The Five Mindfulness Trainings

The other evening at the Berkeley Monastery, Ven. Heng Sure said something he's said many times before in different ways:

The amazing thing about the Buddhadharma is that even though it's gone through so many cultures, so many countries, and so many languages, all practitioners say the same thing: purify your mind.

He makes a great point about the Dharma traversing so far. Wherever it has gone, it has been adapted to suit the propensities, predilections, and sensibilities of the local people without losing the essential meaning. This wholly pragmatic approach was championed by the Buddha himself, who always taught to people on their level. Never too high or too, but just in the middle.

Right now as I'm writing this (and hopefully as you're reading this) the Dharma is adapting yet again, this time to The West. Buddhism has been in the West for barely a century but it is slowly making inroads and we're just beginning to see the embryonic development of Western Buddhist traditions.

If I were asked what teacher/tradition has, to date, been most successful at adapting the Asian Buddhist traditions to Western ones, my answer would be clear and immediate: Thich Nhat Hanh and The Order of Interbeing. Before I continue, let me be clear about what exactly I don't mean by 'adapting'. I do not mean stripping away any and all things that resemble of "cultural baggage" or "organized religion". Nor do I mean forcing Westerners to practice in the exact same way as Asian practitioners have done for the past thousands of years. What I do mean by 'adapting' is striking a balance between these two extremes: a middle path, if you will.

One subtly powerful point that illustrates this is translation. Take the word sila for example. It's almost always translated as 'precept', a word which the OED defines as, among other things:

1) A general command or injunction; a rule for action or conduct, esp. a rule for moral conduct, a maxim; spec. a divine command.
2) A rule or instruction on the practical aspects of a subject; any of the guidelines relating to the performance of a technical operation.
4) A written order, usually from a sheriff to a returning officer, to make arrangements for an election.

I suppose it's not a completely awful translation, particularly for a Victorian audience but if one studies the meaning of sila for just a little bit, one will quickly find that sila is NOT list of 'do's and don'ts'. Sila is a way of life and a practice that we continuously work to refine. The vast majority of teachings/traditions use 'precept' despite the mismatch in meaning but a few have found a way around this by simply not translating the word. Thay, however, has translated sila to better reflect the true meaning of the term. Instead of 'precept' he uses the term 'Mindfulness Training'. Why is this better than 'precept'? Well, because Mindfulness Training is precisely what sila is; a course in the training of mindfulness.

But it's not simply the translation of the term that impresses me; it's the explanation and presentation as well. In the next five weeks, I'll be posting each of Thay's take on the Five Mindfulness trainings, beginning with the first: not to take the life of any living thing or he puts it "Reverence for Life".

Lotuses for you all, buddhas to be.