Train

In the Plum Village tradition, there are a number of ways to exercise our new-found habits of stillness, listening, and acceptance. A guideline for those just beginning their practice is called the Five Mindfulness Trainings. The Five Trainings help us map the insights we uncover in meditation to our daily activities and to our family and social relationships. Most of the ideas are common to other spiritual and ethical traditions.

Each Training begins as an invitation to awareness – acknowledging how actions contribute to suffering – and ends with a path to diminish that suffering. At first reading the words may seem simple, yet as we look deeper into the meaning behind them, and further into their implications in our lives, we discover their meaning and scope to be rich and beautiful.

Those who wish to deepen their practice, such as our monastic brothers and sisters or members of the Order of Interbeing, study a more complete list of precepts known as the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. In the monasteries and sanghas that follow the Plum Village tradition, the Mindfulness Trainings are read in community once a month. This reading allows us to recall and reinvigorate our intention to live peaceful, generous lives.

To help us bring mindfulness into our busy days, we have what Thầy calls a Cong Phu Journal. With it, we watch different activities of the day, and observe our level of mindfulness as we engage in them. You can use a piece of paper and write the activities, or you can use the digital version here on our website.