The Five MindfulnessTrainings

The Five Mindfulness Trainings are not commandments, but guidelines to help us subdue our physical and verbal actions, to become more aware of our mental motivations and live harmoniously with those around us. They are not an external ideal being forced upon us, but points for training that we voluntarily undertake.

We all suffer in our lives. Some of the effects of this suffering are the direct result of alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual abuse, and similar behaviours that have been passed down from generation to generation.

Thich Nhat Hanh, one of the world's foremost teachers in the practice of living mindfully, tells us there is a deep malaise in today's society. He says that when we put a young person into society without trying to protect him he receives violence, hatred, fear, and insecurity every day and eventually he becomes sick.

Our conversations, TV programmes, advertisements, newspapers and magazines all water the seeds of suffering in young people and not-so-young people. We feel a kind of vacuum in ourselves and try to fill it by eating, reading, talking, smoking, drinking, watching TV, going to the movies and even overworking.

When we take refuge in these things it only makes us feel hungrier and far less satisfied and we need some preventative medication to protect ourselves and make us healthy again. We have to find a cure for our illness and find something that is good, beautiful and true.

The Five Mindfulness Practice Trainings are the cure for this malaise and are love expressed in the ground of concentration and insight. To love is to understand, protect and bring well-being to the object of our love. When we are mindful, we can see that by refraining from doing "this", we prevent "that" from happening. It is the fruit of our own awareness, not something imposed upon us by an outside authority.

When we drive a car we are expected to follow the Rules of the Road, so we do not cause an accident. Over two thousand six hundred years ago the Buddha offered to his lay students the Five Mindfulness Trainings.

Christ taught parables to his disciples to show us all how to conduct our lives in a more mindful way. The Buddha (an Enlightened Being) established specific rules, The Five Mindfulness Trainings (Precepts), to help his disciples avoid misdeeds and wrong doings.

The scope of these Trainings' influence includes our conduct, habits, character and mental states. Practicing these trainings helps us become more calm and concentrated and brings us enlightenment and insight. Over the next few months I shall be writing on a weekly basis in great detail about each one of the Five Mindfulness Trainings and how our lives can be transformed by practising them.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings cover a reverence for life, generosity, sexual responsibility, deep listening and loving speech and a diet for a mindful society. On this so beautiful and isolated island of Bermuda we could be the World's First Test Market Survey Group in Mindful Living.

I believe that we in Bermuda could become a truly wonderful example to the whole world on how mindful living can bring joy, peace and happiness into all of our lives. Isn't that what life should be about?

The Mindfulness Practice Centre of Bermuda meets weekly to support the practice of mindful living. Please call 236-4988 or e-mail iamhomeibl.bm.