The Five Mindfulness Trainings

Dhammapada: verses 246 and 247
Translated from the Pali by Acharya Buddharakkhita.

With these words, the Buddha laid the foundation for Buddhist ethics 2,500 years ago. As we can see, even in the Buddha's day, murder, violence, deceit, theft, sexual misconduct, and substance abuse were destroying lives. Two and a half millennia later, Thich Naht Hanh said he was dismayed to learn just how much suffering in western societies "is the result of alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual abuse, and similar behaviors that have been passed down from generation to generation."

It is indeed sad to see how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Yet, the Buddha's message is a ray of hope and glad tidings amidst human malaise.

Thich Naht Hanh says, "When we put a young person in this society without trying to protect him, he receives violence, hatred, fear, and insecurity every day , and eventually he gets sick. Our conversations, TV programs, advertisements, newspapers, and magazines all water the seeds of suffering in young people, and in not-so-young people as well. ... Taking refuge in these things only makes us feel hungrier and less satisfied, and we want to ingest even more. We need some guidelines, some preventive medicine, to protect ourselves, so we can become healthy again. We have to find a cure for our illness. We have to find something that is good, beautiful, and true, in which we can take refuge.

"When we drive a car, we are expected to observe certain rules so that we do not have an accident. Two thousand five hundred years ago, the Buddha offered certain guidelines to his lay students to help them live peaceful, wholesome, and healthy lives. They were the Five Mindfulness Trainings."

What Thich Naht Hanh calls the Five Mindfulness Trainings have long been known as the Five Precepts, five injunctions against the behaviors the Buddha cited in the verses from the Dhammapada quoted above. They constituted the minimum ethical standard for successful Buddhist practice. The Buddha recognized that anyone whose life is disturbed by the consequences of unwholesome behaviors cannot be equanimous and mindful.

Thich Naht Hanh says, "When we are mindful, we can see that by refraining from doing "this", we prevent "that" from happening. This kind of insight is not imposed on us by an outside authority. It is the fruit of our own observation. Practicing the mindfulness trainings, therefore, helps us be more calm and concentrated and brings more insight and enlightenment, which makes our practice of the mindfulness trainings more solid."

He found, however, that westerners did not appreciate "precepts", thinking they were "authoritarian commandments" which sliced ethical practice into good and evil. And he says he agrees.

"Precepts are different from 'commandments' or 'rules.' They are insights born from mindful observation and direct experience of suffering. They are guidelines that help us train ourselves to live in a way that protects us and those around us."

Thich Naht Hanh has titled, expanded, and written commentaries on the Five Mindfulness Trainings, which can be read by clicking on the links at left.

The source of the quotations of Thich Naht Hanh come from his book "For A Future To Be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Mindfulness Trainings"