Mindrolling With Raghu Markus

Music is a beatific balm to our psyche, suggesting our soul...

Leaning into trauma and loss. Loving impermanence. Well, OK...but easier said than done. The comfort zone of normality-seeking “untrauma” always beckoning enticingly. We talk about the “opportunity” of the willingness to face distress...

The "movie of me"...selfishness out of selflessness?..."irregular thinking"...spiritual practice as success mode?...OK, let's stay positive for a moment...

An R & D on the uses and abuses of meditation...Doing yoga just to look cool...Finally cutting through the thoughts and finding your heart through proper practice.

Following guitarist extraordinaire/dharma communicator David Nichtern’s quick turn from the music studio to the Buddhist pure land  – prajna, rigpa and recording...

R & D opine about the commercial business of so-called enlightenment plus they offer some words about how to not go nuts if your work is oppressing and depressing you. How do you stay positive when your job kinda sucks?

Dr. Judith Orloff, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry UCLA, defines “Emotional Freedom” as the capacity to give and receive love, what it is to be a true empath and what mirror neurons are all about...R&D listen...

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity” (Simone Weil) “By this definition, our relationship to the world, and to one another, and to ourselves are becoming increasingly miserly.” (Jonathan Safran Foer) Do we communicate more and love less? Are we hard wired for connection or isolation? R & D do their due diligence on all of this...

Magical, mystical, mysterious, mellifluous music from the legendary Triloka World Music catalog. Enjoy the music and banter from Raghu and David.

Can right wingers be Buddhists?  What is the military-industrial-media complex? Can we resist without rage? How can we avoid harming another heart? 

Bob Dylan - born half a year before Pearl Harbor with his word fugues of our future always old/forever young – he rocked a rotten society...what rocks youth now...our 2013 parallel universe...getting the charge, the message, without needing a drug or a guru...a 9/11 first responder’s love tale...

A little music, a Mad Man, slight madness and some sanity ranging from Pema Chodron to Richard Nixon with entertainment by Malian angel Rokia Traoré.  Podcast gets into music as transportation; sixties/now parallels; “shmoos”; stealing chocolate; “learning to stay”; not chasing thoughts; and service/social activism. Plus “what have we really got out of years of practice?”  

The Mindrolling twins dig into the world of free form radio with Tom Lopez aka Meatball Fulton - a pioneer of the genre from back in the 60’s. Tom talks about his relationship with Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart who was a compadre of Frank Zappa and wrote and performed incredibly bizarre yet transcendent music. In fact the New York Times called it “the strange uncle of post-punk”. Also featured are a few vignettes of highly evocative radio plays Tom has produced.

Ram Dass talks about his relationship with the great Tibetan Lama, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Includes detailed moments with Trungpa and Ram Dass at different events and venues in the early 70’s where Trungpa was teaching - the methods he used with his students and the dismay of many who were offended by his unusual behavior and teachings that were enigmatic to say the least. Ram Dass delves into a substantial issue around teachers in the West that are unconventional and sometimes divisive yet can provide students with a path that allows for real growth.

Navigating the conventional world and its roles – and escaping them: our chat with TV producer/teacher/friend Peter Goldsmith: How to roll your mind away from obsessive identification with the “work you”... How to see all true paths as exactly the same... How to say hello to the inner self...

DUNCAN TRUSSELL, conscious humorist pal and podcast guru, is back with us, and we expand upon mind expansion, conquering cancer, mortality, Allen Ginsberg, the edges of time and space, downloading divine info, “disciplic succession,” and love underlying everything. It’s an intense yet hilarious trip into Duncan’s mind and heart.

“American Veda” author Philip Goldberg traces how Eastern philosophy and practice developed in the U.S., making it clear that yoga, meditation and kirtan didn’t just spring up here out of nowhere. We learn about the progression from people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Swami Vivekananda, George Harrison and Ram Dass.

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said, “The quality of a really good teacher is “rascalness." Why do we need the outright unpredictable sometimes in order to progress spiritually? This week our Mindrollers delve into true intuitive wisdom, cults, humor as teaching, and the connection between art and consciousness. Catch their drift and open your mind or maybe lose it...

Raghu and David welcome Ram Dass and his co-author Rameshwar Das, who just finished their new book, Polishing the Mirror. Ram Dass talks about the moment that his life changed when he met his Guru and how that “moment” became viral with so many people. Also revealing discussion around honesty and being at the edge of awakening with dying people.

The Mindrollers traverse from the implant of knowledge via a teacher (or not) through to the real meaning of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” as explained to David by Roger Waters himself. Also ruminations about “rascal” teachers, the true nature of surrender, the dark presence of fear in our lives, and love as a disease.