Words of Wisdom: Quotations from One of the World's Foremost Spiritual Leaders

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The balance that got off, was that we started out with this undifferentiated self, and we so well learned our separateness–because we learned it emotionally, as well as intellectually–that our separateness veiled over the connection we had to the unity of all things.” – Ram Dass Do You Do It? (31:00) The book is full of beautiful insightful quotes. I wanted to share in this ‘Being Ram Dass book’ review the mantra that he gives the reader. You and I may meet next time, under a bridge, eating putride food out of a rusty tin can after the apocalypse. And after we get over the shaky quality of it, I may say to you “Are you here? Well here we are? Pretty far out isn’t it?” And this too. And this too. Hold on tightly, let go lightly. Hold on tightly, let go lightly.

I have learned that we are all blessed and guided from within even when we lose faith or feel lost. That guide, the real guru, is our own being, our true nature. So this is what I mean by a basic stance, so that for example if you look at someone like His Holiness, his default position is compassion. So whatever happens in his life, his first response is going to come from that standpoint. And then if the situation calls for something else, like a kind of tougher approach, then that will come later. So this we can learn through cultivation, through training, and it's kind of a habituation. Through habituation we learn to be in a particular way. So those are the things I was trying to make clear in the compassion and cultivation training. A new psychologist joined the faculty staff at Harvard by the name of Timothy Leary. Richard and Tim became great friends and embarked on research together. Their research moved into a very different area after Timothy Leary took magic mushrooms on the recommendation of a friend. Consequently, they started to investigate the effects of various psychedelic drugs as a potentially beneficial tools in psychotherapy. Research into this had already been taking place in some institutions. It later came to light that the US government has funded a project looking at the potential use of LSD in warfare. Allen Ginsberg took LSD as part of that particular project. The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it’s in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I’m caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.” Ram Dass Inspirational Quotes In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.” Ram Dass Death Quotes

But, as I’ve pointed out, when he asked that, I said, “Yes, this is something you should be concerned about, and you plan for it.” But how many times do you have to plan for it? Once? Twice? Three times? The seventeenth time you’re thinking about missing the plane, it’s clearly not helpful, it’s not serving anything. So one of the antidotes when we’re caught up in worried thoughts, and especially if they’re a pattern, if they’re very repetitious, and we’re not learning anything in terms of how we should adjust the situation, we’re just caught in that cycle, we could ask ourselves with these kind of thoughts, “Is this useful?” Just that simple question, “Is this thought useful?” And very often that’s enough to unhook us from the identification with the pattern that we see. Yes, it may have been useful the first time or second time, or tenth time, but it’s not endlessly useful.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean. The ocean waves; and the universe peoples.” – Alan Watts True Identity (25:00) Compassion's place in our fundamental nature, compassion's place in our self-definition of who we are. And then also compassion as part of our basic motivation system, because when we are confronted with any situation we have a choice: we can respond to that situation out of fear, or out of anger, out of blame, out of judgment, but we also have an opportunity to respond out of compassion. So compassion is, in that sense, an important part of our motivation system. So the point about cultivating is not so much learning to be compassionate, we don't have to learn compassion from religion or school because it's there, but where training is important is to really make compassion a more conscious part of our attention and also make it part of our intention so that it shapes our motivation system. And also, ideally, to make it our base default standpoint. But to see the path, you have to be very quiet and stop thinking, because every time you think about how the path is, you create something new with that thought—even the concept of a path. You’re in the moment now. This moment is the path. INNER SILENCE Harkening examples from Hinduism, Christianity, and Taoism, Alan Watts elucidates–through the lens of ‘self’ and ‘other’–the intrinsic power encased within authentic trust and surrender. Rousing the notion that, ‘the more you give up, the more you get,” Alan plays with the idea of truly letting go of control and power; imploring that true surrender to the Universe brings about the nondual realization of Oneness.Alan Watts offers his far-reaching Buddhist, Taoist, and meditative wisdom; playing off of and complementing Ram Dass’ deep inquiry and presence on topics pertaining to identity and separate self, unity and interdependence, surrender and trust, intuition and grace, faith and freedom, and meditation and the eternal now. What Is Reality? (19:00) Take these teachings with you wherever you go, so you'll have access to them when you most need them. As a yoga teacher this is also a useful book. Ram Dass has a wonderful way of relating yoga practices and techniques to the challenges of daily life. He also draws from a vast array of sources from across different traditions. You and I are going to face some dramatic changes because there are other people who have little red buttons they can push besides us. And the question of how you deal with social change, because the people that are going to be able to bring in this culture a quiet, clear wisdom and consciousness are people who are primarily not motivated by fear. And the way you extricate yourself from fear is to be centered quietly in your being and realize that what you are is enough. And the way it is is enough. It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”

And here I think this open-hearted courage, which allows us to trust our instinct, and then just be, and also let go, because one of the key practices of any great spiritual tradition is the ability to let go - particularly the "let go" of your strong gripping self. The interesting thing about self-centeredness is that the impulse behind self-centeredness is fear. You're so terrified that maybe somehow to not control and fix it, that terrible things are going to happen, that everything is going to fall apart. And you need courage to be able to just trust the process and also let go. So in all of these, and even compassion, you know you need courage, because to act out of compassion you extend a hand to another person, there's no guarantee that the other person is going to accept the extended hand, you know? There's also no guarantee that the other person isn't going to react negatively. but you need courage to be able to extend that hand first to yourself. Explicating the process and implications of meditation and it’s uncoverings, Alan Watts highlights a methodology for becoming ‘interiorly silent and ceasing from the interminable chatter’ of the compulsively thinking mind. Describing the meditative process of moving behind thoughts and symbols to cultivate a direct relationship with reality, Alan uses music as an example for our experience, sharing that the purpose of life is not some serious trudging journey through the thinking mind, but rather a song and dance from the heart in the ever-changing immediate present moment of existence. It’s beyond interconnected. It’s all one thing, it just keeps changing its flow and patterns, and you’re a part of it. Quotes give us hope. They give us strength when we need it the most. I would sit down and read quotes to be inspired and motivated. I love being inspired. Access to over 100 audio podcasts from Ram Dass' 50+ years of teaching with an easy-to-use audio player.Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.”

Ram Dass embarked on a journey of spiritual discovery. He embraced and sought out different teachers and techniques but remained faithful to his teacher Maharaj-ji. The Zen meditation teacher Alan Watts advised him that “When you get the message, hang up the phone.” Richard took some time before he hung up the phone! The spiritual journey in India features an array of famous names. It is clear that there were a group of like minded searchers converging on India. These people then radiated the teachings out across the world. Ram Dass’ mantra gift If you’re feeling agitated, notice the agitation. If you’re warm, be warm. If you’re cold, be cold. If you’re overly full, be overly full. Be it, whatever it is, but put it all in the context of a quiet space, because there’s a secret in that, and it’s worth playing with. There’s a place where you can be inside of yourself and inside the universe, a place from which you can appreciate the delight in life. Where you can still have equanimity, quality of presence, and the quietness of peace.

Ram Dass Inspirational Quotes

For close to ten years now, I’ve been in a near-constant state of immersion in Ram Dass’s deep archive of teachings. I’ve been collecting the shiniest gems within hundreds of lectures and many hours of audio and video recordings from the last five decades—his core essential teachings—and putting them online as Words of Wisdom. Words of Wisdom is a distillation of the last five decades of Ram Dass's life containing the most powerful quotes from his most resonant core teachings. Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts, if we can keep them open to God, will find their own intuitive way.” Teaching Transcript: One of the points I was trying to make is that, you are right, compassion is something that most of us think that we know about, and also we often take it for granted. And also we have to admit that we, as human beings, as societies, we have been fascinated and intrigued by compassion for a very long time.