Ram Dass
Ram Dass
Ram Dassis an American spiritual teacher and the author of the seminal 1971 book Be Here Now. He is known for his personal and professional associations with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s, for his travels to India and his relationship with the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba, and for founding the charitable organizations Seva Foundation and Hanuman Foundation. He continues to teach via his website...
ProfessionYoung Adult Author
Date of Birth6 April 1931
CityBoston, MA
hippie mean mind
We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.
home brotherhood be-here-now
We're all just walking each other home.
compassion joy and-love
You are joy, wisdom, peace, compassion, and love
life-and-love self-esteem perfection
You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success- none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here.
spiritual money giving
The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.
mind religion spirituality
Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.
freedom journey involved
Our journey is about being more deeply involved in life, and yet less attached to it.
rivers awareness
Thoughts are going by like a river; awareness simply is.
taken dark night
The dark night of the soul is when you have lost the flavor of life but have not yet gained the fullness of divinity. So it is that we must weather that dark time, the period of transformation when what is familiar has been taken away and the new richness is not yet ours.
giving-up mean meditation
You give up not meditating. It's called meditation action. There's no way out of it. Meditation means to be constantly extricating yourself from the clinging of mind.
live-life meditation caves
We live life in the marketplace and then we go off to the cave or to the meditation mat to replenish ourselves.
struggle years passive-resistance
After meditating for some years, I began to see the patterns of my own behavior. As you quiet your mind, you begin to see the nature of your own resistance more clearly, struggles, inner dialogues, the way in which you procrastinate and develop passive resistance against life. As you cultivate the witness, things change. You don't have to change them. Things just change.
independent circles people
I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people.
giving-up ocean helping
Maharajji told me, 'Give up anger and I'll help you.' I found that love freed me back into the ocean of love and my righteous anger didn't do that. And I would rather be free than right.