Ep. 333 – You Can Trust Love Itself: Ram Dass and Loving Awareness

Ganesh Dass (0:06)

The good news is you don't run out of love. When you share it and offer it, love doesn't dissipate. Actually, it grows, says Jack Kornfield in Ep. 333 of the Heart Wisdom Podcast. You can trust love itself. Ram Dass and Loving Awareness.

Welcome back. This is Heart Wisdom, Jack Kornfield's wonderful podcast nestled so sweetly on his friend and fellow teachers podcast network, Ram Dass' Be Here Now Network. My name is Ganesh Dass. I'm Jack's assistant and a student of Ram Dass, and I'm honored to peel back the veil for this special, special episode in which Jack is inviting you to trust love itself. In a world where it's so easy to lose our grounding with the constant barrage of news, social media posts, which we don't know if they are AI or not or what to believe, the state of politics, the climate, all of this going on right now is to say, there's a part of each of us that's saying, what can I trust in this world? Even when we look at Buddhist truths, we look at impermanence. And if the nature of this passing moment is impermanence, what is there to trust?

And Jack answers this question valiantly.

You can trust love itself.

And using his brilliant, wise, and loving friend, Ram Dass, who's the reason Jack and I even know each other, as a prime example, Jack invites us to let go into the abyss. As Ram Dass was forced to, with his stroke, and learn that in the end, who we are is loving awareness itself, consciousness. Jack said, Ram Dass became love. He wasn't just a teacher anymore. Whoever you were and whatever was brought to him, he would sit in a field of love and see you with the eyes of love. Therein, the transformation would occur. Before we begin, if you do enjoy this episode, it stems from the live stream done for How to Thrive in Love, Buddhist Secrets to Transform Your Relationships with Jack Kornfield and his beloved Trudy Goodman, who if you've been following the Be Here Now Network for any amount of time, I'm sure you know well. This is a course on relationships, both romantic and platonic, and it can be found on jackkornfield.com.

So there we go. Let's dive in to this juicy episode, number 333 of the Heart Wisdom Podcast, You Can Trust Love Itself, Ram Dass in Loving Awareness. May you be happy and healthy. May you be safe and protected. May you see others and yourself with the eyes of love. And may you remember your birthright as mindful, loving awareness.

Jack Kornfield (4:02)

Thank you, Ganesh. Hi, everybody. Very happy to see your faces in the little squares. So I'll talk a tiny bit. Maybe or some. And we'll do a meditation together. The first image that comes to mind, you know, whatever that movie was, what's love got to do with it? For the last probably 15 years, Trudy and I have been teaching on Maui at Retreat with Ram Dass. It was Ram Dass' kind of most significant retreat every year. And it was on the beach. And this tent that they put up were made a few hundred people. And it would be a combination of meditation teachings from Trudy and I and some others, other good friends, spiritual authors like Ami Lamott, Krishna Das singing Kirtan every evening. And the end of the week, there would be a ritual that was done in which Krishna Das would begin to chant. They'd set up, there's already been a big altar. Ram Dass would sit in front of it in his wheelchair. He was still, of course, paralyzed for all, half of his body for all those years. And people would file by and he would give them a little mala, a set of beads and tied into it was one thread from the blanket of his guru named Karoli Baba Maharaj, Maharajee. And being one of the teachers and colleague in the industry, Trudy and I would sit up front and I got to watch. And people would file by Ram Dass who was more and more loving as he grew older and wiser. And he would look each person in the eye and put this blessing beads with the thread from his guru. And half the people would start to weep. And part of it I think is, you know, their connection with Ram Dass and love and maybe the projection onto the great spiritual teacher. But some of it wasn't just projection. He was exuding love and in the memorial service for Ram Dass that Trudy and I and Krishna Das and other friends were part of, a couple of them, Krishna Das got up and he said, when we first came back from India, he was in India together with Ram Dass. And Ram Dass would stand there with his beard and white robes and his beads and wava Ram Dass and be the guru and so forth. That was good on stage, but off stage he was sometimes still a mess, you know, in all kinds of ways. And the thing that was so moving of that Krishna Das said, what I want to tell you and remember Ram Dass had this major stroke 20 years before he died. What I want to tell you is that Ram Dass became the person we thought he was when he first came back. And there was something so moving and beautiful about that because he did become love. He wasn't just a teacher anymore, but there was a feeling that whoever you are and whatever was brought to him, he would sit in a field of love and see you with the eyes of love. And so that's maybe an opening little gambit for our conversation of thriving in love and talking about it. Because it's so mysterious. It's like gravity, right? It just is. And it pulls us all together. And maybe I said it in the course, it's kind of like our memory of being together before the Big Bang when we were in the singularity. And we're still in it in some deep way we are love.