Show notes
Ep.12 ~ Krishna Das chats with Lama Surya Das Krishna Das chats with Lama Surya Das, one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, and a long-time friend. In this interview, the conversation between KD and Lama Surya Das touches on the subjects of spiritual practice, retreat, death, mindfulness, compassion and more.At 55:20, KD and Lama Surya Das chant the Buddhist mantra “Om Mani Pedmé Hung” together. “You know, one time, Maharajji said, ‘I hold the keys to the mind,’ … and then He teased us and said, ‘I can turn your minds against me.’ ‘No Baba, don’t do that.’ And He’d laugh, you know? So I said to Siddhi Ma, I said, “Ma, Maharajji says He holds the keys to the mind, which means to me that I am exactly where He wants me to be at all times, otherwise I’d be somewhere else, mentally, I mean like, spiritually, internally. My experience would be different. So, I’m where He wants me to be. So where does personal effort come in? Is it all grace? Or is it personal effort’” She says, ‘It’s all grace, but you have to act like it isn’t.’”– Krishna Das Transcription: SURYA DAS: Talking, shouting at Krishna Das… Badmash… Aap JaoKRISHNA DAS: SurDas. I’m going to call you Surdas from now on. SURYA DAS: Ok.KRISHNA DAS: That was Maharajji’s name for you, wasn’t it? Surdas. That’s amazing. Because you’re a poet, you’re a poet and He knew it. Nina: Maharajji called him Surdas?KRISHNA DAS: Yeah, but nobody knew who Surdas was. So Surdas came out. We didn’t know Surdas at the time.Nina: We should call him Surdas. SURYA DAS: Surdas, the blind poet devotee of Baby Krishna. KRISHNA DAS: Baby Krishna, yeah. And you know, they say, the devotion to Baby Krishna is the most complete because there’s no, it’s completely pure with a baby, you know?SURYA DAS: There’s no interpersonal… KRISHNA DAS: There’s no interpersonal, there’s no anything. There’s no story line. It’s just that love. And Surdas, who was blind, used to see the Leela’s and just describe them. SURYA DAS: I have a poster of Him, you know, it’s a famous poster. KRISHNA DAS: Yeah. SURYA DAS: And Baby Krishna’s like, in front of Him, looking up at Him.KRISHNA DAS: Yeah, just like that, amazing. So, just to start it off, my question is this, you know, you did many many years of intense practice and one of the practices in the Ngondro and the preliminary practices is the 100,000 repetitions of the Mani Mantra, and you did that, right? SURYA DAS: Well, there’s more than that. Hundreds of thousands of different mantras. KRISHNA DAS: Yeah. SURYA DAS: The purification mantra and the guru yoga mantras and other things. KRISHNA DAS: All of it in that practice while you were doing it? SURYA DAS: In Ngondro. The Foundation practices of Vajrayana Buddhism. KRISHNA DAS: I’m interested, personally, I’ve never done that kind of personal intense mantra practice. I mean, so I mean, I’ve done a lot, but not that kind of formal… SURYA DAS: Then half your life is wasted, as they say… KRISHNA DAS: Yes that’s true. Very nice. I’ve already wasted more than half my life. I’m hoping to waste this next half. SURYA DAS: No, but you often talk about taking the name, and the name of a God, and repeating the names, and what kind of practice that is. And you know, whether you use words like japa or yoga or mantra yoga or what we call mantrayana and other things, but you do the Name, so if you were counting, you’d probably, you know, you’d do 100 thousands of Ram Nam or Hare Krishna. Especially Ram Nam, you do a lot. Hundreds of thousands of… there’s really no need to count, that’s just a way of… you can do Ngondro, these foundation practices, by number, which is easy, like saying 21 Hail Marys and then you’re done, or you can do by time, like a one-month retreat or a three-month retreat and then you move on to the next practice that you do by time. Or you can do it by the third thing, which is the hardest, so we avoid that, is you do it by getting the signs of accomplishment. KRISHNA DAS: Oh, right. SURYA DAS: So numbers is better. You can finish those and move on. No signs. No dreams. Go back to square one. Start again. KRISHNA DAS: I don’t know if you want to answer this but it’s more of a personal question, but you can answer it in a general way if you like SURYA DAS: No but since we’re alone here, what happens here, stays here in our podcast. But to answer you very intimately… KRISHNA DAS: Yeah, but you know what I’m thinking is, what were you experiencing on the very relative level as you were doing these intense mantra practices and other practices, as you were going through this transformation? Let me put it this way, did you feel, was it a transformational practice for you? SURYA DAS: Yeah sure. You know, practices go up and down like your life journey. KRISHNA DAS: Yeah. SURYA DAS: So you have your ups and downs and good days and bad days or concentrated days or distracted days or sick days and you know, but over time, from doing long retreats or just year by year daily practice, you get sort of, in the best case, better at it or skilled at it or you learn the craft and then comes the art and the freedom and the creativity. You know, you master the skill, you progress on the path, these words are used. It’s hard to define. But so, it’s definitely transformative, and it’s also, you know, first is purification mantras and things like that and then there’s concentration mantras and then there’s loving kindness and compassion, forgiveness mantras, including self-compassion and self-love as well as others, and then there’s wisdom mantras and there’s like power or self-empowering, empowering yourself mantras and then there’s cutting through obstacle mantras and then there’s long mantras, like 100 syllable mantra, purification, a Vajrasattva thousand syllable mantra, which really we call Dharani in Sanskrit. Like the Hanuman Chalisa’s almost a long mantra. KRISHNA DAS: Well it is, Maharajji said it was. SURYA DAS: It’s a poem of 40 verses with four lines in each or whatever. 40 Praise the Lord Hanuman, right? So that would be a Dharani in Buddhism, like that it would have, you know, a thousand-line mantra. KRISHNA DAS: Dharani, yeah. SURYA DAS: And with stanzas perhaps. It would be a Dharani because it goes around and around. That’s what “Dharani” means. So, the mantra goes around and around like your breath goes around and around, like your mind goes around and around, so being present, you get more being where you are, rather than spinning around in the big wheel of samsara like a chicken without a head going around the rounds of rebirth, or your mind imagining many things, you get more and more just, around here and around here and more centered. Like centering a pot on a spinning wheel when you’re building a pot in a pottery shed.KRISHNA DAS: Right. SURYA DAS: And the more it spins and the more you center it, the better, it’s beautiful, it rises, otherwise the mud flies all over the walls. So, you can also turn the mantra around in your heart in a visualization, which is common to Hindu and Buddhist Yogis and Tantra from the ancient Siddhas of India. So the outer visualization is one thing, but the outer mantra with your breath and your sound and your tongue and your vocal chords is the outer mantra, but the inner mantra is visualizing the mantra in your heart chakra or whatever chakra you’re working on. Like on the six pedaled lotus of your heart would have one of the six syllables, “Om Mani Pedmé Hung” of compassion on them and by spinning it in your mind, it concentrates you and it sheds light and bliss and permeates and radiates outward and you breathe it out to all beings and you absorb it in to your heart and then you’re doing sort of simultaneous pulsing, not just sequentially breathing out and in but pulsing like from the heart, like subtle energy, prana, and the mantras turning and light and bliss and then even on a deeper level, the secret mantra is the natural flow of awareness. KRISHNA DAS: Right. SURYA DAS: You could call it going around and around but not going in circles. Khyentse Rinpoche called it the wheel of luminosity that turns day and night. That’s like your innate mantra or sacred sound. Or inner sound without auditory vibrations but awareness at its subtlest levels like light moves and has vibrations, not sound, but light. So it’s not like getting lost or circling around in samsara. It is the wheel of luminosity that turns day and night. It’s just the constant flow of awareness or the great Dao. So then that’s, you get to a stage beyond practice, where you don’t, there’s some stories of great Lama Siddhas, where after doing billions of mantras and counting them and all the practice, they throw their mala on the altar, even in the forest, and they leave the community and just walk about. It’s become one with their nature. Because the wheel of luminosity is turning day and night, so they don’t have to go to church on Sunday because every day is the holy day. KRISHNA DAS: Every day is Sunday. SURYA DAS: And the sun is the wheel of luminosity, it turns day and night. It never sets. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called it the great Eastern Sun. It’s in many of his books and poems which means, the sun of awareness that’s always rising, not that it comes up in the morning and sets at night. Even while we’re asleep you can be awake in lucid dreaming, so awareness is there. Even though you might not be conscious, you might be semi-conscious or unconscious but you could lucid dream and know you’re dreaming and still be asleep. So this luminosity turns day and night. So that’s like the innermost, an innermost level of mantra. Maybe even more deep than that, you could say just oneness is the ultimate mantra. Like “Om.” Which is a mantra but isn’t. It’s really a seed syllable. It’s a seed and in its potential has all sounds and mantras. KRISHNA DAS: Right. SURYA DAS: So the mantra “Om,” is like an example of like, a seed syllable. A seed is fertile if it’s put in the hot, sort of blind, unknowing but fertile earth. KRISHNA DAS: Right. SURYA DAS: And then anything can spring from it. So, I felt it was very transformative and also, in tantra, sometimes you spin the mantra right or left, clockwise around your heart center if you’re doing male deity yoga, sometimes you spin it counterclockwise if you’re doing female deity yoga, like Tara or Vajra Yogini or these kind of female Buddhas and, this is about feminine and masculine energy, not just masculine and female, not just male and female gender. KRISHNA DAS: Yeah. SURYA DAS: Gender, male or female, but energy, masculine and feminine, like yin and yang, so sometimes we’re practicing visualizing ourself as a Dakini and praying to the guru, guru Rinpoche, or the higher power, for blessings and then merging like as lovers, so as a guy, doing that, seemed a little fabricated to me at first, over the years. But then by spinning the mantra the other way, it was almost like going against the current, sitting near my meditation seat, I felt like there was resistance, like I’m used to going the other way, clockwise, but imagining the visualized mantra in your heart chakra petals spinning counterclockwise, I felt like my feminine-ness of being and embracing and receiving, rather than my masculine-ness of driving, erect, or creating a tower of enlightenment, I got into the womb of being. So you think it’s fabricated but when you actually find out as you get to the substratum, where things are taking form and being created by, let’s say your mind, how you interpret it, by your subjectivity, so you start to see how you can recondition and decondition that by visualizing the energy moving the other way and then it starts moving the other way, so it opened up my right side of my brain that is a more feminine energy, intuitive, being, rather than the left side, rational side. So, these mantras and you know, chakras and channels go together and it’s a combined body and soul, heart and mind energy and psyche kind of a practice. Like, just even chanting. It’s a heart and soul, healing, harmonizing, deepening and concentrating practice. KRISHNA DAS: Yeah. SURYA DAS: So that was like a little transformation. KRISHNA DAS: For sure. SURYA DAS: That I could even see while I was in retreat, not afterwards. Opening my feminine energy or receptivity or vulnerability and not just being an alpha achieving male, finding a new goal now called enlightenment to drive towards instead of to go lying on the football field or on a rocket ship, climbing a mountain, you know, these kind of alpha achieving activities. There’s a purification part, too, where you really chant your brains out and get the cobwebs out of your head and out of your lungs and forget yourself and experience your true being, like your higher self. Like in the kirtan, by chanting for an hour, I felt like everybody was pretty much interbeing and forgot our own narrative or story or who was next to us or what we sounded like. And that’s transformative. KRISHNA DAS: So, let’s, let me ask you know. So you have this base, this solid, not solid but this deep foundation of practice. SURYA DAS: Stable is the word we use. KRISHNA DAS: Stable practice for many many years and then you were in retreat for many many years in a row and then you came out of retreat. How, how did that, how did, what was your experience of that, what stayed with you, in a sense, as you became engaged with the outer world in a much more intense way? SURYA DAS: Well, it was gradual. First it was a bit like culture shock, like the first time I came back from India in I don’t know, my first India trip in 1972 or 3 and I landed in Kennedy in New York and I don’t know, I might have even been with you, maybe my parents picked us up and took you to Long Island and me to their house in Long Island and it was such a culture shock. I mean, India is very noisy and chaotic and has buses and trains and planes, you know all that, but it was such a culture shock. There’s a lot of things it didn’t have in the 70s, like telephones, televisions, hygiene and other things. So there was a big culture shock. And coming out of retreat was like that, too. It was like coming back into another world. In the Tibetan tradition, the Lama training is a cloistered three year three month three day retreat, so our first one that I did with some dharma friends under some great Lamas, Khyentse Rinpoche and Dudjom Rinpoche, etcetera and Nyoshol Khenpo Rinpoche, then it took three years and eight months. Not three months and and three months. Because we were waiting for Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche to come back from Nepal, where he lived, to teach the final teachings and open the gates. So, it was three months, eight months, what’s the difference? At that time you’re already dead. When I went to three year retreat, I really sold everything, I mean my car, my guitar, you know? KRISHNA DAS: Yeah, like when I went to India. SURYA DAS: And I didn’t really see the end of three and a half years, like, what am I going to do later? It was like dying, you know? Like when you go to college, you don’t really think about what you’re going to do afterwards. Even if you think you’re going to be a doctor, you know, you’re such a kid, you don’t really think about, in four years I’m going to go somewhere else and I don’t know, it just seems so long to a kid, four years. So, I came out of the retreat and we did it ritually, in a sacred way, slowly, then went back in, then the next day we came out, and people were more integrated, and so some of their friends and family and a few people threw up when they first rode in a car and smelled gasoline. Because for three and a half years, we had not been with cars. We were in the woods, in a cloistered retreat center with a courtyard out in the middle. And I realized I hadn’t worn shoes in three years. I was wearing slippers or flip flops or barefoot for three and a half years. I hadn’t touched money. So, culture shock w…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
