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Self Knowledge Symposium Speaker: Dave Gold

Kavita Kapur
Public Relations Director, Self Knowledge Symposium
Kavita@SelfKnowledge.org
919/247-8188
www.SelfKnowledge.org

Lectures

Thinking the Unthinkable explores the risks and rewards of living a life focused entirely on the spiritual quest. In this talk, David "Dave" Gold recounts his adventures during his lifelong spiritual search, and the lessons he learned from some very unlikely spiritual "teachers"—a West Virginian hillbilly Zen Master, a corrupt Hare Krishna leader, and a Buddhist monk imprisoned for drug smuggling. Gold explores the nature of the student-teacher relationship and the creative tension between individualism and authority. He addresses questions such as, "How do you find a legitimate, trustworthy teacher, a good 'coach' whose advice you follow for your own good, even when you don't want to? And how do you know when to follow your intuition and be your own teacher?"

Gold graduated from law school at Duquesne University in 1975, and found Gold, Khourey, and Turak in Moundsville, WV. Though his peers considered setting up shop in the backwoods professional suicide, Gold did so in order to study with American Zen Master Richard Rose, whom he had met at the University of Pittsburgh. An ambitious young man, he had at first dismissed Rose, who to all appearances was a short, stocky, cantankerous hillbilly. He soon realized his mistake. "Rose knew something. I could tell that from the first time I spoke with him. He was awake in the truest sense of the word." Gold spent the next fifteen years as a student of Rose's and a successful trial attorney, his firm appearing in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and on The Today Show.

Just down the road from Rose's humble farm was a spiritual "teacher" of quite another sort. Kirtinanda Swami (a.k.a. Keith Hamm) was the leader of a Hare Krishna community who attracted thousands of devotees to his grandiose, gold-covered temple. Unlike Rose, Hamm was corrupt, his rampant misdeeds chronicled in Monkey on a Stick: Murder, Madness and the Hari Krishnas by John Hubner and Lindsay Gruson. After Gold sued on behalf of a former Krishna member and broke up Hamm's cult, Hamm put out a contract to have both Gold and Rose killed, and now is incarcerated in a federal penitentiary for racketeering. In his lecture, Gold contrasts the vast difference between the two spiritual teachers Rose and Hamm, and the lessons he learned from the experience.

Another colorful teacher Gold discusses is Buddhist monk Fleet Maull, who was sentenced to federal prison for drug smuggling. In prison Maull had to face his double life at last, and went on to atone for his mistake by starting the National Prison Hospice Association and The Prison Dharma Network. Gold heard his inspiring story in 1994 on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, and immediately contacted Maull. Mutually impressed, the two went on to produce a film called The Prison Sutras, which placed at the NC Independent Film Festival and was aired on public TV.

In his introduction to Gold’s book, After the Absolute, Joseph Chilton Pearce, world-renowned author of Crack in the Cosmic Egg and Magical Child, writes that Gold’s story is "one of the most gripping, intensely dramatic…heroic-mythic yet poignantly human accounts I have ever read. [H]is account is not just a superb narrative but THE universal drama. [Gold is] an exceptional human, mature, kind, intelligent, responsible, the kind of citizen our society and earth need so badly."

Who is Dave Gold?

Other Lectures and Seminars

• Florida Bar Association, Ethics and Law—1984
• Florida Atlantic University, Stress Management for Professionals—1984
• Indiana Trial Lawyers Association, Ethics and Law—1985
• University of Pittsburgh, Ethics and Law—1992
• North Carolina Bar Association, Stress Management for Professionals—1993

• Gold, Khourey, and Turak has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and on The Today Show
• "The Prison Sutras" was a finalist at the 1996 NC Film Festival

What Other People Have to Say about Dave

"Our debt to [Gold] is incalculable. For here is what will surely prove to be a timeless and classic spiritual treatise. Further, Gold’s telling-of-this-tale proves one of the most gripping, intensely dramatic...heroic-mythic yet poignantly human accounts I have ever read. It would make a fantastic, if unbelievable film, and is a profoundly important document. This book throws light on the perennial what-and-why of our species; reveals the makings of a 'new cosmology,' and surely gives glimpses into as-yet undeveloped potentials we humans hold within us...

"David Gold is...the archetypal human longing to transcend that dark shadow that haunts our species. Gold speaks to me because he is speaking for us all, and his account is not just a superb narrative but THE universal drama...

"The David Gold I met was…an exceptional human, mature, kind, intelligent, responsible, the kind of citizen our society and earth need so badly."

Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, in his forward to Dave Gold's book After the Absolute

Roop Mundi, North Carolina State University, '99

Alyssa Henley

Elan Dassani, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, '02

• "He made me want to take a day and just go off and think about my life"
• "I could tell he was religious and he really made me want to talk to him and share some experiences"
• "I walked out with an awful lot to apply to my life. I'm very thankful that we can listen to things like this in our class"
• "I need to decide whether or not to stay with my boyfriend......After Mr Gold's talk I realise that I need to ask myself what he means to me.......I need to find out who I am without him (the boyfriend)"
• "A lot of people tend to tell teenagers to go out and find out what they want to do and to be a better person. What makes it hard, however, to take their advice completely seriously is that they aren't happy in thier lives. The fact that Mr Gold found his personal key to make himself a better person made me realise that people can improve their whole life just by choosing their perspective"

From five different students in a gifted high school class after Dave came and spoke to their class