Satsang with Giten on Buddha: Bhumis & Paramitas: 2. Grace in Living, Innocence, Simplicity
Satsang with Giten on Buddha:
Bhumis
– Ten Steps to
Enlighten
ment
From Satsang with Giten, February 11, 2016, in Stockholm
2. VIMAL: Innocence, purity and simplicity
The second Bhumi is VIMAL, which means innocence, purity and simplicity.
Innocence is learning to love, respect and accept yourself as you are.
Innocence is learning to trust yourself, to trust other people and to trust life.
To be innocent is to be childlike.
To be childlike does not mean to be childish. It does not mean to be a child, but to be like a child.
To be childlike and to be childish are totally different.
To be childish is to be irresponsible and immature and to be like a child means to be simple, trusting and innocent.
This is what Jesus means when he says that you have to be like a child to enter into the Kingdom of God.
In old Buddhist scriptures it says that Jesus studied at a Buddhist university in India before he began to preach, so this saying of Jesus could come from this Bhumi.
If you become knowledgeable, you lose innocence, you lose your heart.
If you gather beliefs and knowledge, your innocence will become corrupted. You lose the simplicity of being.
When I had a consultation with a spiritual teacher many years ago, she said to me: Never lose your innocence.
Never lose your innocence, your childlikeness, and much will happen.
On the second Bhumi, the meditator also develops the second Paramita, SHILA, which means grace in living. Grace in living means to live a live of compassion, love and gratitude.
It means to live a life that cares for others.
On the second Bhumi, the meditator and bodhisattva, the buddha in essence, overcomes all tendencies towards negative actions. He fulfills pure and virtuous actions and abandons killing, stealing, lying, harsh speech, senseless chatter, harmful intent and actions that is harmful to other living beings through actions of the body, mind and speech. The second Bhumi is also related to karma.
The bodhisattva’s mind becomes pure, which is a prerequisite to going deeper into silence, emptiness and meditation through the ten Bhumis.
It is to remove everything that stands between ourselves and the inner silence and emptiness step by step.
– Swami Dhyan Giten
Satsang with Giten on Buddha:
Paramitas
– The Ten
Provisions
for the
Inner Journey
From Satsang with Giten, February 11, 2016, in Stockholm
2. Grace in Living
The second Paramita is SHILA, which means grace in living.
It means to live a life of grace, compassion, love and gratitude.
It means to live a life, which is responsible and which cares about others.
Buddhists have misinterpreted SHILA and thinks that it means morality and a rigid character.
Buddha says: The second Paramita is grace in living, a discipline that has arisen out of understanding.
SHILA refers to purity of thought, word and deed.
The conditions of SHILA is love, awareness, silence and calm, where you no longer are susceptible to the passions of selfishness and greed.
Buddha says: Unless you have discipline, the capacity to learn, you will not develop grace in living, the discipline that arises out of understanding.
The word “discipline” means: readiness to learn. When one is open to learn one is very aware, because learning is only possible when you are aware. When you are not aware you cannot learn anything.
A man of understanding learns from everywhere. Then there is grace.
One of the most vital distinctions in a person’s spiritual life is to understand that the way is from in to out, not from out to in.
When we change the inner, the outwards follows.
When we find the love, awareness and silence within, grace in living arises on the outside.
– Swami Dhyan Giten
