Podcast Transcript
Avi Gordon
So this topic of peace and a peaceful mind, obviously it was so important to Guru Dev. I mean, I love hearing him talk about the pieces. This is God, you know what’s what’s your take on this? We
Swami Divyananda
don’t want to go to pieces. Okay? We want a peaceful mind. And the slogan that I love of his is, do whatever it takes to retain your peace. Like bottom line, whatever it takes. And usually we won’t do whatever it takes. We get attached to
Avi Gordon
things. So how do you help yourself do whatever it takes? Oh,
Swami Divyananda
and probably the very worst at that that I think the most important thing is regular meditation, because the meditation puts us in touch with the part of us that is truly in peace, and then we carry a little bit of that into the day. But it’s our attachments. It’s the attachments I have that keep troubling that piece, disturbing that piece. It’s hard to give them up.
Avi Gordon
Yeah, it seems that like there’s this, like foundation of peace that’s always existing, right? Like a center,
Swami Divyananda
they say, part of the mind is always meditating, yeah?
Avi Gordon
And then what could happen? We can get closer to that area and, like, be with that, that part of ourselves, and then we can get further out and attach to these other things. Is it like a coming and going from this piece that’s always in us.
Swami Divyananda
Ask me these sophisticated questions. I don’t know. I don’t know, but I know that the meditation reconnects us, gives us a reference point, and then that, you know, gives us, like a standard that we can measure our mind against or our actions against.
Avi Gordon
Yeah, I think about priorities and how important. That’s what I heard Guru Dev saying is, like, this is the number one priority. And to get clear on that, that was something I realized for myself. Like for most of my life, I have not been clear on what my priorities are. You just kind of go and it’s this thing one day and that thing another day, right? And so how beneficial it is to get clear this is the most important thing to me.
Swami Divyananda
Yeah, no, of course. He was adamant about it. He said, If God himself walked up was and was disturbing your peace, you tell, go away. God, go away. God, I’m protecting my peacefulness.
Avi Gordon
Yet all the time we move away from it. Yeah, right.
Swami Divyananda
It’s attachments.
Avi Gordon
Attachments. How would you describe what what attachments are?
Swami Divyananda
You know, I think it’s for our ego, our I think our ego gets tethered in attachments the way we see ourselves in the world, the things that are important to us, the things that we feel are important to others. So we lift ourselves in their esteem. There’s a lot of ways attachment works. I can I can tell you a silly story, but it’s helped me a lot. Very silly story. It was about a selfish woman, the most selfish woman, so her whole life went by and she’d only done one good deed, and it was very ordinary. She’d given away a carrot to a beggar who came to the kitchen door. So when the officers of God went through her record, this is really bad. She was really selfish. And they saw that one little thing. They said, Well, we’ve seen worse, and I think we should reward her for that one moment of generosity. And they said, we’ll give her one day in heaven, okay? And to remind her of her good deed, we’ll send a vehicle in the shape of her carrot, to pick her up. So that’s what happened. The carrot arrived. She’s waiting with a group of people also waiting for their designation. So she climbs on the carrot, holds it tight, but a few other people jump on, and as the carrot takes off, she’s shouting at them and saying, Hey, I’m the one who did the good deed. She said, This is my carrot. Get off. Get off. And in her excitement, she falls off. That’s the end of the story. And. And I told that story to Swami Ramananda and I, and I said to him, Swami G I folded Hamson on his laundry today. Do you think that’s worth a day or two? And he said, Yeah, sure, that should be good for a day or two. He said, but they’ll send a laundry basket instead of a carrot to pick you up, right? Anyway. But that crazy, silly story has influenced me, and it made me think, maybe I don’t have to write a book or become powerful or fix everything with ya. Maybe it’s just as important to fold Thompson on his laundry and bust somebody’s dishes and say nice words and it the little story helped me to see how much my mind is driven by ambition. I still I’m close to 80 years old, and I still want to achieve things that are probably appropriate for when I was 30, but somehow my mind has gone to on. I should be somebody, do something. It just shows me where attachment has taken root and the way It troubles me. It isn’t that I’m obsessed with being somebody, but I stress myself. I’m always trying a little bit too hard. Does that sound familiar? Yeah,
Avi Gordon
do you get the sense that there’s like a score being kept for us, in terms
Swami Divyananda
of we keep score? That’s the thing I’m so certain of the graciousness of God that no matter how foolish we are, he like a baby, how much we love the baby, and all their foolish all their sillinesses. I think God sees us that way. But in our mind, it was our peer group. I think we keep score all the time. You
Avi Gordon
know this idea of like, rewards or punishments based on the actions that you do, and what, what is incentivizing, maybe my kindness, or
Swami Divyananda
right in any direction incentivizing your kindness? Right
Avi Gordon
Is it just for the sake of doing it? Because there’s some impulse that I have, and I’m not even going any further than that, or am I hoping to, you know, rack up a lot of good karma so that I’m rewarded. I think that’s the problem. The
Swami Divyananda
ego drives us a lot and in wrong directions. Okay, I’ll tell you another story. So it was San Francisco, it’s about 1984 and I was the director of the Center, and there’s a massive amount of work. And one day Gurudev was there. We were standing right outside the office, and I said to him, so Aji, if I do my hatha yoga in the evenings, I don’t even go back into the office. I’ll get nothing done that evening. I said, So, I guess I should give up doing evening practice. He looked at me, he shook his head, and he said, work done by your intention? Having tension, not intention. Having tension is basically useless. And so, see, that was 40 years ago. It was 40 years ago. He said that I’m still working on it because I my ambitions, my ego are always driving me, so just about all the time i Attention. So I’m basically a useless phone.
Avi Gordon
I don’t know about that, but it is really interesting. What drives us, right,
Swami Divyananda
yes, and what it does to us, yeah,
Avi Gordon
and like with inside of myself, I sense that there’s a little bit of doubt as to how much I will actually accomplish if I am let go, if I’m just letting go, Yeah, you know, if I’m, if it’s not that ego, that ambition that’s driving me, if it’s just purely for the joy of the act of whatever I’m doing, that there’s a like, a little competition of voices in my head, one that’s saying just, Yeah, have faith in that you’re going to accomplish, accomplish beautiful things, and it’s going to be natural. And the other ones say, no, if you listen to that other voice, you’re going to be lazy and you’re not going to do anything. Absolutely,
Swami Divyananda
we have a lot of socially, culturally and parental voices that are instilled in us, and they drive, yeah,
Avi Gordon
yeah. It’s like this pressure is necessary in order to do something good, yep,
Swami Divyananda
yep, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Avi Gordon
I feel that way too. I don’t know it’s the experience of feeling that pressure for a long time and where it led me. Right, that just doesn’t feel like the way anymore. It’s still, I’m still attached to it, but that that’s not
Swami Divyananda
it. Have to figure it out. To figure it out. I think when we come to understand how precious, if you really come to understand how precious peace is, and then can make that the foundation and the goal of how our life, our daily life, plays out. And I think we’re both self correct, but there’s so much ego, ego, I
Avi Gordon
wonder if, like honesty, can be an amazing tool to help me stay with my peace, right? Because what’s happening, okay, the goal, the intention, is to be in a state of peace, you know, all the time, or as often as possible, and then whatever happens causes me to not be in a state of peace. Now, if my ego is still driving that and not want to see, hey, one second here, you’re not doing what you said you wanted to do. Then, then there’s work to do. Then there’s a shift. I have to come back to the piece somehow. No,
Swami Divyananda
it’s really tough. Avi, I don’t Yeah,
Avi Gordon
so the the honesty, there’s like, it can, like the to me that the honesty has the ability to meet the ego and perhaps prevent the ego from riding the ship. The honesty is the one to say, where are you really at in this moment? You know, okay, I’m not in a peaceful state. Now. I can choose to remain where I am or make a shift.
Swami Divyananda
I think honesty is a good foundation, and then just building up the practice of honoring the peace more than we would honor being esteemed by our culture. I think it’s probably many layered and pretty
Avi Gordon
complex. Yeah, the esteemed, by the culture is
Swami Divyananda
that’s so huge it is steam roars, every other idea,
Avi Gordon
because it seems to be like to make to have peace be the priority in your life, or even yoga, right? You have to kind of distance yourself from what’s accepted, you know, society. I mean, to even be a Swami, right? I mean, you’re operating on a much different plane than the average person fitting into society. You
Swami Divyananda
would think I’d be free of worldliness. You would think so, I’m not. I carried my ego with me right into SWAMI. Can
Avi Gordon
you share a little bit about your story? Mike, yeah, like how you became like a Swami?
Swami Divyananda
There was one point when Guru dad said to me, you’ve been a swami before, and I think that’s true, because I was living in the Berkeley I by I, and that’s the i by i, where Coronavirus parama, Barcel, Steve bacon, Satya Greenstone, some of the seniors in our organization were all collected there. And when the idea of sannyas came every single night. They sat together and talked about it, but I went to bed, I said, not for me, I’m getting married. I never even sat in on their discussions, until one day, when I got up in the morning I said, Of course, I’ll be a Sami. That’s a no brainer, and I stuck with that. So who knows? It just came through somehow. What happened there? I slept. I don’t know what happened?
Avi Gordon
You’re arrested.
Swami Divyananda
I don’t know. That’s why I think that it’s true. I’ve been a swami before, all
Avi Gordon
of a sudden, it just felt appropriate.
Swami Divyananda
When I was very small, I wanted to be a priest. Both my parents are atheists, so see, there’s some Sam scar that was coming through. Who
Avi Gordon
knows? What’s your take on the atheism, like, in terms of, like, religious path, right? Like,
Swami Divyananda
because my father was as dogmatic as any Catholic about his belief system,
Avi Gordon
how would you describe what his belief system was? You
Swami Divyananda
don’t want to know he was a little bit ridiculous, but he just said he believed in science, only science reveals the truth.
Avi Gordon
Interesting. So what does that mean? That essentially anything that can be proved? Yeah. Brandon, there’s so much. That we can’t prove. What do you do with his
Swami Divyananda
mind is very, very narrow. But he was born in 1904, okay, 120 years ago, and that was not a bit uncommon for that for that generation, no.
Avi Gordon
So this path of sannyas, and you said that you’re you still have the attachments and yes, and the ego and all that, but do you feel that it has helped you at least move in the direction that
Swami Divyananda
you Oh, incredibly, absolutely, incredibly, I can’t tell you. I hope this audience out here thinks about, would you like to be a Swami. It’s the greatest help in the world. Just wearing this cloth means guys don’t flirt with me, and that’s important, just as a starting point. And then being in a community of other swamis, they, you know, we’re, we’re very interesting group with a lot of different personality types. The monastery has nine Swamis in it now, and there’s another five who live nearby. But each and every one exemplifies something amazing, and the examples are always there. We’re elbow to elbow with amazing examples. And that’s that’s a tremendous force and and the fact of being a swami having these vows we take every single day, just, you know, there’s certain mantras and vows that we recite to ourselves daily. And I believe in the power of that some of some of our mantras are Sanskrit. It’s a recitation we make in the shower. There are things like that, and there is no doubt of what extraordinary tools they are to shape us, constantly shaping us. It’s very subtle, very powerful. What
Avi Gordon
do you think is the key to having a successful relationship, like, whether it’s, you know, any kind of healthy relationship between with someone else? Yeah,
Swami Divyananda
you’re asking a very deep question. It seems
Avi Gordon
like this is, like, the hardest thing to me. That’s why I kind of like to have, like, you know, a sustained for long period of time, you know, healthy relationship, dealing with all the ups and downs and twists and turns and all of that. It’s challenging, right? I think in a way, we kind of underestimate it, how challenging it
Swami Divyananda
is. That’s right. I’m so glad to be a Swami. I would have failed as a wife. I’m just telling you now I have the highest respect for everybody on the householder path. Yeah, I think humility, honesty, service, seeing the other person in their best light, I can share one trick that I’ve used when I have a relationship that’s gone south, I’ll write a list of their best qualities and then recite it to myself daily, and it protects the relationship. Just a little trick that
Avi Gordon
is, right? It’s like, again, the working with the mind, yeah, what am I focusing on?
Swami Divyananda
Yeah, that’s what if he’s focusing on the negative qualities. That relationship is finished. But if you make the choice to spend a few minutes a day focusing on their their virtues, their positive qualities. It create, it creates, like a protective shield. It’s a pretty amazing practice.
Avi Gordon
Yeah, it seems that there’s like, the assessment of the individual and themselves and the quality that they have. And then there’s also the circumstances of events that are happening between you, you know, it’s
Swami Divyananda
right, that’s right.
Avi Gordon
And where I have trouble sometimes is in in regard to being right, right, like, especially in regard to this, like, assessing of what what happened, right, you know. So I’m not like, labeling the person, but all of a sudden I get righteous about what happened and how I felt that it wasn’t, you know, the right thing and and so I see the benefit in letting go of like, you know, do you want to be right, or do you want to be in a relationship? Could be a question, but it’s so ingrained this, you know, being right in whatever, whatever viewpoint I just I wonder about, like, genuinely letting that go, the need to be right. It seems to be like one of the deepest practices there is,
Swami Divyananda
God bless you. I think, I think the thing is to know the price you pay
Avi Gordon
for holding on, yeah, for holding on
Swami Divyananda
or for pushing your points. And I’m sure in every circumstance, it’s a different price, but that’s, you know, having having harmony, having friendships, that’s so precious in this world. And as we give that more importance? I think we’ll be better able to let go of being right or taking the humble path.
Avi Gordon
And I think having conversations, communication has to be essential too, to be able to work through these things right,
Swami Divyananda
to find the areas where you see differently. Well, look at your little girl. I think sometimes we all act like four year olds. I’m sure you’re always compassionate with her and helpful to her. And if this 70 year old in front of you is acting four years old, you have to manifest the relationship you have for your little girl, you could think it that way, yeah,
Avi Gordon
well, the compassion is such a tool
Swami Divyananda
now, yeah, I think your little girl is probably training you.
Avi Gordon
Yeah, no doubt, there’s no doubt that she is training me, but this compassion too as a powerful tool to use in relationship with other people, is that something that you try to practice tapping into I
Swami Divyananda
do? I have certain things. If somebody’s really irritating me, I just start a mental recitation of, I love you. I love you. I love you. No, if, if they’re still irritating me, I imagine that I put a garland around their neck. If, sometimes I try to attune to that person’s mother and see that person through the eyes of the mother who understands their inner being. Sometimes I pray, because i i I feel certain that the Lord has complete access to my hidden mind and this person’s hidden mind, and I pray that the Lord just puts up my mouth the right words so the hidden part of that person might be a drastic communication. I mean, those are systems I try to use. Then I’m in a difficult conversation,
Avi Gordon
and it’s all it’s true, right? It’s like letting go of the need to blame,
Swami Divyananda
all right, that’s it’s part of needing to be right, yeah, yep, that’s all
Avi Gordon
of it. Instead of, like, it’s almost, in a way, the most obvious and simple answer is that there are reasons why this person is behaving the way that they are. Something has happened to them in their life that is exactly you know, caused this. So it
Swami Divyananda
may be completely invisible to us, and yet there’s something that’s very real for them, that’s tough, yeah.
Avi Gordon
How about compassion for ourselves?
Swami Divyananda
First and foremost?
Avi Gordon
Why have compassion for myself? Why do that?
Swami Divyananda
Well, you won’t get anywhere by beating yourself up. Yeah. I mean, we all make so many silly mistakes. If you watched Good eve in the early years. He would sometimes give us a lot of responsibility for which we had no experience or the right attributes to handle it well that he would he would accept and support over and over and over and over. So we had, I mean, if he could have that compassion, we should also, we’re a work of progress.
Avi Gordon
Could you share a little bit about, you know, the support in particular that you felt from him?
Swami Divyananda
Oh, oh, my God. But a lot of it, yeah, a
lot of it is just in his eyes, his smiles, his presence, he was deeply compassionate, understood. At our inner being. There were times he addressed me, spoke to me in the very same words my mother would have used. For instance, he always knew what was inside and could talk to that not just whatever was the outer circumstance. He in LA. That’s the first time I had an administrative position. 73 Los Angeles, our center so we Yeah, he made me director, fired me a year later, reinstated me. A year later, fired me a year later, reinstated me a year later, and then I stayed okay. So he fired me three times, but he reinstated me again. And when I went to him, you know, with situations to solve, he would he would also listen. He would always listen carefully and and he would make himself available to guide me. Pretty incredible.
Avi Gordon
How has your relationship with him changed since he left the body, if it has no
Swami Divyananda
it’s still very much the same, and I still miss him, really terribly. But I, you know, I feel like yoga is such a miracle. I think he’s here everywhere in this property. He’s here and he’s helping us. So it isn’t, it isn’t as though I feel he’s gone, that I just wish I could see his jeep, or see his face, or have the delight and interaction with them again. But that’s all right. It’s okay. He took Avi. He took years and years and years to bring us from him. I can remember 50 years ago when my friend jagadishu, he had given him a mala to bless. And he blessed the mala. But he said, What are you going to do when I’m not here? Can you imagine that? And then, like I would say, 10 years, 12 years before he passed, he said, I’m staying in my body for the new people. He said, You people stop bothering me so much. You can talk to each other and get the guidance you need, he said, and it’s all there in the books. He said, I’m staying in my body just for the new people. And similarly, he stepped back from being director. He used to be founder director, but he changed his status. I’m just the founder now not going to be the director. So you guys administrate the organization. If you need to, you can call me and I’ll try to guide you, but basically you need to take charge. And when the subordinates have problems, they come to you, not to me, but what happened is one of our Swamis felt that the administration wasn’t solving a problem, so she went to go and he scolded her. He said, Look, I’ve laid out the rules. You didn’t let the administration handle this. She persisted, persisted, persisted. He finally said, I can’t hear you. And then he said, I’m dead and gone. And then he hung up on her so and then, in his last year of life, he told us he made sure that every senior member knew he’s losing his body. He did it with me in a phone call. He said, I won’t be there this winter. And like in my mind, the rest of the sentence come clear. Came clearly, because I won’t be in my body when winter comes. And sure enough, he passed away that August. So yeah, he made sure each one of us knew and that He was compassionate.
He was personal. He wasn’t just the Perfected soul out there. He cared about the person of each of us and related with all our unique qualities and aspects.
Avi Gordon
It’s that personal level that seems to. Be like the most powerful and also obvious when we consider how larger changes as made moving think about these big ideas of impacting large groups of people or whatever, but ultimately it’s on the individual level
Swami Divyananda
that individual change happens.
Avi Gordon
You shared the other day about the teaching of putting garlands around the sign post, right, right, which very powerful to me when I when I hear him talking about that, and then hearing you talk about that, because, if it feels so right to me, but I’m curious, maybe you can, like, clarify a little bit around this, because, you know, the the the devotional guru path, it seems like there’s so much of that, like, even with with him, like so much focus on him. And I wonder is, is that us doing this, you know, looking at him more than the teachings itself?
Swami Divyananda
It’s very, a very interesting question. So bhakta Yoga is a very honorable path within the integral yoga system, and he did not block those who have had that quality and chose to walk that way. But is one of six paths. So he, you know, I think in honor of those who, in respect for those, he made himself available, but he was adamant that the body itself was not worthy of worship. And there was one time he was seated like this, his legs like this. And it was some it was either giant group or there were 500 young people there, and each one was coming up to offer flowers. There’s a pile of flowers almost up to his knees. He was reading a book. Usually he would be so gracious, he would look to each person, meet their eyes, smile, pat them on the shoulder. No this day, he was paying no attention to the festivities, the flowers, the devotion, he just sat there and read a book. So I’m just saying he could manifest either side of him.
Avi Gordon
Yeah. I just wonder about distraction, you know, and that was what this teaching is really about, in some ways. And you, you mentioned our society pressures, norms. And what I get the I get the sense that we can get really focused on the end the hero, the individual hero, whoever it is, if it’s Jesus or George Washington, or whoever that we love, we maybe have the tendency to obsess about this particular hero. And I wonder if like the next level is what like Thich Nhat Hanh says is the next Buddha, is the Sangha, which these, these people really, what they can be for us is to inspire us to see that within and to keep on doing our own work. Now, instead of, instead of kind of just taking all my time and just saying, oh, like, I love you the most more than anyone else, you’re you’re amazing. All my time doing that is time that I could really spend on, like nurturing and cultivating that same inner guru within myself.
Swami Divyananda
Yeah, I think it was, is, I think, a very delicate path to serve as a guru and also to deflect the adoration that we laid on him or the projections we had for him, he had this one statement, which I think summarizes it. He said, This person is a mirror. He said, Whatever you see here, if you can see it in me, you have it in you. I’m just here to show you what you have.
And yeah, he would, he would often say, I’m not a scholar, I hardly ever read, but I’m here to serve. He wouldn’t. He tried not to let us put him up on testo. He would say, show your devotion. Show your love. And devotion. By being regular in your practice, you bring out the light in you.
Avi Gordon
The most amazing part of living here is seeing the impact and that relationship that people who have spent time with him right how much they value. And, I mean, just this whole place being built, right? It never would have been built if he didn’t Kindle that, that flame, that spark in each individual person to have that passion to build yoga. Bill,
Swami Divyananda
oh, it’s true. It wasn’t. I mean, he had the shape and name of a man, but he was a somehow, force of nature. He was a very extraordinary soul, and he accomplished so much in thought song last week, I only touched on some of his accomplishments. So there’s ecology, there’s vegetarianism. He’s a patron of the arts. He was a supporter of the youth. He were working for the UN interfaith harmony, also the medical fields, the interdisciplinary clinics that he set up, education, his system of education, it just goes on and on. So how could one person be a pioneer in so many areas, seven or eight different areas? I know. How is that possible? So I don’t, I don’t think we can think of him though he had a human form. He was an intention of some divine essence, something beyond what we can understand.
Avi Gordon
But I guess my question is, Is there value in trying to understand?
Swami Divyananda
I think only there’s value in it. If you look for it inside yourself, we get glimpses. We get little, just little glimpses of what’s there and and we’ve learned how to access it, what it takes to access it. And so just cultivating that that he said, When he says, I am a mirror, he said, Don’t strive for the praises of the mirror, strive to become that which you see, he was a great guru, and you’ve met many. Yeah, I’ve met many. I didn’t find any to compare. He says, I think the way he presented the teachings is very, very pure, because he did deflect so much of the honor and praise that we keep telling kept sending it back. Find it in yourself. Find it in yourself.
Avi Gordon
I think the point that you’re making about how many different areas he impacted on is one to really pay attention to, like, how is that possible? Right? To me, the answer that comes is a being who’s able to tap into just universal truth, probably through his meditation practice, what I would guess, getting to the space of real oneness, where his personality and identity is not there, and then all of a sudden, the truth comes in. Yeah, you can trust him. I
Swami Divyananda
think it’s something just like that Avi, that he has a capacity to subjugate himself or subordinate himself to something that was on a divine level.
Avi Gordon
That’s it. That’s the humility, right? I think it’s
Swami Divyananda
the willingness, yeah, the willingness to do the work, to free himself the ego, so that he could become a tool of something divine, I think, I think,
Avi Gordon
and then there’s not even the taking of credit. No. Thanks so much for sharing with me. This is so much fun
Swami Divyananda
on me. Thank you so much. So
Avi Gordon
we close with a prayer. You lead the prayer please.
Oh,
Swami Divyananda
dear, oh.
Avi Gordon
Sam, the entire universe is filled peace and joy, love and light.
Swami Divyananda
Jai Sahab. COVID.
Avi Gordon
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