In this rich conversation bridging Zen and Jewish mysticism, Rabbi Rami Shapiro and Raghu Markus navigate nonduality, the shadow, and the living experience of the divine.

Grab a copy of Rabbi Rami’s newest book, Zen Mind Jewish Mind, HERE

This time on Mindrolling, Raghu and Rabbi Rami discuss:

• Veering off from traditional Judaism and into Jewish mysticism
• Nondual awareness as the realm of divine consciousness
• Going beyond the dead word and into the living word
• Inspiration from Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and Thich Nhat Hanh’s series on How to Live
• Koan: the Zen practice of exhausting the logical mind to provoke direct, intuitive insight into reality and one's own nature
• Recognizing our own shadow rather than pretending it does not exist
• Holding multiple truths at once: there is no other, we are all part of a whole, and we do have differences
• How the Kabbalah expresses the name of God in an embodied way
• Seeing the divine in all humans and everything in front of us
• Special moments with Ram Dass, accepting silence and accepting the moment for what it is

About Rabbi Rami Shapiro:

Rabbi Rami Shapiro is an award-winning author of over two dozen books on religion and spirituality. He received rabbinical ordination from the Hebrew Union College: Jewish Institute of Religion, and holds a PH.D. from Union Graduate School. A congregational rabbi for 20 years, Rabbi Rami currently co–directs One River Wisdom School, blogs at r writes the foundation’s newsletter, Ask Rabbi Rami, and hosts the foundation’s podcast, Explore Spirituality with Rabbi Rami. Rami is also a contributing editor for Spirituality+Health magazine www.spiritualityhealth.com where he writes the advice column Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler. Rami can be reached at https://www.threads.net/@rabbirami

"The Jewish meditation practices, the spirituality within Judaism, never or at least rarely gets beyond or slips into the nondual to the extent that you drop the labels, that you drop the tribal. You get Saint Paul saying there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, in Christ. To me, that's Christ consciousness, that's Buddha mind. When you reach that level of consciousness, all the labels fall away, your sense of separate self is gone.” –Rabbi Rami Shapiro

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Dakota Wint meets Raghu beyond the veil of normal perception to explore mysticism, altered states, and the fringe of spirituality.

Subscribe to Dakota’s new series, The Flower Heads Show, on your favorite podcast app.

This time on Mindrolling, Raghu and Dakota explore:

• The Aghori people of India and the side of Hinduism a lot of people don't know about
• Dr. Robert Svoboda’s trilogy on the Aghori people: At the Left Hand of God
• Differentiating real prayer from performative rituals
• Faith and seeing beyond the veil of our normal perception
• Considering the limits of spirituality and how it is expressed across cultures
• Dissolving polarities and seeing the universality of all beings
• Taking wisdom from Ram Dass through his posthumous book, There is No Other
• Realizing that wisdom and spirituality does not require travel or psychedelics
• Dakota’s experience with plant medicine in the Amazonian jungle
• Faith and remembering the mystery in day-to-day life
• The eternal light of the Sadhu and reaching enlightened states without substances

You can find Dakota’s documentary, Aghori: Holy Men Of The Dead, free on YouTube: Click Here To Watch

About Dakota Wint:

Dakota Wint is a documentary filmmaker, vlogger, podcast host, and spiritual teacher from Detroit, Michigan. His films and podcasts revolve around current events, strange spirituality, and taboo traditions. You can subscribe to his podcast, A Place for Humans, HERE. Dakota grew to fame as an internet personality via his popular YouTube channel, Dakota of Earth. Dakota hosts retreats around the world and runs a non-profit focused on cultural and language preservation. Learn more about current happenings on his website

“I am just trying to figure out what spirituality is, what the limits of it are, how it expresses itself, are we all talking about the same thing, what can you show me? I go to these places that have these big practices. What do you have to offer? Especially in India, where all these gurus make these big claims, what can you show me? That's what I've been asking myself and anyone I meet.” –Dakota Wint

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From Tibetan Buddhism to Bhakti Yoga, Raghu and author Vincent Thibault explore reshaping the mind in our chaotic world.

Grab a copy of Vincent’s book: Overflow: A Buddhist Guide to Recovering Sanity in the Age of Information Overload | Vincent Thibault

This time on Mindrolling, Raghu and Vincent journey through:

• Vincent’s early exposure to literature and the roots of his interest in Eastern philosophy and contemplative traditions
• Navigating digital overwhelm and content overload in the modern age
• How busyness and productivity culture can numb us to collective suffering
• Parkour: a physical, artistic, and spiritually metaphorical discipline
• Suffering as a path to transformation and a deeper connection with God
• Drawing connections across many different wisdom traditions
• Positive attachment versus attachment that traps us
• Those who inspire the trust of our own pure minds
• Tibetan Buddhist traditions and the value of learning from multiple teachers
• Raghu’s lineage of Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion
• The Tibetan translation of devotion: interested humility
• Training the mind, training the heart, and learning to relate to both inner and outer phenomena

Learn more about Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche HERE and check out his book on karma

About Vincent Thibault:

A man of ideas and actions, an amazed traveller, and a defender of what could be called lucid optimism, Vincent Thibault is a Quebec writer and screenwriter. Vincent’s writing takes on many forms, including fantasy, psychological or adventure novels, comic or dramatic scenarios, travel stories, literary short stories, philosophical essays, and translations of Buddhist texts. While his work is incredibly diverse, it revolves around the same key themes: integrity, the quest for wisdom, the relationship to uncertainty, the reconciliation between tradition and modernity, and the power of benevolence in a noisy and busy world.

Check out more of Vincent’s writing on his website which includes both a French and English section. You can also keep up with Vincent on Facebook.

“Be it just on the cushion for a few minutes a day, if you find a way to make that switch and see difficulties as opportunities, then you can slowly learn to turn everything into the path of enlightenment.” –Vincent Thibault

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