Let Go But Don't Give Up | Bhakti, Business and the Art of Surrender
4/29/202656 min
After twenty years of living in an ashram, Divya Alter opened a restaurant — and her spiritual practice tested new ways and taken to a whole new level. Divya — Ayurvedic chef, Sanskrit scholar, and founder of New York City's beloved Divya's Kitchen — discovered that separating her spiritual life from her business life created nothing but internal war. The moment she saw the restaurant as her devotional service, everything shifted. Raghunath and Kaustubha sit with Divya for a conversation about what a decade of serving prasadam in the most competitive restaurant city in the world teaches you about surrender, letting go, and tr...
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First 90 secondsDivya Alter· Guest0:00
I came into the business after 20-plus years of intense bhakti practice, you know, living as a monk in India and other countries, and, um, just practicing, studying two hours a day, and chanting a lot, and all that. Um, and I was very comfortable in my bhakti practice. I was very uncomfortable in my business practice. [laughs] [laughs] And the past years [laughs] I, I, um, I kind of separated the business from my service. It, it was like my spiritual life ... I had my spiritual life and my business, and this created a lot of internal stress for me. Um, there was always, like, something fighting in me. And, and then with the help of my teachers and guides, I, I was able to see the dichotomy, and I was able to kind of integrate the two and see the business as my service. The business is my path to spiritual enlightenment.
Raghunath· Host1:06
[laughs] Mm-hmm.
Divya Alter· Guest1:07
And, and when I, when I did that, all of a sudden everything shifted for me personally. And, um, and then the real lessons started flowing. I was open to receive so many different lessons. So that was the first lesson, to integrate, to see the business as my, as part of my spiritual