Online Zoom Forum: Baba Ram Dass: The Spiritual, Humanitarian, Education, and Service Vision in his Life and Work.
Date: Wednesday 13 November 2024.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 12 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Phyllida Anam-Áire:
Bio: Phyllida Anam-Áire is a grandmother, a former Irish nun, author, poet and therapist.
She has worked extensively with the sick and dying and has just finished her 5th book.
Now at 80 years of age, she is truly in love with her beautiful life and grateful for it too.
Phyllida lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Speakers:
Raghu Markus:
Title: Ram Dass: An Extraordinary Life of Service.
Bio: Raghu Markus spent 18 months in India with Neem Karoli Baba and Ram Dass. He has been involved in music and transformational media since the early 1970s, when he was program director of CKGM-FM in Montreal.
In 1974, he collaborated with Ram Dass on the box set Love Serve Remember. In 1990, he launched Triloka Records, which established itself as a critical leader in the development of world music. For 17 years, Triloka was home to such artists as Krishna Das, Hugh Masekela, Walela, Jai Uttal and transformational media projects that featured Ram Dass, Deepak Chopra, and Les Nubians.
Raghu lives in Ojai, California, and is the Executive Director of the Love Serve Remember Foundation. In 2016, he co-founded the Be Here Now Network, where he hosts the Ram Dass Here & Now podcast, as well as his own Mindrolling podcast. He is the producer of Becoming Nobody, a Ram Dass documentary feature film that was released in 2019.
Frank Ostaseski:
Title: Keeping Company with Death.
Bio: Internationally respected Buddhist teacher and visionary cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project, and founder of the Metta Institute.
He has lectured at Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, leading corporations like Google and Apple Inc., and teaches at major spiritual centers around the globe.
Frank is the 2018 recipient of the prestigious Humanities Award from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
He has accompanied over 1,000 people through the dying process and trained thousands of healthcare clinicians and family caregivers around the world.
His groundbreaking work has been featured on the Bill Moyers PBS series On Our Own Terms, highlighted on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and honored by H.H. the Dalai Lama.
He is the author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully.
Mirabai Bush:
Title: There is No Other.
Bio: Mirabai Bush teaches contemplative practices and develops programs through the application of contemplative principles and values to organizational life.
Her work with individuals and organizations includes entrepreneurial project management, compassionate staff-board relations, organizational leadership, public relations, communication, networking, and strategic relationship building all through the lens of contemplative practice in action.
Her spiritual studies include two years in India with Hindu teacher Neemkaroli Baba; meditation in monasteries with Buddhist teachers Shri S.N. Goenka, Anagarika Munindra, and IMS guiding teachers; and studies with Pir Vilayat Khan and Tibetan Buddhist lamas Kalu Rinpoche, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Gelek Rinpoche, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and others; and five years of intensive practice in Iyengar yoga and five years of Aikido under Kanai Sensei.
Mirabai Bush and Ram Dass published Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Love and Dying.
Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D.:
Roshi Joan Halifax, Ph.D. is a Buddhist teacher, Founder and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a social activist, author, and in her early years was an anthropologist at Columbia University (1964-68) and University of Miami School of Medicine (1970-72).
She is a pioneer in the field of end-of-life care. She has lectured on the subject of death and dying at many academic institutions and medical centers around the world.
She received a National Science Foundation Fellowship in Visual Anthropology, was an Honorary Research Fellow in Medical Ethnobotany at Harvard University, was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library of Congress, received the Pioneer Medal for Outstanding Leadership in Health Care by HealthCare Chaplaincy, the Sandy MacKinnon Award from Covenant Health in Canada, Pioneer Medal for Outstanding Leadership in Health Care, received an Honorary DSc from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
She has received many other awards and honors from institutions around the world for her work as a social and environmental activist and in the end-of-life care field.
From 1972-1975, she worked with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center with dying cancer patients. She has continued to work with dying people and their families, and to teach health care professionals and family caregivers the psycho-social, ethical and spiritual aspects of care of the dying. She is Director of the Project on Being with Dying, and Founder of the Upaya Prison Project that develops programs on meditation for prisoners. She is also founder of the Nomads Clinic in Nepal.
Her books include: The Human Encounter with Death (with Stanislav Grof); The Fruitful Darkness, A Journey Through Buddhist Practice; Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America; Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Wisdom in the Presence of Death; Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet; Sophie Learns to Be Brave; and her latest work, In a Moment, In a Breath.
She has been involved with the Mind and Life Institute since its inception and is founder of the Varela International Symposium.
For more about Roshi Joan’s life and work, please visit her website: www.joanhalifax.org.
RamDev Dale Borglum:
Title: Ram Dass and the Conscious Dying Movement in the West.
Bio: RamDev Dale Borglum is the founder and Executive Director of the Living/Dying Project in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He is a pioneer in the conscious dying movement and has worked directly with thousands of people with life-threatening illnesses and their families for over 45 years. I
n 1981, Dale founded the first residential facility in the United States, The Dying Center, for people who wished to die consciously.
He has taught and lectured extensively on the topics of spiritual support for those with life-threatening illness, on caregiving as a spiritual practice, and on healing at the edge — the edge of illness, of death, of loss, of crisis.
Dale has a BS from UC Berkeley and a PhD from Stanford University.
He is the co-author of Journey of Awakening: A Meditator’s Guidebook and has taught meditation for the past 50 years.
He has intensively immersed himself in the practices of devotion, meditation, and contemplative prayer for over forty years, studying with many of the greatest masters of the last century including Neem Karoli Baba, Suzuki Roshi, Ananda Mayee Ma, Kalu Rinpoche, the 16th Karmapa, Dilgo Khyentse, Mahasi Sayadaw, Tsoknyi Rinpoche, Trungpa Rinpoche, Goenka, Dudjom Rinpoche and HH the Dalai Lama.
Dale has taught with Ram Dass, Stephen Levine, Joan Halifax, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Rev. Wayne Muller, and many others.
His life’s work and passion has been and continues to be the healing of our individual and collective relationship with death and using our mortality as an inspiration for spiritual awakening.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
NB: There will be no refund if you cancel your booking.
Cost: By Donation:
Contact: Neill Walker, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
There seems to be a new issue with Paypal and hopefully it will be resolved.
If you are having a difficulty paying by Paypal, then you can pay by bank transfer instead.
NB: you must also email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. so we can send you the Zoom sign-in details.
Here are the bank transfer details:
Account Name: Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace
Bank: Bank of Scotland
Bank Address: Edinburgh Royal Mile Branch
Account Number: 06131159
Sort Code: 802000
Some international transfers also ask for an IBAN number:
The IBAN number:
GB70 BOFS 8020 0006 1311 59
BIC:
BOFSGB21168