Ep. 4 - Mirabai Bush

this is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. This is synchronicity. What's going on everyone? This is episode 4 my guest today is Mirabai Bush but I wanted to talk about what's been going on for the past few days. A little bit longer I mean truthfully but culminating in the Paris attacks. Before that there was the Beirut attacks almost dropped by recorder and then before that there was the blowing up of a Russian jetliner and Egypt honestly if you just keep going back I don't think you ever get to the beginning of this. But you know it's been pretty crazy right especially for people in the West it seems like it's really hit home because Paris doesn't seem that different. People going out on a Friday night to bars to see a band it seems like anything that anyone could be doing in this country at any given time.

And then you have on the heels of that ISIS you know ISIL, Daesh whatever they're called taking responsibility and encouraging people to follow up on it and other planned attacks in DC. You know all of these things that are just clearly there's no other I don't know the word to adequately describe it. I don't think it's evil it's certainly their evil acts it's diluted right that's probably the best word anyone who would encourage any murdering anyone let alone people they don't know in other countries there's something going on there but that's not that's the obvious stuff that's going on. What I wanted to talk about briefly before today's episode was how people react to all this stuff and what we could be doing to maybe not get caught up in these crazy cycles of anger or rage fear and you know ultimately it can be violent violence.

You know for me myself I posted something on Facebook that just for my friends and family to see that I remember when 9/11 happened here it was graduating high school was right before I was going to go off to college. I had some friends in New York who were there for college I knew some people in the city and I just remember after of course the shock and the horror of it but then afterwards I was so fucking mad. I was so mad at somebody I didn't know who but them right terrorists people over there them not me. So you know it was crazy and I remember feeling like that truthfully for two weeks three weeks maybe a month just being like angry and I think ultimately I came to realize it comes from a place of fear but regardless the feeling was visceral it was palpable.

Since then one thing I've tried to do and I wish I could say I was able to apply this other aspects of my life but at least when it comes to terrorism and global catastrophes that are brought on by human beings not natural disasters is really try to consciously take a step back and you know not get caught up really make an effort not to get caught up in the reactions that are so easy to get caught up and say fuck these people at shoot them all it's bomb them basically anything Donald Trump would say you know anything along those lines how to not get caught up in that because you know what's funny about Donald Trump is when you watch him you see all of these bombastic things and a lot of people identify with that but for those of us who can see it is either a game or just he looks like a fool like that's what we all look like when we get caught up in those types of feelings.

So you know I don't like looking like that I don't like looking like a fool so I try to avoid getting caught up in these cycles of rage and anger which you know truthfully I see on social media people I know people I don't know just it's just but fueled by the Internet or whether that's not it just happens to be there people really get caught up in this stuff and you know it's one of those things where you just you got to take a step back so that's my little to be on all that you know the other thing you can do is you can honestly try to just the only thing you can do in these situations I mean if you if you're motivated to go seek action in some other way like actively go help somewhere with something by all means I'm not telling you not to pursue it but for me the type of person I am who I know I am what I try to do is really just start with myself that's the way you enact change in the world it's the only thing that I've actually ever found affects my world and our connected world is if I can work on myself and my reactions and how I am and how I am two people you know trying to be a little bit kinder and more compassionate that cumulatively obviously if everyone did that everything would be great so start with yourself that's the only other really tangible piece of information I have and I start with myself but I still get mad I still get angry and I still do fucked up shit so it's not that when you don't live up to some ideal of perfection that you get frustrated you do what Sharon Salzburg says to do just begin again that's all you have to do alright so now moving into my podcast with Mirabai Mirabai Bush is the co-founder of the mind in life wait I don't want to fuck this up it's contemplative mind in life I got to get this right I am actually going to Google it while here I should know it she is the center she's the co-founder of the center for contemplative mind in society I was adding life I don't know why but that's what one of her many roles she also sits on the board of the love surfer member foundation foundation which is Rambas's foundation and her guru she has a guru is Neem Krolli Baba so the only thing I want to get into this is finally you're getting a long intro the other ones have been so short and so sweet now I'm finally giving you a real intro so we're going to go into the concept of a guru this is I think one of the least understood concepts in the West the Western world whatever that is I think on two ways too it's not just the way of being like I don't want to I don't need a guru I can do it myself religion is stupid totally unnecessary that's one way of looking at it another way is being like ooh guru teach me everything I know I don't know anything I completely submit to you because I don't know anything as kind of like an escapist type of mentality that something is maybe being exoticized coming from the East when we're from the West so it's just a little understood thing and admittedly I had no real conception of what it was I probably would have fallen in the former category someone who was like nah I don't need a guru that's not not for me don't need it can take care of myself thank you very much so I am going to let me talk about nimcaroli Baba who now I would consider my guru and it's kind of an interesting route that I took to get there so what I did have an interest in back in the day when I was like a teenager was psychedelics I very much enjoyed them I really appreciated the mind altering and expanding dynamic that seemed to happen whenever I took psychedelics psilocybin mushrooms or LST so you know I was pretty young when I started with psychedelics I started about 15 and before I started them I read about psychedelics a lot one of the places I read about them is still around today and definitely check it out is aerowid.org E-R-O-W-I-D.org really amazing sight just for learning about anything from the biology and anything to do with actual substances to case reports of people taking various things and reporting back empirically and also just subjectively so anyway that was one of the places I read but I also had two books and those were storming heaven one was one book and acid dreams and I don't remember it might have been both but in one of the books there was a story about someone going to the Himalayas to go or Himalayas Himalayas I don't know I'm gonna set on one of those at some point in my life but I'm gonna use them interchangeably now anyway he went to the Himalayas and met an enlightened being and he said hey I have some acid I got three tabs of 300 mics each of acid and you take these up and tell me what's good so he gave him to the guy the guy was like not see everything exactly the same no change whatsoever that's pretty much the story there so that always stuck with me just because the implications of that are pretty profound but whenever I would take psychedelics for the first time starting with the first time up probably through you know the the the last or times I would tell that story I don't know why it was just something that I kind of just did whenever it happened and it wasn't something I would tell it to the people around me tell people tripping the babysitter is whatever it is so babysitter meaning the people who would watch the people take drugs so they didn't do something crazy not like a babysitter I wasn't that young when I started taking psychedelics but that story always stuck with me all right fast forward to about 10 years I was at Omega Institute and that's an upstate New York really awesome place and Ryan Beck just a really cool place but if you didn't know there's a library there and the library is the Rhonda's library and I was there for another program at this point I think this has got to be like 2004 five maybe didn't really know Rhonda's was at all maybe it read the written name Richard Alpert along with Tim Leary for the Harvard and the Silicide and stuff but really didn't know Rhonda's at all but I end up in the Rhonda's library and when I was walking up the stairs there was the statue quarter to life size maybe a little bigger of this guy I think it was a white statue and his arm is bent in like a funny way and I just remember looking at it and being like ah that guy looks really really really familiar like very very familiar to the point where it left the lasting impression on me that like how do I know that person pretty sure I know that person then I walked up to the top of the library there is a awesome area where you can sit and there's all these pictures of people like Ramakrishna, Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi didn't know any of these people at the time mind you but I was just looking at their pictures and like yeah pretty cool place so that stuck with me then fast forward to about 2013 I hear Raghu Marcus director of the love server member foundation and also co-hosts of mind rolling podcast boom did that smoothly I heard him on a podcast that my friend recommended I listened to called the Duncan trussle family hour podcast and it was Raghu and I was like oh it's Ramdas guy it's very interesting so I watched Fierce Grace which somehow was on my computer as something I downloaded and if you haven't seen the movie Fierce Grace it's Ramdas had a stroke in the late 90s and it was pretty debilitating and especially for someone who had been profoundly eloquent and communicating a lot of lofty spiritual concepts but in a way that was extremely relatable for a lot of people was like a big blow and part of the movie is him somewhat questioning his faith and he's grew named Corolee Baba and the movie is really it's in a I for anyone who hasn't seen it absolutely see it's by Mickey Lemley it's incredible I was watching and I was like oh I was in tears at a point I was like wow this is incredibly moving so I was watching that and then after that I set up a Skype because at the time you could do these one-to-one skipes with Ramdas so I set up a Skype for one evening and the evening eventually came and I was continuing to work with the foundation I'm gonna ask the question to Ramdas because I wanted to know at this point I'm getting interested in the Guru concept as just like a thing I was like you know if I have a Guru how do you find a Guru like how do you do that because I had always heard you don't find the Guru the Guru finds you which I always thought was kind of bullshit I was like that's a convenient way of skirting the issue and then not really telling me how to do it because it's so cool and so life changing how do I do that so I asked Ramdas and he pointed to his heart and he said Maharaji is with you a lot I was like okay and I was like that's nice you know and I was it's Ramdas so I am taking it to heart but on the same token I'm like it doesn't really help me I don't get that doesn't mean anything and I figured my Guru would be alive at the very least so I could go see and talk to and ask questions to so move forward about a year year and a half my life and I go to the Open Your Heart and Paradise Retreat on Maui in 2013 this is a retreat that is one of the best experiences of my life I've been twice it's absolutely incredible Maui itself is just like a magical magical place if you haven't been and you go you'll immediately know what I'm talking about and also there's teachers like Ramdas, Jack Cornfield, Trudy Goodman, this year there's Sharon Salzburg there's just so many like that combined with Maui you just really get these transformative you know practices and teachings on things that like you know help you like little little tips and you know things you can do to make your life a little more manageable and you know we know life is filled with suffering but how to relate to that and how to be more present anyway so during the retreat they have these afternoon programs and Nina Rao who is Krishna's manager and also in she plays the the finger symbols in his band also best finger symbols best symbols player I've ever seen ever and I mean this I went to a music school her timing and her it's insane like she did her double time when she goes into double time when the songs really get going it's incredible but anyway I hadn't heard her really at to this point and I went I smoked a joint before Kirtan because it's pretty much what I do and I went in and sat in low disposition because it seemed appropriate and I soon as she started chanting the hanamantalisa as soon as it started I got this immediately overwhelming experience of seeing in my mind a monkey kneeling at a throne and I'd been working with love serve at this point for a year or so maybe maybe a little longer a year and a half and I knew you know certain things about Neem Krolli Baba like understood that he was Maharaj you know he was Rhondas is grew but I didn't really get the whole thing but anyway I'm seeing this monkey and it's overwhelming to the point where like I still have conscious and rational thought I'm like okay what the fuck is this I'm gonna make this go away now I'm trying to enjoy what I'm doing here it's gonna like could not it was like it was like if I pushed it out of my mind it was like someone would just go and push it back on or something was doing that so I'm doing all these experiments I'm like okay I'm gonna not think about it now for this long at a certain point I just gave in okay what is this I'm examining it this she did a eleven hundred month chalices so it's about an hour an hour and a half each one takes about ten minutes or so and during this time period I'm just trying to you know deal with what I'm going on it's not an unpleasant experience experience at all but it's just like kind of weird but then at some point during the the chalices tears start coming down my face I'm not crying I'm not you know ecstatic or anything but it just starts happening and oh gosh I hope people don't think I'm a weirdo but that's what was happening subsequently whenever I was at the retreat and would hear the Honda much at least of that what it would be like an involuntary response and it was weird but that's just what would happen so then after the chalices I start think I look up and I see there's a picture of named Charlie Baba and I go okay you know what this is the guy I'm now realizing when I was in the rhombas library a while ago before I even knew who rhombas was this is the guy who the statue that I thought I knew like for sure he's in the same posture like oh my god then I realize you know what this is the guy who I was reading about in the book who was given acid by a guy who was Richard Albert rhombas and I've been telling that story every single time I've taken psychedelics since the first time I've taken psychedelics and so it's I'm like okay this is getting this is getting pretty weird and at that point I'm just like oh my god like now I'm working with all these people here I am we're talking about all these love and what named Charlie Baba embodied and what his practices were love everyone serve everyone remember God whatever your conception of God is and I'm like okay like I get it those three things clicked all at once for me and I'm like okay this is really this is who my guru is and I never in a million years would have thought that I would have said I had a guru in any way shape or form and one of the things that made it so profound for me is I wasn't actively seeking it out right I had asked the question around that's like how do you find a guru but I wasn't like I need a guru so bad it's going to teach me everything I didn't it's going to be so great it was a concept that was interesting but I wasn't like really rushing towards it I was kind of like bumbling if anything towards it and was you know given plenty of opportunities to be like hey dumb dumb when you pay attention this thing is going on in your life but you know I am the type of person who needs you know the proverbial tilopa sandal across the face because you know I'm that type of person so Mira by was also at the retreat she was one of the speakers one of my favorite speakers at the retreat actually she's on the podcast today but I also had beer miss if I didn't point out there's a new book called love everyone which is essentially a recap of name curly baba seen through the eyes of the westerners who went and saw him and many of them have stories not dissimilar to my own although they met him in person you know a lot of these people weren't actively looking for some guy and some some being to be like you're my guru like a lot of them were like rondas is story himself famously he was like a bothered right before he was going to meet him that he was going to have to go rub some guys feel like what the fuck so the book though itself is by Parvati Marcus you can get it at rhombas.org/love everyone just I cannot say enough nice things about it it is so well done it's it's a million times better than I thought it would be not that I thought it wasn't going to be good it's just better than I thought the already good it was going to be it just weaves together these stories in a chronological way and just in a meaningful way that can give you a nice little introduction to who named curly baba was name curly baba another popular culture tie-in is Steve Jobs famously went to go see him after reading be here now got sick and missed him he Maharajee died and I think in 1973 and he just missed him and that was one of the you know he had Steve Jobs had really tried to go there and then most recently Mark Zuckerberg I think Steve Jobs told Mark Zuckerberg to go there to the ashram and Kenchi and he went for a couple days and there was a little story about that now apparently the place is blowing up and everyone's trying to get there the tech guru but that's that's not really what it's about it's just to show you that there's there's a little there's stuff going on that we don't always see but definitely pick up that book and so today Mirabai Mirabai is so freaking awesome and she is lovely just one of my favorite people to sit down and talk with she's taught contemplative practices to some really interesting groups like the military Google ex gang members lawyers like people who you would do she has some really interesting experiences that she talks about about teaching and some of these practices and tools to people like that and organizations like that she also was there in the 70s with Maharajis so has some very cool stories from back then so yeah without further ado won't ramble on anymore here is the podcast with Mirabai Bush [Music]

you were in New York right or you were in Baltimore you were in New York I was in New York I mean at K.D. Yeah I was there this weekend I didn't see you yeah I think I saw you went to go say hi then get dragged off by like three other people and then when I turned around you weren't there and my mom wanted to go I got it yeah I know you know how it goes it was like the hub right in the middle pew section it was just like so much stuff going on but yeah no I had a blast that was really that was really awesome so you're mom like it my mom really liked it she really wasn't into any of this stuff but then purchased some perk on indiegogo for the NPM thing and then got one of the things in all the books she got was the Krishanats DVD so I guess they watch that her my stepdad and she's like I can't I can't get the Hanuman to Lisa out of my head I was like all right I get it so she was really happy she was bummed they didn't he didn't do the Hanuman to Lisa and I was like oh don't worry you'll hear it eventually yeah but she had a really good time and it was it's nice that she's into that stuff she's more into like the the southern she really is into Buddhism she's been seeing Sharon and DC for 20 years really on time yeah and she also is into the shamanic stuff in South America like the ayahuasca stuff so but she's now getting into a little bit about these stuff so not so bad all right so yeah we'll use some of this file and I'll just edit it but we can start now so I had all of these questions prepared before and then I got this in the mail yesterday I got two copies actually because I pre-ordered and got one I think yeah I think me too oh man it was I've just been going through it just briefly today in between working and I noticed and I scrolled through and look for your stories and it got me to thinking so I have some questions related to that too it's it's honestly and I and this is not meant to be in any way disparaging it's way better than I possibly could imagine like no I agree it's so good like the way it's laid out just the weaving of the stories the chronology of it it's it's really awesome and especially for me like I wasn't there I've only read about it and heard stories it's you're excused yeah I know it's pretty amazing I I have like the weird Maharaj story too which I'm probably going to use an intro for this one because I'll go through my because I this is where we'll start because I was reading and I know your story a little bit from New York right you're in New York at the time before you left for India is that right I was actually at SUNY Buffalo okay cool cool oh didn't did Sharon go there yes and so did Suriya does oh I didn't know Suriya does one yeah oh hey cool so what I liked about it though is your story how you described you know before you met Maharaji named curly Baba yeah your story was how you kind of were a little bit reticent you were kind of an intellectual the concept of a guru was like completely not only foreign but even a little bit distasteful which is not dissimilar to kind of what happened with me like I didn't really go out looking for a guru at any point I will say this before I called and got in touch with love so remember I did ask the explicit question with my heart like if I have a guru I want to know who let me know who it was until a year and a half after working with love so remember that I realized that Maharaji was probably my guru and all these things like way before way before I got in touch years decade before started lining up and I was like oh yeah get so what I wanted to ask you is what was it like before you left for India what were you doing and then what was it like you know throughout that process of kind of meeting Maharaji accepting surrendering to kind of the guru thing and you know just what happened there that's that's a good place to start I think before I left I was at SUNY Buffalo teaching English I was in the fourth year of my PhD so I was teaching English so I met Suri Das because one of his roommates was one of my students and it was the time it was I was in the graduate school from 67 to 70 so this was a time of a lot of civil rights activity a lot of anti-war activity and I was really involved in both of those and many things happened it was just you know it's hard to appreciate and remember just what a radical time that was yeah I've had to go back and like search online to find you know see what people wrote about that time but it was really intense and the FBI was following us around and the police took over the campus and it was almost impossible to teach and I was teaching a class that was majority African American because there had been this big initiative after Martin Luther King died and there was so much suffering and it was just nothing made sense anymore so and I had taken a lot of psychedelics also through pretty much everybody on the campus was doing it there and the faculty so we a group of us just said we you know we have to figure out a different way of living so the first thing I did was I traveled across country with 20 other graduate students in English and we homesteaded on land in British Columbia and we did the thing you know we lived in TPs and we built buggy fuller domes and we washed our clothes in the stream and we fished with the Kwaki Udall Indians that was very cool they had all the salmon vision rights and they liked us and so on it was quite amazing and but we had my partner then John Bush who became a Christian Bush we had talked about going into it before we left Buffalo we I don't know anything about India but we had this two friends had come had gone there and come back and they told us something about Buddhism and so we had in mind that that would be one of the things we could do to try to figure out life right and so we after I can't remember some months on the commune we decided we'd just go off and do this trip and then come back to it and then we traveled over land through Europe and and the Middle East and India and I always say it was so amazing then we could travel through through the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and into India and it was totally peaceful everywhere yeah no one's making that trip now that's not a trip that people took us into their houses and into their mosques and churches and temples and fetas it was really so amazing and then I got to India and so I well actually I didn't know quite we didn't have any idea what we're gonna do when we got there but on the first day I was there on the street in Delhi I met Sharon Salzburg she was I hadn't known her but she was an undergraduate and I was teaching so she told me we you know we figured out there weren't very many Westerners in India so she told me about this course was being taught by the Lanka and so I figured well we're in India I guess we're gonna learn to meditate I had never meditated I had never sat down across my legs you know I read a lot of books but I once met Alan Ginsburg but not meditated so I went and that was this famous retreat the first meditation retreat taught specifically for Westerners in India was taught by the Lanka and it was 10 days long and we didn't really have any idea we're getting into it we don't learn meditation now the way people talk about mindfulness now right say for 15 minutes and breathe in and breathe out right it was 10 days from 5 a.m. till 10 p.m. every day in silence and it was fabulous and there also I met many people who have been my lifelong friends Ramdash Christendash Ramesh Danny Gullman and Joseph Sculcine and Sharon and many others it's a good group of people it was a great group we even though we were silent together we got it and so we didn't nobody wanted to leave when it was over so we stayed for another we did I can't remember but we did three or four courses in a row Wow and we were in such a zone when we finished and in the meantime we'd all had clothes made I remember in but Gaia so we were all dressed in these long white flowing clothes you know and we got we've so Ramdas had promised you you probably know the story Ramdas had promised that he was going to meet Swami Muktananda and Delhi and so group of us not everyone at the course but a smaller group of us decided to go with him and on the way Danny Gullman who had snuck out of the monastery during during the course because he wanted to see the Kumamel that was in just gathering sorry what is that it's a it's a gathering every the big ones every 16 years but it's actually the largest gathering of humans in the world and it's a gathering well holy holy men yogis and sadhus and teachers in India and then also all kinds of pilgrims and everybody comes to it's in different places but this year it was in a lot about where these three sacred rivers come together and people bathe it's very auspicious and so we and it was over by the time we got out of the course but Danny had been there during it and he wanted us to just see the play of course the place is amazing so finally there was a big discussion around it which has been rehashed for the 40 years since whose idea was it real? and so we and we had we we contracted with this bus driver who some of us have been on this bus part of the time coming over land we later found out Scott is Italian and he had this incredible Mercedes bus and very comfortable and everything else that was all broken down and so we called him Gino and he came and got us on the bus but he if we later found out that the bus had it was all like the luck there was there was a separation between the outside of the bus and the inside lining up the bus and he'd been he'd been that smuggling hash back and forth but we didn't know it at the time and we and so we arrived in a lot of butt and that was what what I wrote about there about right seeing my rising for the first time and as others have expressed you know it was just totally outside my experience I was very I mean I was becoming more than rational by doing all this meditation I was beginning to appreciate a different way of knowing but um I was totally unprepared for anything like this and right and I just I just radically changed in that moment I just saw it right I fell in his feet and everything was different after that and forever I mean I I you know I never met him in the body but I have I can trace back like a big turning point in my life was when I started getting involved with love serve remember and not just because of the things that came out of that but my my world changed right like it I know it's it's interesting because it's not just you it's not just me it seems everyone who has some connection to named curly lava has this type of experience at one point or the other where it's like a pivot point and and and again what's so interesting is like there's a couple other things like I am just about I my wife is pregnant so we're going to have a baby that's so great yeah and we're really excited and you know you get to hear about everyone's perspective on having a child know then you know all the different things and what I'm noticing is there's a comparison in my mind when people describe psychedelics right like you can hear everything there is exactly exactly but it's still you do it it's like you don't know but what I find so interesting about the Maharaj and stuff is a lot of people had already done psychedelics like I've done psychedelics dozens of times for any of this stuff happened and even though that's a transcended experience a completely then another thing that completely radically shifted my world it's not those experiences this is my next question too is when you have these transcendent experiences sometimes it's hard to integrate them back into regular life the the Maharaj stuff and not just Maharaj I know there's other beings who have done this for people too a ton of them but it seems to stick with you well past the peak experience of say like an LSD trip or a mushroom trip where you still can take some knowledge and wisdom back but it's like a fundamental shift and then I also saw in the book you write about these mirror neurons right you know as neurons actually emulate when you're with someone what's going on so like there's physical characteristics so I was hoping you could talk a little bit about that and just also expand expound upon you know the lasting impacts of the Maharaj meeting yeah it's true psychedelics are important to me in terms of showing me something about the nature of reality that I had not known before but that that sense of awe that you have when you see that everything is interconnected oh yes it's hard to sustain that awe well what Maharaj seemed to have done to us was he you know he opened our hearts and so of course all of this you have to keep you know doing what you know to do in order to deepen into it or even to sustain the um the um awakening that you've had through these things but um but there was that way in which he opened our hearts it seems that never changed for me right and I mean it's not that I'm loving in every single time definitely um it's definitely been like a major um motivating and uh it's just a force and a way of being that's been with me ever since then and um a more easy to access it sometimes than others but it has kept growing without question you know uh and you can see that rammed us of course I mean clearly I mean it's just become love it's just nice I know I mean and anyone can follow like there's talks from him from the 70s and subsequent and you can see his transition physically and I now I mean well physically you know not in the greatest of shape but you can see in his eyes and just when you're around him physically you can sense it it's it's weird and uh yeah it's like a conduit he's like a conduit for it I mean it's it's incredible it's the real for me it's the real statement of what you know the potential of the guru you know um creating in us and we're all you know carry it in different ways but Rumba says really embodied it and yeah yeah it's just so beautiful so because you know because I knew him when he wasn't always like that he had a very critical edge also yeah yeah and um now he just knows what's important and it just had such an impact on other people it's so wonderful well that's like the same that's the same thing I think the you know and we see this in the physiological stuff the mirror neurons but I think there's I also am another one of my big influences that changed my life and not psychedelics was Carl Jung I'm a huge young fan and uh one of his uh you know students Marie Louise von Franz, a post-youngian she has an excellent book called psyche and matter and it is fundamentally the crux of it and it goes into things like numbers and gematria and all of these mystical divination things like the yin but the crux of the book is essentially that our inner states and our psyche can affect external reality which is you know in a very in a very tangible way to not some esoteric like oh you're a half person things get happy around you but in the same way what you're describing when you're around Rumbas or you're around named Crowley Baba and you feel physically changed and that that line in the book I forget who said it but I think it was Larry Brilliant when you were around Maraji it's not that you were loved it's that you loved every year and that uh to me I mean that that's something that what I think when everyone anyone experiences that in any facet of life um you know at least for me this is what it was like Marie when I experienced by the sign the the second thought after that is how do we get everyone to feel like this how can we really make this a state where everyone is coming from and so that ties in I think greatly with what you've done with the center for contemplative mind and society so I want to delve into that and specifically I would like to hear about what your experience is like teaching in places like Google and the army but before we get to that I would like to hear how you were impacted you know by going to India having these experiences and then what you did subsequently to try to I guess integrate those experiences into your regular life in quotes yeah well when we came back and everybody came back at once but yeah I came back with Rumbas and Rago and Parvati and Ramesh and group of us left we didn't expect to be in the West very long we just assumed we'd go back and be with Maharashi again we've been away for two years and we got family and other kinds of things we needed to work with and I was pregnant so I wanted to have the baby here which I did and but then as it happened Maharashi died and those who were with Maharajian also those of us who stayed on the Buddha path pretty much everybody came back we were so taken by course by what happened and we all wanted to share it in some way so most everybody wanted to be a teacher one calendar another you know and most people did and so yeah we ended up opening retreat centers you know insight meditation and spirit rock and then and then all kinds of centers you know happened and then people were teaching in all different contexts and I used to teach around us when he traveled around but and we all taught at Naropa that summer but but I but mainly I was married had a child and we had to have some livelihood and also in those years nobody no one dreamed that you could actually integrate a child into like a you know all all the meditation work and other work was going on was in this very monastic model right right right not in the world like separate right right right and so but of course Maharaj you had you know encouraged us to be Carmen Yogis to serve and so the first thing I did with with John then was to we started a business we needed some money so we started business and it was a like essence new age business you know this was at a time which is also kind of amazing there was no spiritual paraphernalia right there was art to imagine now it's hard to imagine really that didn't know there were certainly like no special clothes you couldn't get yoga mat or a Zafu you couldn't and you certainly couldn't buy all the doodads you know that around now but um so but there were spiritual bookstores and so we did this I won't go into it's the whole thing we we um so screen these mandalas from all the different sacred traditions on clear plastic with a sticky back and people put them on their windows and on their I mean every car window of anybody under 30 had one of these on their cars and so we did that for some time and and then actually we we silkscreened a rainbow so we called it the universal symbol of peace and harmony and it completely took off it was like the icon for that period and we were in 10,000 stores so we didn't know anything about business and we had friends and friends and friends and it was a whole thing so after that was over and but but what I was doing there what I was most interested in was bringing practices and awareness into into a working situation we're all working all the time so like the idea to me of like you know saving your spiritual practice for that one hour you might have when you weren't working just it makes sense so we did we did all of the things that later have grown into this whole crazy movement that's going on but um you know we've had silence at the beginning of meetings and we always sat on the floor anyhow we didn't like I remember when we came back it was like we'd been back from India back four years I think yeah and we moved into when we'd been living in these group situations all the time we moved into a house and I remember we bought a couch and it I felt like oh my god it's over now we weren't into furniture you know so but so we'd have these staff meetings we had 65 people working and we'd sit on the floor and we'd meditate we'd read from the eaching and then we'd decide we'd question okay what's the message for what we should do this with the business that's all you had business but the thing is it all worked it was really successful you know we supported 65 people well for years so Ramdas used to come and give talks about right livelihood and we had a big feast every Tuesday it was hunt them on day you know and so we we did all that stuff we had all these things that now when I got to Google you know we have pool tables and you know right now that's the trend is yeah and great parties and if you we had a meditation room and if you needed to take time out and be quiet for a while you could do that we'd go good classes so but this isn't this early 70s mid through yeah we started we first came to life we started like in 74 so and it went till like 83 or something so but then after that what I did was help to um found Sava Foundation with Larry and Girajan and Ramdas and maybe gravy and others and then got into direct service where most of Sava was working on blindness in yeah Asia and Sava is now what site to four million people I feel free it's unreal who would otherwise be blind it's just I mean and that is to talk about the changes and we were hippies you know we really the Grateful Dead was the house band and they would give concerts and raise money you know and it was amazing so then and during those years I spent ten years working with developing a program in Guatemala with my and people in the mountains was great and then after that is when I began the Center for Contemplative Mind so by that time so at Sava we also of course integrated all this into in a less kind of structured way but we all we on the board all we were there to integrate spirituality and and service so then when I started the Center for Contemplative Mind it was to look I started it with two friends who were they were each the head of a foundation one was the head of Nathan Cummings in New York was the Jewish Family Foundation very progressive and Nathan Cummings in Michigan and so they had funded Bill Moyers to do a series called Healing in the Mom which was the first thing along with a with a study that was done by Eisenberg at Harvard to show how many people were using what now we would call integrated medicine then it was called alternative and it was really underground I mean people were using active acupuncture and and yoga and a whole range of of of alternative practices so they did this TV series and and John Cabot's in was part of it and Danny Goldman and and a whole bunch of others and when was this Dean Ornish probably 99 93 or something okay okay because by 1995 we were asking the question could these practices been so helpful in for health and healing could they be beneficial in other sectors of American life and it was a real question then I mean nobody was doing it right in other professions and sectors so we decided we form an organization it was first a project of SAVA and then it became independent and we started looking around places where we could try it out and you know we'd have retreats for journalists and we had retreats for the green group they were the still art but CEOs of the national environmental organizations like NRDC and Sierra Club, Williams Society and we had it was really a fun time because they were just everybody who like was into this was out on an edge you know and they were so happy to find other people who were I remember Robert Redford gave us what to call his what's what's the film that film series called the Utah you know the Sundance yes sometimes well he is a he is a resort also called Sunday and so he gave he gave us part of that like so we could have this retreat for the green group because it was so far out you know it was like that and we did a lot of retreats with lawyers judges yeah what was that like see that's that's I specifically I my mom was a lawyer my grandfather was a lawyer my mom you know worked with companies like Google to choose communications lawyers so worked with and I know kind of what lawyers are like and lawyers obviously get a having a stigma associated with them a lot of them as the legal society the way it works in this country what's it like when you go in and I mean how how do you a approach that like let's say you're going to a law firm and you're working with a group of lawyers and I assume they're probably really stressed out and dealing with a lot of stuff nonstop like a lot of my lawyer friends how do you go in and like what do you teach them number one and like how do you approach it yeah well it's a really good question because yeah each group and this is true for everybody but it was so clear for us in those years you know because each group we were working with was so different and they all everybody stress but they all had they all had a different way of like framing how they saw their lives their language was different they're they're just their culture was just really different so you had to figure out you had to figure out not only what would in what ways could these practices help them but in what ways did they perceive that they could help them what did they perceive that they you might have heard me talk about Google and the Googlers didn't think they were stressed at all because they had a call or some in the world right so of course they were but they didn't identify with that but lawyers of course you know they definitely know that they're stressed yeah but it was more than that it was like it was really it was funny for me because after teaching with Rhonda's for years you know we would just we'd go anywhere and we'd do and we'd say you know it was kind of like what shall we do for this one we'll play it by year or right right I totally decide as we go along or let's meet for 15 minutes before we start yeah just to get yeah exactly the lawyers oh my god we'd have the first retreats we'd had so many meetings we had a committee of lawyers and they they would talk forever about like well is it better to have eight people or 10 people you know and well what's the goal what question should be the guiding question I said I think we should let it emerge out of what we see is happening once we get there no nothing you do not let things emerge when you're in the courtroom so that's a your worst fear right you want to be completely prepared and you want to know the answers to any questions that you ask so well you know we were we'd like to talk about barren witness and and like you know don't know mind right yeah I'm sure they love that yeah be totally empty when you go into court have nothing planned you know you know the whole non judging quality of mindfulness or meditation was a challenge so and they were and then they wanted to have what we did the first things we did were straight meditation retreats Joseph Goldstein was the lead teacher and we did pretty traditional they were be like three or four days and the first ones we did I think we're with yeah law students and and so they wanted to know what text we were going to use and we said there is no text for this the text is your own mind right it was just comic at times yeah I'm sure and and also it was just really hard for them to let the concept of letting go it's very hard well that's that's that's my question there too I mean because I think a lot of people I agree with you and your fundamental believe that people you shouldn't have a distinction between your time for being spiritual and your work and your other stuff I and and just like you I am completely aware that as much as I believe that I totally fall into the same things but I do know that ideally we should have be mindful of these things all the time but when you're working with lawyers and we'll get into the army in a second but when you're working with people who are fundamentally focused right right brain is left brain right brain I think right brain is an intuitive brain yeah right left brain so being the analytical like you know fusing those let alone just not working exclusively from them like how how would I mean because that seems to me like it would be the biggest challenge getting people to like I can see even as a lawyer I'm not a lawyer but if I were a lawyer that the non judging aspect of mindfulness would actually be immensely useful right but it sounds like when you're a lawyer that that is a completely useless thing so exactly yeah like how yeah lots of you know well the main thing was to get people to practice because once they began to put all the talk ahead of time you know so they wanted to text they wanted some play no text right you know so we did a lot of things in the first planning where we said okay because we think we really they'd know after a while so we left them figure out every five minutes of the four days you know and then of course it didn't and I mean it's not like I don't think you should have plans and in a weirdly with rhondos it really was that we just knew we've been doing it for 30 years you know we knew it but you know I am actually working on an agenda right now for something that's coming up yeah so but so it's basic rule of any kind of community organizing is start where people are and it's the same when you're teaching any kind of spiritual practice or anything so we would you know get a sense of where they were I mean like we started with lawyers because there were so many lawyers on our board and they had friends and they wanted to do it there so you know we knew among us we knew pretty well how people were thinking we started with the with the Yale law students because there was this one of the early meetings they were sitting around there saying we've got to influence the you know the professional law they were lawyers and so how are we going to do it so they said Charlie Halpern was like he likes to think big you know he said well start with the Supreme Court and a brier I think is does actually meditate wow so he said he had heard that and he said and he had gone to get a loss going so he thought he could get in there and talk it right right now it became clear and this was before even some of the most conservative judges were all but so then it became clear we were not going to do that so then they started thinking well managing partners of firms you know and then you know we had some talks with some managing parties like this is not going to work so and yeah we kept going down and down and we said well but you know the law school and then they started remembering what it was like to be in law school and they said we've got to have first year first year students that's the only ones were ever going to really affect but as it turned out we had mixed group of students but things like you know we would teach mindful listening which we didn't have to make too big a case as it were to convince them that they needed to listen better they knew that but what happened was we did this with you know a deep listening mindful listening you you're in silence you're listening the other person you're letting you're watching that comes into your own mind you're letting it go and bringing your awareness back to what the person's saying over and over and then you process later after it I remember this one student said we said you know okay any comments what happened oh my god he said I had no idea he said I've been we've been learning a certain kind of listening for being in in being litigators in the courtroom setting and so we're listening for the weakness in the other person's argument and we're ready to attack and he said I realize that I've been I've been listening to my girlfriend that way I've been listening to my professors that way I've been listening to everybody that way he said I totally didn't know there's like different kinds of listening for different settings yeah like so great moments like that would happen in every different with every different group you know the the environmentalist used to talk about it as the inner habitat you know and happen and recognize that they bring like issues around the importance of biodiversity and the external and how like honoring and loving all your thoughts and emotions and recognizing how they interplay with each other and not you know repressing a whole set of stuff that you don't want to look at or it's a yeah so I mean it must it must have been fascinating though for you to see each of these different groups and take away and see how they all engage with these principles I mean wow yeah that's so cool amazing what about the army I need to know about the army because that to me I mean that is the first place it's such a juxtaposition and I've had this conversation with Raghu with David with a lot of other friends about you know whether these mindfulness techniques or even the my mindfulness stuff can be kind of co-opted by Wall Street people army people make them better killers fighters my general belief is that I think the more you immerse yourself in this stuff you don't kind of get use them for the dark side so to speak but you kind of cultivate more perspective you get a little more compassionate and ultimately that feeds into your life at whole what's been your experience though working I mean like you know I don't know if you're allowed to even talk about specifically what you are helping them with but like what's what's that whole experience been like that's fascinating well the army what you brought up is this huge conversation you know yeah of course and I do believe the key is the quality of the teacher the quality and the preparation the wisdom passion of the teacher and I think the big problem isn't so much business managers and generals who want to co-opt it for their purposes I think that's probably true in a lot of business settings you know right but um but the if the people who are teaching the practice are have you know a deepened awareness teach it well are there when the students are the participants are like want to talk about it it's so because the practices actually are like they have the potential they've transformative potential and if they're taught right and well and you know it's so easy close your eyes watch your breath but there's so much more to it than that and what the luxury we had at the center was nobody was doing this except us so I would call anybody you know and they're all old friends anyhow but you know I could call Joseph or Norman Fisher or lots of great teachers and they come and do this and yeah so we we never saw any of that make mindful stuff because of course the people in the presence of these wonderful teachers you know and they they didn't all like keep meditating I'm sure but they had an experience of a different way of being and it so it's with you that's a big part of that answer if there is an answer to that other question but in the army that Norman worked with me in the army think too but we were we were approached by to work with caregivers in the army who were chaplains and medics gotcha so and they were burning out they were they had they were whole vocabulary like everybody else but they had lost resilience so that somebody who was a chaplain had done he had done learned meditation from Larry Rosenberg in Cambridge and he got it and he said this could be really helpful I think so and then at first it was like he called me up I said you're who you know and then I remembered that like but it was a fascinating conversation what I realized was so much suffering and this was 2008 so this is right now right in the heart of that yeah Iraq Afghan situation so oh my god there is one chaplain in the army for every one thousand soldiers so the stories and the stories of the vicarious trauma that the caregivers go through right I mean soldiers maybe like once or twice during a deployment are like in the presence of somebody getting hit by an IUD but these guys are with it every single day that's their job so they were really hearing about that suffering just soften my heart then I remember then he said well can we talk again on Wednesday I said sure what time you know 130 he said okay I'll see you there and he hung up and I said oh my god they're coming here so this is the center of your contemplative mind in Northampton you know I said he's kind he didn't even ask how to get here and then someone in the office said nearby they found Baghdad they're gonna fly Northampton for sure so they came and yeah what I saw is the tremendous suffering what I also these guys are not fooling around they are in the presence of life and death and I loved that about them you know meet so many people who are like leading their lives as if just not thinking that way right and they're and these guys were so real I just and you know I've been a big anti war activist and you know they were so great I had so many great conversations with them about you know they'd say things like we're buying the military does not take us to war civilians take us to work you follow orders you know yeah and I mean that's essentially it's true I mean yeah you know it's like bigger than that of course obviously but yeah that's uh but um so I what finally happened we had endless conversations and I met a lot of amazing people and then what we finally did was we were gonna have a small conversation about six or eight people I thought I'd bring a couple of meditation teachers and a couple of the researchers just getting going then so it's like to bring you in and someone else to talk with a couple of people in the army about you know what the field looks like and what what might be possible but by but the timing was so that as soon as the word got out that we were going to do this I mean people from every seem to me like every part of the army called him and asked if they could be there so there were people from from Walter Reed and the other hospitals there were people from the traumatic head injury division there were people the chief of chaplains came people in involved in training of all different kinds people in the Department of Defense at the Pentagon it was crazy so we yeah and every day he'd call and say can we have one more person at this so then we realized it had to be a different kind of thing so we ended up giving this big colloquium at the National Cathedral in Washington and they were and they all you know these days they all were camouflage all the time like when this guy's first showed up in our office it was like oh my god when I realized it was a camouflage if you wear it in the jungle or in the desert maybe it works but if you wear it you're in New York Hampton as the opposite opposite of the opposite you know all the time they were these camouflage and then those boots on the ground yep I you know I live in Silver Spring Maryland so we're right outside of DC so yeah I hear the Jets constantly flying about like it's a very military Walter Reed five minutes away yeah so I'm I'm a little more used to it but I also I always thought it was ironic that the camouflage right if you're in the jungle if you're in the dunes it's it's good but here it's totally the opposite exactly so so they all came and then the hooded hybrid and Cliff Saren who's he he's at UC Davis and he's he's doing the the testing and on the Shama to project which was people mentating for three months he's great and and Norman came and Sharon Salzberg came and a lot of what's his name from John Cabot who was running John Cabot since seen then Socky Santa Riley and anyhow so it had researchers the head of neuroscience at Stanford called me up one day and said could I come?

I couldn't believe this was happening so we got there all these people were there and we also had someone who was in into something called Christian Insight which is basically Vipassana for Christians you know okay and because of course most of the chaplains are Christian almost right and so chaplains and medics and it was so amazing first they told they kind of framed it with their story about all this suffering and people were being sent back for fourth and fifth deployments and you know it's been a really really horrible war period it's so fucked up so anyhow they they told their story to frame it and then and then people from various parts of the military presented and then I asked I was still entertaining and then I asked the you know people oh Liz Stanley who's a person who's running one of the projects for Marines she was a person who's career military ninth generation military family had got some form of PTSD went I think this was Sharon also but anyhow she learned to meditate and then she decided to go to Burma she went to Burma for a year and took ropes you know you can do that in Southeast Asia you can be a nun for at or a month for some time and then leave a lifetime commitment so yeah so she took ropes for a year and then she came back and she wanted to integrate these two things she's teaching international service strategy at Georgetown and so she put together a program that taught basically taught meditation to Marines and I was on her board for a while it was amazing and so all these people presented the amazing thing about the day was that most of the people in that room never thought they'd be in a room with other people who were in that room you know they were totally the other you know right right that's that's why so fascinating and so everybody was literally on the edge of their seats you know if you've ever seen the Dalai Lama when he's listening to somebody he moves up in his chair and then he leans forward yeah well that's what the whole place felt like that day some people are actually doing it it was amazing people you know how often in a scene like that you kind of know what everybody's going to say it is a little of this and that's just kind of exciting but mostly you know because of who they are and they've all written and spoken and you know right this day people had no idea what was going to be said it was really wild and they didn't ask us to lead any meditation just talk about it but the way that both Norman and Sharon spoke about meditation they kind of dropped into space and so when you are bringing your awareness just to one place you begin to become calm and quiet you know it was like the whole room was like it was so amazing and then at the end of it the chief of chaplains came up and he said well now we've done and there've been many tears during the day military tears as well as others and at the end of the day he said now we have one more thing to do I said okay you said nearby we want to award you this coin you know the military gives coins it's like before you get a medal you get a coin and this coin said for being strong steady and valuing unity over self that bad you know those moments when the highest expression of what the military is there to do to value unity over self which is so easily forgotten yeah so then as it happens many things happen after that and the guy who was our like main person retired and we were going to do a series of retreats which we didn't do but by that time Liz and others were building their organizations but so that was kind of the extent of my career in the military but it was I really we saw guys talk about it later when these Marines have been trained you know the whole thing was that they at that point they had there is no battleground there isn't you know it's not the Civil War you don't go out there and just stand there and shoot people now it was when in the years when I was working with them it was about them going into these villages in Afghanistan and Iraq and to just try to see who was there try to see if they were safe you know they and they need all the things that they've been taught which was basically go in assess the situation and use the most force possible right all of that was now counterproductive because anytime you know they didn't damage or killed anybody it was the wrong person then they lost all their authority and that and so they talked about like how this allowed them to they'd say do you lose your edge no but you learn how when you need to learn use your edge you and then they talk about like how because there was all these kids holding weapons you know yeah I mean I got a lot of compassion for it was really hard and so how they could go into a community and just how their awareness was so much more mindful how they were they could look and they learned to pay attention to small gestures on people's part that might mean they had a weapon or not yeah they learned how to read people better it was really moving so I feel like the people from the outside and I would have said the same thing before you know we're teaching people to kill people better in a way that's true we're trying because we're trying to teach people not to kill the people they're not supposed to kill and it was all different and I feel like a lot of the people who first particularly the ones who jumped in to criticize had never been in those situations they weren't even in the situation I was in listening to the suffering you know yeah I mean it's just a good reminder too that the us first them kind of paradigm is usually it's almost never productive it's just not the reality of the situation so when we fall into that and I mean everyone we're in political situation right now it's the easiest thing to fall into in so many ways from the cock brothers to you know just and take your pick whatever side you're on it's it's really easy so I think that's awesome that the experience ended up being like a unifying shared space all of this is the best thing about all this work it happens to me over and over I went to Chicago to work with these ex gang leaders they don't murder people and I went with George Mumford who's very cool yeah yes yes yes and um but it doesn't matter every single time every time I think there's a them right turns out it's I mean that to bring it back just quickly to psychedelics that was to me the most valuable thing I learned is the cultivation of multiple perspectives because if you have the more perspectives you have on a situation you can see 360 you can actually understand what's going on rather than just coming out of from one or two or a couple places which is usually just limited information I think that that that ultimately as time goes on I learned that more and more in my slow limited way but it's definitely it's true so we this flew by I can't believe this has been I know I have one last practical question okay so what what practice would you recommend for individuals or even organizations what regular practice do you think would be and I know every situation is different but if there was one general global practice that someone could do to to help help that's it well I think it's not a coincidence that mindfulness has emerged as one that it was the way we started in the center also because everybody nobody's threatened by almost nobody with the idea of like noticing what's going on in their eyes be more clear yeah and everybody wants to be less stress and more clear and everything so it is and it is a very helpful practice it the beginning has to be a slowing a calming quieting stabilizing up the mind before we really can see things in a different way so I think it's good that that mindfulness has you know there are a lot of complications with it but yeah yeah but basically I do think it's good and now I when I teach it I always end with like a few moments of Ram Dasa's favorite which is I am loving awareness and some people think that's a little flaky you know like but it doesn't matter you know I say that's the truth I don't it does these days I don't you know I don't have anything to lose if people if I was trying so hard in the beginning with the center not to put anything in the way people like being willing to try out some of these things but I take much more many more risks now and so I pretty much always end mindfulness practice now with with loving awareness and of course you know at least half the people in the room love it you know so because opening going back to the beginning of the conversation yeah opening your heart is real that's really how people change it's nice to know what's going on in your mind and it does help but but yeah deep change usually comes out of the heart and then you say I'm gonna figure out what's going on so I can be a more loving person and that's absolutely and it fits in with what I think is true which is intent counts for so much and if you have an open heart then your intent will probably be in the right place which is gonna be good for everyone yeah so yeah well thank you so much yeah for sure I really had a great time and so what are you doing with your podcast well it's on my pod network now I had a couple episodes come out just basically using it as a vehicle for MPN at first so to galvanize you know Danny Danny Goldberg was a bit of an inspiration on this because so many people on MPN are teachers you know done this for so long and I recognize the vast importance of that but I also know that a lot of people my age not even my age just a lot of people in Western society computers all this stuff here may need another kind of entry point into this stuffs I can identify with more yeah exactly so not like and be like you know here that I'm constantly fucking up to like I'm not like coming from an authoritative place so just basically talking to cool and interesting people and you know touching on those things that's great yeah no I I played that role in a lot of different contexts you know yeah yeah people I teach a workshop sometimes people would say things like we are by I'd really liked I really liked being with you because you're so you're so normal I never knew quite whether that was no compliment or not but but but that but I think that helps a listener you know I think so too I mean I think also in the realm of podcast at least and I was talking about this before I go I mean we we accept the fact that the person who was the genesis of MPN in a lot of ways was Dunkin and Dunkin has such a talent for kind of weaving together normal normal stuff and spiritual concepts and you also like me and a lot of us reads a lot so has all these different things to compare and contrast and I think that that's turned a lot of people on to other teachers so just my whole idea with MPN in general is just to create a very wide spectrum of entry points for people to get into any of these things so the more the better yeah that's great cool so sent you can send me this file yes I'm going to try I think I'm maybe I'm sure it's easy I'll figure it out if not yeah if you have questions let me know we'll figure it out [Music]

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