Ram Dass Legacy Retreat: Open Your Heart in Paradise

The Ram Dass Legacy Retreat, "Open Your Heart in Paradise," is an annual spiritual retreat on Maui, held at the Napili Kai Beach Resort in West Maui, Hawaii. It celebrates the life, teachings, and legacy of Ram Dass through meditation, kirtan, and satsang. It is led by Jack Kornfield, Trudy Goodman, and Krishna Das & Friends, together with the Love Serve Remember Foundation. Long-time students and people new to the path are both welcome, and the retreat is available in person and online.

What to Expect

The retreat is built around shared practice: silence, reflection, meditation, and devotional singing, with room for healing and celebration. It draws people of all ages from around the world, and the gathering functions as a sangha, a community that supports each other's personal and spiritual growth through shared practice and simple companionship.

Teaching and bhakti yoga come together here. Krishna Das leads the kirtan, the call-and-response chanting that is central to the devotional side of Ram Dass's path. Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman bring teaching and meditation. Satsang, gathering in the company of truth, ties the days together.

The schedule leaves free time too. Participants can walk nearby nature trails, watch the sunsets, or snorkel among reef fish and turtles. The retreat is meant as a real break from daily routine, with the quiet and the ocean doing part of the work.

About Ram Dass

Ram Dass was born Richard Alpert and was also known as Baba Ram Dass. He was an American spiritual teacher, psychologist, and writer, and is regarded as a guru of modern yoga. In the early 1960s he was associated with Timothy Leary at Harvard University, where they researched the therapeutic effects of psychedelic drugs. His best-selling book Be Here Now, described by multiple reviewers as seminal, helped bring Eastern spirituality and yoga to a Western audience. He went on to write twelve more books on spirituality, including Grist for the Mill, How Can I Help?, and Polishing the Mirror. This retreat is held in his honor by friends and fellow teachers.

About Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield grew up in a Jewish family in the United States and was curious about spirituality from an early age. After graduating from Dartmouth College, he traveled to Asia, where he studied Buddhism in Thailand, India, and Burma and ordained as a monk in the Theravada tradition. Those years of meditation under respected masters shaped his understanding of mindfulness and compassion, which he later brought back to the West. He co-founded the Insight Meditation Society with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, an organization that played a key role in introducing Buddhist meditation to Western students, and he went on to establish the Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

The Setting

The Napili Kai Beach Resort sits on an oceanfront property in West Maui. It offers a quiet escape without giving up convenience, with sunsets over the water, nature trails close by, and snorkeling just offshore. Its beauty suits a retreat devoted to turning inward.

Before You Go

No prior experience is needed. The retreat is open to all levels, from long-time practitioners to people encountering meditation, devotional singing, or satsang for the first time. Anyone who cannot travel to Maui can take part online.