This is a great clip from a Q&A Ram Dass did at a pharmaceutical company in the 80’s. He gives a sort of two-pronged response to the question of religious identity; first, we get a beautiful teaching about how we cling to all sorts of self-conceptions, before he explores the way in which we can use those same definitions as methods for awakening.
That first teaching is very relevant in a world filled with identity categories that expand beyond just religion: more and more, our algorithms force us into boxes based on our lifestyle, interests, gender, sexuality. The Internet is a good place to find likeminded people and community, but I’ve noticed myself clinging to these labels, setting myself in opposition to others that don’t consume the same media as me or share my opinions. This teaching is a good reminder that we are much more interesting than that.
The other side of that coin is listening to and honoring these individual differences. I was raised Catholic, and, like many Catholics I know, I began pushing that identity away as a teenager. Jesus always felt a little stuffy after forced confessions and three hour Latin masses. Eastern philosophy seemed much more attractive. Here, Ram Dass has a wonderful bit about how Jesus, Moses, Buddha, all these guys are teaching us the same thing, the singular truth that we are all one consciousness manifesting in different forms. Instead of spending time pushing the Catholicism category away, I could’ve embraced it for what it is: a part of that beautiful mosaic of love, just another way into The One.
— Aidan Gould, Content Creator, Love Serve Remember Foundation // RamDass.org
Ram Dass: When you say “I am,” anything that follows that is a limiting condition. The closest to truth you can get is just the statement “I am.” The minute you put a limiting condition on it, you define out what you aren’t. You immediately make an “us and them,” or a “me and that”.
So by my saying “I am a Jew,” makes me not all the rest of it. And then I say, “But I was born a Jew,” well what does that mean? And then I can be cute, I’d say, “Well, I’m only a Jew on my parents side.”
And I hear that from my point of view, what I’m trying to do is to learn the lessons of this birth. I’m trying to learn that everything that is on my plate has been given to me as a curriculum through which I can become free. That’s the way I see the universe. I’m giving you the advanced course right now, but that’s roughly it.
Everything, including the fact that my father was this, my mother died this way, that I’m bald, that I this, that, all my neuroses- they are all part of this curriculum that is offered to me through which I can awaken.
So I listen to each thing to hear what it has to teach me, if you will. Now, sometimes, if you push away a role identity prematurely, it still has you. For example, in the early days, I just wanted to get high all the time. I wanted to go be in la la land. I wanted to be in The One, to hell with all these individual differences. I didn’t like who I was, in individual difference land. So I wanted to be out there. I kept trying to get high all the time.
And then I saw that that was a trap. I was pushing away something. As long as you try to push something away, it’s got you. It’s like your hand sticks to it. So, you know, the secret of all the transmissions are attachments or aversions. Both of them catch you.
One of the highest teachings is the third Chinese patriarch of Zen. It starts out with a line that you immediately feel you’re not ready for yet. It says “The great way is not difficult”-- meaning the great way, the true understanding, the deepest freedom– “the great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” When you’ve got that one, let me know and I’ll give you the next line. It says, “When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. But make the slightest distinction and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.”
What you hear is that as long as you identify with anything, this versus that, as long as you push away your humanity to hold on to your divinity, so long as you grab your humanity and push away your divinity, it’s got you. You don’t see the truth of things.
They say in the mystic literature, “truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.” As long as you want anything, you only see the outward container. As long as you identify with any thing or group, you’ve got an agenda. You’re trying to protect it. If you say I am a Christian, you’re busy trying to protect that definition.
Jesus is one of the most brilliant teachings of just what we’re talking about today. I mean, what a mind blowing teaching. He comes and he says, Look, I’m taking a human birth just like you, and I’m just going to show you the truth of the fact that you aren’t who you think you are. Watch. I’ll go and I’ll just be like you and then people will scorn me. Now, that would freak you because you’d say one, you know, shame is terrible. They’ll shame me and I’ll still be here.
Then you say, Well, shame is one thing, but your body is your big deal. Go ahead, I’ll be crucified, and I’ll drop back in three days and show you that isn’t it either. Can you imagine the statement: I’m offering my life to show you you aren’t who you think you are, so you can be free if you believe that I just did what I did. What a statement.
Now you can appreciate that statement of the Christ consciousness coming down in the form and giving that teaching. But I can also appreciate Buddha, who started out as a rich boy and then saw through the fallacies of stuff that he saw there was suffering and sickness and death and that as long as you try to hide from it or push it away, it had him, and he went out and he had commerce with it, and he kept working on himself. And he saw through the whole game and sat down and came back and taught these clear truths about the nature of suffering and humanity, and I can love him. And I can look again and again to Moses and what happened up on the mountain.
And in each tradition, I see the truth. Because every religion was rooted in somebody that had a direct experience of who we are.
And then it’s different strokes for different folks. They came down and they, for a different time, they formulated it in a different way, and then people kill each other for it. “My way is better than your way.” And it’s interesting to understand the universality of the deepest truth and yet honor your form.
I mean, my guru was a Hindu guru, but he used to say to most Westerners, Christ is your guru. Christ is alive and well in your heart if you will allow him to be, and he’ll guide you. And I think that’s true. And I listen in each religion to find that form that allows me to touch that deepest truth.
— Ram Dass, 1987
Published by the Love Serve Remember Foundation, the nonprofit caretaker of Ram Dass’s teachings since 2010. Learn more at RamDass.org or join our virtual community and archive at Inneracademy.ramdass.org.
