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| Even in his later years, Ram Dass just kept going with Baba in his heart. |
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| Like Syrian Rue to see the Burning Bush |
One of my stories is with Ram Dass [former Harvard Professor Richard Alpert], a wonderful spiritual teacher, in the early years.
When he came back from India, he was sitting up there and teaching devotional and meditative practices.
He had a long beard, white robes, mala beads, a sort of "guru" outfit. A
woman in the front row raised her hand and yelled out: “Ram Dass! Ram Dass!
Aren’t you Jewish? What’s with [all] this Hindu stuff?”
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| Ram Dass fame spread with Be Here Now |
Ram Dass explained, “Well, yes, I am, actually. I was
bar mitzvahed.”
“And there are many things I love about the Jewish spiritual tradition -- the generosity of it, the [mystical]
Kabbalah, and all its great teachings on the many stages and states of consciousness, the
Hasidic masters who are like
Zen masters.”
Then he paused, looked out, and said: “But remember,
I’m only Jewish on my parents’ side” [a quip he borrowed from Jewish-Buddhist writer
Stephen Levine].
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| I have nothing to tell you. I'm just here to look at you with loving eye to transfer a fraction of the love I felt from my guru when he looked at me, Ram Dass explained. |
There was something both witty, which he was, but also profound about it, which he also was. We are not just our parental history or the historical circumstances of this place we're reborn into, this body that we were reborn into. And something in us knows this...
There’s a wonderful book that came out called
The Book of Joy, which is a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Both of them have marvelous laughs. I think people go to hear the Dalai Lama by the tens of thousands not just for the Tibetan Buddhist teachings, some of which are actually hard to understand, or even the fact that he’s a Nobel Laureate and world figure. I think people go to hear him laugh.
That’s somebody who’s carried so much suffering from the loss of his throne, country, where he’s not allowed to return, and the burning of sacred texts and temples, the killing of lamas, all of those things.
He and Tutu had a week together where they were asked, which led to the creation of this book, How can you be joyful? How can you laugh like this when you’ve lived through apartheid and the death of so many people around you?
The Dalai Lama and he, they banter back and forth like brothers. The Dalai Lama says, “So much has been taken from me. They’ve taken our sacred texts. They’ve taken our ability to make prayers in public. They’ve taken so much of our culture. Why should I let them take my happiness?”
Then Archbishop Tutu starts to laugh and giggle and say, “I’ve been through so much, but I’m not going to let myself live in that place. I’m going to let myself live in that which affirms life, and in a kind of profound joy that we made it, that we’re still alive, that we can contribute, that we can be here on this beautiful earth.”
This shift of consciousness is what’s needed in the world, because if we look honestly, no amount of technology alone is going to save us. Nanotechnology, and space technology, and biotechnology, and the Worldwide Web, the Internet, computers, supercomputing technology, are all going to stop the continuation of warfare, racism, tribalism, and environmental destruction.
Those are happening based on the consciousness of the human heart. So here we are now: We’ve made these enormous developments outwardly, where we have the Great Library of Alexandria in our smartphone in our pocket, along with a million YouTube cat videos or whatever. But there it is. It’s all in there.
Then what we need is collectively to develop a transformation inwardly of our inner life that is parallel to this enormous outer transformation.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff some years ago said, “We are a nation of nuclear giants and ethical infants.” You know?
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| Ram Dass lives on: The Be Here Now Network |
Tim Ferriss: Oh gawd.
Jack Kornfield: “I don’t know how old humanity is, but it’s time to grow up.” So this work that we’re talking about is both individual, but as you learn to meet your own life with greater understanding and compassion, it empowers you to move through the world in a different way and to help others do the same.
“And then you get that kind of joy of Tutu and the Dalai Lama, that you’re somehow part of an awakening that humanity now needs more than ever.
Tim Ferriss: And Jack, I’d love to ask you... These interviews are always driven by some self-interest. I always have some issue or challenge or problem that I’m trying to figure out, so I reach out to someone like you to help me do it...
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