SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regulate and present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz at Beat the Prosecution. I'm a criminal defense and DWI defense lawyer in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. I am having a lot of trouble containing my excitement with today's guest. Her name is Mirabai Bush. I first met her at the Mindful Leadership Conference in 2015. She wrote this essential book that you'll want to read. It's a little dog-eared because that on the beach when it started raining a few weeks ago. It's called Almost Home. She's the author not only of that, she's the author with Ron Doss of uh walking each other home. I think she'll tell me if it's corrected, uh, if should be that. She wrote another book with Ron Doss. Um I don't know if there were some other books as well. The reason why I'm interested in Mirabal Bayabush as a lawyer and uh just as a person is that she is a fascinating person who, as I understand it, bridges mindfulness with business. And that's very important for me because I apply mindfulness. My main mindfulness practice is daily Tai Chi Chuan practice. And Mirabai Bush, for instance, was uh a co-creator with uh Shane Mang Tan, for instance, of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. Uh that acronym is silly, literally. Uh there's so many things I want to talk to her about, but I want to start out with you, Mirabai. Please introduce yourself. Please tell the audience uh what's most important to you, and of course, please tell them about your book, your books, your websites, anything you've been doing over all these decades.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Well, I will keep this short. Hi, I'm Mirabai, and um I have had a long life, and I put a lot of it into this book, and um it I led a fairly conventional life uh in the 40s and 50s growing up, um, and until in 1970, I um went to India and met Neemkarali Baba Maharaji here, and um he just uh uh changed my way of seeing what's possible in this lifetime, in this world, and really opened it up for me. And um then when I came back I tried to integrate those that understanding and practices that uh came out of uh Eastern traditions into lots of different fields and in the I ran a business for a while uh and tried to do it on principles of right livelihood, and and I worked in international development for a while. Um and uh then I founded the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, where we brought um meditation, yoga, other contemplative practices into mainstream uh secular settings, including law, John. Um we started out at Yale Law School, um, law, business, uh it's social justice activism, uh, philanthropy, um, the army, and Google. So uh that's my story. And and I will be happy to answer any questions you have.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Now I told you I read your book cover to cover, but sometimes I read it quickly. Did you mention in your book about having uh been over the Yale Law School? I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Oh, but I'm sorry I missed that. It's okay. It was kind of a funny story that we were trying to think about ways. Three of the five book founding board members were lawyers, and um they by chance, because none of them were practicing law, they were heads of foundations and things, and so they all thought it would be really great to introduce meditation into law, the field. And um, this is 95, so at this time it's hard to appreciate now, it's not that much later, but nobody was doing meditation outside of you know monasteries or um uh retreat centers, and it was still kind of a hippie thing. Um, and we had no idea whether there would be interest or acceptance in mainstream settings, higher education and so on. Um, but they very much wanted to see if they could introduce it into um into the field of law, and so we had a conversation about how we would do that. And I remember Charlie Halpern, who had formerly I know Charlie. Do you? He was he was the chair for years, and he had been the dean at CUNY Law School. Um, and uh he said Charlie's so good and so his big ideas, so he said, Well, where should we start? Let's start with the Supreme Court. The others said, Charlie, I don't think that's gonna work. So then it was like, how about um uh partners at major law firms? Might be too early for that, too. The conversation went on, and finally someone said, How about law schools? Um, and then um Charlie had gone to Yale Law School, and uh Tony Cronman was dean then and he was somewhat open to these things. So, anyhow, and one uh uh someone who was who became a board member, Harlan Dalton, was also teaching at Yale then. So we gave a retreat for Yale law students, um, and we didn't know how to introduce these practices in yet in new in a secular new way. So we gave a three-day silent retreat to the kind of retreats that we had learned in monasteries, and uh uh for these students. And of course, as you know well, students yeah, the law students are very good at talking, they're not talking about being silent, it was radical. Um, but it was really extraordinary.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Um you say this was 1995? Yeah, or six.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

It was mainstream? Yeah, yeah. Well, the only thing that was happening then was John Caputin's work, and that was still just in hospitals um with uh around chronic pain. Uh nobody else was doing it. Yeah. Wow. We did a whole national survey to see if we could find people who were running institutions of any kind who had introduced any of these practices. And I mean there are a few places like Sounds True publishers, but it was a spiritual publisher, you know, and they they were doing some yoga, I think. But um, no, no, it's certainly not in higher education, business, it wasn't happening. So, yeah, so we did it, and you know, we with the law students, one of the most effective practices was mindful listening. Yes, it was really beautiful because you know, you can imagine, you know, and they had to listen to each other and really fully listen. Um, they learned a lot from that.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Um yeah. Well, I I've been to two lawyers' retreats, so and it was working backwards in 20 uh 15. Uh so this was just a uh few months um uh before meeting you over at the uh Mindful Leadership Conference in Northern Virginia. I went to the Garrison Institute and Charlie was one of the teachers there, along with um Zoketsu Norman Fisher. Yeah. And there were about three other people. And uh it was a lawyer's mindfulness uh program. And and I I I think it was related to what they were doing at Berkeley, and maybe the program you did at Yale ended up being related to that. And uh I was stunned, and people to this day probably are surprised that I loved the silence. The only time I wasn't silent during those uh two and a half to three days was when we had group discussion and question and answer, and the only time I broke my silence otherwise was I went to my cell phone in the trunk of my car each night to say goodnight to my wife and son because my son at the time was only nine. But other than that, it was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

That's great. Yeah, those those retreats came right from the program that we did, and Norman was also on our board, so it was a great boon. Um, yeah, uh they were pretty wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Excellent. Well, we've gotten pretty much in the middle of it because there's so many things I want to talk to you about. So, your name when you're you were born was not Mirabaya Bush. No, uh Mirabai was uh the name given to you by Maharaji, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:07

That's right. My name was Linda Thurston. And um Maharaj gave me that. In in that tradition in Hinduism, um a teacher gives the student a name and you aspire to live into that name. So Ramdas means servant of God, um, or servant of Ram in Hinduism. And uh Mirabai was a she was a queen who um basically left all her privilege and comfort to sing to God in the streets. And she had and this this is in the 16th century and was very unusual. And um so she's known in Hinduism as um, or in I should say in Indian culture, as um the there's a there's a form of devotion that's called erotic bhakti or loving God as your lover, and she's the embodiment of that. So he gave me that name, and I, as you know, had grown up Catholic, but I loved the name from the minute he gave it to me, and um, and I loved the the story. So um, yeah, I never it was so strange, I never once used the name Linda after that. I mean it just felt totally natural, and I was already in my 30s, you know.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

So yeah. When when I um by the time I started college and before, I said to myself, how cool it would have been for me to have been uh a teenager or adult in the 60s rather than my single digits. But then I started thinking, well, wait, one moment. The 60s was the best of times and the worst of times. The Vietnam War was going on, Martin Luther King got uh assassinated. Things are much more racist and sexist then than now. So it's it's all a mixed bag. So as it turns out, I I actually uh got to get a taste of the 60s more than I had realized. For instance, when I uh when I heard uh Jerry Lefcourt talk at my first National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Conference in 1991 about representing Abby Hoffman, and Abby said to Jerry, uh, you know, you got to keep me out of jail so I can do my activism. I said to myself, Wow, I wish I had been uh uh older feel lawyer then, but then nine years later, I got a call from Elizabeth McAllister, the uh now the widow of uh uh uh Philip Berrigan, and she said, Well, they got arrested again, and uh this time they're they're not going pro se if possible because Ramsey Clark, if he's available, they they want someone who's local. So Ramsey and I defended these four plowshares activists, Phil Berrigan, uh Father Steve Kelly, uh Elizabeth Walls and Susan Crane. They were they were hammering on these two uh A-10 Warthog planes uh against the depleted uranium bullets they were firing. What a great experience that was. And that was just the start of representing fascinating uh uh activists.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

That's great. I didn't know that. Yeah, and Abby's in the book, you probably saw.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah. Yes, indeed. Well, well, so so many people are in the book. And so, you know, it's uh one of the many fascinating things about you and your story is that my understanding is that uh Ram Das and the others weren't supposed to say where Neam Karoli Baba was Maharaji, but people figured out through breadcrumbs. And you went over to India, am I correct, without even looking for Neem Karoli Baba? You met Sharon Salzburg, who I know. I've been to a lot of her sits in DC. I don't know if she's still doing that. And uh and she and she told you about that uh uh that retreat with I think it was with the the the Buddhist uh teacher, and some was it was it through that you heard about Maharaji or was it through Ram Das mentioning him?

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Well um that was the first retreat that teacher, uh Goanka, who was Burmese, was the first retreat he'd given for Westerners, and so that was what we were called, and um so yeah, I I had never meditated, I don't know anything about it, but it just sounded cool, you know. So I went. And uh Ramdas was also there as a student, um, as were many other people, including Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg and others, and um they none of us except Joseph uh had done any kind of uh that really intensive meditation. It was 10 days from early in the morning till late at night in silence, meditating. And uh Ramdas himself had never done that. And um, anyhow, it was a 10-day course, and at the end of it, there were about 70 of us there. We uh just so many of us recognized this is amazing, something's happening here that I didn't glimpse was possible before. And so we asked him to do another, and he did four in a row for us, and um so we got to know each other. That and that's that's where I met Ram Das and we got together, we got to be friends there, and then um a whole group of us left there together with Ramdas, and he wanted to go see where Maharaj was, but he didn't know where he was. And we were on this rented bus, and we drove into the town of Allahabad, and there was Maharaji standing on the street in front of a temple, kind of waving to us.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Was that the story where Maharaj had said to uh uh some of his devotees uh set up a puri and food for a certain number of people, and that was the exact number of people that you you were with with Ram Das and friends? Right, yes. Yes. So I'm still I'm still jumping around. Well, I mean I'm not gonna tell everyone what's in this book because you you go read the book, but to take some stuff from there how much of it was the si that it was the sixties itself and how much it was otherwise, that uh you were very much in tune and active uh by the nineteen sixties with uh with women's rights and uh and with civil rights.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Yeah, well it was hard not to be. Well as we know, half the country wasn't, but and still aren't. But um I was in I was in graduate school at SUNY Buffalo uh in this in the late sixties, and um that was the time of the things that you mentioned. And as a student I became I mean, I was a teaching fellow, um, getting my PhD. And um I got very involved in anti-war uh work we all did, and um and also civil rights. Uh uh Martin was killed during that time. And um we also uh discovered psychedelics during that time. Yeah in the middle of everything else going on, and it was um it was just a time of big change, as most people know, and um it was and also uh um the w awakening of women um about our rights. And I had uh I before that, as I said, I I mean I was born in 1939, so I had been around for a while. And the fur when I was first married, in a very conventional marriage, my husband then uh was in ROTC and he was an aeronautical engineer and they sent him to Cape Canaveral. And because I was there as an Air Force wife, and Air Force wives were not supposed to work, nobody did, but I was so bored, and I just I I wasn't cut out to be an Air Force wife, so I got a job working on the the Saturn Apollo that went to the moon, first moon launch. Um, so I had I was able to do some things or did some things and then got divorced, which um women usually couldn't initiate in those years. Uh I remember I had my own credit card when I went to graduate school, and then women couldn't have their own credit cards without a man signing for them. That's crazy. And um uh so I had experience of not being like fully repressed. I was able to do some things just because I didn't know any better. I just did them.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

That's great.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

But um, but I understood what you know what was going on, and then there were all those other ways in which we needed to awaken and flourish, and uh so I became very involved in that also. And then the police took over the campus as they did in many places in the country. That was over at SUNY Buffalo, yeah, and that seems wild now, but now we're seeing police taking over whole communities. Right. Not police, but you know, uh, and uh I and of course we were taking psychedelics at the same time, not every day, but you know, some, and that opened up a whole kind of mystical dimension. So I it was really difficult. I was teaching. It was so hard to teach. We actually that we couldn't teach a lot of the time when the police were there. So when that school year ended, I just felt like I wanted to travel to some places in the world to see if there was anywhere where people were leading a saner, more more compassionate life.

SPEAKER_01 20:35

And what year was that when you went to India?

SPEAKER_02 20:37

1970.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Was that after the Kent State uh massacre? Soon after. Soon after, yeah. And of course, uh, you know, Lama Soya Das uh aptly says uh that you know it's it's not enough to be anti-war, anti-violence. You've got to find peace within yourself. This is it.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

I took him to his first meditation course.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Amazing, amazing.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Um, but yeah, exactly. And um, so that's how I got to India. I went overland through the Europe and the Middle East and got to India, and uh, but I had no idea what I would find. I was really just looking, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Did you go by yourself? Uh what did you uh go nonstop? I mean not non-stop, did you did you stop anywhere along the way? Many places.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

We took we took a bus from London to Delhi, which is like especially in these they had these old buses and it was like a hundred dollars or something, and um went through all through Europe and then through all the Middle East, and which at that time was completely peaceful, was and everybody loved Americans. And and of course the Shah was still in Iran. So, I mean it was there were reasons it was peaceful, but uh but it was and um yeah we stayed with people and these buses kept breaking down. They were called the magic bus or the green turtle because they were so slow. Took two months to get from London to Delhi, but it was a great trip.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

And was there one, two or three defining moments for you that were uh the turning point? Was it merely meeting Maharaji? Was it uh being involved uh for decades with mindfulness? Or was there not really a turning point? Was it just a gradual development?

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Yeah, um, but there were a couple of key times. That that first meditation course was uh radical for me. I had never looked inside. I was a literature student, I'd read, you know, hundreds of books, and and you know, in the university, mostly you look outward, you look to what other people have said and thought, and you learn it, and you compare one to the other. But the idea of looking, really looking within at the nature of my own mind, uh was amazing, and that really uh changed things. And then soon after that I met Maharaji, and he was a being of so much. He just expanded my sense of what it can be to be human. He was just uh big and he was I don't mean physically, but he he um and he was so loving that just being around him he felt love. That was pretty amazing, and which meant that I let go of all kinds of judgments and you know, of myself and others, and uh just being with him allowed us to just kind of be there, which was a pretty amazing experience, which then led me, you know, over the years to learn more practices so that I could more often be here, as Ramdas would say, be here now.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Do you do you uh uh practice meditation or other mindfulness daily? Do you ever miss a day?

SPEAKER_02 24:23

I practice with a group on Zoom three mornings a week, and I never I've been doing it for a few years, and I never miss, I don't think I've missed one. But on the days in between, sometimes, and you know, I schedule yoga, and sometimes, you know, it's real it's hard, it's hard, you know, this life gets in the way, or one, you know, I let it get in the way. Um, so I'm really grateful to have a group to do it with, and I always tell people that, even if you're one other person, it just for me, anyhow, really it changes it.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

I have my I uh invented last year my prune juice challenge to make sure I don't sorry you were chicken water. I didn't intend that, but nonetheless, uh I I realized I won't miss a day of doing Tai Chi, which I started doing in 1994, and sure I would find my excuses, miss a day there or whatever. Uh an assistant of mine bought bought uh as a joke an organic bottle of prune juice because she knows I wouldn't drink something if it wasn't organic uh of that type. When I said, I guess there's no exception for bad mouthing prosecutors and cops. So if I bad mouth them wrongly, I'll drink prune juice. So she brought she bought the jar of it. But then I realized I can apply that to Tai Chi too. I announced to the world that if I even miss a day of Tai Chi, I'm gonna drink prune juice on uh on uh YouTube. And you know, I I don't know if what I'm more scared of, that I'll I won't like the prune juice or I will. Um that's kept me going since last March.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

Prune juice helps you become regular. That's what you want.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Yeah, but if I like the prune juice, I have to find something else. Um you are very frank in your book. Uh have you held anything back? I mean, you were talking about how you know the pill liberated women and you know, and and the benefits you got from the pill, for instance, and and and and really, you know, financial uh financial struggles, uh concerns about uh you know w where where your next financial uh gig was gonna come from. I it's it's just such a big help for people that you're so open. I mean, is there anything that you've left uh left out there that that was just too personal to reveal?

SPEAKER_02 26:52

No, no category of, you know, of probably examples, but you know, Buddhist practice really teaches you to see things as they are and not judge, you know, look at them clearly, and then if you see that change is appropriate, just be able to see um what opportunities there are for change. But to, and Ramdas is really good on this also, to, you know, just say, oh, like they always on me about pain. I never, you know, I don't like pain. He said, Mirabi. It's just pain. You know, just look at it, just pain, you know, and so it's like all those things are just what they are. Of course, it helps that they're all in the past to write about them.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

Ram Das may have said that eventually, but my understanding from his Still Here book is that he went into deep uh depression or trouble over the stroke, and finally he realized that uh that was a lesson from Maharaji for him not to be attached to his body, and he said that Maharaji had stroked him, and I said, Okay, uh, if someone who was as uh advanced as he as he was when uh Ram Das got the stroke, and if he went into deep depression or whatever the upset was, what what what happens with the mere mortals? But Ram Das, you, the people who share these experiences there helping the other people get through uh similar situations.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

He was, and this is the other book, Walking Each Other Home, but he was really amazing. And as you know, I knew him for 50 years, and we went through all kinds of stuff together and did many different things together. But um, in those last 20 years, I guess, after the stroke, um, he was amazing. He went to it in the beginning, he just hated it, you know, and really had a hard time. Uh, but he eventually really saw it, he saw it as a blessing. Uh he saw it um there was a a film made about him called Fierce Grace.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

That's he saw that as grace finally because it he had to give up everything pretty much that he really cared about that wasn't necessary, you know. He liked to he had he liked to drive a sports car and he liked, you know, just all kinds of playful things, and he certainly liked walking, you know, and and um traveling and doing all kinds of things. And he couldn't he couldn't do those things anymore, and he had to just let it go. And he did, and he was uh it was really amazing to be with him. He was uh just so present, and um never he had so much pain and for years until he died. He had all kinds of things wrong with him, besides a stroke, and um he never complained, which is stunning to me.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

I met him in the fall of 2003 when he spoke at the Lisner Auditorium on the George Washington campus in uh in DC. And uh so that was only a few years after the stroke, and uh, you know how amazing he was. He was probably exhausted after giving the talk, and yet he received the audience. He was in his wheelchair, and as I told Rao Gu Marcus when I interviewed with him, uh he he treated me as if I as if I was the only person on the planet uh when I arrived at him, and he took firm hold of my hand with his with his good hand, and uh that that 10 or 20 seconds with him uh seemed like much longer, was so much richer than that.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

Yeah, he was uh he was amazing that way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Well, how about this though? He was so loved, he was probably never alone. Uh so what happens to people who are going through the same oral ordeal when they're alone?

SPEAKER_02 31:00

I've thought about it so much, really. And uh he wasn't just not alone, but there were, you know, always volunteers to help him. He couldn't do anything by himself, you know, he couldn't get in and out of the wheelchair by himself, he couldn't do anything. So he needed people, he needed help. And there were people around him who loved him and wanted to help him and did, and then so many people would come and see him and like have these loving exchanges with him. And I, you know, I think about how many of us don't have I shouldn't, how many people don't have that, and those last years would be so different if each of us was surrounded by loving people and um uh good care and all of it. It was really beautiful to see, but it really taught me, especially because in the last two years we were writing this book about dying. So I was really aware of um what a really great way to die was, which he really had.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Okay, and that's the book called Walking Each Other Home. And uh, for those who don't know about this uh this aspect of life, walking each other home means walking, walking ourselves to what we call our last breath, to the afterlife. What would you call it?

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Well, I mean, it's really about how we we need each other, and that in our relationships with each other, we're helping us move moment to moment, day to day, toward our death, even from the beginning. And uh in order to die in a way that um in which we've let go of most of our attachments, we're at peace with the dying process. Um, that um it's there's a lot to do to get there. And we really help each other by just being being friends, being with each other. Just friends, but just um, you know, just people you meet for one time. It all matters. There's one.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

What was the writing process like with Ram Das? I mean, I know there are a lot of spiritual teachers who really don't uh do a lot of writing themselves and and other people just edit and and uh and and rewrite what they've said orally, for instance.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Well, he was a good writer, uh um, but once he had a phasia after the um stroke, which doesn't really affect your thinking brain so much, but it um affects your speaking. And so he he said he'd be looking for a word. He said it was like going to a closet and opening it up and trying to find the right costume for that day. Um it was a struggle to find words, so he couldn't um write a book himself, but he wanted to write about dying. He'd written, I mean, I said from Be Here Now, which was 1970. Um the words were all there. It's it's pretty going back to that book, is which still sells like mad, but uh for good reason. It's kind of all there. But he said that he knows it now, he said, in a different way. He's holding it, living it in a way. And so he said he wanted to talk about it from that space. And so um, so he asked me to do it with him. And um we we did it, I didn't want it to be, you know, a kind of ghostwriter effect. So we did it as conversations, and um then if if I needed to fill some things in, I could fill it in and then read it back to him and see if that sounded right to him. So that's how we did it, and it was so great. We when we started, we said, okay, let's because he had talked so much about dying over the years, and I had too, and we said, okay, we're gonna say what we know and not say what we don't know, period. And we caught ourselves a number of times kind of just rattling on with, you know, things that weren't they weren't untrue, but they weren't fresh out of the moment, you know. It was great.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

So my understanding is uh Ron Doss would really look forward to being with uh dying people, and he he said that that is when people are are uh they're most authentic, right in their dying moment. Uh did did you share that interest with him?

SPEAKER_02 36:06

I well, I mean I appreciated. I haven't been with so many dying people, but a few, and I appreciated it just a sacred space, and I learned so much from those couple of people I was with, just most of it's nonverbal of what this passing into another form is, and um yeah, uh but he learned a lot. And speaking of things that you know you maybe want to leave out or are saying for the first time, he said when we were talking about it, he said, well, backing up, you know, you know that he was gay, but he grew up in the 40s really in prep school, you know, and he was brutalized. He was he went to school here at Willison Prep. And um he it it wasn't a good time, as we know. But some but we forget, it was a terrible time to be gay. And so he pretty much repressed it and um kind of came and identified as bisexual and um didn't really talk about it that much. And like during the 60s, during the uh the whole gay liberation movement, they always wanted Ramdoss to be a spokesperson, and he he would say, uh, I don't want to be identified by my sexuality, I want to be identified by my soul, you know. But that was true, but it was also a little bit true that he still had you know difficulty with with it from the way he'd grown up. So when we did the book, and so when he got into being with dying people, it was in the 80s during the AIDS crisis, and um he was asked to be with people dying from AIDS, and um he confessed kind of while we were writing it that um he was first drawn because he wanted to be with these guys. By that time he was out and he had had uh various uh gay lovers, but he said he wanted to be with them, you know. That's why he did it, not because he wanted to advance his his spiritual understanding. Wow. And uh so I put it in the book. But he said, of course, then when he got there, you know, then he was going through dying with people, and he learned so much about dying through it. But that was what first attracted him. I had never heard him say it before, so that was great.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Is there uh a secret to getting a benefit out of meditation? Because all I know for doing meditation, sitting meditation, I can go into really deep places, and I don't know of any secrets. Uh what I do know, uh Mirabai, is that when I first was in the presence of Sharon Salzburg and Krishna Das, this was around, oh, I would say it was around 2009 or 10, with what was then called the uh Buddha Fest, and those are the same organizers, and then changed it to Mindful Leadership Conference. And we were over the historical Sixth and I synagogue in Chinatown and DC, and Sharon started, and I'm not sure what she did to inspire this in me, but that was the first time in my life that I felt a combination of that time and space are infinite, and so am I. She did something, she did something to inspire me to do that to myself. And only a year later at the Buddha Fest, the next year or so uh with Alan Locos, who I understand is one of Sharon's uh students. You know Alan, I take it. Locos? L-O-K-O-S. And uh this was over at the um uh the the the Spectrum Theater in Arlington, Northern Virginia. And when he was leading this meditation, this was after he was in this uh I don't know how many years after this terrible fire, he was in that plane that he survived, and he made the joke of uh he I he said, I have no fingerprints as a result. Can you can you imagine the possibilities there? He said. And during that meditation, I felt like I was the only person on the planet and I really didn't want to open my eyes, but I realized that I have to because I have to integrate with people to see that I wasn't. I and that that heartened back to when I was 16 years old uh in the Sinai desert with a group of teens, I I had to we we we slept uh not far from Mount Sinai because we would have to uh wake up before sunrise so we didn't get too scorched by the sun. And I had to go move my bowels. So I I I went to this uh about a quarter mile away from everybody, and I found such a peaceful place there that I just wanted to stay there. The only reason I didn't stay there, we didn't have uh cell phones, and I didn't want people to be sending a search party out for me. So so these were three instances of mindfulness meditation, whatever you call it. So I ask you, what are what are some of the deepest levels of mindfulness meditation consciousness that you've reached? And is there a secret to it beyond what what I was just talking about, which is just just being in the present and and really grooving in the present?

SPEAKER_02 41:48

Yeah, it's an open secret. There is no secret, really. It may or may not. And um also sometimes it happens but that have nothing to do with meditation. But if you but those times are great. We learn a lot of about yeah, the relativity of everything and the um just how our perception is relative and that um it and it it gives you a sense of the interconnection of all life and so usually those are really wonderful experiences to have. And um so you can't make them happen, but um you can maybe be more prepared when they do happen. And and one way to to do that is to do these practices because they do they quiet the mind and allow the possibility of seeing in a different way.

SPEAKER_01 43:15

Um I've been such a chatterbox because there's so much I want to talk to you about. In fact, when we met, it was such a brief conversation. In fact, you may remember this was maybe a little selfish of me. I handed you uh two P uh origami peas cranes, one for you, and the second one I said, Well, I understand you're gonna be seeing Ram Doss and Maui in a month or two. You won't have given this peace crane. I mean that was selfish of me to ask you to bring it all the way over there. I'm not gonna ask if you can.

SPEAKER_02 43:51

I'm sure I can't remember, but I'm sure I did it.

SPEAKER_01 43:54

Well I what I'm getting at now is if you said it all in your book, I really. What do you want to tell the audience, many of whom may not read your book about what they might want to consider doing, thinking, being whatever before they leave their body.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

Um I have been thinking about it because I am 86, so it seems to be on the horizon. Um well again, I just think any of these many practices Tai Chi for sure. I write about Aikido in the book, yeah, meditation and yoga and so on. Um they they're all just gifts that a l that help us um slow down and cultivate uh um insight so that we are able to see the bigger picture than the day-to-day stuff we get all caught up in. And I think that's very important, just um partly so that you under you know, you have a better understanding that we are in this body for a short time and it's gonna go away, and we when we die, we'll be part of uh something much larger, uh however you understand that. Um but but taking the time to um get closer to that I think is uh a real gift to yourself. And also I found, you know, when I wrote this book, I thought, oh, I'm writing a book. But actually, as it turned out, it's really more of a practice and looking back and all the spiritual traditions all say this, you should do this as you um as you get older, but I think at you know, pretty much at any time, looking back over your life so far and just uh reflecting on it and seeing, you know, you'll see patterns in it, you'll see ways in which you um were so attached to the outcome in certain times that you didn't take the most compassionate uh choices. Um just so helpful, also just in appreciating yourself. All of that I think is important so that in terms of dying, so that when you do, you're able to like be there just uh letting go and being in the moment. Um it's like unfinished or then finished business. Ramdo's said about about dying, he said, it's just this is so true, it's just another moment, you know, you're here, you're out, and then and then you're not. And so he said it's just like this moment, this moment, this moment, and then the moment you die. And it's true, that's all it is, but you want to be able to be there for that moment with not fighting it or you know, um so yeah, maybe that's helpful.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

Who was with Ram Das when he left his body?

SPEAKER_02 47:36

Um his some of his caregivers who were his students as well, you know. Um his main caregiver, who's Dasy Um Murphy, uh, and then there were several others. And uh Rameshwar Das, who was his co-writer with his um with his memoir called Being it's called Being Ramdas, I think. That's right. And some other books as well, and was with us from the beginning from India and Maharaji. Uh he was there. Krishind Das was not there, he had just left, and I had just left also. And when I left I thought Ramdas could die where you're gone. But I had thought that so many times, because I mean he was on the edge for the last couple of years. And um and we had just finished teaching a retreat together, and it was time, it was time to go, so I did, and it was only I don't know, uh two weeks later or something that he died, but I think he I'm sure he died really peacefully. His body was re you know not good. Well, he died, but uh but it wasn't uh but he had all kinds of things wrong with him. Um but uh but he was he was ready and he was yeah he was very accepting of it all.

SPEAKER_01 49:09

A close friend of mine, Trudy Morris, who was born in 1919, and uh she passed away in 2013, wrote this amazing story about how, oh, I guess it was around uh 2008 or so she had a uh a very uh serious asthma attack episode. She was in the hospital and she said she was she saw herself with the uh the the medical team working on her from above, meaning she had left her body, and she said she found this casket right there, and she was trying uh uh for whatever it was worth to open up the casket. She was ready to go into the casket. She said the casket wouldn't open. I don't know if there are that many people in the mindfulness movement who are looking forward to leaving their body uh so much as that.

SPEAKER_02 50:07

That's a good one.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

To what extent do you maintain uh a community with all these people you're with in India and beyond? And to what extent are you uh supporting each other morally, spiritually, and and to what extent is that helping all of you out?

SPEAKER_02 50:27

To the maximum extent. It I mean, it's one of the confirmations of what we went through and who Maharaji was for us, that he died two years after. He died in 73, right? But so since then we've uh had each other, and we all have big busy lives and lots of you know friends. But um the group of us who were together at that time are still, most of us are still, many of us are still really close, and we see each other uh at some at like kind of ritual holidays uh and um just on and off during the year and stay in touch. But I have been really helped by that, you know, it always brings me back to what is important, and I just say, and in the sense of we're walking each other home, that it's really important to you know stay in community with people who uh who you can turn to around this level of uh concern and interest and you know you can talk to about your spiritual life.

SPEAKER_01 51:47

Um I I want to bring up my wife now, my wife Joy. We we uh support each other so much on our spiritual journey. We agree there are many paths to the one destination. She adores Ram Das, who doesn't, who who who finds out about him, and um she encourages me on the Tai Chi Chuan practice, for instance. She she she might say to me, if I if I come home after a long day and fall asleep on the couch and I'm reading uh a court case, for instance, she she might say before I finally go into the bed, did you do Tai Chi? And she said to me, you know, it's remarkable uh about how much I love being with the spiritual people uh who have something in common with me, but the people who are just boring me to death, to tears and talking about the spit, the this the uh uh uh the superficial stuff, she said, I really don't give them much time. I say, well, I try to see if I can draw the deep person out of them, but if I don't, I mean, you know, I only have so much time on a Saturday until then I'm gonna be back in court on Monday. That that is true. And I'm so blessed to know the people who are deep.

SPEAKER_02 52:55

And what grows with that is that, you know, after a while there's less distinction, you know, that you can Ramdos is really good being there with whoever showed up, you know. Right traveling with him, I remember he'd be checking in at the airline counter and the person, he'd be like totally there for the person who was on the other side. And it just makes people happy to be seen and to be heard, and uh he was really good at that. He taught me a lot about that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:28

Well, well, I don't I don't want to say that I don't give the people a chance, I just try to be with who they really are. And he he he once wrote about, as you know, I guess uh how he saw this uh traffic cop as Krishna and dragon. So yeah, to the point where they the the cop just was uh taking all the time in the world, just uh not wanting to leave that experience thing. The cop wanted to be there. Exactly almost yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:54

He's good.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

What made you decide uh not to just uh have some sort of uh well, I won't call it monastic life, because you know you've been involved with romances and marriages, but but what made you decide not to have so much the uh just like a non-materialistic uh always hippie life and and bridge this into the the business world? Because that that's what uh that's what I do too. I'm not gonna say I'm a hippie, but I'm I'm into the spirituality, and of course I'm I'm a business person. I I run my own law firm as much as first and foremost is to help people for me rather than to be a business first.

SPEAKER_02 54:30

When when we all came back from India, many of the others became teachers. They wanted to be teachers, so Joseph and Sharon in the in the Buddhist realm and Ram Das and Krishna doing chanting, and every everyone was teaching and like staying in that. They weren't hippies anymore, but they were like in that role outside the mainstream. But I um came back and had a baby, and then it was clear that uh in those years, like none of the meditation centers, like they did not want babies or children. Um, and so uh something else had to happen. But I was as committed to you know integrating these practices into American life as as people who were teaching it. So um that's when I started a business and integrated both practice and just an understanding uh of yeah, right livelihood, I would say. So and then once I did that for 10 years and then it it plowed into other things, and that just I just felt like it was important to do the practices, and and I continue to do them, but um, but I thought we must be able to um use our whole lives to wake up. It can't be that we're just waking up and we're sitting on a zafu somewhere, um, and so how to do that, and um that's what I paid attention to for the next 50 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:13

Yes, and and here I go again, but at the last minute of the hour I set aside when I there's so much other stuff I want to talk to you about. So, what I ask you uh um Meral Ba is to tell everyone anything that you want them to know that you haven't already said. And uh, I don't even know if we really want to time say anything about the Sava Foundation and about uh searching aside yourself. Oh, those are big. For instance. Um in a minute. We can go over time if you're willing.

SPEAKER_02 56:46

Um well when we left Maharaji, he said, we said, what should we do in in America for the rest of our lives? He said, I mean, he said, he didn't say it's simple, but he kind of implied that. He said, love everyone and serve everyone. So that's uh we had no idea how to do that when we we first came back. But one of the um one of the ways we try to uh do loving service was through uh the Seva Foundation. Seva means service in Sanskrit. And s Larry Brillian, who was with with us at with Maharaji, um had gone to India as a young doctor. He hadn't practiced yet. And um Maharaji, and he was just sitting, Maharaji used to call him Doctor America. He had come overland with the hog farm with wavy gravy, so he was like, definitely alternative. And uh he was just sitting and and Maharaji sent him to Delhi to join WHO because at this time they were working on the elimination of smallpox, and no infectious disease had ever been eliminated from the planet. And but this was an international group of medical people uh trying to end smallpox, and smallpox was we forget now, but it was a brutal killer all around the world. So many people died from it and became blind from it, and so um Larry went to he became part of that team, and indeed he was there for the last case, uh, which was in Bangladesh in 76. Um, when he and his wife Giritja, who was also part of it, came home. Um they wanted to see how to do service, loving service here. Um and so we founded a group of us together, founded a uh a 501c3 foundation and we did research and we decided on uh eliminating blindness in Nepal and India, where because we felt that not only had our teachers been so important to us and so good to us, but those cultures had allowed us to change and you know rethink things and had given us so much. So, anyhow, Sabas started out with um the goal of eliminating unnecessary blindness, I think we said many things happened. One of the things that we've been thinking about this week is that we didn't have any money, and um so how to raise money, and um Wavy Gravy was part of the original board, right? And he asked the Grateful Dead if they would do a concert for us, and they did, and kind of the rest is history, they did 40 years of they and then they brought all these other uh uh musicians, all kinds of musicians, in who and so much of Sabah's income that then led to Sabah has now restored sight to over five million people. Wow and that all started, and of course, you probably know Bobby Weir died this week, and he was on board for a while, he was wonderful, and um uh yeah, and as part of that, well then we branched out, we did a lot of work with uh in health with Native American people, and I for 10 years I worked in um Guatemala uh for uh communities um rebuilding themselves after uh terrible violence there. So that was Seva. Still going, thriving, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

If I may have one last question, the name of the show is Beat the Prosecution. Do you have any suggestions for us? Criminal defense lawyers, criminal defendants, or maybe in the wider world trial lawyers, lawyers, otherwise you've said, because you did, of course, talk about the uh uh, you know, introducing the the lawyers and law students to mindfulness. Yeah. Oh, words for for lawyers? Yeah, especially the criminal defense lawyers, if possible, ignore the criminal defendants.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

Yeah. Well, I would say the two practices that are that really feedback was from lawyers that was really helpful. Was one was mindful listening, and as I said before. And um the other is compassion.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:46

Yeah, being able to be compassionate to the person on the other side of the case. Um, would you know, could you still be a zealous advocate for your client if you actually had compassion for that person? That was a big discussion uh for years. And uh, but uh but the answer is yes, and it really um turned things around for people, yeah, those two. Yeah. I love working uh in in the law program. They were so amazing, so smart, and so asked such great questions. And um, yeah, it was wonderful. One time I was on my way out to Berkeley Law School to give um a talk to uh lawyers and law professors and whoever. And um so my my uh granddaughter, who I write about, Dahlia, um, she was up like three or four or something at the time. And I she said, Where are you going? And I told her she'd never heard of Berkeley, she didn't know what a lawyer was, you know. So I said, I'm going to give this talk to lawyers in Berkeley, and uh what should I say to them? And she said, stopped for a moment, and then she said, Tell them, puff up the music of your life. Yes. And so I opened the talk when I got there with that. They loved it. So I have that to share. Puff up the music of your life.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:26

Well, Mirabai, thanks for being with me and for uh going over time. Uh, this has been tremendous, and I've been looking forward to this talk so much. Everybody read Mirabai's book. Almost home. You can get it on Amazon, I'm sure, plenty of other places. You've heard from Mirabai Bush, a great person, a great talker, a great thinker, a great being. Should I keep saying the greats? This is John Katz, a criminal defense and DUI defense law in Fairfax, Northern Virginia. This is Beat the Prosecution, because there is no other way. Please stand by Mirabai.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:04

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at be the prosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.