Ep. 306 – Our Place in the Dance
Ram Dass Here And Now - Ram Dass / Love Serve Remember
Ram Dass explores living with awareness and openness in daily life, emphasizing our interconnectedness and the importance of presence. The episode reflects on compassion, suffering, and finding one's place in the 'dance' of existence. It features heartfelt calls and timeless wisdom from a 1996 radio show, now remastered for a new generation.
Key takeaways
- Live with awareness to find freedom in daily life
- Embrace suffering as part of the human experience
- Let go of others' projections without denial
Transcript preview
This episode is sponsored by Better Help. For some people, summer is the best time of year. Kids are out of school and fun adventures await. For others, it's an overwhelming juggling act. Between kids, travel, and work, there's no time for you. Don't forget to take care of yourself during this busy season. Therapy can help you understand your needs. and create a version of summer that feels right for you. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served more than 6 million people globally. They do the initial matching work for you, so you can focus on your therapy goals. You don't have to say yes to everything this summer. Find support in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp. Ram Doss. That's better. H E L P dot com slash Ram doss. Over the last 10 years the Be Here Now Network has had more than 100 million streams. That is so many people being touched by the wisdom of Jack cornfield, Ram Doss, Alan Watts and all of our other beautiful teachers. And if all of you wisdom secrets could donate just five dollars this month, we could accomplish our goal of keeping teachings accessible. And until the end of June, your donation will be matched. So five dollars will turn into ten dollars. And ten dollars from everyone who sees this could get us to our birthday goal. So for Be Here Now Network's 10th anniversary, please consider donating even just five dollars. Thank you. Donate today at Be Here Now Network. So I see this as a way in which we can figure out together how to live our lives consciously with awareness so that we can have our hearts open to one another to one another as a species and one another across species to the Earth itself in fact to the entire Cosmos so that we can hear our place in the dance. our place in the dance. Because I feel that what we're talking about is just the way of viewing our daily life events in such a way that we find the excitement and the enthusiasm and the adventure and the possibility and the opportunity to become free. with Ram Doss. I'm your host Jackie Debrinska and this is episode 306. Our place in the dance. So imagine it. It's a quiet Sunday morning, December 8th, 1996. And Ramdoss walks into the studio at KSRO Radio in Northern California. He puts on some headphones and he tries something he's never done before. A live call-in radio show. which to us now probably seems a little old hat, but was completely novel for him at the time. So he's on air and he talks about wanting this to reach the whole nation someday to be a place where strangers could figure out together how to live with open hearts, how to hear as he puts it our place in the dance. And that radio show? It never happened. But 30 years later, we're listening. to Ram Doss right now and he meets us in the moment again and again. Maybe you're in Tokyo or London or in your car in Cincinnati and this podcast it carries his voice around the world and this year marks 10 years of the Be Here Now network that's 10 years more than 50 million listeners and this incredible family of darma teachers from Ramdoss to Jack Kornfield. to Sharon Salzburg to so many others and it's all in one place and it's all free and it's for anyone who needs them at any time and it's all about the darmas and we know about 70% of people these days they find Ram doss through this podcast and every week we get these messages about how they just discovered this podcast and Ram doss saved their life. Maybe it's someone in their 20s, maybe it's somebody in their 70s, maybe it's somebody in their 70s, but they're just finding him for the first time and they have their hearts and their minds blown open and so often they say it just felt like home. And so to celebrate all of this to celebrate the 10 years we are remastering the Ram Doss here and now podcast. Many of these recordings they are old and they have hisses and pops and you can't hear the questions and they're muffled and so our engineers are restoring them so that it sounds like wrong. Ram Doss is sitting across from you with a hope that these teachings will last for generations to come. So please, if Ram Doss has ever touched you, has ever met you in the moment, please give what you can. Through the end of this month, every donation is matched, dollar for dollar, up to $50,000. So your 25 becomes 50, your 100 becomes 200. You know, Ram Doss, he dreamed that this radio signal would reach everyone. And now it does because of you. So please help that continue. Go to Be Here Now Network.com slash 10 years and help us keep these teachings alive. That's Be Here Now Network.com slash 10 years. So now today's episode, Ram Das, he opens the phone lines and the calls roll in. He takes questions about keeping the heart open. in the presence of immense suffering. He talks about polarization and living in hard-hearted times. He talks about right livelihood, conscious dying, and the recent death of his old friend Timothy Leary. And he closes the show with a question about advice you might give children, which is worth the whole hour. So it's like he's speaking to us right now as he so often. does. So let's settle in for Sunday morning 1996 or 2026 and listen for your place in the dance. Here's Ram Doss here and now. Happy Sunday morning. This is Ram Das and we are on news talk 1350 K-S-R-O. And the show is Ram Das and we are on news talk 1350 K-S-R-O. And the show is called Here and now with Ram Das. And I can't tell you what a... delight this is. And I'm going to spend a few minutes trying to tell you why it's a delight. Because I've chosen this is the first radio show of what will sooner or later be I hope a national call-in series in which we have a chance to hang out together. compassionate way in a way in which we can explore how close we can get to truth. And I really, I found I'm a people person and I really like hanging out with people. And I'm learning the art form of listening into other human beings and how to listen without judgment, just listen to that. And the opportunity for for us to talk to the point clearly, simply truthfully with heart, and then to listen non-judgmentally to one another. To me, that's the way in which you and I can recognize that we are part of a community of consciousness. Who am I? who you know introduces himself at lectures as Ram does which means a servant of God and but I use Ram also as an acronym for rent a mouth because I feel the audience has rented my mouth to tell it what what it wants to hear and what does it want to hear it apparently wants to hear things it already knows because when I tell really was I noticed the audience all nods in agreement so they already know what I know. So apparently we just come together to say over and over again to one another what we already know until we can hear it. And I kind of see the show a little bit like that. It's not so much focused on information as it is on perspective. the experiences we have in daily life and look at them in a way that minimizes the amount of suffering we might create to ourselves and to everybody else and also enhances everyone's happiness. There are a lot of topics that I imagine will come up over the course of these next four weeks together. Because I enjoy working in fields like politics, relationships, social action, issues of responsible business. And then I figure we'll talk some about stages of responsible business. And I've just been working on a book on aging, so that'll be fun to talk about. I'm 65. And part of why I'm doing this show is because I've been traveling lecturing for years all around the world. And I'm getting kind of to the point where my old bones would like to stay home a little more. And so I figured we'd all gather on the airwaves rather than in physical buildings. It saves, renting and all kinds of things. I assume because I've done a lot of work with the dying, with AIDS, cancer, that issues about suffering will come up, just as the suffering of poverty will come up. And so I see this as a way in which we can figure out together, how to live our lives consciously, awareness so that we can have our hearts open to one another, to one another as a species, and one another across species, to the earth itself, in fact, to the entire Cosmos, so that we can hear our place in the dance, our place in the dance. Because I feel that what we're talking about is just the way of viewing our daily life events in such a way that we find the excitement and the enthusiasm and the adventure and the possibility and the opportunity to become free. And that's a that's describing what my life is on the inside. On the outside. I'm from Boston. I then taught at Harvard for five years in the field of psychology, social relations. Then I was involved with psychedelics, with Tim Leary. I left Harvard in the 63. I went to India in 67, started to really tune into Eastern metaphysics. And for the past 25 years have been integrating metaphysics. Eastern metaphysics with Western psychology and trying to figure out how these changes in my own consciousness play into the way I live life as a responsible human being. So in the course of these years I've tried a variety of spiritual practices and I hope we'll not only talk about those but actually try some of them. that you and I would find most useful. A lot of talk radio is often feeds on a certain kind of an adrenaline that has to do with confrontation. And I think how we hold opinions is really interesting. I think we all do have opinions, but that who we are is not our opinions and our opinions should be open to discussion. And I'm much more in favor of... reflective discussion and conversation rather than debate and confrontation. So I think that helps define what our ground rules are, of what, of the kind of people I like to hang out with and have conversations with. So in a few minutes we will be taking calls here at News Talk 1350, KSRO. And it will be after a... break coming up. As I become older, I realize that society needs new roles for people like me, older people. And the role I would like to be and is a wise elder, a member of the society that stands back and reflects and contributes and looks and offers. But I'd like it understood that I'm not saying what I say because I know. I'm saying what I say because it's as close as I can tune at that moment to the truth of the situation when I listen carefully. And so whatever I say, run it through your own intuitive heart to see whether it's a value. And I think there is an opportunity in a good way to say, I don't know. Our first advertisement. Welcome back to here and now with Ram Das. This is News Talk 1350, KSRO. And now if you want to call in, we'll be getting close to taking some calls. And we will, in there are many traditions, in, in fact, in most traditions, opportunity for people of like mind to come together in a community to give each other support for what they're doing. And in this case, that's what I see this as, whether you call it the fellowship or the, or Satsang or Sanga or whatever. It's a group of people that come together. And you can look at your own life and see who you come together with and