Via Daily Dharma: Discover Your True Nature

We can’t control [insight]; we can just create conditions in which insight is more likely to happen. We can be curious and open. We can inquire. And eventually, if we are lucky, the mind will wake up to itself and know its true nature.

—Teah Strozer, “RAIN”

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Via Daily Dharma: Developing Compassion for Our Feelings

As we become mindful of a feeling that’s driving us, we realize that we don’t have to react to it and be driven by it. Instead, we can simply observe it, recognize that it represents a part of us that is suffering, and have compassion for that part of us.

—Bodhipaksa, “Digital Detox: Reclaim Your Mind From Social Media Addiction”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - January 5, 2020 🌈

"When you realize you want to relieve suffering, you realize that you have to become an instrument for the removal of suffering, and that means you have to be free of suffering. Then there is the choice, to deny suffering or to change yourself inside. "

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Opportunities for Renewal

Wherever there is the death of one state of mind there is the birth of another.

—Francesca Fremantle, “The Luminous Gap in Bardo”

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Via Daily Dharma: Look Toward What Is Good

A powerful light can illuminate a cave that had always been dark, and there are beacons of pure goodness whose luster can sustain us and give us the strength to carry on.

—Pamela Gayle White, “A New Year’s Wish for Light”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - January 1, 2020 🌈

"We are on an inevitable course of awakening.

If you understand that message deeply, it allows you to enter into your spiritual practices from a different perspective, one of patience and timelessness. You do your practices not out of a sense of duty or because you think you should, but because you know in your soul there really is nothing else you would rather do.

In Sanskrit, this is called vairagya, a state of weariness with worldly desire where only the desire for spiritual fulfillment is left. The spiritual pull is the last desire, one that really grabs you, but that dissolves on its own because you dissolve in the process. The Tao says, "In the end, you will be like the valley which is the favorite resort of the Way." You become receptive, become soft, become open, become attuned, become quiet. You become the ocean of love."

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: The First Step of Transformation

The Buddha saw: our thoughts, emotions, and actions are the primary sources of our suffering. Equally, our thoughts, emotions, and actions can be the source of our joy and freedom. Living, as much as possible, with conscious intention is the first step of this transformation.

—Thupten Jinpa, “Two Exercises for Turning Intention into Motivation”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 27, 2019 💌

"My route is through the heart, of devotion. That is a path. There are many pathways through here. One is the path of wisdom, one is the path of calming the mind, one is the path of opening the heart. My path is the path of love."

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Move Through Transitions with Care

Do not think of doors as obstacles to whatever is on the other side. Practice opening them magnanimously and closing them with care.

—Gary Thorp, “Crossing the Threshold”

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Via Daily Dharma: How Morals Arise

Morality is an outcome or consequence of a well-ordered mind, and such a mind is well-ordered because there is correct understanding of the true situation.

—Dharmavidya David Brazier, “Other-Power”

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Via Daily Dharma: How Insight Can Transform You

Insight is the beginning of transformation, not the end.

—Oren Jay Sofer, “Turning a Ship”

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Via Daily Dharma: Toward Our Buddha Nature

For the entrusting heart, you don’t work toward Buddha; you make yourself available to let Buddha work toward you.

—Andrew Cooper, “Regret: A Love Story”

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Via Daily Dharma: Opening to What Is Truly Here

The insights that arise in the course of meditating are often surprises. The awakening mind lets go of the old fictions we invent and opens to what is really here: simply this.

—Sylvia Forges Ryan, “Bare Branches, Bare Attention”

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Via Ram Dass / Words of Wisdom - December 29, 2019 💌 🎆

 

"Old age is rife with change. Old age is training you in change: change in your body, of relationships, change of your energy, change in your role. The last part of your life is sensational; yum, yum, yum. Ego things calm down and wisdom comes forth. And compassion comes forth—compassion for yourself, compassion for others, compassion for the world."

 

- Ram Dass -

Via Daily Dharma: Building Strength in Trying Times

In times of trial, one must learn to endure whatever may come and thereby strengthen and improve oneself. After all, it is only the person who has experienced the cold of winter who can savor and enjoy fully the warm sunshine of spring.

—Daisaku Ikeda, “On Hardship & Hope”

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Ram Dass Via Querty: Rest in peace / The LGBTQ figures we lost in 2019

Spiritual philosopher Ram Dass died December 22 in Hawaii. He was 88. Born Richard Alpert, he was a clinical psychologist but a trip to India, and experimentation with LSD in the late 60s, set his life on a different path. He published several motivational and inspiring books, including The Only Dance There Is, and How Can I Help? Compassion in Action. A stroke in 1997 left him disabled, but he continued his work, saying his health challenges only led him to look even further inward into the spiritual heart of life.

Actress Helen Hunt was among those to mourn his passing. She posted a photo of herself to Instagram with one of his quotes on the subject of death.

 “Dying is the most important thing you do in your life. It’s the great frontier for every one of us. And loving is the art of living as a preparation for dying. Allowing ourselves to dissolve into the ocean of love is not just about leaving this body; it is also the route to Oneness and unity with our own inner being, the souls, while we are still here. If you know how to live and to love, you know how to die.”

Make the jump here to see who else we lost this past year and more

Via Daily Dharma: The Blessings of New Beginnings

Life moves in circles, goes through cycles, regenerates, starts over. Every 24 hours the sky goes dark and night comes and we sleep and the next morning sunshine pours in and we are given another chance to begin anew.

—Taylor Plimpton, “Starting Over, Again”

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Via Sounds True / In Gratitude for Ram Dass

A Remembrance and a Gift of His Teachings

Dear friends,

If you're a spiritual explorer of any age, chances are good that you've heard of Ram Dass.

Born Richard Alpert, Ram Dass is known to millions as the stellar young 1960s Harvard-psychologist-turned-hippie who tripped with Timothy Leary, befriended beat poets and Tibetan lamas, found his guru Neem Karoli Baba in India, and penned the perennial classic Be Here Now.

All of that is true . . . but for those of us who've leaned into his teachings, you know that he was also an extraordinary and beloved soul who sparked transformation throughout generations.

His teacher, Neem Karoli Baba, revealed the way for him: "Ram Dass, love other people and serve them. That is all."

Brilliant, irreverent, wise, and most of all, unconditionally loving, Ram Dass lived his life as "an experiment in truth." He helped the dying, the blind, and the imprisoned, and considered service as essential as meditation or prayer.

We are all manifestations of the same greater Self, we are meant to enjoy our roles here on Earth, and our dying is simply a point of transit. And along our way, as he so often reassured us:

"We're all just walking each other home."

Thank you, Ram Dass, for all that you have shared with us.

In celebration of Ram Dass, we would like to share this free gift with you:

The Ram Dass Audio Collection:

Conscious Aging

The Path of Service

Cultivating the Heart of Compassion

Access Your Free Gift Here

May these classic audio sessions with Ram Dass help you to love, serve, and remember—as we celebrate his wisdom, humor, and inspiring life lessons.

We also would like to share two episodes with Ram Dass from our Insights at the Edge podcast:

 

• Walking Each Other Home with Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush
• Soul Land with Ram Dass and Tami Simon

To learn more about Ram Dass, his teachings, and the continuing work of the organizations he helped create, visit ramdass.org.

In gratitude,

Your friends at Sounds True

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation - Statement from the Love Serve Remember Foundation on Ram Dass’ Passing

 

Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert) died peacefully at home in Maui on December 22, 2019

Click here to read Ram Dass’ obituary.

Please share your reflections on Ram Dass, via email: remember@ramdass.org or post with the hashtag #LovingRamDass

For more than 50 years, Ram Dass was a key influence on American spiritual culture. His monumentally influential and seminal work BE HERE NOW–part graphic novel, part introduction to yoga and inner transformation–is an enduring classic that has sold over two million copies. BE HERE NOW still stands as a centerpiece of Western articulation of Eastern philosophy. In the 1970s it was the hippies’ bible; today it continues to be the instruction manual of choice for generations of spiritual seekers.

As a psychologist, Richard Alpert–along with his cohort, Timothy Leary–played a pivotal role in the psychedelic movement of the 1960s, lecturing on the healing effects of psychedelics at college campuses across the country. At the time, Alpert and Leary influenced a generation to “turn on, tune in, and drop out” with psychedelics, providing the inner fuel during a turbulent era of social change, sexual liberation, and political unrest.

In 1967-68, Alpert journeyed to India, where he met the famed Indian saint, Neem Karoli Baba (Maharaj-ji), whose central teaching is to love everyone, serve everyone, and remember God. After learning yoga and meditating in the Himalayas for six months, he returned to the West as Ram Dass, meaning “Servant of God.” For decades, Ram Dass crisscrossed America, lecturing on an eclectic spiritual path. He was a guide for thousands seeking to discover or reclaim their spiritual identity beyond or within institutional religion.

In early 1997, Ram Dass had a hemorrhagic stroke that left him with paralysis and expressive aphasia. He recovered his speech and went on to continue his teachings online, at retreats in Maui, and through film, and music, inspiring the next generation of seekers.

The Love Serve Remember Foundation is planning a worldwide BE HERE NOW moment in celebration of Ram Dass’s extraordinary life.

Additional details on this event forthcoming shortly.

 In the meantime, if anyone would like to share their reflections on Ram Dass, please email remember@ramdass.org, or post on social media using the hashtag #lovingramdass.

We want to offer gratitude to the outpouring of love that has been shared over the last day. It’s a true testament to the volume of hearts Ram Dass was able to connect with.

Namaste,

Love Serve Remember Foundation