Presence Beyond Absence
on the expansive love that death can reveal
I woke up this morning with a deep peace. Considering the immense pain moving through this world, and the intensity with which I feel that pain often, I was curious about this deep peace. When I looked closer, I found the depth of my connection with beloved teachers, friends, and family who have left this world. I feel them with me, and I feel their presence is a tremendous source of peace and clarity when I am attuned to it.
So this essay, this morning, is an exploration of three of those relationships, with three incredible people (two of whom have passed, one of whom just entered hospice), whose living and dying have shaped my life and the world they touched profoundly.
If you’re new to Ram Dass or unfamiliar with some of the references, I’ve included footnotes you can hover over for context.
If you hold wisdom or direct experience around the expansiveness, transformation, and deeper connection that can be felt in death, I really welcome you to share it. Death is an essential element of the flow of the Living World, and I would be honored to read your reflections.
Years ago, in a rock quarry downhill from a mansion in Ojai, I spent the night of Ram Dass’s1 birthday sitting around the fire with a group of my friends, the majority of whom had been Ram Dass’s caretakers. They’d lived in his house, helped take care of his body and daily needs, had immersed themselves in the world of devotional practice in the process, and their lives had changed profoundly from this service.
We spent the night singing, and telling stories, and asking questions and finding both answers, and perhaps more importantly, the questions beneath the questions. We saw one another with intense clarity that night. What unfolded around that fire changed all of our lives, forever.
Ram Dass turned 88 that night, “double infinity!” we said when we facetimed with him from the turning of midnight in California, still a reasonable time for him to be awake in his home on Maui. We sang him happy birthday, and dedicated some kirtan to him. Dedicated everything to him, really, as none of us would have been there without him.2
We talked that night about his life, and his death which we sensed was close, but didn’t know it would happen before the year was over. We revisited some of the incredible wisdom he’s shared with us about death, playing with the phrase “death is taking off an old shoe”3.
That night, one of our friends leaned into this metaphor, talking about how big Ram Dass’s consciousness, his loving awareness, is. And how limited his body was to holding and expressing that any more.4 He said something about Ram Dass’s consciousness being so big, so global, so expansive, that what’s left in his body is like a pinky toe’s worth.
We talked about how we all felt it would happen when the world needed it most, because when that pinky toe slips out, his incredible love will have a difference expression, a different reach.
We see this throughout history. In death, we are transformed, our legacies shaped and spread, we reach people who perhaps we didn’t have the karma to connect with in life.
Ram Dass died on December 22nd, 2019. If there is validity to this idea that in dying, he became bigger, and his presence became wider, and his wisdom became more accessible to those in the world open to it, then the timing of his death can certainly be seen to have been a strange and powerful blessing.
Since then, it is true, his legacy has grown. There are so many people around the world connecting with the wisdom and love that he offered. I’ve only been to one retreat since then, but it was full of newcomers and to be frank, was more ethnically diverse than ever, perhaps most notably with a number of young Indian professionals who had left India to come to the US for work and who, having found success, were allowing themselves to open to the Bhakti tradition of their families, in a way that felt like a synthesis of where they came from and how they chose to shape their lives. (This is really interesting to me, and I’d love to follow up with more people who’ve had this experience.) My step mother Durga leads a Spanish language satsang for the community, and there are people around the world connecting with the books, the podcasts, the teachings, the non-linear lineage of love that is welcoming to all and which has shaped our world in so many subtle and not-so-subtle ways.5
I am thinking about all of this so tenderly this morning, as I process the news of another elder entering hospice, and a beloved friend of mine passing a few weeks ago. Both of them incredible wisdom keepers, both of them have changed my life forever.
Joanna Macy6 is one of those people. An elder, a teacher, and a living bridge between ancient wisdom and contemporary knowing, she brought to light a way of seeing the world that reoriented everything for me, and for thousands if not millions of others who have been touched by The Work that Reconnects. Her work illuminates the underlying systems of life itself—not only as abstract theory, but as a deeply embodied truth that animates the universe. Through her, systems theory has become a sort of lingua franca for the soul of modernity. Her teachings on the Three Stories of Our Time—the Business as Usual story, the Great Unraveling, and the Great Turning—offer a framework that allow us to hold grief for the world, gratitude for its beauty, and a fierce creativity of vision for how we might still shape its transformation.
She taught us that to truly act from love, we must begin in gratitude. That grief is not something to be bypassed but honored, as a measure of our deep care. And that by seeing with new and ancient eyes—eyes attuned to interdependence—we become more capable of participating in the turning of the tide, in shaping a future where life can thrive. Joanna gave us a map for this time. And now, as she prepares to leave this life, her presence feels all the more vast, like Ram Dass’s pinky toe giving way to the fullness of his love. Her legacy is not behind her—it is alive in so many of us.
And so is Ximena Cho’s. Ximena, my dear friend, my sister in devotion to the living world. She lived the Great Turning every day. Her leadership, her activism, her steadfast commitment to Indigenous sovereignty, ecological healing, and loving her extended family deeply were values that she lived every day. She left this world a few weeks ago, on June 17th, 2025. This is a beautiful video that gives a small glimpse into the incredible beauty that she embodied in this life:
She approached cancer not as an enemy, but as a master teacher who was initiating her into the depths of her soul, into intense clarity about what truly matters, and into profound awareness of the sacredness of every moment that anything is alive. This informed the work that she did as co-founder of ChoZen Center for Regenerative Living, and so many other intitiatives she co-founded and inspired.
Together, Ximena and I made many offerings to the earth and to the elements, we created and tended many altars. The last time I saw her, she walked my son and I to our car because we wanted the conversation to keep going, and Akiva reached up to hold her hand. Both of our hearts cracked, to be trusted by a toddler that way is the greatest honor and the best rush of dopamine, and as we walked through the oak grove together we swung his little body up to make him fly every few steps until we got to the car. I can still feel that hug and the sweetness of her voice saying goodbye to us.
There is a massive, ancient live oak that we would always bump into one another under. It’s home to a statue of baby Hanuman that has been there for decades, and a small Gaia shrine that she created to anchor mother energy there in the living altar of wide, low, spreading branches. This has been my favorite space to meditate, to read, to tend to life, since I was eleven years old, about a decade before I ever met her. But she and I had so many memories there that even thinking of it, she becomes present. I hear her voice. I feel her hug. I hear her talking of the responsibilities we hold.
I am going to go to that tree this week, offer a ladoo, and connect with her. I ache for the absence I might feel, but then I remember that again and again when people I love die, I find that underneath the absence in their passing, there is absolute presence. That they can actually be found everywhere, and much more so than when they were embodied. This perhaps is the paradox of death.
We are deep in the Great Turning. Every moment that we are in the Living World shapes reality, shapes the present, shapes the future.
There is a swelling now, and the need for life affirming, love fueled, embodied care is more needed than ever. And these beloveds who have showed us remarkably beautiful ways to live, Ram Dass, Joanna Macy, Ximena Cho, and so many others, they are currents in that wave, guides in the undertow, whispering:
This is the time. Be love. Be peace. Be joy. Be wisdom. Be compassion. Just be. Live for the world you long for.
Here is four hours of Ram Dass’s wisdom on death and dying, compiled by the Love, Serve, Remember Foundation:
I tend to assume people know who Ram Dass is, because he’s been present my entire life. But if you don’t know, he was born Richard Alpert to a wealthy Jewish family in Boston. He was incredibly brilliant and precocious and became an assistant professor of psychology at Harvard at 27 years old. Six years later, Timothy Leary joined the faculty and soon after, the two of them together began the Harvard Psilocybin Project, which ultimately led to their dismissal as faculty from Harvard. Richard Alpert was eager to find ways to access the type of consciousness he had only so far experienced in psychedelic settings, which led him to India where, after meeting many false “Gurus,” he eventually met an old man who was always draped in a blanket who would change his lives, and the lives of millions, forever. That man, who gave Ram Dass his name, was Neem Karoli Baba. Baba was also my father’s Guru and I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him. If you want to hear more about any of this, please let me know, it’s a huge part of my life that I perhaps take for granted, and I would be happy to write about it more if there’s interest.
This was a gathering at one of the Ram Dass Legacy Immersion Retreats which would not have been possible without the incredible vision and generosity of Dave and Erica Cianciulli and the Love, Serve, Remember Foundation. There were many people there on scholarship, including myself, and these gatherings really made a world of difference in so many of our lives, for me personally, especially in the aftermath of my father’s death. I am forever so grateful for these opportunities to gather and build relationships that continue to shape our lives.
Ram Dass always attributed this quote to Emmanuel, who was a channeled entity who spoke through a woman named Pat Rodegast and who befriended Ram Dass many years ago. I personally try to take claims of channeling with both discernment and an open mind, and I don’t know much about Emmanuel or Pat Rodegast, except what I’ve heard from Ram Dass, which often acknowledged that he himself was in a state of mystery around it, but that the wisdom was undeniable.
He had had a stroke in 1997 and his body was progressively losing its ability to express his genius, except through the extraordinary loving presence that he radiated.
What I’m referring to here is the many, many ways that Neem Karoli Baba (Ram Dass’s Guru) has shaped our world through his devotees. From setting things in motion for Larry Brilliant to play a critical role in helping to eliminate smallpox, to the beautiful subtle ways he continues to shape our world as recounted in Whisper in the Heart by Parvati Markus.
I cannot express how powerful Joanna’s presence has been in my life, or the many ways she has shaped my worldview and my work. I hope to write about that much more in time, and right now I am mostly just deeply praying peace and grace in this time of transition for her and all who love her.
Super interested in your spiritual lineage and history and stories!! Thank you for this precious homage
Another beautiful offering from you—such a lovely discovery. A hum of truth and shared experience in my core. All blessings to you. 🙏🏼🌀💫