I feel vulnerable because my mind – because of the stroke, my mind doesn’t focus. And then I feel vulnerable because I don’t understand the world around me. Ram Dass Read Quote
I remember my first visit with my guru. He had shown that he read my mind. So I looked at the grass and I thought, ‘My god, he’s going to know all the things I don’t want people to know.’ I was really embarrassed. Then I looked up and he was looking directly at me with unconditional love. Ram Dass Read Quote
In working with those who are dying, I offer another human being a spacious environment with my mind in which they can die as they need to die. I have no right to define how another person should die. I’m just there to help them transition, however they need to do it. Ram Dass Read Quote
In India, there’s a way of seeing life as a cosmic play. It’s called Lila. I can watch my life, and I can see my guru playing with me. Ram Dass Read Quote
My belief is that I wasn’t born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that. Ram Dass Read Quote
When I look at relationships, my own and others, I see a wide range of reasons for people to be together and ways in which they are together. I see ways in which a relationship – which means something that exists between two or more people – for the most part reinforces people’s separateness as individual entities. Ram Dass Read Quote
Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath. Ram Dass Read Quote
My guru said that when he suffers, it brings him closer to God. I have found this, too. Ram Dass Read Quote
In our Western culture, although death has come out of the closet, it is still not openly experienced or discussed. Allowing dying to be so intensely present enriches both the preciousness of each moment and our detachment from it. Ram Dass Read Quote
The stroke has given me another way to serve people. It lets me feel more deeply the pain of others; to help them know by example that ultimately, whatever happens, no harm can come. ‘Death is perfectly safe,’ I like to say. Ram Dass Read Quote