Does anybody have my Ram Dass? [By Steven Rea]

You know how you lose books, lend books, spill a pot of coffee on books, slip books into Little Libraries around town, put books on the sidewalk in a box marked "Free!" -- never to see them again?

There are books I've owned over the years that I don't own now, and most are not missed, but every now and then you're reminded of a volume that was significant in your life that is now nowhere to be found. Of course there are public libraries, and Amazon, eBay, Indie Bound and used book shops, but why didn't I hang onto that British first edition of John Fowles' The Magus with the purple spine, or the Black Sparrow Press paperback of Charles Bukowski's The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills issued when the indie publisher was still using a Los Angeles PO Box as its address?

And then there is Baba Ram Dass' Be Here Now (Lama Foundation, 1971, San Cristobal, New Mexico), a big square trade paperback, in which I had dutifully inscribed my name (neatly, I think, in ink) and drawn a little Om symbol alongside. Spiritual was me! 

Lots of readers were reminded of Ram Dass, nee Richard Alpert -- the Timothy Leary cohort turned Hindu/Buddhist-inspired guru to a generation of questing Aquarian Agers-- by David Marchese Talk interview in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday. There's a lot to mull there, and if some of the lose-your-ego stuff is hard to hang onto now, Ram Dass, 88, living in Hawaii, remains one of the first extollers of "mindfulness," and the stories he tells in his book, and the spiritual lessons imparted therein, still resonate.

Or at least I think they do. I'll have to go out and rustle up a copy -- there are more than two million in print. But if anyone has the dog-eared edition that says "Steven Rea" on the inside page, hey, I'll make a deal with you. Namaste! 

Comments

[Nin Andrews]

Oh, I still have my Ram Dass--it came out in 71, a year the draft was still in place, the year my college aged brother grew marijuana plants out past the cow pasture--they grew fast, five feet tall and a little more, and he used to smoke pot and read that book aloud and laugh till the tears came.