Discussing her book Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, Anne Lamott highlights the importance of showing mercy to ourselves as much as we do others.

Grab a copy of Anne’s book HERE

This time on Mindrolling, we revisit a 2017 talk with Anne and Raghu on:

• Mercy as grace put into action
• Rediscovering mercy and its importance in our lives and the world
• Finding deeper connections with ourselves and others through loving-kindness, generosity, and forgiveness
• The wisdom of humility and generosity in spiritual practice
• Understanding the deeper meaning of mercy
• Learning to extend the same compassion and mercy to ourselves that we offer others
• Letting go of the need to please everyone and embracing our authentic selves
• Discovering happiness and purpose through service to others
• Allowing mercy to protect us from our own darkness and create space for equanimity

“If you were here and you were hungry, I would feed you. That’s what Jesus says.Go get everyone some water. If you have some food, share it. I would automatically know how to care for you. Those expressions of love and grace are what we’re starved for. We want the perfect person to come along and bestow those things upon us and the perfect person is us.” —Anne Lamott

About Anne Lamott:

Anne Lamott is the New York Times best-selling author of many books, including collections of essays, novels, and long-form non-fiction, including the classic writing manual Bird by Bird and child-rearing memoir Operating Instructions. In addition to being a novelist and nonfiction writer, Lamott is also a progressive political activist, public speaker, and writing teacher. Keep up with Anne on Instagram.

“To show mercy, to show forgiveness, loving kindness and generosity, and to receive it which is so much harder, is more of an action whereas grace is the stuff we’re made of, surrounded by, saved by, created in. I’ve always said grace bats last, but I think mercy is the action step of grace.” —Anne Lamott

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John Pattern joins Raghu in a heartfelt exploration of embodiment and enlightenment, inspired by the music of his upcoming Ram Dass-infused album, Rainbow Body.

Pre-save Rainbow Body HERE and watch the official music video for “Sun in Your Heart”.

This week on Mindrolling, John and Raghu discuss:

• Awakening the power of the human heart
• Getting back into the body through music and mantra
• The choice-point of awareness and helping the mind and heart work together
• John’s work as a psychotherapist
• The benefit of regular mindfulness practice
• Spiritual bypassing as a fog covering our lives
• When Raghu first heard Ram Dass speak in Montreal
• The making and meaning of “Rainbow Body”

Check out the book referenced in this podcast, Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself by Mark Epstein

About John Pattern:

John Pattern is a multidisciplinary artist and music producer whose work is rooted in healing, transformation, and reconnection with the higher self. As a licensed psychotherapist, he brings a deeply integrative approach to trauma, addiction, and emotional well-being—bridging clinical expertise with a profound sensitivity to the unseen dimensions of healing. With a background in sound and energy, John incorporates music as a vital part of the therapeutic process. His sessions invite the body, mind, and spirit into coherence through the power of vibration, presence, and attunement. Drawing from a wide range of modalities—including EMDR, somatic experiencing, breathwork, IFS, EFT, compassionate inquiry, and psychedelic integration—John creates a space for insight, release, and authentic restoration. He is a certified Journey of Intrinsic Health coach under Dr. Zach Bush, and offers guidance rooted in mindfulness, yoga therapy, and integrative spirituality.

Whether through immersive sound journeys or trauma-informed facilitation, John’s work opens the door to deep inner listening and sustainable healing. Stay connected with John via Instagram where you can find links to his therapy/coaching, music, and more.

“What I’ve been really fascinated with is the concept of the rainbow light body that most esoteric traditions equate to enlightenment and that state as you leave your body; you’re leaving in this state of light.” —John Pattern

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From the mountains of Nepal to the nature of mind, author and alpinist Michael Schauch shares insights on nonself and interconnection.

Grab a copy of Michael’s recently released book, Anatta: Heart of Wisdom.

This week on Mindrolling, Michael and Raghu discuss:

• Michael’s early call to visit Nepal and his work with youth in Kathmandu
• The translation of the Pali word Anatta: Nonself
• How all suffering comes from the view that we are an independent, separate self
• The necessity of practice and direct experience
• Regularly walking in nature as a form of spiritual practice
• Depathologizing mental health and our idea of ‘sanity’
• The limits of our conceptual mind

“We are not an independent separate self. Nothing on earth can exist by itself. Everything in nature, including ourselves, exists in a highly interdependent existence. The core practice of Anatta is recognizing that interbeingness in the world.” —Michael Schauch

About Michael Schauch:

Michael Schauch is an alpinist and award-winning author who lives to explore the depths of nature and the human spirit and share the beauty of connection he discovers along the way. For fifteen years, Michael has been a mentor and supporter of Tibetan Buddhist youth in Kathmandu, Nepal, and many young members of his community in Canada. He holds an MBA from Queen's University and is a member of the Explorers Club.

He and his wife Chantal make their base camp in the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nation (Squamish, BC), nestled in the rugged Coast Mountains and temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. Check out Michael’s books and website HERE. You can also keep up with Michael on Instagram.

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From gang violence in LA to the beauty of belonging, Father Greg Boyle inspires listeners to recognize our shared humanity and put love into action.

Grab your copy of Father Greg’s most recent book, Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times.

This week on Mindrolling, Father Greg and Raghu discuss:

• Becoming anchored in the truth of interconnectedness
• The ‘Decade of Death’, a period of severe gang violence in LA
• Being with suffering and allowing it to transform
• The unshakable goodness within us all
• Belonging as the vitality of relationships
• Inviting people rather than indicting people
• How God sustains us through all things
• Compassion as the answer to every question

“Belonging is more than inclusion, it’s the vitality of relationships. What makes it vital is the rolling up of sleeves. Cherishing is love with its sleeves rolled up, it’s connective tissue. It can’t stay in the air, your head, or even your heart—it gets to your feet.” —Father Greg Boyle

About Father Greg Boyle:

Father Greg Boyle is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world. In 2024, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’s highest civilian honor. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. He is the acclaimed author of Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, and most recently Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times.

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Author and music executive Danny Goldberg joins Raghu to talk about tapping into the basic goodness inside us all.

This week on Mindrolling, Danny and Raghu discuss:

• Our basic goodness as human beings
• The deep spiritual experiences that can happen outside of organized religion
• Breathing contemporary life into ancient spirituality
• Govinda, a famous devotional track produced by George Harrison
• Universalism and taking different paths to the same place
• Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and nonviolent resistance
• Seeing everyone as the Buddha, as ‘God in drag’
• Wise Compassion: Using your brain and your heart

About Danny Goldberg:

Danny Goldberg is an author and music executive who has spent decades in the business. As a manager, Danny represented Bonnie Raitt, Nirvana, The Allman Brothers Band, and Sonic Youth. As a label executive, he was President of Atlantic Records, and Chairman of Warner Bros. Records and the Mercury Records Group – among others. Danny Goldberg’s previous books include Bloody Crossroads 2020: Art, Entertainment and Resistance to Trump, Serving The Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain, How The Left Lost Teen Spirit, Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside The Rock and Roll Business and In Search of The Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea. Learn more about Danny and his work HERE.

“You need to go to the mountaintop for the inspiration but then to be the kind of person Dr. King wanted us to be, you gotta minister to the valley. We need both.” —Danny Goldberg

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Outlining our inevitable oneness with the world, Buddhist scholar Jack Petranker joins Raghu to explore letting go of habitual stories and fully inhabiting each moment.

Check out Jack’s recently released book, One with the World: A Path to Living with Presence and Appreciation

This week on Mindrolling, Jack and Raghu discuss:

• Jack’s teacher, Tibetan lama Tarthang Tulku
• How we often take our experiences too seriously
• Krishna Das’s perspective on the stories we tell ourselves
• Treating each moment as an ongoing adventure
• The logic of experience and our inevitable oneness with the world
• The habitual beliefs that get us into trouble
• Ways in which the self makes us small
• Causality vs. the truth of the way things are
• The quiet courage to accept whatever arises

“If we learn to inhabit our experience fully, then, every moment becomes a kind of ongoing adventure and opportunity to open out into our experience in new ways. That’s really what I mean when I talk about being one with the world. In the logic of experience, we are inevitably one with the world—there’s no choice in the matter.” –Jack Petranker

About Jack Petranker:

Jack Petranker holds a law degree from Yale and an M.A. in political theory from the University of California, Berkeley. A former Dean of the Tibetan Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, he has also served as North American Vice President of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (1988-92). He is the founder of the Center for Creative Inquiry and serves as its senior teacher and regularly teaches and lectures in the United States and Europe. He has been a close student of Tibetan lama Tarthang Tulku for more than 40 years. Jack lives in Berkeley, California. Learn more about Jack on his website.

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From Bob Marley to Chogyam Trungpa and Ram Dass, David and Raghu explore the many paths that lead us back to one love.

This time on Mindrolling, David and Raghu discuss:

• David’s work filming Bob Marley
• The attempted assassination of Bob Marley in Jamaica, 1976
• David’s encounter with Bob after his cancer diagnosis
• The profound impact of Bob Marley on David Silver’s life
• The many forms that transformation comes in
• An explanation of Mahayana Buddhism
• How Chogyam Trungpa made complicated concepts more practical
• Trungpa’s teachings in Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving Kindness
• Ram Dass’s book There is No Other

Check out the book recommended by David in this episode: A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

“Bob’s friendship had metamorphosed my whole life. His magnitude as a divine messenger was enough to change me. That coupled with the most potent music I’d ever heard was enough to seep Bob’s special essence into my own heart and recover me so often from despair, doubt, or depression.” –David Silver

About David Silver:

David Silver is the former co-host of the Mindrolling podcast. He is a filmmaker and director, most recently coming out with Brilliant Disguise. Brilliant Disguise tells the unique story of a group of inspired Western spiritual seekers from the 60s, who in meeting the great American teacher, Ram Dass, followed him to India to meet his Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, familiarly known as Maharaj-ji. Two days before he left his body, Maharaj-ji instructed K.C. Tewari to take care of the Westerners, which he did resolutely until the day he died in 1997. Silver’s #1 charting MGM/UA/Warners film, “The Compleat Beatles” is the critically acclaimed biopic movie about history’s most famous band. The term ‘rockumentary’ was first applied to this two-hour movie. Rolling Stone recently described the film as a “masterwork.” Silver’s Warner Brothers’ feature film, “No Nukes” also started the whole trend of music/activism feature documentaries. Be on the lookout for David’s upcoming book!

“The idea that we are alone and striving alone is corrosive. As soon as we can overcome that, we find an even deeper pleasure but it has nothing to do with acquisition, competition, and matters of repeated forms of hatred and animosity.” –David Silver

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Drawing on mythology and ancient storytelling, author Michael Meade shares how we can renew the earth through personal and cultural transformation.

You can now pre-order Michael’s book, The Heart of Transformation!

In this thought-provoking episode, Michael and Raghu discuss:

• Bringing mythology into the modern world
• Creation and recreation: how the end times lead to the next times
• Our responsibility to aid in the healing of the world
• Returning to the etymology of apocalypse: collapse and renewal
• Transformation on a cultural and collective level
• Michael’s life-changing experience of solitary confinement in military prison
• How unity is revealed through unique expressions of the deep self
• The imagination that exists in the void
• Recognizing our own genius qualities
• The relationship between fate and karma

About Michael Meade:

Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller and author who combines hypnotic storytelling, street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths. He has a unique ability to tap ancestral sources of wisdom and connect them in illuminating and healing ways to the dilemmas we face and the stories we are living today.

Michael is the creator of the Living Myth Podcast, a highly regarded weekly podcast that goes out to a diverse and growing audience spanning over 150 countries. He is the author of a number of timeless and timely books including: Awakening the Soul, The Genius Myth, Fate and Destiny and Why the World Doesn't End. Michael is the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose projects bring the medicine of myth and story to the issues that trouble both culture and nature in ways that inspire creative imagination and genuine hope. Keep up with Michael on Substack, or check out his website for events and more.

“In the old imagining of myth, creation is recurring all the time. We are in the end times, but the end times lead to the next times. The word ‘end’ itself actually means loose end or remnant. From the remnants of the previous world, the next world is rewoven.” –Michael Meade

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