Try a Little Mindfulness Training with Thich Nhat Hanh

 

02.05.2021 TRY A LITTLE MINDFULNESS TRAINING WITH THICH NHAT HANH In mindfulness meditation, you’re trying to stabilize and calm your mind. With some dedication, you will begin to discover that this calmness or harmony is a natural aspect of the mind, which mindfulness meditation practice helps develop and strengthen. Eventually, you will be able to remain peacefully in your mind without struggling. “Calmness, a natural aspect of the mind?” you ask. “Remaining peacefully in my mind without struggle? Are you serious?”  This may seem like a tall order, but as the teacher of Zen, mindfulness, and peace, Thich Nhat Hanh, encourages the reader in “The Practice of Mindfulness,”: “You don’t have to wait 10 years to experience this happiness. It is present in every moment of your daily life.”  It is easy to become swept up by worries about the future or regrets of past mistakes and forget where you truly belong. “Our true home is in the here and the now,” continues Thay, as he is affectionately known by students. “Life is available only in the here and the now, and it is our true home.” In the following offerings, Thich Nhat Hanh guides you through a series of exercises that will help you release tension, harness compassion, revere life, and become more mindful.  May these teachings help you find your way back to your true home, the present moment. —Ross Nervig, audience engagement editor, LionsRoar.com

Thich Nhat Hanh on The Practice of Mindfulness The great meditation master Thich Nhat Hanh teaches five mindfulness exercises to help you live with happiness and joy. Mindfulness is the energy that helps us recognize the conditions of happiness that are already present in our lives. You don’t have to wait ten years to experience this happiness. It is present in every moment of your daily life. There are those of us who are alive but don’t know it. But when you breathe in, and you are aware of your in-breath, you touch the miracle of being alive. That is why mindfulness is a source of happiness and joy.

To Practice Mindfulness Is to Return to Life Thich Nhat Hanh on mindfulness, harnessing compassion, and cherishing life. To practice mindfulness is to become alive. Life is so precious, yet in our daily lives we are carried away by our forgetfulness, anger, and worries. We are often lost in the past, unable to touch life in the present moment. When we are truly alive, everything we touch or do is a miracle. To practice mindfulness is to return to life in the present moment.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings The five mindfulness trainings are an expression of the five precepts, the core of Buddhist ethics. Thich Nhat Hanh offers a down-to-earth method of practicing mindfulness in daily life. The Five Mindfulness Trainings represent the Buddhist vision for a global spirituality and ethic. They are a concrete expression of the Buddha’s teachings on the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, the path of right understanding and true love, leading to healing, transformation, and happiness for ourselves and for the world. To practice the Five Mindfulness Trainings is to cultivate the insight of interbeing, or Right View, which can remove all discrimination, intolerance, anger, fear, and despair. If we live according to the Five Mindfulness Trainings, we are already on the path of a bodhisattva. Knowing we are on that path, we are not lost in confusion about our life in the present or in fears about the future.

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