I have just returned from ten blessed, restful, delightful days with my dear old ashram friend and mentor, Baba Ram Dass, at his home on Maui, a truly magical and healing place. Spending time with RD is awe-inspiring.

1. WHAT IS THE SECRET OF LETTING
GO
I have just returned from ten blessed, restful, delightful days with my
dear old ashram friend and mentor, Baba Ram Dass, at his home on
Maui, a truly magical and healing place. Spending time with RD is awe-
inspiring. Every moment of enlightened conversation or carefree
laughter, dinnertime meditation or sacred chanting, opens up new
worlds. Memory-making, I cherished and filed away an abundant array
of happiness data as well as stories and teaching tales from the Great
Path.
Spending time with this realized spirit allows me an opportunity to "see"
and be more clearly. As I head into the tail-end of my life, and watch
many of those close to me either struggle with health issues or pass on
all too quickly, life becomes more obviously a gift, day to day as well
as moment to moment.

3. How can I forget and fall into thinking of this grace-full life like more of a chore
than a joy? Why see it as an existential burden or wearisome, as one may very well
feel sometimes when afflicted with various travails physical, mental, spiritual,
socio-political and otherwise? Personally, I try to focus on the ¾ of the glass that's
full rather than the half that's empty. Sure, my years of meditative practice have
paved the way towards appreciating this, but I tend to think it's more about the
unbroken wholeness and underlying interconnected oneness and inter being in the
ever-flowing present, the great Flow, the Tao. We need to let it flow and let it
go. Grasping too tightly to evanescent things passing thru the fingers just gives us
rope burn!
Profound teachings sometimes show up in unlikely places. My dear friend and
long-time dedicated Dzogchen student, Dr. David Sugarman, who is dealing with
the later stages of a terminal illness, recently shared with me this very thoughtful
piece from Elmore Leonard's novel "The Hunted" as an example of that venerable
genre. Leonard ("Get Shorty", etc.) is a master of mystery fiction whose superb
dialogue creates memorable characters. In this scene the character, Rosen, has been
shot and realizes he may be dying.

4. "He had finally made it. It had taken him fifty years to learn
that being was the important thing. Not being something. Just
being. Looking around you and knowing you were just being,
not preparing for anything. That was a long time to earn
something. He should have known about it when he was seven,
but nobody had told him. The only thing they had told him was
that he had to be something. See if he had been told it then,
he'd have had all that time to enjoy being. Except it doesn't
have to do with time, he thought. Being is an hour, or a minute,
or a moment."
The secret of letting go is letting things come (arise) and go, and
letting be. That's the Secret. Catch and release; nothing's big
enough to hold onto for too long.
With love & blessings,
Lama Surya Das
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