BHAGAVAN DAS

Born Kermit Michael Riggs in Laguna Beach, California on May 17, 1945, Bhagavan Das is a Western yogi who lived for more than six years in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.  The Buddhist community knows him by the name Anagorika Dharma Sara.

He is a singer and teacher.  He is perhaps best known for having guided spiritual teacher Ram Dass, at the time known as Dr. Richard Alpert, throughout India, eventually introducing him to his guru Neem Karoli Baba, who then became Ram Dass' guru.  Bhagavan Das gained fame after being featured in Ram Dass' 1971 book Be Here Now, a bestselling classic.

Das is a bhakti yogi, a shakta tantra adept, and teacher of Nada Yoga, a sound-based yoga.  He was the first Western initiate/devotee of the aforementioned Neem Karoli Baba, as well as the first American to meet Kalu Rinpoche of the Shangpa Kargyupas lineage.  

He has received Vajra Yogini initiation from His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje of the Karma Kagyu lineage and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the 11th Trungpa Tulku.  During the six plus years he spent as a wandering ascetic he received numerous initiations and teachings from living saints and sages including A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Swami Chaitanya Prakashananda Tirtha, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Sri Anandamoyi Ma, and Tarthang Tulku of the Dudjom Rinpoche lineage.

In 1972 in California he married his pregnant girlfriend, Bhavani, who subsequently bore him a daughter, Soma, who was born in New York.  In 1976 in Berkeley, California, he met Usha, who eventually became his common-law wife, and they had a son together, Mikyo, and then a daughter, Lalita.  Over the years he became friends with Allen Ginsberg, Alan Watts, and the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa. 

Das travels widely throughout the world as a performer of traditional and non-traditional Indian bhajans and kirtans, which are devotional songs and chants, and is the author of an autobiography, It's Here Now (Are You?).