:: September/October 2004 Volume 3/Number 5

Getting off at LAX
Benefit Weekend Retreat for Ram Dass With Krishan Das and Steve Ross

By Bob Belinoff

To my surprise the transformational teacher at this conference (at least the parts I attended) was not Ram Dass, who had been the most important spiritual guide in my formative years, and who will forever be dear to my heart – but Steve Ross, of whom I knew absolutely nothing. His humor, positive energy, smiling presence and Buddha buoyancy in the face of an unfortunate yoga setting on Saturday morning, made him a channel of warmth and light in a cool and less than enchanting airport hotel ballroom.

The retreat was produced by Shri Dhar Silberfein and The Center for Spiritual Studies in Topanga. “Ram Dass has given so much to others, through the Hanuman Foundation, Seva and other charities, I wanted to help give something back,” said Shri Dhar. The scheduled agenda included Friday evening kirtan with Krishna Das and a talk by Ram Dass, the Saturday of Yoga with Steve Ross and Q. and A. with Ram Dass followed by more chanting, yoga and satsang thru Sunday afternoon.

About 400 people, young old - bedecked and bedazzled, blue-jeaned and funky, sexy and droll - attended opening night festivities Friday night with Krisha Das leading a truly stellar ensemble including Wah!, Steve Ross and Ty Burhoe in chant after chant, usually call and response. And respond, the audience did, happy to be in the presence of perhaps the west’s most famous chant artist, Krishna Das and one of the West’s legendary spiritual teachers, Ram Dass. Most of the audience seemed to recognize KD’s offerings, apparently heavy listeners of his prolific collection of CDs.

After warming up the room, raising the energy level several octaves, Krishna Das turned to Ram Dass playing the role of occasional sideman to his long-time friend. Ram Dass whose delightful way with words and stories demystified the mystical and helped introduce eastern spirituality to the western world in the 1960’s suffered a stroke several years ago. The stoke has left him wise in ways he has said he could not have imagined, but it has also left him and his listeners with occasional long pauses between thoughts, as he searches for the perfect word – which he eventually finds – to make his point with surprise, humor and grace.

These pauses, it’s been suggested, are teachers of patience for both him and us. He quite literally gives us pause as he imparts his gems: “The soul has one need”, he tells us, “to return home. The ego, on the other hand, has (pause) many, many, many, many needs.” There are many levels of being, Ram Dass said and he asked us to have compassion, as he did, for George Bush’s unfortunate incarnation this time around. This brought him to his main message of the evening, the lesson he learned from his guru, Maharaji, many years ago; “Love everybody. And tell the truth.”

More than a spiritual lecturer now, this sage is a teacher through his writing and his mere presence. Ram Dass is a powerful agent for change and transformation; I’m not sure he needs the lengthy podium venue - he can just wheel right up there and beam – his very being and his books will continue to change lives and hearts with humor and a kind of wry one-liner wisdom unique to the spiritual world. In another setting some months before, my one on one conversation with Ram Dass proved him to be as powerful in this personal format as he had once been before a large group. And something akin to that more intimate setting was available to participants at the Q. and A. on Saturday afternoon.

Saturday morning about 50 of us gathered for yoga with Steve Ross. It was the morning after the Krishna Das, Ram Dass event and hundreds of empty surgically attached chairs still occupied the hotel ballroom, which had yet to be cleaned, the carpeted floor still littered with paper cups and flyers from the previous evening. Practitioners unrolled mats where they could, dispersing themselves in the aisles and crowding in the area in front of the stage, under fluorescent lights that wouldn’t be dimmed until savasana, when the right dimmer switch would finally be located. This appeared to be a no frills event, perhaps understandable given that it was a benefit with proceeds going to Ram Dass’ medical fund. But God is in the details and few were attended to here.

The room was transformed not by staff, although they did begin stacking chairs and hauling litter as we practiced asana, it was transformed by Steve Ross – he paid no attention to the conditions and instead focused us on our bodies and the positive nature of his words and presence. Where a lesser being, such as myself, was initially distracted by the litter, lighting and eventual maintenance workers, Steve paid it no mind, his consciousness was on the bigger picture – taking us, with humor and grace and an occasional touching correction into a better place, a higher state and a more ordered world.

We practiced Yin Yoga, Steve coaxing us with jokes of impending pain, into deep stretches. I learned this style was about stretching connective tissue, which I didn’t know I could feel so acutely. At the height of one painful moment he quietly informed us, “it’s probably not in your body, it’s your mind.” Under his gentle guidance bodies melted, the very air relaxed, and had there been a flower on stage, or anywhere at the event that day, it would have smiled.

Steve then led the small group in a meditation, after which he became sound man, operating the sound board before darting back to the stage, picking up his guitar, sitting on the lip of the stage with percussionist Gilbert Levy and leading the kind of chanting, “tunes that have been on the hit list for 1000s of years,” that elevated the room several floors above its clutter.

Three encores later, lunch was served to the still vibrating retreatants. I was not able to stay for the Q and A with Ram Dass set to follow. I left the refrigerated air of the Airport Radisson, walked out into the sunlight of a beatific day with the image of a smiling Steve Ross lingering in my head and the words of Ram Dass vibrating in my heart; “Love everyone. And tell the truth.”

Bob Belinoff is a long-time follower of Ram Dass, a fledgling chanter and a largely imperfect student of asana.