Merging East and West: A Spiritual Awakening with Swami Lotus

Are you curious about the fusion of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions? Join us as we journey down the path of transcendent enlightenment with our guest, Swami Lotus, a Buddhist monk who's mastered the delicate dance between the heart and mind, and has established Water Moon Refuge as a sanctuary of serenity. In this inspiring conversation, we'll unlock the secrets of non-duality, the language of silence, and how to trust the heart of divine consciousness.

This episode also takes an in-depth look at the contrasting views between East and West towards truth seekers and how these perspectives have shaped the spiritual journey. Swami Lotus shares their personal journey of establishing the Water Moon Refuge, a place that nurtures profound stillness and gratitude. So, get ready to experience the tranquil echoes from the Water Moon Refuge, and explore how the fascinating blend of spiritual traditions can pave the way to a realm of divine consciousness, freedom, and peace. Intrigued? This path of enlightening discussion awaits you.

You can learn more about the Water Moon Refuge at watermoonrefuge.org 

We hope you enjoyed Swami Lotus...there might be a part 2 coming

Transcript

Rev Lynne: 0:01

Okay, welcome. This is an episode of Spiritual Gumbeaux and I would like to welcome today Swami Lotus. Swami Lotus is a Buddhist monk who is the exemplar of what I would call earthly peace and spiritual peace. Here at Water Moon, I have found a wonderful place to just come and be and be silent. It's a place that my children love to come to to find that sense of peace. So I want to welcome Swami Lotus and for those of you who are new to Spiritual Gumbeaux, Spiritual Gumbeaux is a podcast for those who exemplify this notion of spiritual leadership, meaning they allow the spirit to lead them in the world and for those who come into their place of being. And oftentimes, those who come into the presence of spiritual leaders, like people like Swami Lotus, go out into the world with another sense of peace, and that's what leadership is all about helping to guide others into other spaces. So at this time, Swami Lotus, if you could share a little bit about yourself and Water Moon and how you came to this place in space.

Swami Lotus: 1:49

I would, and I would begin by saying thank you, Lynn, for this time. It is an unexpected delight, both in our reconnection and in doing something so modern as a podcast. Water Moon Refuge came to me over 20 years ago while I was hiking. Something said open a center, and it took a little while to do that. And I have been given something so precious, something that made up for all the traumas and all the losses and anything that ever happened in this long, long life. Water Moon Refuge has been given to me into my care, and I don't know what to say. It's just gratitude. What I would like to say is that Water Moon in my life have transcended any idea about a spiritual way with a name on it.

Swami Lotus: 2:54

I have been ordained in both Zen Buddhism and in Advaita Vedanta. Advaita is a Sanskrit word that means non-dual. In other words, everything is consciousness, no matter what it looks like. There's a line in the heart sutra that says what you see is no different from the empty, and the empty in this case would be the divine. However you want to name it, the absolute or God beyond genders, it doesn't matter what it is. The empty means it's empty of our egos. If I put it simply, it's empty of name and form. What we see is through our mind, what we hope to see is through our hearts.

Swami Lotus: 3:39

So those two traditions I am ordained in, but, as all these years have passed, I cannot identify with any one way. It's too confining. When you get to the core of any tradition, whether it's Christian or Buddhist or Muslim, you will find a place of quiet, a place where there aren't any words anymore. Every tradition has it. It's not very popular and it's not obvious, but if you look you'll find it, and that's where you live today. Right now is in that place. So whatever you need to find it, embrace it and then be willing to let it go so there are no more words.

Rev Lynne: 4:25

You have just opened up so many questions and I guess maybe it's not questions One of the things that I personally like to preach about or speak about is this struggle between the heart and the mind, and Jesus talks a lot about the heart. He leads us into our hearts to lead instead of our minds, and so I'm really kind of dancing with this now, as you start to talk about the heart and the mind, and there's something inside of me that's clicking, that's saying okay, you need to talk more about what your heart is guiding you to do and your mind is stopping you from doing. And I see this a lot when people dream about what they could be or who they could be or how they could do, but it's often the mind that, nope, you can't do that yet. I mean, even with myself, I struggle with that and how that the mind kind of puts the brakes on the heart, and the heart being the seat of consciousness in many ways.

Swami Lotus: 5:47

Yes, and the mind has all that perceived power. I say perceived because it is not real. It only feels real Because we're afraid. You know there are studies done about the primal anxiety that our species feels all the time, and if we thought about it we'd all go nuts because you know the roof could fall in at any minute or we could lose something precious at any second. And so we don't think about all that. What we do instead is take the mind, or the ego mind, seriously and let that keep us safe in little boxes. You know what Stuff happens anyway. So what are we going to trust? We could trust the heart, but it's not our physical heart, you know. It's the heart of divine consciousness and you can change.

Swami Lotus: 6:35

Our minds can be changed. It takes some willingness to do it. It takes some willingness to understand that your mind can only run your life well and happily if you're using it as a computer. It can drive your car, it can fill out your taxes, but it should never decide who you are or how your life should be. It must come from your heart, and I would give the example.

Swami Lotus: 7:04

Another word for heart could be in this relative reality, could be intuition. What do you feel what calls you, where do you stand, and from that place things work. Let's say, your mind says I want to move to Costa Rica and your heart said I don't think so, it doesn't feel right to me, and so there's no harmony there. But the way the mind could work is opposite. The heart says you know, costa Rica would be a great place to go, and the mind says well, this is how we will do it.

Swami Lotus: 7:42

The mind did not make the decision and so whatever takes us, like Lynn sitting next to me and her brilliant ideas about freedom, that's where we start. How do I feel about it? Not emotionally. That can get a little muddy for a while until we get our feet under us. But if we start with gee, you know, it feels like if I did this, it could work out. Or let me take a risk, which we don't do very often, and see what happens. And then the mind can be a good guide, but it does not make personal decisions. So that helps in our freedom. If we're not dependent on the mind, which has been trained throughout our lives to keep us safe, well, how are we going to go anywhere?

Rev Lynne: 8:38

You know, this is not the planned interview, this is the spirit interview, and this is so wonderful because you are stirring up things that I already know, that I have put in the back of my mind now, and there's no such thing as coincidence, //no,// no. And as I reflect back on my own life, I have been very blessed when I say that I came with parents a biological parent and parent through marriage who were always very spiritually open people, and when I say that they were always searching, searching and and did not. My mother was a little more restrictive, but biological mother, but now I can see that part of my being in the world really is to learn from other spiritual traditions and to open up those ways as a form of universal to truth. So so what am I saying? My parents, of course, raised me and my mother in the Christian tradition.

Rev Lynne: 10:02

My father, as you know, has been very much into various forms of Buddhism, hinduism, african traditional religion, christianity, and some will say, oh, that's spiritual hopping or whatever. But I don't think so. I'm starting to really think that there are those of us who have to hop in those spaces so that we can open up the breath and depth of the divine, for others to see that God's world, or the divine consciousness, is not limited to one way of being. That's for sure, and and and this conversation with us, it. I am remembering when we became Nershian social Buddhist. I remember that I remember my father going to the African traditional villages and and all of those things, but they all of that is now coming together to form this thing called spiritual gumbo, and that's what's happening, and being here with you affirms that this is the right thing to do, this is what the world is needing to hear. And no, it doesn't conform with doctrinal boundaries and it never will. It never will. So I need to thank you for that. I need to thank you for that.

Swami Lotus: 11:41

You already know it. You know it. And about going to different traditions, you know there's a wonderful thing that happens if you do that and you go to the core. You don't just believe what's on the surface or read a book or have somebody tell you what it is. You explore it until you get the essence of what that is and then you either commit because it calls you all the way, or you take what you've learned and you apply it differently until you get to a place where Lynn is sitting here doing this podcast called Spiritual Gumbeaux, which is a wonderful word to describe what's happening here. And I'd like to make another point as you're going around looking for all these things, to do it with intention and to do it with intelligence and perhaps some discernment seems to be missing sometimes.

Swami Lotus: 12:34

The discernment comes all the way back to your own heart and your own intuition, not your mind. The mind can lead to it, but one thing that's important and it's a huge leap if we talk about leaps of faith is that everything here is being done. We are not doing it ourselves, it feels that way, but it is being done. And if you can trust that, if you can be available enough to what presents itself to you, then you don't have to work very hard. We work so hard to make something happen, or to learn something, or to make us, et cetera, et cetera, but all the time it's all being done, and often we interfere with that by thinking we have to do it instead of that exquisite, ultimate surrender to what is, and so we can have more fun along the way.

Swami Lotus: 13:36

Actually, if we don't get too serious about it, and it does not diminish the pain that comes in life or the losses. But how do we handle those? What is all that? Lynn addresses that far more beautifully than I could. So you know her, and so that's what we'll be doing, or she'll be doing for all of you. But just relax.

Rev Lynne: 14:02

You know, when you talk about the being, it's already happening and there's some wonderful Eastern Orthodox icons and that's one thing I love about the aesthetic of the Eastern Orthodox churches and when you go in there it always is this sense of busyness. You look on the ceilings and there's no white space, but there's this, all of this work of the spiritual beings making things happen in the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity. If you go into a Greek Orthodox or Ethiopian Orthodox Syrian, you won't see just white space. What you'll see is images and pictures, and really it's about the busyness of spirit Trying to connect to the Earth //that's very beautiful// and to make things come into being for us.

Rev Lynne: 15:04

And I guess that's where your language just took me to, and it's open yourself, release yourself to the work of the spirit. And you'll just go, it'll just happen. You don't have to make it happen.

Swami Lotus: 15:21

We can't make it happen. We'd like to think so, but see, it's even worse than that for us, we can't. Where is the power? What actually is power? Well, that's an exploration all by itself. And so we come back again to trust. At Water Moon, all we do is sit still. You don't have to know anything, you don't even have to sit in a special way, you just have to be quiet for 45 minutes in a beautiful space, and I think that is a grounding, primal approach to everything else that happens.

Swami Lotus: 16:03

Stillness is the essence of everything the universe, ourselves, beyond the universe it's just another name for the divine, but everything in truth, beyond the busyness of our minds, is still. There's a book entitled Perfect, Brilliant Stillness that really pulls the plug on a lot of this, but the title is just beautiful, because all the beings and all the traditions and all the cultures over time, when they see what's really happening here, is that description Perfect, Brilliant Stillness. And we are already that. So what would it take for us to know that we can't do it? We can position ourselves, perhaps so that we could be available, just in case. Someone gave it that little tiny nudge and said oh, oh, it's like one of those puzzles that you see and it looks like a flower, but when you look carefully, it has a bunch of faces in it. Well, that's how small the shift is from seeing all these forms to seeing perfect, brilliant stillness.

Rev Lynne: 17:16

I'm glad that you talked about stillness, because one of the things that Jesus is very clear about he says, be still and know that I am God. And in that text I think in my interpretation is that Jesus is also making us very clear that that which we seek in God is in us, and allow him to be the example of that. Be still and know that I am God the I am comes out of the Hebraic tradition and that I think a lot of people don't see the threads. Again, we talk about universalism, of Buddhism in the Christian way, because we are so anxious to be right and to be perfect in that sense, the Christian way is perfect and we don't see Jesus as the spiritual being who's giving us a message about stillness and quiet.

Swami Lotus: 18:28

Yes, that's right. Well, we interpret instead of going a little deeper with that. He also, as I understand it, said I and my Father are one. So I would come back to the point that we are not like Jesus or God or Buddha or anybody. We are it Because you can either have duality or non-duality. You cannot have both. Either everything is split and there's them and us, so to speak, or everything, is it? I'm in the field of everything, is it? Even though I can still see all the forms and have this conversation. But after you practice for a little while and sit still, you begin to think it's really possible that I'm it. Why am I looking somewhere else? It's right?

Rev Lynne: 19:18

here. And Jesus also says to his disciples you will do greater things than I. So if that God peace was not in you, how are you going to do greater things than I? But we don't like to dig deeper in that, because then someone will come back and say well, you think you're God, exactly, but it's right there. But you've been taught doctrinally not to think for yourself, or you've put Jesus in this little box, and that's where Jesus has to stay, in this little box, and I think, well, that for me is sin.

Swami Lotus: 20:02

Ha ha. Off the mark? That's what that word means. Off the bark, off the mark, yes. Well, why? Because we're using our, our limited minds to decide Something that we don't have a big concept for. We think we do, but we don't. Also, there's a lot of fear of being made wrong or not fitting in or not being part of a community Because you're not adapting to the party line or you're not using the same language, or that you know. Well, the West has a rather harsh tradition of dealing with people like Jesus, for instance. Don't like it, he's not saying what we want, we'll kill him.

Swami Lotus: 20:37

Oh, well the East has been a little more forgiving about those who know the truth, and that is a benefit to us today, because we actually have some living examples. We do have a lot of examples now in the West of people who are awake, who do see the perfect, brilliant stillness. But the West has not been kind and so it makes it harder for people who want to get outside the box a little bit. I want to be different, I want to be free. What does that mean? It's really quite a beautiful process and it's all being done not by us but through us, just like Jesus to. Whatever was done was done through him. He just showed up. He said hey, nice body, I've got it. What do I do with it? I allow whatever I am to work through this body For the good of all.

Swami Lotus: 21:32

Now, how can we do that? We can do exactly the same thing. Am I gonna be excommunicated here Waiting for the lightning? We can do exactly what Jesus did probably not as gracefully, because we can. We can say I opened myself to the divine, I'm not gonna try and decide here. I'm gonna be available. I'm gonna let the divine work through me Instead of me taking all the lead. So that's a spiritual practice all by itself. It's a lifetime of practice. It's fabulous, though. The results are worth anything you think you might suffer in the process.

Rev Lynne: 22:14

So so, Swami Lotus, how did you find yourself? How did you? How are you introduced into this? What took you down this path?

Swami Lotus: 22:26

Broken neck. I Was in a car accident. An elderly driver Turned into my car and my neck was broken and I had to wear a halo brace for three months. Goes around the head and you can look that up.

Swami Lotus: 22:43

And during that time my mother was going to lectures at the Advaita Vedanta Center in a small village where I grew up called Saugat uck in Michigan, and she said well, you know, one of the monks has moved to Decatur, where I was living. Why don't you look him up? And I thought Swami Yogesh Ananda, what's a Swami? Threw it in the waste basket. She sends me another one a few months later. You know, you really ought to look this man up. Waste basket Sends me a third one. Okay, here's the third thing. I keep it. But this is summertime and I don't look at it again until January. And I go look him up and I get there and he answers the door and he's just, he's crabby and he's small, and I'm Looking at a picture of a man sitting in a loincloth in a prayer position and I had no idea what it was and I thought this is nuts.

Swami Lotus: 23:39

So but I came back. He's told me to come back and I said I'll do it and that was the start of my studies of non-dual traditions. I Studied with him, I became his housekeeper for a long time and during that time I realized that I had a call to be a monk and and it's been the most joyous, incredible life anybody could have. And that was a long time ago and it it's taken a long time for the beauty and the grace of that to fill every pore in my body. Now, if I were only a little more graceful in my daily life it would be great. But you know I'm I'm here and just Just doing what can happen. And water moon refuge came Out of the blue. It was made easy. Lynn's father helped us do that. In fact he was the first board and //who, my father.

Swami Lotus: 24:39

Your father is our nonprofit lawyer and he was on the first board of three people and got us started and got us our Our nonprofit status. But mostly what's happened is this beautiful place dedicated only to stillness has busted me over all these years. It has taught me things that are invaluable, and so that's why I say it's a gift given, not because I knew what I was doing, but because I was gonna learn a little bit more, and the learning has been so wonderful because of the people that come to sit here, that come and sit still, creative and open, and I am just immensely grateful for all of this and that I didn't miss it because I could have. So I say to everybody don't miss it. If it looks weird, check it out and then come and sit in stillness, because that's the core of everything else anybody is doing anywhere stillness, if we can be still, we know what we're doing. Be still and know that I am God. That's it.

Rev Lynne: 25:54

Wow, wow. That sounds like a wonderful, wonderful way to conclude. I still have so many, so many, many, many, many more questions and it's just I'm feeling so encouraged. Encouraged is probably the best word. I'm thinking about the New Year's Eve Coming to sit here and COVID kind of taking that away in some ways. That was a big loss for us, yes, but hopefully this year we'll come back to Water Moon and Swami Lotus.

Rev Lynne: 26:33

I would like to also, to those of you who are listening, to consider coming to Water Moon just to spend 45 minutes, even if you only get to do it once a year. Just to take that 45 minutes and come and sit and think about, instead of your the normal New Year's Eve revelry, maybe spending New Year's Eve in 45 minutes of silence as you bring in your new year and think about it. Also to think about possibly donating a gift, a financial gift, to Water Moon. Swami Lotus did not ask me to do that, but this is something I felt To keep these kinds of places and spaces available. It's very quiet here and the world is so busy and we will all go back out into busy and noise and moving and being and time and how are we gonna get there and when are we gonna get there? How are we gonna execute? And even, sometimes, in our own spaces, in our own homes, it's very difficult to find that retreat, that place to allow your mind to settle and your heart to grow. So I would encourage you, if you're listening to this particular podcast, to look up Water Moon here in Atlanta and to Water Moon Refuge.

Rev Lynne: 27:57

Water Moon Refuge. Org. Water Moon Refuge dot org. Let me say it again, I got a little tongue tied. Watermoonrefuge. org. Maybe even give Swami Lotus a call to.

Rev Lynne: 28:12

Maybe you can spend some time and they can contact him, because at the other piece of this it's all about relationships. Yes, it's all about relationships, and maybe this is a relationship you need, because I know it's a relationship that I need. Thank you.