Ram Das
Remembering Ram Das, who left us five years ago.
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NO ONE, for me, explained the rules of this crazy life game better then Ram Das .... the acid-dropping, ganga-smoking, sports car driving, co-dependent neurotic bi-sexually entitled rich kid, HinJew, self-confessed insufferable Harvard big shot, Guru-worshipping, Seva-embodying, cataract-curing, food-delivering, eloquent stuttering stroke surviving, never afraid to show the egg-on-his-beard mensch ...... who pointed us in the direction of clarity and light until he became indistinguishable from the light he pointed to.
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What a great Xmas gift this is, the gift of his own perfect transition, so that we can feel the immensity of his lifelong service and generosity, the never-ending gifts of his wisdom.
Wow. Ram Das. Everyone’s Family Friend. Thank you thank you thank you beloved ally, teacher and guide.
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One of the best gifts I ever received was a box of cassette tape recordings of Ram Das talks. I’d listen to the same talks, endlessly, always fresh, my own personal yoga love doll, wise kitchen magician, therapist, guru, bar stool consoler, seeker, adviser and fellow confessor at the touch of a button.
You realize you feel toward Ram Das the way Ram Das felt toward his teacher, Neem Karoli Baba. A lineage of gratitude.
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The confessor aspect to his “ministry” was especially powerful. His outing of himself time and again established a deep and abiding trust in his words.
I remember him sharing his challenge of intimate relationship.
“I realized I was too caught in the Ram Das game,” Ram Das said. “I enjoyed playing the public role so much it got in the way of my private life.”
Has there ever been a more “public” figure than Ram Das!
He’s practically the entire New Age Movement branded into a single bearded silhouette.
His most deeply profound teaching was his simplest: getting caught in the illusion of Ram Das, caught in the power and glory of being a “made” spiritual wise guy, as compensation for his deeply embedded sense of lack and unworthiness.
What an admission from an admired and revered teacher! What a gift for me, to be made aware of the dangers of praise ... me, a beginning yoga teacher, unaware of my shadow, and just beginning to get some positive feedback and attention.
Conversations like these, in every day language always underscored and made comprehensible the deeper spiritual teachings of “I AM,” Unity Consciousness, Namaste, Not Two .... etc. etc.
He brought the wisdom of all those folks in stained glass to life.
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I would listen to his talks in my car right up until the time my class would start. He would say something I knew I HAD to share in class. Forget down dog — whatever this guy just said was the money!
The problem was that as soon as I HEARD what he said, I FORGOT what he said. It was like trying to drag and drop a file but having it always bounce back.
Where I was in my life, in my head, in my brand of neurosis, it was as if I couldn’t welcome this new piece of information that threaten to undermine my fragile self-concept.
In the end I would have to scribble his wisdom on a scrap of paper. But that presented another pathetic egoic challenge: I didn’t want it to seem like I was cheat-sheeting my way to wisdom.
I freely shared my sources of inspiration .... most of the time.
It’s those occasions where I didn’t want to reveal my source that revealed where I was stuck.
Those moments where I wanted my delivery to be effortless, as if I had rolled out of the womb with this elusive wisdom already part of my being.
The gift of humiliation!
Don’t be ashamed by the revealing of your own neurosis, Ram Das would say. Be Grateful!
Just part of the journey, he reminded us patiently, time and again.
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His seminal story, “Egg on My Beard,” (required reading, IMO, for anyone fronting a yoga class) described his fling with a charismatic teacher whose amphetamine habit Ram Das confused with an enlightenment state.
http://www.kashiashram.com/egg_on_my_beard.pdf
The story concludes:
“There is one final point to be made. Is there reason to fear taking teachings out of concern as to whether the teacher is pure? Perhaps not, for all that can ever trip us up is our own impurities. Which is not to say that discrimination is to be abandoned, for indeed it remains an invaluable protection on the path. I got caught because of my spiritual greed and insufficient faith in Maharaj-ji. You too may get caught and suffer deep disappointment and confusion. But I hope that you may learn something from my example and save yourself a big detour, if your longing for God is pure, this is your strength. Then though you may get lost for a time, you will in the end hear clearly in your inner heart what to do, and all the impurities around you will just become more grist for the mill of your awakening.”
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Part rabbi, part guru, part confessor.
Another saying of his I use regularly as mantra: “In order to be nobody, you first have to be somebody,” compactly, brilliantly summarizes the agonizing confusion of the spiritual path.
So many of us “yogis” or “seekers” or “people” are dissociated from our lives because of old traumas we’ve failed to face or process. Traumas we consciously and unconsciously bypass in a premature rush to “nobody-ness” which we confuse with enlightenment or awakening.
Why go inside when you could hide all the messy inside stuff beneath a humble robe, or bunch of tattoos, pearly beads and wise words.
“You have to be somebody to get to nobody,” Ram Das said.
To hear him repeatedly connect his lifelong sense of unworthiness to the lure of grandiosity that his “Ram Dassness” offered was the perfect, on-going lesson of humility in action.
Go into the muck to realize you aren’t the muck until one day the muck-seeking you isn’t there anymore.
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Just walking each other home.
Love Everyone and Tell the Truth.
Indeed.
Thank you, Richard.
KASHIASHRAM.COM
www.kashiashram.com