Mindrolling with Raghu Markus

Early 70’s adventures in the East, leading Michael Daner overland through Europe to Afghanistan and eventually India. What was going on here? This mindboggling journey could never happen now, given the state of the world, but back then, it was a scenario starring many so-called hippies and genuine smugglers, some yearning for the exotic, some desiring money, money, money, and some - Michael, in particular - who eventually graduated from smuggling to seeking…and finding. Included in this tale is an example of Neem Karoli Baba’s wondrous bi-locational capability…plus, as an added extra, a 1980 conversation between David and Bruce Springsteen about his CD “The River”…so please enjoy this picaresque podcast… See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mindrollers and friends in Manhattan, with a far-ranging conversation about the incredible scrolls of St. Issa in Tibet and India; Maharaji telling the Westerners to meditate like Christ; the dismissal of mysticism by modern organized religion; David being accused of black magic by Evangelicals, Raghu being dragged into a “men’s group”; tales of sixties Rajneesh followers copulating in the kitchen…and finally, a Shambala Sun inspired rap on the task of making friends with yourself.  Somehow, we end with an anecdote around the amazing Kalu Rinpoche.  It’s all in there and quite a bit more… See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What is real love?  What isn’t?  The Mindrollers turn for inspiration to HH The Dalai Lama and the super intense poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, who said “For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks”…talk of cultivating inner spaciousness as the ultimate antidote. Jumping off from a Tricycle article, David confesses Johnny Depp envy while Raghu remembers the perverse joy in jealousy…the answer to these neurotic pulls seems always around finding the freeing route to the heart, your own heart.  Sometimes, instead of fervently reaching for another soul, a spell of serious solitude might help that journey.  Speaking to youth, Rilke says: “They have to learn it.  With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Mindrollers challenge a Zen sentiment that teachers are expendable, passionately citing life-transforming personal teaching guidance encountered by both of them. They move on like madmen to the bizarre concept of stool replacement banks for micro biome worries – will Amazon ever offer “good” stool on sale? Once again, we analyze the entropic dangers of too much social media creeping into everything. Do we only know “bits and pieces” of people now? David quotes the the prescient words of Seneca (the Roman humanist saint in Christ’s time) about fecklessly squandering your life away on nonsense, thereby ending life shocked and downed by suffering and mortality. From the horrors of the Coliseum to YouTube addiction, R & D investigate Western civilization’s entertainment obsession. There’s actually even more…check it out for yourself, your Self… See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Embrace everything - bad and good, pleasurable and horrible. Chris’s new book, Everything Mind, comes out today. R & D talk with him about its prescient premise that everything – the whole kit and caboodle – from Trump to Ramana Maharshi to the suffering migrant millions to the iPhone 6S Plus - is a legitimate part of the spiritual reality: G-d, The One, whatever, and that this is a necessary and healing component of the spiritual/philosophical inclusion clause – everything is grist to the mill. Even a harsh and hurtful text insult message, even true pain and adversity, even hideous stuff - within you and without you - even Kimye! Chris’s own words on his book: “What I've Learned About Hard Knocks, Spiritual Awakening, and the Mind-Blowing Truth of It All.” Plus David recalls his amazingly counter-intuitive 9/11 kindness experience. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ecstatic kirtan singer/violinist Jahnavi Harrison is with us on the podcast. She tells her unique life story - as a child raised at the 700 year old Bhaktivedanta Manor home in the Hertfordshire countryside. Beatle George Harrison (no relation) had donated the estate to ISKCON, the Krishna movement, in 1973.  Jahnavi talks of her devotional trajectory from being a child brought up in idyllic rural England to singing to Krishna all over the world.  We talk about the cleansing power of the Maha Mantra, her whole life singing kirtan, and finding that back-and-forth love therein and the universal magnetism of Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Hare Rama Hare Rama.  You will hear her sing live and from her new CD, “Like A River To the Sea." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ram Dev (Dale Borglum) of the Living Dying Project explores surfing the edge of the heart approaching consciousness transformation, in life…and death. Who dies anyway? How do we change annihilation fear to being right here, still confidently in the heart chakra? “All fear is fear of death” he maintains, “being trapped in separateness” and how the deeper fright is resistance to death rather than death itself. We talk through wholeness and healing for the living as well as those passing and those immediately affected. This seems like heavy stuff, but the end product in this hour is light and insight…into living. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Experience John Lockley’s journey into authentic shamanism after intense and intensive training and initiation.  How did a South African Irishman become a real  Xhosa sangoma - “dreamer”?  What is a shaman anyway?  John talks with R & D about using your dreams to heal your deepest psyche’s wounds and traces his path from soldier/medic to Zen to yoga to Nature-master medicine man.  He tells us in depth about his healing via dreaming, dancing, chanting and plant-ing… See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“My yellow in this case is not so mellow” Jimi Hendrix sang. Is it ever cool to be angry? R & D’s wary warnings about the seductively enjoyable taste of anger. Maharaji’s words about anger’s reality, with the crucial caveat to never throw anyone out of your heart. Raghu’s anger is analyzed by… Raghu. David recalls learning to love right wing friends, especially conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Then we talk about Mark Epstein’s take on anger and his very do-able way of dealing with it. David reads a Tom Waits poem about Keith Richards. Finally we dive deep into Trungpa’s Gap - "the space between out breaths” (Pema Chodron) the spaciousness between internal chatter and the sudden glimpse of awareness, openness and absence of self - which scares the shit out of us. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Uber useful conversation with wisdom writer Sylvia Boorstein: her clear and helpful grasp of present-ness… her words on true mindfulness cut with goodwill…her thoughts on thoughts, seeing them as always potentially co-operative and not so bad after all.  Making friends with the present is just that, even if it startles you, “relax, take a rest, calm down” – R & D listen, interrupt, and have a fine time with Sylvia… See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.