Submitted by Imela Cuthbertson
- Tejomaya Pandit
Ahimsa – the perfection of peace.
Pandit Tejomaya shared this practice with some 45 participants at the January 14th 2015 programme of the Gabriola Ecumenical Society.
This had been one of Gandhi’s main practices and for his part Tejomaya has been working with Ahimsa for the last seven years. The practice centres around the belief that the Divine is manifested around us and that we need to show reverence for all divine nature.
Ahimsa is non violence both to ourselves and others.
Each practitioner tries to refrain from harming anything by word, thought or action. The result of this would be peace. However, no matter how hard we try, we are continually affected by five stains which are part of our inherent nature. These are very subtle and part of our subconscious and unconscious mind. Frequently we are not even aware of these and how they affect us and so we behave more like a puppet controlled by them and not an active doer and spreader of peace.
So what are these stains?
- ignorance
- ego
- attachment
- aversion
- fear
For most of us the soul, which is perfect and at peace, is blocked off by these stains.
Our spiritual struggle is an attempt to uncover our soul, that soul which is the expression of love, which is the place from which we came as perfection created us.
Pandit Tejomaya then laid out a ‘simple’ path which would help us move in towards Ahimsa or non violence in all aspects of our lives.
The key is to commit and Tejomaya has found that he can change a pattern if he commits to it in increments of 21 days.
He suggested we started with “Speech”. This means that all negative, harmful words are eradicated.
Usually by making the intent you can feel a change within yourself. If a negative thought arises you would reflect on which of the ‘stains’ it was coming from. E.g. if your angry words were from fear you would acknowledge that, replace them with a positive expression, and let them go non judgmentally.
Expect to meet a lot of ‘resistance’ as over the years you have become very attached to your behaviours, so much so that they could be thought of as an addiction. Each time you allow negative and harmful words to be spoken you return to DAY ONE. As you can see getting to Day 21 could take considerable time!
The benefits to oneself and then on those around you are enormous. With this inner peace developing and strengthening the ability to bring peace to our world increases.
Pandit Tejomaya continued talking about working with thoughts and actions and offered many practical suggestions to enable us to start practicing Ahimsa. He also has a blog which we are welcome to visit to follow his progression as he works with Ahimsa.
For most of us there a number of new windows were opened as we gained valuable insights into how we could enrich our own personal spiritual work. We left with much food for thought!
Namaste.
