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Dear friends,
This Monday, September 26, Susie and Annie will facilitate. We will recite the Five Mindfulness Trainings together. The Mindfulness Trainings were suggested by the Buddha for lay (non-monastic) practitioners and modified over the years by Thich Nhat Hanh and Plum Village. They are suggested ways we can practice and live with compassion and understanding; they are not commandments.
This week we will focus on the Fifth training: Nourishment and Healing:
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming.
I will practice looking deeply into how I consume the Four Kinds of Nutriments, namely edible foods, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness. I am determined not to gamble, or to use alcohol, drugs, or any other products which contain toxins, such as certain websites, electronic games, TV programs, films, magazines, books, and conversations.
I will practice coming back to the present moment to be in touch with the refreshing, healing and nourishing elements in me and around me, not letting regrets and sorrow drag me back into the past nor letting anxieties, fear, or craving pull me out of the present moment.
I am determined not to try to cover up loneliness, anxiety, or other suffering by losing myself in consumption. I will contemplate interbeing and consume in a way that preserves peace, joy, and well-being in my body and consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family, my society and the Earth.
The heart of this training is about not using consumption to distract us from the present moment or cover up suffering. These days we have more distractions than ever and one of the distractions most difficult to refrain from consuming is our technology.
We can use our technology as a bell of mindfulness allowing us to look more deeply at our habit energies. When we reach for our phone, computer, email, or social media, what are we avoiding? Annie tried an experiment with an online journal in which every time she felt the urge to look at her phone she opened the journal app and wrote about it. Most of the time when reaching for her phone she was feeling worried about something or wanting stimulation.
Thich Nhat Hanh says this (full quote at bottom of email) in his book Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet:
We want to have some kind of excitement, and we pick up our phone, our laptop, or a book or magazine, expecting to get it. We're looking for images and sounds that take us away from the discomfort we're experiencing in the present moment and cover up the suffering inside. When we reach for stimulation, it's not exactly because we need these things but we're doing anything we can to avoid encountering ourselves. And we can get addicted to these things, and yet never get the kind of fulfillment we need. We need love, we need peace, and it's only because we don't yet know how to generate that love and peace inside, that we are looking for it outside of ourselves...
Can we say hello to the part of us that is trying to escape the present moment? By noticing it, we will have the opportunity to take care of our suffering and make a choice that feels more satisfying and meets our deeper needs for connection.
Annie & Susie both have the habit of listening to podcasts, wanting to have company and also avoid being quiet with ourselves. One of the ways that Susie has worked with this is rather than listening to someone else’s voice, she records herself speaking about what is actually happening for her in the moment. She comes back home to herself and uses the impulse for another voice to learn more about her own voice and what she is experiencing in this moment.
We don’t need to judge ourselves for being hijacked by our technology - they have been designed to be extremely addictive and difficult to resist. Instead of judging ourselves or others, let’s ask ourselves, what am I really needing right now and how might I take good care of myself?
Ironically, there are technological supports for our technology distractions: The journal app that Annie used, the voice memo that Susie used, an app that allows us to shut down our email during certain times called Inbox when Ready, and apps like Freedom. If we are too rigid with our boundaries around technology, it may be a little like being on a strict diet, we end up binging and giving up. So we have to find that middle way of gently supporting our intentions for presence while acknowledging the reality of needing to use technology for work and life.
There are some ways in which social media in particular can affect our real life relationships and intimacy as well. Susie finds that the falseness of what people post limits our ability to really get to know others, thinking we know them, when we really don’t.
This week, after meditation, we will recite the trainings and then have a chance to share about the Fifth Mindfulness Training or anything else that is on our hearts. Here are a few questions to consider, and a few longer quotes below that:
When and where are you challenged by the distraction of technology? What techniques have you tried to work with it?
What practices have worked well for you and what hasn’t worked?
When looking at social media, are you comparing yourself to others and igniting the superiority, inferiority, or equality complexes?
From Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet by Thich Nhat Hanh, pages 167-171:
"Another kind of nutriment is what we call in Buddhism "sense impressions" -- what we hear, see, touch, and smell. When we watch movies and TV series, we consume. When we go online, we consume. When we read a book or magazine or listen to music, we consume. Even when we have a conversation, we are consuming that conversation. What another person says may be full of hatred and despair and, when we bring these things into our body and mind, it can be very toxic. The news can have a lot of anger, fear, anxiety, and hatred in it.
We want to have some kind of excitement, and we pick up our phone, our laptop, or a book or magazine, expecting to get it. We're looking for images and sounds that take us away from the discomfort we're experiencing in the present moment and cover up the suffering inside. When we reach for stimulation, it's not exactly because we need these things but we're doing anything we can to avoid encountering ourselves. And we can get addicted to these things, and yet never get the kind of fulfillment we need. We need love, we need peace, and it's only because we don't yet know how to generate that love and peace inside, that we are looking for it outside of ourselves...
Technology is making us alienated from ourselves, from our family, and also from nature -- and yet nature has the power to heal and to nourish. But we spend so much time with our computer that we are no longer there for ourselves, our family, or Mother Earth. And that means civilization is going in a wrong direction. The way we are making money may not kill anyone, may not rob anyone, but it is costing us our life, our happiness, and the life and happiness of our loved ones and Mother Earth."
An Introduction to the Five Mindfulness Trainings from Thich Nhat Hanh:
The Five Mindfulness Trainings are one of the most concrete ways to practice mindfulness. They are nonsectarian, and their nature is universal. They are true practices of compassion and understanding. All spiritual traditions have their equivalent to the Five Mindfulness Trainings.
The first training is to protect life, to decrease violence in oneself, in the family and in society. The second training is to practice social justice, generosity, not stealing and not exploiting other living beings. The third is the practice of responsible sexual behavior in order to protect individuals, couples, families and children. The fourth is the practice of deep listening and loving speech to restore communication and reconcile. The fifth is about mindful consumption, to help us not bring toxins and poisons into our body or mind.
The Five Mindfulness Trainings are based on the precepts developed during the time of the Buddha to be the foundation of practice for the entire lay practice community. I have translated these precepts for modern times, because mindfulness is at the foundation of each one of them. With mindfulness, we are aware of what is going on in our bodies, our feelings, our minds and the world, and we avoid doing harm to ourselves and others. Mindfulness protects us, our families and our society. When we are mindful, we can see that by refraining from doing one thing, we can prevent another thing from happening. We arrive at our own unique insight. It is not something imposed on us by an outside authority.
Practicing the mindfulness trainings, therefore, helps us be more calm and concentrated, and brings more insight and enlightenment.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Happiness: Essential Mindfulness Practices (2009)