33 min
Ep. 52 | Reincarnation, Sci-Fi Buddhism and Devotion Call and Response with Krishna Das
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- Religion & Spirituality
Call and Response Ep. 52 Reincarnation, Sci-Fi Buddhism and Devotion
“He encouraged us to love everyone, serve everyone and remember God, which is to repeat the Names of God. Japa. Ram Nam. Yeah. I always wanted Him to tell me what to do, you know? Give me some like, practice, some mantra. Some “this” that I could do, you know? But He was never, He never encouraged us to do spiritual practice for the sake of our own spiritual benefit, so to speak. He said, “Think about others.” And really, to tell you the truth, I didn’t get it, you know? “What is He talking about? What do you mean, think about others? What about me?” It takes a while to get with the program. Really, it does.” – Krishna Das
Q: You said something about good health is…
KD: Hard to find?
Q: Yeah, that’s true. The joy of your, all of your cells living in harmony, something along those lines, I didn’t get it down right.
Bob: Yes, yes. That’s right.
Q: That’s it?
Bob: Yes, your life force, your health, is joy and bliss in your system.
Q: Ok.
Bob: It’s the nature of reality in your system, exerting itself in your system. This is the new orientation we’re cultivating is that reality is joy.
Q: Right.
Bob: Love is joy. Because love means, the wish for the happiness of the Beloved is what “love” means in these traditions and how can it wish to have happiness for the Beloved if it doesn’t have happiness itself? Right? In other words, ok?
Q: Without making this, you know, a story rather than a question, this has been a lot, my husband has stage 4 lung cancer and he has gone past his expiration date. He’s supposed to be dead now. But he gets out there and he walks the dog every day and then he goes, he rides the exercise bike for 70 minutes and it makes him happy and he comes home happy, and the doctors are saying, “Well, it’s your physical health that’s keeping you alive.” And that one statement just kind of like, whoa, it’s not just that, it’s the attitude. And thank you all.
Bob: Ok.
Q: Could you just say a few more sentences about what I asked you during the break? When we were talking about, you know, going through the transformation of this life to the next life and I know in Buddhism that you can come back as everybody’s mother, or you can come back as a flea or you can come back as a preta…
Bob: Yes
Q: And my thought is if you’re being reborn in the human realm, you’re here already having some compassion so it would appear to me that you would want to, people would naturally continue in a higher state. So how do people fall back so they’re in that cyclical of going down again?
Bob: Well, I think the traditional religious interpretations about that tend somewhat, Oh, that’s really interfering with your head. Ok, we have to get that a little bit away, that’s terrible. Ok. So, they tend to overemphasize the danger of deteriorating in one’s embodiment and, which connects to, which is, I think they overdo that, I think. And this connects to the fact that they so much appreciate the evolutionary achievement of becoming human because it’s really extraordinary in the way that… Buddhist biologists would see, for example, how you would move from being a tigress or a lioness towards some less violent embodiment, would be that lioness that was waiting, chasing the herd of antelopes and saw a really juicy slow-moving pregnant one, really juicy, and sort of all, like, puffed up from being pregnant, and then had a subliminal sense of identification because of having had pups herself and then decided to let it go and swerved and jumped on a stringy old disgusting hobbling old much less delicious one, but enough to feed herself and her family. So how many tigresses, lionesses would have such an impulse, such an empathetic impulse based on not having watched nature movies on PBS? And so that kind of thing, that then teaches,
Call and Response Ep. 52 Reincarnation, Sci-Fi Buddhism and Devotion
“He encouraged us to love everyone, serve everyone and remember God, which is to repeat the Names of God. Japa. Ram Nam. Yeah. I always wanted Him to tell me what to do, you know? Give me some like, practice, some mantra. Some “this” that I could do, you know? But He was never, He never encouraged us to do spiritual practice for the sake of our own spiritual benefit, so to speak. He said, “Think about others.” And really, to tell you the truth, I didn’t get it, you know? “What is He talking about? What do you mean, think about others? What about me?” It takes a while to get with the program. Really, it does.” – Krishna Das
Q: You said something about good health is…
KD: Hard to find?
Q: Yeah, that’s true. The joy of your, all of your cells living in harmony, something along those lines, I didn’t get it down right.
Bob: Yes, yes. That’s right.
Q: That’s it?
Bob: Yes, your life force, your health, is joy and bliss in your system.
Q: Ok.
Bob: It’s the nature of reality in your system, exerting itself in your system. This is the new orientation we’re cultivating is that reality is joy.
Q: Right.
Bob: Love is joy. Because love means, the wish for the happiness of the Beloved is what “love” means in these traditions and how can it wish to have happiness for the Beloved if it doesn’t have happiness itself? Right? In other words, ok?
Q: Without making this, you know, a story rather than a question, this has been a lot, my husband has stage 4 lung cancer and he has gone past his expiration date. He’s supposed to be dead now. But he gets out there and he walks the dog every day and then he goes, he rides the exercise bike for 70 minutes and it makes him happy and he comes home happy, and the doctors are saying, “Well, it’s your physical health that’s keeping you alive.” And that one statement just kind of like, whoa, it’s not just that, it’s the attitude. And thank you all.
Bob: Ok.
Q: Could you just say a few more sentences about what I asked you during the break? When we were talking about, you know, going through the transformation of this life to the next life and I know in Buddhism that you can come back as everybody’s mother, or you can come back as a flea or you can come back as a preta…
Bob: Yes
Q: And my thought is if you’re being reborn in the human realm, you’re here already having some compassion so it would appear to me that you would want to, people would naturally continue in a higher state. So how do people fall back so they’re in that cyclical of going down again?
Bob: Well, I think the traditional religious interpretations about that tend somewhat, Oh, that’s really interfering with your head. Ok, we have to get that a little bit away, that’s terrible. Ok. So, they tend to overemphasize the danger of deteriorating in one’s embodiment and, which connects to, which is, I think they overdo that, I think. And this connects to the fact that they so much appreciate the evolutionary achievement of becoming human because it’s really extraordinary in the way that… Buddhist biologists would see, for example, how you would move from being a tigress or a lioness towards some less violent embodiment, would be that lioness that was waiting, chasing the herd of antelopes and saw a really juicy slow-moving pregnant one, really juicy, and sort of all, like, puffed up from being pregnant, and then had a subliminal sense of identification because of having had pups herself and then decided to let it go and swerved and jumped on a stringy old disgusting hobbling old much less delicious one, but enough to feed herself and her family. So how many tigresses, lionesses would have such an impulse, such an empathetic impulse based on not having watched nature movies on PBS? And so that kind of thing, that then teaches,
33 min