I LOVE Ram Dass: Look at your life, see what message it is you are

Reflect about death. And become friendly with it.

Find a community around you of people who would like to really grow inwardly if you’re lucky enough to find them. They’re called satsang or sanga or the family or the community of spirit. If you don’t then you’ve got books of sadhaks, of wise women, of all of that. Tune back into nature more deeply so you can feel the cycles, the natural cycles of which your body and your personality are a part.

Find practices of meditation. Meditation on impermanence, meditation on suffering and the end of suffering. Meditation on non-self. Meditation on dependency.

Learn how to act in the world in caring and compassionate way without being trapped in being the actor by using it all to go inward more deeply, more deeply.

Just to give you just a flavour, I’m about to draw to a close here.

These are the kind of spiritual teachings I work with.

You should rest in naturalness. A clear, empty and naked mind essence, free from any concerns, just rest in your awareness.

When your body falls sick don’t indulge in it, but rest in naturalness.

Look into the painful sensation itself. The pain doesn’t cease, however you will directly realize the inate state of awareness free from any thought about where it hurts, what it hurts, how it hurts as well as the object of the pain.

At that moment the sickness grows less intense and becomes more insubstantial.

Regard disturbing emotions from within the space of emptiness.

Any disturbing emotion that may arise is wisdom the moment you relax in naturalnesss. Look directly into it. Don’t deliberately reject it or regard it as a fault or indulge it in concreteness, or even regard it as a virtue, just look at it. And keep coming back into spaciousness, come back into spaciousness.



The result of the kinds of spiritual work I’m talking about is that you are growing towards being equanamous, peaceful. Where you see that the process of the aging is itself the creative act. And you see the way in which you are your own creation and when you are creating from peace and equanimity and the quiet spaciousness of being in love in the universe, the unity of the universe, you become a wise elder in to the society.

When you are dependent on others, the way in which you are dependent is a message to other people. To help them get free of their fear of dependency.



The people I work with who are dying, I have to tell you, are my great teachers. They are people who in the way they work with these processes keep teaching me. So understand that … Mahatma Gandhi’s line, he was on a train, it was rollling out of the station, a reporter rushed up and said ‘Mahatmaji, give me a message to take back to the people.’ He had just time to scribble on a paper bag, he handed out the bag and it said: My life is my message.

I invite you to look at your life and see what message it is you are. And when you find that part of you that is afraid, that is caught in time and that which changes, get to work.

There’s no better time to do than now.

Full Interview