith thing, it’s my experience that no matter how close I’ve gotten to being destroyed by one thing or another, every time I would fall off the cliff, he’d move the cliff and I’d fall on my face, instead of 10,000 feet to my death. That just happened so many times. But a funny thing happened when I first met him physically. It was confusing because I was feeling him everywhere all the time after that first meeting with Ram Dass and then after traveling around with Ram Dass in the States for a year and a half before going to India. He was huge. And then I saw this little guy in a blanket, and I thought like, “Wait a minute, how does all that fit into that blanket?” I don’t know. It was like, how does this work? I got really confused. But I got over it. I got over it and I got completely attached to the body and I forgot about the space. So, that took a lot of getting over. I don’t know. It’s not much of an answer, but when you go, the more you go through and survive, you can start to trust that you’re going to make it, regardless of how you feel. Sometimes it feels like you’re not going to make it, but we’ve all survived so many difficult situations in our lives and we’re still here. Maybe we could relax a little? I don’t know. What do you think? Fear is a big thing. Fear is very crippling. But fear itself never hurt anybody. It’s a feeling that comes and goes. There’s reasons it arises in us for sure, but the more we get used to letting go of whatever pulls us away from whatever we are thinking about or concentrating on, every time you come back, it’s training, it’s mind training, and you get more used to what it feels like not to be lost in dreamland, or absorbed in thoughts, or thinking or planning, or the past. I mean, every moment is either that everything, it’s either that you’re thinking about the past or imagining the future or judging how you are now. So, it gets easier and easier to notice the more you, the more practice you do, to notice when you’re gone. Of course, when you’re really gone, you don’t notice until you’re back. But how does that happen? Shri, Ram, Jai, Ram, and you’re thinking about, “Oh man, what’s on Netflix tonight? Yeah, right. Okay.” Oh. How did that happen that you notice you weren’t paying attention? That’s a great moment. Because we’re not doing that. We’re gone. And yet, oh, we woke up. So, if you understand a little bit about cause and effect, nothing can happen without a cause. What could the cause be of waking up? We must have planted seeds of waking up already or we’d never wake up. So, that’s the work we’ve already done, coming into fruition and waking us up, bringing us home. But don’t think about it too much. But it’s there. You notice, you come back. I mean, I remember once I got asked to sing at this teacher training for this yoga studio. So, I showed up and the teacher who was going to train these poor people started haranguing them. And there were pictures of all the deities on the wall, and this person was going, “If you don’t know what all these, every one of these beings are, you’ll never be a good yoga teacher.” I wanted to commit Hara Kiri. I just wanted to get out there. I couldn’t, but there was nothing I could do. Man, the deities is who we are. It’s our true nature, home base. And we’re always home, but we’re not paying attention. So, all we have to do is train ourselves to let go of what’s taken us away, and come back. Let go, come back, let go. When you let go, you are back. You don’t have to then find back. You notice, you’re gone, you’re home. And then you try to stay with the sound of the name if that’s what you’re doing, or with the flow of the breath or whatever, but you can’t. The personal will can’t do that. You’re gone again, then you wake up, then you’re back, and you stay with the sound, but you’re gone. You just watch it happen again and again, over and over. And little by little you, you’re not gone so, long. That’s over time. One of the definitions of meditation is becoming familiar with getting used to being here. Someone asked Ramana Maharshi, what’s the result of Raama Japa, the repetition of Raam’s name? He said, Raa is reality. Ma is the mind. Their union is the fruit of Raam. Japa, utterance o…

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Call and Response Ep. 85 | Dada Mukerjee, Maharajji, and the Practice of Ram Naama Jan 15, 2026

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Call and Response Ep 85 |Dada Mukerjee, Maharajji, and the Practice of Ram Naama “When we chant, when we repeat the names mentally, physically, or when we even hear the names being repeated, when we chant, all we have to do is come back again and again to the sound of the name. We don’t have to manipulate our emotions to feel anything special. There’s no failing and there’s no getting anything. You simply come back, because you’re coming back to a flow, a living flow of grace.” – Krishna Das So, the story goes like this. Maharajji was staying in Allahabad at Dada’s House, which wasn’t really Dada’s house. It was Maharajji’s house, and it really was, because Dada had been living in a small apartment. Let me tell you about Dada. Dada was a communist economics professor, and he had absolutely no interest in religions and spiritual things at all. He was a good person, but he had no… his wife and auntie and mother, who lived with him, they were all into all that stuff, but he had no interest, and he had a group of friends who also had no interest in that stuff. So, one day he and his friends were sitting around drinking their tea, and his wife and aunt were getting ready to go outside to leave the house. So, Dada said, “Where are you going?” And they said, “Well, there’s this small house across the street that we hear this saint comes and visits, and we’ve been waiting, and we heard he’s there. So, we’re going to see him.” “Good. Go.” So, they left, and they came back in about a minute and Dada said, “What happened? Why are you back?” And his wife said, “Well, we walked into the house. It was a small mud house and a dark room. Couldn’t see very well…” So, they kind of had to bend over and come in the room, and just before his wife was sitting down, the Baba there said, “Jao, go.” But she said, she tells Dada, “I couldn’t believe he really wanted us to go. We just came. So, I sat down, and a minute later he looked at me and called me by my name.” “Kamala, go home. Your husband’s friends are waiting for their tea.” How he knew her name is also a mystery. So, this piqued Dada’s curiosity. So, the next day he goes across the street with them, and they walk into this little mud house. And as soon as they walk in, the Baba gets up from the cot that he’s sitting on, grabs a hold of Dada’s hand and starts walking across the street to Dada’s house, dragging Dada along behind him. And he says to Dada, “From now on, I’ll be staying with you.” Okay. Right. You just pulled up to the Stop-and-Shop, and you came out with your groceries and some homeless guy comes up to you and says, “From now on, I’ll be staying with you,” as he gets into your car? I don’t think so. But Dada being Dada, and India being India, this Baba comes in and sits down and the people from across the street all come to this house now, and all the other devotees start showing up and the Ma’s go into the kitchen. They start cutting fruit and prasad is served. And the whole thing starts. And it continued. However, that house was owned by a relative of Dada’s, and after a year or so, or some period of time, Maharajji started telling Dada, “You’re going to have to leave this place. You need to get a house. You need to get a house.” But they had absolutely no money. They were dirt poor. Dada used to tutor. Like I said, he was an economics professor, but he used to tutor students and stuff just to make enough money to live. So, every time Maharajji came and said, “Do you have a house yet?” Dada didn’t say anything. So, finally Maharajji says, “Okay, I’ll build it.” And so, this house was built and Dada was moved into it with his family. And from that point on, Maharajji came there to that house and it was a bigger house with a big sitting room, and over time, Dada gradually became a devotee. And he’s written two books that are really lovely. One is called “By His Grace,” and the other is called “The Near and the Dear,” in which his premise is that he didn’t learn anything from Maharajji at all. He learned how to become a devotee from the other devotees who were already pukka, who already knew how to do it. And it’s a wonderful book. It’s really good. However, one year Maharajji goes off on a pilgrimage with Siddhi Ma, Jivanti Ma, and Siddhi Ma’s husband, who had become a very close friend of Dada’s. And they went to Calcutta, and they went up to Dakshineswar. Now, when Dada was a young boy, he had come home from college in the summer, and in those days, you could buy a day pass on the public transportation, and you could go as many places as possible in one day. So, in order to say that he had gone there, Dada had decided to go to Sri Ramakrishna’s Temple in Dakshineswar, this Kali temple where Sri Ramakrishna, who was a great saint, had lived, not because he was interested, but because it was a tourist place now. So, he went there and he pranamed to the Murti. Then there was a courtyard. I haven’t been there, but I think there’s nine Shiva Temples, It’s a small little mandir. It’s like this high, each one with a Lingam, and it’s a big courtyard. It’s the middle of the afternoon. It’s probably 120 degrees. But in order to say that he’d done it, Dada goes in front of each one and he goes like this, and then he goes to the next one. He goes like this, and then he goes to the next one. He turns around and there’s some bulky gentleman standing there saying to him, “Come, I’ll give you a mantra.” And Dada says, “I won’t take your mantra.” “Yes, you’ll take it. You’ll take it and you’ll do it.” “No, I won’t. I won’t do it.” And then this Baba says, “Yes, you’ll do it. You’ll do it after you do your Gayatri.” So, Dada was shocked. The Gayatri mantra is… when a Brahmin boy is initiated, he gets a thread and the Gayatri mantra. Now, Dada had been initiated by his father, who died very shortly after his initiation. So, in order to honor his father, he did the Gayatri mantra every day when he took a bath. But it wasn’t a spiritual thing, it was just to honor his father. How this Baba knew what he was doing? He said, “You’ll do it after your Gayatri.” So, Dada said, “Okay, give it to me.” So, this Baba tells him this mantra. Dada turns around, pranams to the Murti. He turns around again. Nobody there. Wow. A huge courtyard. I mean, just gone. So, he thought, “This is very strange.” So, now maybe 30 years later, Maharajji is traveling with this group, and they go to Ramakrishna’s Temple and as they go there, they walk by the courtyard and Maharajji casually points, and he said, “See there. That’s where I gave your Dada his mantra.” Dada had no idea. He never connected that event with Maharajji, but he did that mantra every day because he said he would. So, one time in Allahabad, during the time of one of the melas, one of the great gatherings, the festivals at Prayag, where the three rivers come together, a very sacred place, Maharajji left early in the morning, and he told Dada that he would meet him there on the banks of the Ganga in the evening. So, that evening, Dada goes to Prayag, and he’s walking around on the banks of the Ganga looking for Maharajji. It’s nighttime, and he has this young servant boy with him, and they’re walking. They don’t see anything. Where’s Maharajji? They don’t know. And the servant boy is getting anxious and says, “Dada, we should go back. Maybe Maharajji has gone there. We should go back. We should, it’s late.” And Dada was just standing there, and he wouldn’t go, but he was also concerned because the boy was so upset and this and that, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a boat appears right in front of them, and Maharajji is on the boat, and he says, “Dada, what were you doing? What are you doing?” And Dada wouldn’t talk. He wouldn’t say anything. “Tell me, what are you doing? Why are you here? Why are you here?” He said, “You said you would meet me here. So, I stayed.” “Why didn’t you go back? It was late, then you didn’t see me. Why didn’t you go back?” “You said that you would come. So, I stayed.” “Oh, and what were you doing? What were you doing?” Dada was quiet. “What were you doing?” Finally, he said, “Tell me.” He said, “I was taking Ram’s name.” “Ah.” Maharajji goes, “Ram nam karne se sab pur ho jate hain.” From going on repeating the names of God, everything is accomplished. And he said this to us many times. And this is somebody who actually knows what’s going on in the universe. This is not like a chai wala on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 14th Street, although you never know. So, through the repetition of the names, everything is accomplished. I mean, how difficult is that to understand, word-wise? Very simple, right? You do this, then that. However…Personally, I mean, it’s now more than 50 years since I heard that. If I really believed it, if I had the karmas to believe it, if I didn’t have all the tamasic nonsense in my emotional body, what else would I be doing but Raam Naam all day long? So, that’s what I ask myself. So, Maharajji didn’t teach much. He didn’t give lectures. He didn’t write books. He basically said that the Westerners were qualified for the five limbed yoga. Eight limbed yoga, right? Ashtanga yoga. This is Paanchtanga Yoga. Eating, drinking tea, sleeping, gossiping, and wandering around. This was the yoga that we Westerners were qualified for. Unfortunately, I think it’s true. He used to say to us Westerners, he said, “You can get everything from devotion.” He said, “You don’t need yoga.” And even, one time I asked Siddhi Ma many years later, I said, “Ma, should I meditate?” I’ve taken a lot of meditation courses with Tibetan Lamas, Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, all this really powerful, big-time stuff, and I like to fool myself and pretend I know what it’s about. So, I said to her, I said, “Ma, should I meditate? Or should I chant?” She said to me, “What do you like to do?” Hello? My mother never told me that what I’d like to do would be good for me, but this Ma, my real Ma… And then she said something very interesting. She said, “Krishna Das, in 40 years with Maharajji, not once did he ask me to meditate. He asked me to do Japa, to remember the name, to repeat the name, and to serve others. But he never asked me to meditate.” And she said, “Maharajji said that the more subtle, higher states of consciousness cannot be brought about with the use of personal will.” In other words, you can’t. It’s like Ramana Maharshi said, “It’s like asking the mind or the ego to kill the mind or ego. It’s like asking the thief to be the policeman. There’ll be a lot of investigation, but no arrest will ever be made.” The ego, the will that comes from the sense of a separate self, the “me” will never do what’s necessary to dissolve itself fully. It wants to live, it wants to keep its separateness, which in some of the, like in Dzogchen meditation or in Mahamudra, it isn’t the use of the will. It’s a different type of meditation, also. So, it’s interesting. Now I want to… Robert’s not the only one who can read stuff. I want to read stuff. Where are you? Not that. So, we were talking this morning. Robert was talking about surrender in different contexts. But here’s what Ramana Maharshi said. One of the things. I’m going to read you a few things. “Surrender to Him and abide by His will. Whether he appears or vanishes, await His pleasure. If you ask Him to do as you please, it is not surrender, but a command to Him. You cannot have him obey you and yet think that you have surrendered. He knows what is best and when and how to do it. Leave everything to Him. His is the burden. You have no longer any cares. All your cares are His. Such is surrender.” This is Bhakti. This is devotion. It’s a nice idea, but how do you do that? How do we give up? How do we let go of our stuff? How do we let go of all the things? Like Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was saying: your stories, all this stuff, all the things you think you need, that you want. How do you let go of that and really turn it, really let it be? So, when we chant, when we repeat the names mentally, physically, or when we even hear the names being repeated, when we chant, all we have to do is come back again and again to the sound of the name. We don’t have to manipulate our emotions to feel anything special. There’s no failing and there’s no getting anything. You simply come back, because you’re coming back to a flow, a living flow of grace. Like Robert said the other day, these names are the sound form of reality, of what’s beyond form. And so, as we become more and more familiar with letting go and returning, letting go, and returning to the name, to the sound of the name, every time we come back, it’s a very big thing. Most people, like I’ve said before, they get born, they graduate high school, they drink some beer, and they die, and that’s it. They’re not here for one second in a whole lifetime. So, if we’re at all involved in this situation, it’s because our own karmas are blossoming right now in our lives, bringing us to this place where we might be able to move towards our own hearts in a new way, in an ever-deepening way. Here’s another quote. “The guru is within. Meditation is meant to remove the ignorant idea that he or she is only outside. If he be a stranger whom you await, he’s bound to disappear. So, what’s the use of a transient being like that? In order to receive the grace of the guru, one of two things must be done. Either surrender yourself because you realize your inability and need a higher power to help you, or investigate into the cause of the misery by self-inquiry, and so, merge in the Self. Either way, you will attain freedom from misery. God or guru never forsakes the devotee who has surrendered himself.” Sometimes it seems like surrender might feel like driving a car with a blindfold on. Scary. But the reason that we have Saints, the reason that we know about these great beings, is because they have cultivated an attachment that keeps them here in physicality, and that attachment is compassion. They have no agendas. There’s nothing left. They don’t need anything. They’re finished. But because they know that there’s only one of us, and if there’s one person that thinks that they’re separate, then there’s no real freedom yet. There’s only one being here. We’re all parts of that. And if one of us is hurting, we’re all hurting. And they know that in a way that’s beyond what we could understand. They experience that directly. Maharajji, every minute of every day, He was taking suffering from people. He was giving. There’s a prayer to him called the Vinaya Chalisa. “Vinaya” means “to beg,” or what’s another word, Robert, for “Vinaya?” “Plead.” Like to plead or beg. To ask for something a polite way. “And you wander like a God distributing alms to all you meet.” And this was like Maharajji. Everywhere he went, he was giving things; children, jobs, curing people from diseases, twenty-four-seven. And the thing about these great beings is that they have hearts as wide as the world. So, at the same time that they can feel and experience our suffering, it doesn’t destroy them. There’s nothing in there to take it personally. Like I told you the other day.. did I tell you? I don’t know where I was. I told somebody. When I was going to kill myself in India, in the Temple, Maharajji, He said to me, “You can’t die. Only Jesus died the real death.” Because he never thought of himself. There was nothing in there, no person in there thinking about themselves. That’s the real death. And these great beings have died that real death. They’re only visible because we need them. And the more we understand that, the more we trust, the more we can trust life itself, that it’s leading us in the right direction. And that’s hard to do, especially if you read the papers. It doesn’t look like that in this world. Here’s another one. “Place your burden at the feet of the Lord of the universe who accomplishes everything. Remain all the time steadfast in the heart, in t…

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Call and Response Podcast Ep. 84 | At Home With KD, May 7 2020 Jan 08, 2026

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Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das Ep. 84 |At Home With KD, May 7 2020 “All we have is what’s in front of our faces, which is the ups and downs of life. So, you have to learn to deal with those situations in the best way… and there’s no God outside of your Self, your true Self. And that true Self is the same in every Being. So, if you treat other people the way you would like to be treated, you won’t have any problems at all.” – Krishna Das “Ram nam karne se sab pura ho jata” My Guru used to say that to us quite often. “From going on repeating these Names, everything is accomplished. Everything is accomplished.” A very simple statement. Easy to kind of just say, “Oh, yeah, ok,” but I’ve been thinking about that, or trying to truly believe that for 50 years or so. 40 Years. 45 years. So, if I truly believed that what He said, that from repeating these Names, everything is accomplished, I would probably be giving more of myself to the practice as I’m doing it. But, you know, we have our own karmic predicaments that we live in. Very distracted lives. Very fast lives. Although it’s a little bit slower these days. Although we can fill it up with stuff quite easily. I remember many many years ago, before I went to India I was up in the mountains of New Mexico with Ram Das at the Lama Foundation for about a month in the winter. It was fantastic. And every day we would spend many hours meeting together, singing, talking, meditating. And we heard about this New York artist who had moved out to New Mexico and lived just down the hill, down the mountain from where the Lama was, and he had been to India and he knew how to meditate. This was Big Time. So a group of us went down to meet with him, to see him. And we spent a couple of hours with him, talking to him. I just sat in the back of the room, listening. And as we were leaving, I was the last one to go out the door. As I was about to go out the door, he grabbed my arm and he looked at me and he said, “You. You have to find out why it is you can’t give yourself 100% to whatever you’re doing.” Oh. He nailed me to the wall. That was unbelievable. That was in 19-, the winter of, let’s see, ’69. That’s what? 50 years ago? I can still feel his hand on my arm. You know, if we look at ourselves, we notice how difficult it is to be fully engaged in something. We’re not talking about watching a movie where you’re fully lost for as long as the movie’s on or some kind of entertainment, but whatever you’re doing, being fully engaged. Not thinking about the future, not the past, not this and that, not the chatter that goes on in the brain all the time, but truly present. Truly present and aware. So, I’ve been working on that a long time. Or, at least noticing how little of myself I really can give to each moment. So, when it comes to chanting or a practice that you do regularly, you create a situation where you’re training yourself to let go and come back. Let go and come back. Over and over again. It doesn’t, it’s not about up here. It’s about in here. And it’s not an intellectual process. It’s not a learning process. It’s a training process. So, little by little your Being gets familiar with these sounds, with these Names in this case, and you begin to relax into the Name. And the Name, as we come to know it, has been brought into this world by a Being who has fully realized the reality of that Name, the reality of what is Named, and has brought that Name into this world for us as a practice, as a doorway into that Name, into the reality, which is our own true nature, which is our soul. The love we’re looking for exists within us. It lives within us. We look outside ourselves in the outside world. We look for it everywhere and we don’t find it. We don’t find it until we look within. It’s not like you look with your eyes within. It’s not like that. It’s moving more deeply into ourselves by releasing the stuff that holds us and takes us away again and again and again. That naturally moves us within. Letting go again and again. And we don’t have to make this up. We don’t have to manipulate ourselves. We don’t have to be looking for anything specific, any kind of experience. Once we know who we are, we’re wide open. Everything is here and now. Everything exists within us. We’re so achievement oriented in the West. We’re in such a hurry because everything is done so quickly here. But that’s not how we find ourselves. So, anyhow let’s take some questions for a while. Q: Who was Neem Karoli Baba’s spiritual master and what were some of the practices they would do? KD: We don’t know. We don’t know who His gurus were. We have no idea. He never spoke about it. He had some… We hear stories, when He was very young, He went to this ashram, that place, He met this guy, that guy. But nobody really knows that we ever spoke to, ever told us anything definitive about that. He never spoke about it. He never had pictures up of this and that, you know? He was very much believed to be a manifestation of Hanuman himself. I don’t even know what that means. You know, we use all these words, all these words that we bring, we learn from India or from the spiritual path, but we don’t really know what these words mean. But, the lineage that He seemed to be a part of was a Ram lineage, the lineage of Ram and Hanuman. But more than that we don’t know. We know that He, He spent many years in a cave, in caves. There were two small caves, well, one big cave in a town called Neeb Karori, which is where He got His name, the Baba from that town, that village. I visited there and it was a very small village, a very funky village and they told us not to leave the temple, especially at night. You needed to be very careful. Apparently, there’s a lot of murders in that part of the country. But that’s where He decided to build the cave. The villagers dug out a cave for Him in this field, or it was, I think, in the jungle at the time. Later on it was cleared. And nobody knew that He was there. And He was existing on, existing on one glass of milk a day, which, this old village lady used to bring to Him. And then, she died and so He was starving. Nobody knew He was there. So, the story goes that He picked up His chimta, which is this metal tong for moving fire around, moving the logs around, and He threatened Hanuman. He had a little murti of Hanuman that He had in the cave. He threatened Him. He said, “You’ll starve me so I’ll beat You.” And apparently, the next morning, there was milk outside the door. Q: Do I draw any inspiration from Eddie Vedder with my vocal style? KD: Excuse me. Eddie Vedder is a kid. I’m 20 years older than him. No, I mean, he’s great. In fact, I think his wife said something to somebody I knew, that she reminded me of him. No, I love Eddie Vedder, but I just sing. I don’t have a vocal style as far as I know. Q: How do I remain focused on God when I have to deal with the ups and downs of life? KD: If you have to ask that question, you don’t know what God is, where God is or who God is. So, you can’t be focused on God, because you don’t know. We don’t know. All we have is what’s in front of our faces, which is the ups and downs of life. So, you have to learn to deal with those situations in the best way and there’s no God outside of your Self, your true Self. And that true Self is the same in every Being. So, if you treat other people the way you would like to be treated, you won’t have any problems at all. Calm yourself down. Calm your mind down little by little and find a way to get through the day without falling on your face too many times, or creating negative karmas by being angry at people and hurting others and hurting yourself. There’s no God out there. The God that you’re looking for is within us and until you learn how to be kind to yourself in a real way, which is to give yourself a break and learn to trust your own intuition about where to look for these deeper realities, you know, you need to do some practice. And you need to treat others the way you want to be treated. Q: Towards the end of your film, One Track Heart, you use a word. Someone said you were giving something to people. I tried looking it up but I found only something… KD: Yeah, Maharajji had asked me to be the pujari or the priest of the Durga temple that He had built in Kainchi in the courtyard and I had to distribute the charanamrit. That means the nectar of the feet, which is the water that was used to wash the feet of the Goddess in the pujas, in the rituals. Yes, it is water, but it’s blessed water because it was used in the ritual. So, distributing that charanamrit was a way of distributing the blessings of the ritual that the other pujari did. I just watched. “Charanamrit” is the name. Q: I need advice on suicide. KD: You mean how to do it? I can’t help you. I needed advice, too, you know? I was going to jump in the river and kill myself. I was having a nervous breakdown in Kainchi, right there in the temple. Maharajji was there and it’s a long story. It’s in my book, Chants of a Lifetime. It’s in that book. But the short story is that I was completely flipped out and I was going to kill myself and He called me over and He said, “What are you going to do, jump in the river?” And He laughed. “Ha.” He said, “Worldly people don’t die.” Us. Worldly people. People who are attached to this world and to the ego. “Worldly people don’t die. Only Jesus died the real death.” What? “Why? Because He never thought of Himself. He gave His life for His people. He never thought of Himself.” So, the idea is that, all we do is think about ourselves and suicide is not going to change that. You go from this body to some other body and the karmas that you have, that you can’t deal with now, you won’t be able to deal with later, either. So, the best way is to try and find a way to be in this world in a good way. Whatever you have to do to find some peace of mind, you should do. Counseling, therapy, antidepressants, whatever works for you. And that’s what you should do. You should dedicate your life to finding a way to live here. Because you got born here for a reason. We all did. And what’s in our life is what we have to deal with and there’s nowhere we can go to get away from that. Suicide is not going to change that. You’re not going to have this body but you’re going to have another one and who knows what it’ll be? It might not be as good. Q: These days I have to wear a police radio by my ear while I’m on duty. KD: That doesn’t sound like too much fun. Q: I have to listen and talk to others and write, etcetera. Any suggestions about how to not ignore the least urgent but to include? KD: Once again, it’s all about when you’re not on duty, what you do. It’s about developing a practice that helps keep you in line as the day goes on. You just pay attention to what you’re doing. You do the best job you can do. Don’t try to… give yourself 100% to what you’re doing. Whatever it is. Just do the best that you can. And do that when you’re doing your practice, too. I’m sorry I can’t really get into that one. Q: What’s your advice on sannyasa, to dedicate one’s heart and mind totally in service and surrender to God and also does Guru have to have a physical form? KD: Absolutely not. Guru doesn’t have a physical form. We see it that way because that’s what we’re attached to, a physical body. A Guru is never identified with the physical body although a Guru might take a body to help us if it’s necessary for us, but Guru, God and our true nature, the Self, the Soul, are not different. And, you know, these days it seems like there’s Gurus on every corner, but those are not Gurus. Those are not Satgurus. Those are not real Gurus, true Gurus. They might be teachers, they might be more advanced than us. But a Guru, a real Guru is something else entirely. So, you can read books about some of the real Gurus; Swami Nityananda, who was Muktananda’s Guru; Shirdi Sai Baba; and my Guru, Neem Karoli Baba; there are many, Sri Ramakrishna. Read those guys. Read how they lived. Read what they said. Read how they got through the day. What did they do? That’s how you get a feel for what a real Guru is. They don’t do business. Q: Can you get the grace of the Guru even though He isn’t in the physical form, through Bhakti? KD: Of course, absolutely. Of course. Grace is always here. We’re just not paying attention. We are not paying attention. It’s raining everywhere all the time but we can’t drink until we cup our hands. So practice, devotion to practice, the path is what trains us to cup our hands to get the water that we need to drink. Absolutely. No question. Grace is all the time. And the other part of that question is surrender. What is sannyasa, to dedicate one’s heart and mind? That’s wishful thinking, that’s what it is. You know, that’s wishful thinking. Good luck, you know? It’s not so easy to do, you know? You’ll go to some cave, you’ll put on orange clothes. You’ll just have a big ego about having orange clothes and thinking you’re more humble than other people. Give yourself a break. Live in this world like you are now and don’t let your neurosis fuck you up and make you think you have to go be a sannyasi because you’re too scared to deal with your shit. There’s no where you can go where your shit is not going to be right there with you. Deal with it. Find a way to live with it. Find a way to love yourself. That’s sannyasa. Clothes, initiations don’t do anything unless you’re ripe and if you’re ripe, you’re ripe. You would know it. Q: How do you know if your difficult, painful, stressful life situation is part of your dharma? KD: Well, it’s certainly your karma… Q: and you stick with it all through ups and downs and pain and sorrow or if it’s time to make a change? KD: I have a feeling you’re talking about relationships, because you can’t change your life. You can change the people in it and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that if you, if you find yourself in a situation that is causing you pain and causing others pain and it’s just not working, you certainly can find a way to make something work for you. You know, we grow up thinking relationships are going to make us happy. We get turned on by somebody and we so-call “fall in love” and we fall in love and we are in a relationship. Relationships are busines. You give, you take, you give, you take. When somebody stops giving, you freak out. When you stop taking, they freak out. So, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to find a more peaceful way to be in the world but you can’t avoid, by changing the external circumstances you can’t necessarily, necessarily make yourself happy. So, whatever you do, you should do with as much kindness to yourself and others that you can do, whatever that means to you. You’re the only one who knows. Q: How does it feel to offer the chants without the large energy you’re used to in the church or in a theater? KD: It feels fine. Better than robbing banks. I’m having a good time. I’m singing and you’re singing. That’s good. You know, because we’re attached to the physical body, because we’re attached to the physical body, we think we’re here and other people are somewhere else. That’s only one way of looking at it. In the space of the heart and the sky of the mind, we’re all within that and when, certainly when we’re doing practice, we’re all tuning into that space together and it’s all about doing the practice and if I was missing the energy of the people, I would notice that and I would let go and I wouldn’t be missing it anymore. You keep coming back to the chant. Anything you think about it, you keep letting it go and coming back. So, for me it’s not, I mean it’s very different on many levels, but it’s also very much the same. Q: I feel my devotion scattered over many aspects: Christ, Kali, Hanuman; and it keeps spreading over more. What are your thoughts over devotion: many aspects versus one aspect with full attention? KD: T…

Full show notes at the publisher

Call and Response Ep. 83 | Recovery, India, Letting Go Dec 30, 2025

Show notes

Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das Ep 83 | Recovery, India, Letting Go

“Ultimately, nothing ever happened, nothing ever will, there is no one and there never will be any one. No one’s separate from anybody else. It’s all one, all the time and always has been. Nothing ever happened. Obviously, when you stub your toe, that makes no sense. It hurts. So, we have to find a way to deal with that pain. You have to learn not to stub your toe. Pay more attention. Up-levelling it intellectually is not useful, as far as I’m concerned. I think it’s based on a fear of engaging with life for most of us. Not that it’s not ultimately true, but here, now, we have to get in the battle of life and go after what we want and find out what we want.” – Krishna Das

Q: Hi KD.

KD: Hi.

Q: Actually, every question answered so many thoughts I had in my mind. The spirit in chanting did a major role in my transformation and especially through this mantra to the divine mother, Ma Durga. Can you explain a little bit about that?

KD: Which one?

Q: Ma Durga. Durga Ma.Yeah, it’s unbelievable what I felt when I chant that.

KD: Yeah.

Q: It’s a sort of divine connection.

KD: Wonderful. Why do you want me to screw it up for you? Sounds like you’re doing just fine. You know? Don’t ask me to ruin it. The experience of the Name is your experience. That’s it. You don’t need to think about it. Just move into it more fully. Always. Every time. You don’t need this. It’s useless.

Hi.

Q: Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed listening to you last night and also especially today with this format. So, I’m glad you like it, too.

KD: Good. There’s two of us, then.

Q: You know, you were just talking about the selfishness and I’ve been in recovery for the past two decades and I’ve found myself here. I’ve really, you know, heard a lot of what you said today has really resonated with me and I believe you have a past with addiction and I was wondering what your feelings are about that and…

KD: A path with?

Q: A past with addiction, and what your thoughts and feelings are on addiction.

KD: Well, it just doesn’t work. Bottom line. You know? Good luck with your addiction but it doesn’t work. So, I’m not a fan of anything that doesn’t work. And I’ve told many times how I was strung out on freebase cocaine for a couple of years and so people think I’m an expert on addiction. I mean, no offense, but I don’t know anything about it. I was saved, literally, by my Indian father and Maharajji. They just saved me. I’d flown in from California. Ok, Mr. Tiwari was coming from India to visit. Now, I was very close with this family for many years and I was actually treated like the eldest son in this family and I really treasured that and so, Mr. Tiwari came to America to visit with the devotees. He flew to Canada first. I was living in California and I was very addicted to freebase cocaine. And I flew into New York and I had enough to smoke for one night and I was up all-night smoking and then I ran out and I was scrounging around the floor. I was smoking lint from socks. Anything that looked like anything to smoke, I was smoking. And then I flew to Canada the next day and I drove out to the place, a couple of hours outside of Montreal where he was visiting. And I walked into the room where he was sitting. He had his back to the door. He was talking to another friend of mine and I walked into the room and as I walked into the room, I felt this, I don’t know what, like a forcefield and I stopped and I was just about to kind of back away, get away, I wasn’t even thinking, I was just like, and he turned and he looked at me, he said, “You, promise me now you will give up cocaine! Promise me now!” Like that. I said, “Ok.” And that was it. From that moment to this moment, gone from my consciousness. And I just want to tell you, if it had been up to me, there was no way. I was gone. I was on my way out. I could not deal with that. I could not get sober myself. “You.” And I couldn’t say no to him. I mean, it wasn’t an option. I would do anything he ever asked me to do. So, I just said, “ok.” And that was it. I don’t know. I guess they wanted the kid to live. Otherwise…

So, but I was, I had just a black hole in my heart. And this is after being with Maharajji, you understand? After my time in India. This is in the 80s. I was still ridiculous. Completely meshuga. Meshuga? That’s what I got. So, they took it away from me. They just took it away. There’s no way I could have ever let go of that. So, I have tremendous respect for anyone who’s dealing with those issues because I know I couldn’t have. And I know how hard it is. And I also know what’s at stake and how difficult it is, so, that’s it. And how much it’s worth to be in the battle, by the way. And how much, what that means, to cherish one’s self enough to enter into battle with one’s own darkness and one’s own hungers because after all, it’s a desire for bliss. It’s a desire to be free from suffering. But it doesn’t work. That’s what I mean by that. It doesn’t free us from suffering. It creates more and more and more. So, there’s nothing wrong with the desire. It’s a good desire, to be free. But we’re not actually. We’re putting ourselves in bondage, which is just one of the ways we get fooled by our own stuff. When we look outside of ourselves for something that can give us that, what we want.

Hi. We’re gonna sing. Yeah, no. We’ll be there in a second, but I mean, the woman who asked to sing, two hours ago, she went home to listen to me on cd. You can’t please everybody, what are you going to do?

Q: Hi, Krishna Das.

KD: Hello there. Very good.

Q: I’m trying to wake everyone.

KD: Ok, thank you. You woke me up to.

Q: In recent times, how have you been spending your time when you visit India?

KD: Oh, I go up to the mountains and visit the people that I knew for all these years, you know, wander around here and there. Been hanging out in the jungle with a nice Baba sometimes. And also, I’ve been singing in India, you know. I get so many emails from Indian people, you know, so sweet. You know. “I’m your devotee. You are my Guru. Please come sing. I want to see you.” You know? Delete. You know, I mean, I can’t. You know, enough already. But, I do go. So, I said to Siddhi Ma, I said, “Ma,” and She was always telling me to rest. Take care of myself. Get enough rest. Don’t sing too much. Don’t travel too much. So, once I said to Her, “Ma, you know I ‘m getting all these emails from India. You know, they want me to come sing. You know, should I accept?” And I figured She’d say, “No, no stay home.” I said, “Should I accept?” She said, “You must.”

Why did I ask?

So, I’m screwed.

Now I have to go and sing.

Any other questions?

And then I go from pharmacy to pharmacy and get all the medicine I need to get over the dysentery and the malaria and everything else, you know? I love it very much.

Q: Hi.

KD: Hello.

Q: Some of the Vedanta yoga teachings…

KD: Say what?

Q: The Vedanta yoga teachings… some of them teach that everything in your life is already destined to happen. Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen.

KD: Really? What a concept.

Q: Well, because you were talking about free will, and I’m just wondering how that Vedanta teaching…

KD: Talking about what?

Q: Will. And I’ve, I mean, I’ve had, I’ve heard people say, some Vedanta yoga teachers that, it’s like your life is a film that’s already been filmed and that your choice in your free will is how you respond to suffering or not suffering, but I was just curious to ask you your perspective on that.

KD: People say all kinds of shit, you know. All I can tell you is Maharajji never spoke about that stuff. He said, “Serve people. Feed people and remember God.” If that talks to you, if that makes sense to you, fine. If it doesn’t, fine. Everybody’s selling something. You know? What are you going to do? You’re looking for a button to push to relieve you of the job of living your life, making your decisions. You’re looking for a way to make it ok. You’re looking for a concept to lay on your life that makes sense. I don’t think there is one.

Give her the mic, where’s the mic. Finally, we’re getting into it here. Oh, it’s too late? The mic’s away? Ok.

Some people say things like that, but the point is, those kind of statements, they’re very difficult to understand. One thing is, there’s ultimate reality, ok? They say. Which is ultimately final, this is the way things are, and then there’s relative reality, which is our worlds. So, the two things, ultimate reality includes our reality but relative reality, which is the way we live, all the stories, everything we see, it’s all relational. That’s included in relative, but relative reality doesn’t include ultimate truth. It’s all relative. It’s all subjective stories and our version of stuff. In relative reality, you just do the best you can. Ultimately, nothing ever happened, nothing ever will, there is no one and there never will be any one. No one’s separate from anybody else. It’s all one, all the time and always has been. Nothing ever happened. Obviously, when you stub your toe, that makes no sense. It hurts. So, we have to find a way to deal with that pain. You have to learn not to stub your toe. Pay more attention. Up-levelling it intellectually is not useful, as far as I’m concerned. I think It leads to, I think it’s based on a fear of engaging with life for most of us. Not that it’s not ultimately true, but here, now, we have to get in the battle of life and go after what we want and find out what we want. There’s no escape from that because, because every day we’re going on and on in one way or another and if we’re not paying attention, we’re not paying attention. If we’re not living in a way that satisfies us, how is that going to change unless we pay attention and notice it and understand it and find out why. So, yeah. Willpower doesn’t necessarily change the storyline because you don’t know what the storyline is. The storyline might be, yeah, on June 10^th 2019, you decided to go this way. Well, that could have been the story, you just don’t know. You can’t, you know? One time, I was sitting with Maharajji and I was with one of my guru brothers. He had this book called the Ashtavakra Gita, which is the ultimate non-dual teaching book. I mean, it’s like, “there never was anything. It’s all one.” On like that. So, Maharajji sees the book. He said, “What’s that book?” So, he showed Him. “Oh, what does it say in there?” And the guy goes, “It says, it’s all One.” Which Maharajji always said. Maharajji goes, He looked at the Indian people and said, “These boys know everything.” You have to be it. You don’t need to hold onto it. You don’t need to understand it. You have to manifest it. One must manifest it in one’s heart and the only way to do that is to engage in some training, which is to keep coming back. Letting go, coming back. Letting go and coming back. As far as I can see, that’s the way you get the strength to let go. And you keep letting go until there’s no more letting go and no one to let go of anymore and then it’s a different ballgame. So, let’s practice letting go.

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Call and Response Podcast Ep. 82 | Real Enlightenment, Service Dec 16, 2025

Show notes

Call and Response Podcast with Krishna Das Ep 28 | Real Enlightenment, Service

“A lot of people don’t give. You know, there’s so much fear about contacting other people and opening up and allowing the reality of this world to enter into our hearts. It can be very brutal. There’s no question about it. That’s why you need inner strength. Now there’s something to do. So, that’s why, when we have inner strength, when we trust our own hearts, when we learn to take it easy on ourselves, then we can just do what comes naturally. Helping people will come naturally once we overcome our own fears.” – Krishna Das

Q: So, you were saying, now my question is gone.

KD: Ok. No problem.

Q: It’s back, ok. So,

KD: Problem.

Q: What if, in your life, you look and listen to your heart and you don’t get the direction for your life like you say. More, you just want to meditate and be in the silence and you don’t, you know, I’m going to work but it’s just so I can pay my bills and for awhile now, I don’t have any motivation to go after anything in life, and I wonder, is that wrong? From what you’re saying, because the only thing I want to do is be in the silence.

KD: It’s not for me to say it’s wrong or right. You know, it’s your life. Only you know and only you can work through it, find out what’s right for you. But I will say that there is a lot of confusion about states of mind and when you say you want to stay in the silence, in the real silence, there’s no “you.” So, I hear that you seem to want to hold onto one particular type of feeling as opposed to other types of feeling. That’s not going to work.

Q: yeah.

KD: Because you’re pushing things away. Ultimately, the silence is everywhere, all the time. Because it is that way. And nothing can disturb it. Any state of mind you try to hold onto will not last. States of mind are all temporary. The only thing that’s not temporary is who you are, which is not a state of mind. It’s pure being. Pure ultimate reality. That’s who is in there. That’s what’s in there. So, it’s no different than wanting desert without eating your meal, you know? So, if you’re pushing anything away, it’s not something that’s ultimately going to give you what you want. So, that’s all I have to say about that. Ok?

Q: Thank you.

KD: People think, you know, we hear about samahdi and all this meditation stuff, you know, it’s very subtle stuff, really. It’s not so easy. I mean, don’t think you’re going to sit down and meditate yourself into some other planet. You know, it doesn’t work that way. And I remember, we used to, a lot of times we’d see Maharajji in the late afternoon when the temple gates had closed and just the people in the temple were there. So, I used to put on my Holy clothes and go out and sit down and one day I was sitting there, and I almost burst out laughing because as I was sitting there, I saw that my idea of enlightenment, nirvana was some place that I would not be. And where was that going to be? Where was the place that you’re not going to be? You’re here now, when you go to the bathroom, you’re going to be there, too. Tonight, you’ll go to sleep. Where are you going to be? Right there. There’s nowhere you can go where you will not be, and nirvana is not some other place. Liberation is not some other place where you won’t be. It’s actually where you are finally going to fully be present, when you stop hating yourself and limiting ourselves. So, that was interesting.

Q: Good evening.

KD: Hi.

Q: In this process of serving, feeding and remembering, what is your understanding of the role of children and own children or children in general?

KD: Your own children or other people’s children? I’m not sure what you mean.

Q: Both. Having your own children, is this an important part of this or how does this fit into this?

KD: It’s one of those things that happen when you do certain things. Yeah. You were a child. We were all children once, you know? And our parents, whether they were, whatever part of the scale they were on, were still here. They took care of us enough and at least cared enough that we’re still here and you know when you’re a baby, there’s nothing you can do for yourself and you know, India has a very strange way of looking at things. There’s an incredible hymn by Shankaracharya and I recorded part of it on my first CD, it’s called the Devi Aparadh Kshamapana Stotram. How do you like that? And it translates as “begging the Goddess for forgiveness.” And the line that’s repeated, verse after verse, is “in the whole,” let me see, basically, He keeps on saying that there will never be a bad mother, even though I’m such a bad child. And He begs the goddess for forgiveness. And the idea is simply, we don’t, we barely know we’re alive on a day to day basis. We float through our lives in a sleep. We don’t understand how hard it is to be, get a human body and to be in a position to satisfy our desires and live a good life and especially in this circumstance. We’re all, there are many places in the world where you can’t rest for a second, where you’re on the road, you’re being driven by this or driven by that. Bombs are falling. Poverty. A human body in a good circumstance is very difficult, they say, to get. But we don’t appreciate it. And we would not be here if our parents, regardless of their own problems, didn’t take care of us enough to keep us alive. It’s very interesting. I mean, I have all kinds of issues with my parents, right? But still, they fed me. They took care of me. They allowed me to live on this earth and to live and to manifest whatever karmas I had to work with. And now, here I am, learning to sing and chant the Name and find a good way to live. Without them, I wouldn’t be here. And it’s the same with our own children. We just do the best we can, which is, try to, regardless of our own shortcoming, we try to let our children know that we love them. And that’s not so easy sometimes. I don’t know. More? Anything else? I’m sure I didn’t answer your question. You’re right to give up.

Q: Hi.

KD: Hi.

Q: So, you were saying earlier that we should be thinking about other people, we should be serving people and helping them out.

KD: I don’t think I said, “should.” That’s one of the words I try to avoid. Especially when I’m talking to myself.

Q: So, what was the word you used?

KD: I have no idea. What’s your question?

Q: So how do we help people or how do we think about them without we, ourselves, getting fatigued by it. Like, either in our work life, or in our family life or in other phases of life?

KD: So, how do we think about other people?

Q: yeah, how do we help them and not get fatigued by it?

KD: Well, one of the ways you help other people is recognizing your own projections onto them and not doing that to other people. Like, say there’s somebody at work who never looks at you, never talks to you, seems to avoid you everywhere, you know, and you build up a story about that person in your own mind. And then you find out that he’s got brain cancer and the fact that he never spoke to you has nothing to do with you. He’s totally absorbed in his own shit. So, that’s one thing that we can do to help other people is not believe our own stories about them, unconsciously. And then as far as, you do what you can to help people. It’s not a question of trying to change anybody. The best way to help people is to work on yourself and allow some compassion towards yourself to also extend outward to other beings and not be so harsh on yourself or others. And more than that, I mean, if there’s some other way that you can help, you try to find a way to help, you know. I remember being completely blown away, I read about this woman down in Texas somewhere who just decided, she recognized how much food was wasted at the supermarkets, you know. That after a certain time, they have to throw everything out. She created a business of collecting all that food and feeding homeless people and people who needed it. It was amazing. I mean, like, she fed hundreds of thousands of people a week, and I thought, “Goddammit, I wish I could do that.” But it’s not me, you know? So, you find your way of doing it. Everything is good. And anything you can do for anybody is a good thing. But once again, it’s not done out of a sense of “I’m going to help this person,” you know. “How great I am. I’m going to give,” you know. Get over it, you know? You just do what you can in a very simple, easy way. A lot of people don’t give. You know there’s so much fear about contacting other people and opening up and allowing the reality of this world to enter into our hearts. It can be very brutal. There’s no question about it. That’s why you need inner strength. That’s why we need to get new mufflers for everybody on the fucking street. Now there’s something to do. So, that’s why, when we have inner strength, when we trust our own hearts, when we learn to take it easy on ourselves, then we can just do what comes naturally. Helping people will come naturally once we overcome our own fears and stuff like that. You just do what you do. You know, our own karmas allow us to do certain things and not to do other things. Sometimes, you have to feed yourself first before you can help another person. Sometimes, you have enough, you can just give. It’s just a way of overcoming selfishness and self-centeredness and the obsession with “me, me, me.” It’s a good practice to help with that. I’m sure that didn’t satisfy you, but I did the best I could.

The post Call and Response Podcast Ep. 82 | Real Enlightenment, Service appeared first on Krishna Das.

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