09.15.2023 Try a Little Mindfulness 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 late 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’s easy to become swept up by worries about the future or regrets of past mistakes, forgetting where you truly belong. “Our true home is in the here and the now,” continues Thich Nhat Hanh. “Life is available only in the here and the now.” The three teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh featured below offer a series of exercises that will help you release tension, harness compassion, revere life, and become more mindful.  May they help you find your way back to  the present moment this weekend — your true home. —Ross Nervig, Associate Editor, Lion’s Roar Thich Nhat Hanh on The Practice of Mindfulness The late Thich Nhat Hanh taught these 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. ADVERTISEMENT 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. Practicing mindfulness, we see the suffering that is caused by the destruction of life everywhere, and we vow to cultivate compassion and use it as a source of energy to protect the lives of people, animals, plants and minerals. When we see suffering, compassion is born in us. It reflects the Buddha’s first sermon, that we have to be in touch with suffering. 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. LION’S ROAR PROMOTION