Tag Archives: five mindfulness trainings

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pressed precepts

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There was one of those quirky “try this” posts on Facebook that sent me to three different websites from which I collected words and pictures that created the name of my band, its album title and cover.  Silliness that distracted me from something in a long day.  But I am intrigued that the band name is “Beacon Comm;” it was Beacon Communications which I thought sucked as a band name.  The church made my eyebrow raise but the words I had to use for the cover song were interesting: a box where I hang my hat.

This sacred place as a box where I hang my hat.  Fascinating.  Especially when this random set of information kept resonating with conversations I found myself in over the week.  Precepts, Mindfulness Trainings, Vows, Refuge, gravitas of commitment.

More than that, at dim sum lunch, a dharma friend and I puzzled over the reactivity we see in many people to the idea of taking precepts.  Not keeping precepts, because most of us keep them in one form or another.  Taking the precepts seems a huge breath-catching, show-stopper.  Somewhere between the shrimp shui mai and the steamed rice cakes, we stopped being puzzled about the reactivity and started digging into what it meant to actually live the precepts.

In 2002, I excitedly took the Five Mindfulness Trainings at a retreat led by dharma teachers in Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition.  Over the years of reciting the Mindfulness Trainings, I’ve develop a deep affection for them and perhaps less for the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings when I ordained later.  Somehow the Fourteen seem just a bit more political and prone to a holier-than-thou attitude.  But we recite them too and do our best with them.  There are other sets of precepts one can commit to as well: Bhante Gunaratna transmits Eight Precepts – the standard five with three on speech.  And of course, there are the 10 Grave Percepts of most Zen orders – it’s actually 16 because you have to add the Three Refuges and the Three Pure Precepts.

Ironically, I think I only really understood what I was getting into when I took the Five Mindfulness Trainings.  Honestly, I can’t say I dug deep with the Fourteen MT’s.  And I gave it the best shot I had at the time with jukai and the 16 Precepts.

I have to think about all this.  It bothers me that we can’t separate the call to vow from a sense of belonging to a group.  The taking on of a way of living becomes conflated with a social identity.  Your mileage may vary and it likely has.

When I read this passage in Roshi Daido Loori’s Invoking Reality, I felt my discomfort articulated:

There are thousands of Zen practitioners in our country, many thousands who have received the precepts and taken refuge in the Three Treasures but who don’t really know what they’ve done.  They have no idea what the precepts mean.

“Hello, I’m Genju and I’m a precepts-taking addict.”

Roshi Daido Loori continues:

There is so much to learn.  The precepts are incredibly profound.  Don’t take them lightly.  They are direct.  They are subtle.  They are bottomless.  Please use them.  Press up to them.  Push them.  See where they take you.  Make them your own.  They are no small thing, by any measure.  They nourish, they heal, and they give life to the Buddha.

It’s a start.  It’s a box where I hang my hat.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

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only this being

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I don’t know when it happened but somewhere along the ragged path of managing the symptoms of Fibromyalgia, I realized something subtle.  FMS, as a disease, is a collection of sensations that signals my body’s physical reactivity; my dis-ease was a collection of mental reactivities to the signals sent as sensations from my body.  As much as I could, I understood the physiology and psychology of the former but I struggled with the implications of the latter.  Combined with the reality that there is no cure, I had to re-configure my practice.  It was no longer beneficial to use the panoply of wellness strategy to take away the symptoms.  Instead, I had to consider the possibility of transforming my dis-ease to something that allowed me to be in my life as it was (is?).  I had to let go of the disease/recovery model and take up one that spoke to living well, one that allowed me to embody dignity and gratitude.

All this may sound terribly rational and logical but it wasn’t.  The actual progress was in fits and starts with many side trips and time spent staring at dead ends.  Being a Bear of Limited Imagination I decided to use the Five Mindfulness Trainings as my map.  Respect for Life, Generosity, Respect for Sexual Boundaries, Mindful Speech and Mindful Consumption are Thich Nhat Hanh’s re-framing of the five precepts (do not kill, do not steal, do not engage in sexual misconduct, do not lie, and do not use intoxicants).  Practising with each Mindfulness Training (I like calling them MT’s for obvious reasons: all are contained in each), I began to develop a road map to negotiate through the difficult days.

When the dark thoughts visited, I confronted the reality of my mortality.  This life is limited in its time span and unpredictable in its endpoint.  It is only an illusion that we know how long we have.  This effectively rendered as nonsensical any thoughts of being cheated out of something.

When I was caught in my acquisitive and entitled mind, the practice of generosity was a powerful antidote.  When I wanted something different from what I had, I offered it to myself in a creative way.  It wasn’t always satisfying but it allowed me to develop a more realistic appraisal of what was possible.  Catching myself wanting more good days, I would try to notice the range in the quality of my days.  Finding myself in the thrall of my past, I tried to see what part of that past I still had in my reach.  Truthfully, the concrete shifts didn’t always work but something subtle began to happen.  Ironically, by allowing the wish for more, being generous with the humanness of wanting shifted my perspective in ways I didn’t expect.  It is OK to want something different from what I have; what is neither useful nor beneficial is going blindly after it.

Generosity played an equally powerful role when I was caught in the painful physical symptoms.  Giving myself permission to just be in pain without making demands to do something settled the reactive mind.  It clarified the decision-making about rest and the possible use of medications.  (Thankfully, I’ve not needed the heavy-duty meds to manage this .)  Allowing myself to take days off, re-arrange my schedule, even to sleep all day if necessary was a challenge.  It took a double dose of both generosity and mindful speech (No, you’re not a lazy, wimp) to peel off layers of self-criticism.

Speaking compassionately to myself when I couldn’t meet goals, cancelled gatherings with friends and family, or had to adapt to doing less at work was as much a challenge as being generous to myself.  It all seemed self-indulgent and unfair to Frank who bore the burden of the see-sawing finances.  But the harsh self-recriminations were not working.  I had to re-think my fierce independence and what it meant that I could no longer fly solo.  Along with compassionate speech, the practice of generosity meant allowing others to give to me.

The impact on our finances of my ability to work made Mindful Consumption a crucial practice.  I tend to take the deprivation route which only leads to impulsive spending.  Being skillfully generous became a central practice.  But it wasn’t just about money.  I had to be attentive to the way I consumed media images of what Life is Can Be Like, what can be had just for a small down payment, and all the slights of hand we encounter in our commercialized world.

It’s better these days.  I practice and play smarter.  The fact that I play is in itself remarkable.  The fact that I practice is non-negotiable.  When I talk to people about managing FMS “using mindfulness,” I go to great lengths to point out that mindfulness is neither magic nor a Theory of Everything.  It will not take away what is inherently part of being human.  It cannot explain why anything has happened; nor will it predict what will happen (even if you sit, stand, walk mindfully until the cows come home).

Practice, on the other hand, is different.  It is the essence of generosity.  It is allowing myself to be just who I am.  In this day, this moment, this breath, this being.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

Photo: The doll is a Compassion Katsina by Brent Brokeshoulder of the Tobacco Clan from Hotevilla Village.  Its crossed eyes, twisted legs and arms represent what is wounded or misshapen in us that needs compassion.