Jackie Dobrinska speaks with devotional musician Benjy Wertheimer about dharmic shifts, discovering how our unique gifts can evolve into deeper forms of selfless service.

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This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Benjy and Jackie explore:

• Benjy’s unconventional journey from music and technology to spiritual service
• The idea of a “dharmic shift” and how life can redirect our path
• Ram Dass’s influence on Benjy’s music and spiritual calling
• Using our unique gifts in service of something larger than ourselves
• Walt Whitman’s shift from poet to Civil War nurse
• Deep practice as a form of service and connection
• Balancing personal gifts with humility and non-attachment
• Listening, finding common ground, and navigating disagreement
• Grief, anger, self-care, and “healing the healer”
• Service as an evolving practice of love and compassion

“The Dharmic shift that I went through from that point, somebody who was maybe helping a lot of people with computer systems, and I was maybe pretty good at it, but I never would have been great because my heart wasn't there, was suddenly called into service with music and with the practice of kirtan, using whatever gifts I could bring to honor something bigger than myself.” –Benjy Wertheimer

About Benjy Wertheimer:

Benjy Wertheimer is an award-winning devotional musician, composer, vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist equally accomplished on tabla, congas, percussion, esraj, guitar, and keyboards. Benjy’s connection to Ram Dass predates his birth. His father, Professor Michael Wertheimer, was Richard Alpert’s Masters Thesis adviser at Wesleyan in the early 1950s. Some half a century later, Benjy joined Ram Dass and Krishna Das in Berkeley for a joint program in 2002, and since 2003 Benjy - along with his wife Heather - has often provided music and kirtan for Ram Dass pilgrimages and retreats in Maui. Keep up with Benjy on Instagram.

About The Host, Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director with the privilege of marrying two decades of mystical studies with 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an inter-spiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves.

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With compassion and presence, Trudy Goodman teaches listeners how to bear the unbearable through our own willingness to hold it.

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https://youtu.be/TwYZlCsBKnc

In this episode, Trudy Goodman offers her perspective on:

• Learning to be present and okay with our strong emotions
• Recognizing our emotions as the first step in working with them
• Allowing difficult emotions without being swept away
• Surrounding our pain with compassion
• Noticing the bodily sensations that arise with strong emotions
• Self-regulation and soothing the startled heart
• The powerful statement “it’s like this”
• Merging with the world of intuitive wisdom

This was recorded at Spirit Rock and was originally published on Dharmaseed

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats, engages in activism work, and teaches workshops worldwide and online. She is also the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series, The Midnight Gospel. You can learn more about Trudy’s flourishing array of wonderful offerings at TrudyGoodman.com

“By allowing reality to be as it is, since it is that way anyways, we’re making a relationship with it that’s based on clarity. It is a paradox that I think most therapists know: that by allowing something and accepting something and even by positively connoting what needs to change, not struggling with it, surrounding it with metta and compassion, we actually stop our war with reality. When we stop resisting what’s true, we aren’t fixating on it, and it’s free to move and change. This is called radical acceptance.” –Trudy Goodman

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Sharing meaningful stories from a life of practice, Gil Fronsdal chats about the impact of spiritual community, simplicity, and generosity.

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This week on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal outlines:

• Honesty, communication, and understanding as an alternative to LSD
• The impact of reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and going to the San Francisco Zen Center
• The importance of doing spiritual practice with other people and finding community
• Finding freedom within simplicity and generosity
• The practice of working through fear and becoming relaxed
• Gil’s mindful founding of the Insight Meditation Center, balancing the commercial forces of society
• How growing up in wartime inspired Gil’s interest in nonviolence and civil disobedience

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed

“When I went to the Zen center, people didn’t participate; they didn’t pick up the cues and act accordingly. They became a mirror for me, and I said, ‘This is fantastic’, to be able to see myself clearly through other people. I wanted that mirroring to be seen. In that time of living at Zen Center, I am very confident that I couldn’t have practiced as much as I have done over the years without the support of the community that I was with.” –Gil Fronsdal

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