Heart to heart, face to face
Open Door via Zoom
All are welcome, no charge.The link above opens a few minutes before each session (see schedule below).
Open Door Dharma gatherings offer simple refuge, time to rest and breathe in community. Chanting, meditating, and reflecting together are practices that cultivate stability, clarity, compassion, and community. The format is lightly fluid, responsive to the group. Living Earth has offered residential retreats, meditations, and workshops since 2005. Deeply grateful to Ram Dass, we embrace the wisdom of many teachers whose roots connect in a range of traditions and lineages. (Scroll down to see “What is this path?”)Open Door Dharma practices and gatherings cultivate resilience and an easy sense of belonging. Regular practice in community – whether a sangha, fellowship, satsang, congregation, or circle – nurtures stability and balance with whatever arises in our world. Few can do it entirely alone, but together we begin to see and experience that we really are all One, all the body of Buddha, the heart of the Beloved. Click here to be added to receive occasional texts or emails with schedule reminders. (This is not an interactive list, and contact info is never shared.)APRIL 2021 Schedule*:
Sunday Afternoons 4:30–5:45 pm Tuesday & Thursday Mornings 8:00–9:00 am, West Coast time *On hiatus April 18-25. Contact us for updates or to be in touch during that time. Chanting, meditations, and dialogue. Our eclectic tradition weaves together devotional practices, Buddhist teachings, Hinduism, the Abrahamic traditions, and earth-centered wisdom. Practices and insights from all these paths open the door to our true nature. Our gatherings open with simple chanting (mics are muted), followed by silent or lightly guided meditation. After meditation closes, conversations touching on our lives are anchored in perspectives flowing through the world’s timeless spiritual traditions. NOTE: Seeing each other feels almost like being together. If you prefer to keep your camera off, a photo of you or something you love would be welcome instead of the camera.
What is this path?
More than fifty years ago, Neem Karoli Baba (affectionately called Maharajji) drew Ram Dass, along with countless Western seekers, to the Himalayan foothills, where they were immersed in the timeless, simple path of devotion, wisdom, and service.
Maharajji offers a path of deep love and engaged spirituality, a way to be active in our roles without forgetting who we really are. We don’t need to “add” anything, only to soften the grip of the layered, encultured identities we’ve been assigned or adopted.
In Open Door dharma gatherings, our tapestry of spiritual practice and service includes Buddhist wisdom, Hindu devotional practices, chanting and meditation, woven together with a rich mix of the world’s enduring spiritual traditions.
All backgrounds, experience, and curiosity are welcome. Sweet voices and creaking pipes all chant together, and longtime practitioners and devotees join friends just beginning their spiritual exploration.
Together we’re learning how the rich Western dharma growing from the roots of ancient Eastern traditions can flourish and be fruitful in our time and our lives, here and now.
Ram Dass
In the late 1960s, a one-time professor at Harvard named Dr. Richard Alpert was among the first Westerners who somehow found themselves sitting at Maharajji’s feet in the Kumaon foothills of northern India. From their first encounter, his life was forever changed – the rest is history, as they say.
The acclaimed professor was given the Hindu name Ram Dass, meaning servant of God, and he carried Maharajji’s teachings back to the US, where countless students and scholars, housewives and hippies, activists and artists from all backgrounds were ripe to listen. The counterculture generation of that era was deeply influenced by Ram Dass’s workshops, retreats, lectures, interviews, and books, where his intellectual 
clarity blended with humor, devotion, and compassion, honoring his guru by his commitment, or surrender, to love and being of service in the world.
Spiraling forward from that time, what Ram Dass shared continues to echo and open hearts around the globe. He continued deepening his spiritual immersion in Maharajji’s love and wisdom throughout his life, even after enduring a massive, near-fatal stroke in 1996. Ram Dass continued writing, teaching, and serving until his death on December 22, 2019.
An ever-evolving trove of Ram Dass’s life’s work can be found in traditional and electronic forms at ramdass.org. His books are also available online and in bookstores and libraries everywhere.
Open Door on Zoom
