SHOW INTRODUCTION:

If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about yourself and living your most magnificent life, then do we have the Walking Each Other Home show for you.

Today I’ll be talking with Mirabai Bush, spiritual teacher, best-selling author, and co-author along with Ram Dass of several very special books, including one of the most beautiful and perhaps most important books I’ve ever read, and a new ALL TIME FAVORITE, Walking Each Other Home.

And that’s just what I want to talk with her about today, conversations on love and dying, and what it means for you.

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BOOKS BY RAM DASS & MIRABAI BUSH:


Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying (Hardcover)
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Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying (Hardcover)

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MORE ON RAM DASS:

Ram Dass first went to India in 1967. He was still Dr. Richard Alpert, a prominent Harvard psychologist and psychedelic pioneer with Dr. Timothy Leary. He continued his psychedelic research until that fateful Eastern trip in 1967, when he traveled to India. In India, he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known as Maharajji, who gave Ram Dass his name, which means “servant of God.” Everything changed then – his intense dharmic life started, and he became a pivotal influence on a culture that has reverberated with the words “Be Here Now” ever since. Ram Dass’ spirit has been a guiding light for three generations, carrying along millions on the journey, helping to free them from their bonds as he works through his own.Since 1968, Ram Dass has pursued a panoramic array of spiritual methods and practices from potent ancient wisdom traditions, including bhakti or devotional yoga focused on the Hindu deity Hanuman; Buddhist meditation in the Theravadin, Mahayana Tibetan, and Zen Buddhist schools, and Sufi and Jewish mystical studies. Perhaps most significantly, his practice of karma yoga or spiritual service has opened up millions of other souls to their deep, yet individuated spiritual practice and path. Ram Dass continues to uphold the boddhisatva ideal for others through his compassionate sharing of true knowledge and vision. His unique skill in getting people to cut through and feel divine love without dogma is still a positive influence on many people from all over the planet.In 1961, while at Harvard, explorations of human consciousness led him, in collaboration with Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Aldous Huxley, and Allen Ginsberg, to pursue intensive research with psilocybin, LSD-25, and other psychedelic chemicals. Out of this research came two books: The Psychedelic Experience (co-authored with Leary and Metzner, and based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, published by University Books); and LSD (with Sidney Cohen and Lawrence Schiller, published by New American Library). Because of the highly controversial nature of their research, Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary became personae non-grata and were dismissed from Harvard in 1963. Tim Leary and Alpert then went to Mexico, ate mushrooms, and went from being academics to counter-culture icons, legends in their own time, and young at that. For Ram Dass psychedelic work turned out to be a prelude to the mystical country of the spirit and the source of consciousness itself. Mind expansion via chemical substances became a catalyst for the spiritual seeking. This naturally led him eastward to the traditional headwater of mystical rivers, India. Once there, a series of seeming coincidences led him to Neem Karoli Baba and the transformation from Richard Alpert to Ram Dass.In 1974, Ram Dass created the Hanuman Foundation, a non-profit foundation meant to embody the spirit of service inspired his Guru. The Hanuman Foundation developed the Prison-Ashram Project, directed by Bo and Sita Lozoff, which helped prison inmates grow spiritually during their incarceration and the Dying Project, conceived with Stephen Levine, which helped many bring awareness and compassion to the encounter with death. Also as part of the Hanuman Foundation, Dale Borglum founded and directed the Dying Center in Santa Fe, the first residential facility in the United States whose purpose was to support conscious dying. The Prison-Ashram Project, now called the Human Kindness Foundation, continues under Sita Lozoff in North Carolina and the Living/Dying Project, now a separate non-profit headed by Dale Borglum in the Bay Area, provides support for transforming the encounter with life-threatening illness into an opportunity for spiritual awakening.Be Here Now, Ram Dass’s monumentally influential and seminal work, still stands as the highly readable centerpiece of Western articulation of Eastern philosophy, and how to live joyously a hundred percent of the time in the present, luminous or mundane. Be Here Now continues to be the instruction manual of choice for generations of spiritual seekers. Forty years later, it’s still part of the timeless present. Being here now is still being here now.Other books include The Only Dance There Is (Anchor/ Doubleday); Grist For The Mill (with Stephen Levine, Harper Collins); Journey of Awakening: A Meditator’s Guidebook (with Dwarka Bonner and Daniel Goleman); Miracle of Love: Stories of Neem Karoli Baba (Hanuman Foundation); How Can I Help? (with Paul Gorman, Knopf); Compassion in Action: Setting Out on the Path of Service (with Mirabai Bush, Bell Tower Press), Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying (Riverhead Books); One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life (Bell Tower Press); Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita (Harmony Books). See the Ram Dass Books Timeline for more detail.Ram Dass is a co-founder and advisory board member of the Seva Foundation (“seva” means “spiritual service” in Sanskrit), an international service organization. Seva supports programs designed to help wipe out curable blindness in India and Nepal, restore the agricultural life of impoverished villagers in Guatemala, assist in primary health care for American Indians, and to bring attention to the issues of homelessness and environmental degradation in the United States, along with other nations.

In 1996, Ram Dass began a talk radio program called “Here and Now with Ram Dass.” Seven pilot programs were aired in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, and Ram Dass planned to launch the show on a nationwide basis the following year, but it was not to be. On February 19th 1997, Ram Dass suffered a near-fatal stroke, which left him paralyzed on the right side of his body and expressive aphasia limiting his ability to speak, along with other challenging ailments. Though the radio show did not last, his Here and Now podcast (over 100 episodes) lives on today at Ram Dass’ Be Here Now Network.

The after-effects of the stroke have once again changed his life and vastly altered his day, but he has been able to resume teaching and continues to share and teach. In 2004, following a life-threatening infection, Ram Dass was forced to curtail travel and focus on recovering his health.

Ram Dass now resides on Maui, where he shares his teachings through the internet and through bi-yearly retreats on Maui. His work continues to be a path of inspiration to his old students and friends as well as young people who are just discovering the path of Being Here Now. His most recent books include Be Love Now (2011), Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart (2013), Cookbook for Awakening (2017), and Walking Each Other Home (2018).

MORE ON MIRABAI BUSH:

Mirabai Bush teaches contemplative practices and develops programs through the application of contemplative principles and values to organizational life.  Her work with individuals and organizations includes entrepreneurial project management, compassionate staff-board relations, organizational leadership, public relations, communication, networking, and strategic relationship building all through the lens of contemplative practice in action.

Her spiritual studies include two years in India with Hindu teacher Neemkaroli Baba; meditation in monasteries with Buddhist teachers Shri S.N. Goenka, Anagarika Munindra, and IMS guiding teachers; and studies with Pir Vilayat Khan and Tibetan Buddhist lamas Kalu Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Gelek Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and others; and five years of intensive practice in Iyengar yoga and five years of Aikido under Kanai Sensei.

Mirabai has led her life responding to the speed and fear that drives much of American life and thought with programs for developing a culture of reflection, insight, compassion and wisdom.  Having studied with contemplative teachers from diverse traditions, she has focused on the interdependence of social change and individual consciousness, and the potential for reforming secular institutions through practices that once existed only behind monastery walls.

She has led a diverse network of leaders from most every sector of American life to systematically explore the potential contribution of contemplative practices on American civil life and learning: insight and creativity, compassion and civic engagement, and an awareness of the interconnection of life on earth.   The practices—meditation, yoga, deep listening, lectio divina, and others—are drawn from diverse wisdom traditions and adapted to programs specifically designed for each sector:  higher education, law, business, journalism, environment, biotech sciences, youth leadership, government, and philanthropy. Her teaching and program development focus on the interconnection of the personal, institutional, and political realities of our lives.

SHOW NOTES:

Ram Dass Online: Website| Twitter| Facebook

SHOW NOTES:

Mirabai Bush Online: Website| Facebook

Key Topics:

  • How did Mirabai first meet Ram Dass?
  • Who is Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known as Majaraji?
  • What are our possibilities as human beings?
  • What does it mean to look inside yourself all day – and how does it change you?
  • What did Mirabai learn from her first experience in India with death, and what can we learn from it?
  • What does it mean (from Ram Dass) to snuggle up to one’s suffering?
  • And to snuggle up to death?
  • What does it mean to shred roles and why is it so beneficial for us?
  • What happened to Mirabai that nearly killed her, and how did it change her perspective?
  • What can we learn about emptiness, zen and the meaning of life from Zen Teacher (Norman Fischer)?
  • What can Ram Dass share with us about living?
  • What can we learn from Ram Dass about his first experience with pyschedelics?
  • What is interconnection and how does it affect our lives?
  • What do we need to know about how to die???
  • What does it truly mean to let go of attachment?
  • What’s the importance of a gratitude practice?
  • What’s the importance of hugging?
  • What’s a mala ceremony and how can it help us???
  • For more info visit: RamDass.com
  • Or Contemplativemind.org/tree

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