So, while we need to lay a solid foundation of practice with the moral teachings, we see that “shila practice” is not some mere staging ground we leave behind when prajna is achieved. The Dalai Lama has been quoted as saying, “If a teacher teaches that an enlightened person lives beyond the precepts, that his acts are not ‘confined’ by shila, then that teacher has not practiced correctly. An enlightened person’s life manifests as a life of shila.” These trainings are not merely preliminary practices nor descriptions of the goal; they are an essential part of the means.
When people react negatively to hearing about the yamas and the precepts, it is because they think of morality as a rigid code of restrictions. If we habitually think in terms of freedom to rather than as freedom from, we naturally want to rebel against restriction. We have been trained to think happiness comes from doing what we want, yet if we stop to take a moment and really look at how we have been living, we have to admit that we have been doing pretty much what we want for all our lives, and it hasn’t really brought us the lasting happiness we imagined! All true yoga is ultimately the middle way between self-indulgence and rigid restriction.
Those of us who have been inspired by the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh practice what he calls the five mindfulness trainings. Each of the five begins not with the restraining action of the precept but with the commitment to cultivate certain positive qualities.
The Five Mindfulness Trainings
The First Mindfulness Training
Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.
The Second Mindfulness Training
Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I am committed to cultivating loving-kindness and learning ways to work for the well-being of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I will practice generosity by sharing my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in real need. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others. I will respect the property of others, but I will prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on the earth.
The Third Mindfulness Training
Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without love and a long-term commitment. To preserve the happiness of myself and others, I am determined to respect my commitments and the commitments of others. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct.
The Fourth Mindfulness Training
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I am determined to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope. I will not spread news that I do not know to be certain and will not criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause discord, or that can cause the family or the community to break. I am determined to make all efforts to reconcile all conflicts, however small.
The Fifth Mindfulness Training
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I will ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society.
These trainings embody the kind of life that helps create ease and stability in our bodies and our minds, individually and collectively. We do not practice shila because we have been told to do so, but because we have tried the other way and it hasn’t worked for us. We can see that living according to the trainings and the yamas helps to calm our minds and open our hearts. We do not refrain from harming ourselves or others because we will be punished or because we have been told it is wrong. We refrain from intentionally causing harm because we know that if we do, we cannot help but become agitated—consciously or unconsciously. And as practitioners committed to developing our minds and our insight, it behooves us to do all that we can to aid ourselves in calming our minds. We cannot look deeply if the waters of mind are churning.
Living with the precepts is truly a training process in mindfulness. They are said to serve us as the North Star has served sailors for millennia—they orient us and give direction to our life’s journey—but by following the North Star we do not expect to ever actually arrive at it. The precepts and yamas are a map but not the territory itself; the territory is our lived experience, moment by moment, breath by breath.
The more we engage with the precepts, the more we see for ourselves how liberating they are. The purpose of Dharma practice is to become awake, liberated, free. The precepts allow us to awaken to reality and to choose how to respond more fully and creatively to life. The alternative is to merely react mindlessly, conditioned by our body’s sensations, feelings, perceptions, and mental formations. Ironically, we then label such reactivity as spontaneous action! In fact, we haven’t a prayer of a chance to act spontaneously if we remain unaware of what it is we are reacting to!
INTERLUDE
MY OWN EXPERIENCE WITH THE PRECEPTS
Soon after I formally received the precepts from Thich Nhat Hanh, I was eating at an English pub-restaurant that was serving a “vegetarian pasty.” However, as I took my first bite, I tasted the butter that had been used in the pastry shell. Immediately the thought of the source of the milk that had become the butter arose in my mind. I had known for a long time that the commercial dairy industry was responsible for much animal cruelty, but now this knowledge became internalized in a deeply visceral way. I could actually feel the suffering that went into the production of the butter that I was now taking into myself. I became intimate with the awareness of how implicated I was in the untold suffering of countless beings throughout the world.
At that time in my life, I still ate fish and other animal flesh occasionally. From that moment on, I became a vegetarian. Of course, I had long heard many arguments for a vegetarian diet, from its health value to the environmental benefits and the ethical considerations. I even considered some of them quite worthy. But, with the mindfulness evoked through the precepts, I felt the suffering involved in the consumption of animals, and it just became more painful to eat meat than not to. I claim no special virtue in being a vegetarian. Most schools of yoga encourage vegetarianism—I will return to this topic later—but the point I wish to emphasize now is that those who take the precepts, whether formally or informally, ultimately have to honor their own practice and work on it continually, according to their own insights, conscience, and beliefs. If I allow my vegetarianism to lead me into self-righteousness, in a very real way I will have betrayed my practice.
A last point I would like to make about my experience of having received the precepts and practicing with them is how aware I�
�ve become of their interdependence. Practicing any one precept deeply is practicing them all. Although practitioners have the option of receiving whatever precepts they choose, I see how truly impossible it is to avoid those that are not chosen.
For instance, if one received just the first precept, one may think it fairly easy to avoid killing and to protect the lives of others. We may know, as I mentioned earlier, that it is impossible to observe this training absolutely, since we kill when we boil water, and the vegetables we eat have also been alive. We may not have been the ones who pulled them from the ground, but we are implicated nonetheless. Yet, for most of us, we will feel that this is the extent of our killing. But is it? Once we take the precept into ourselves as our practice (and not just some nice ideal), we begin to see that we can kill someone’s spirit through mean and vicious speech (the fourth precept), and that we kill parts of ourselves through improper diet (the fifth). And it is also true that we can kill and destroy through sexually irresponsible behavior—quite literally as well as metaphorically. Indeed, if we look deeply into any one precept, we see the spirit of the other four.
A vow is a statement of intent. It is our intentions that generate behavior and karma. The vow gives us energy to persevere in our practice. You can vow to feed one person, or you can vow to feed ten thousand. You may not be able to feed all ten thousand, but the intention is what gives us the energy to try. In this spirit, I have vowed to practice and live by the Five Mindfulness Trainings. Every day of my life, this practice gives me energy to live as honorably—as “nobly”—as I can. The precepts act as bells of mindfulness calling me back from the distortions of a sometimes busy and harried life. They save me from getting completely caught up in thoughtlessness, in forgetfulness and mindlessness. And so I still feel as if receiving the five precepts is the greatest gift I have ever given myself.
Right Consumption
The first of the precepts taught by the Buddha (ahimsa, or “nonharm”) is often traditionally worded as “Do not kill” or “Affirm life,” and the fifth precept as “Refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs” or “Avoid clouding the mind with intoxicants.” The fact that precepts are seen as guidelines rather than as commandments has led to a variety of opinions over how to practice these precepts.
Some schools, teachers, or practitioners interpret the first precept to mean that one should hold to a vegetarian diet. Others say that eating animal flesh is allowed as long as one eats mindfully. Some say that to eat animals in moderation is the Middle Way approach to food consumption as opposed to the ascetic approach.
Within the non-Buddhist yoga tradition, there is less dissent from the preference for vegetarianism. In fact, vegetarianism is the much-preferred mode, although some Tantrikas do eat flesh as part of their ritual practice. In the wider yoga tradition, diet has been given much thought and consideration. The Bhagavad Gita, for instance, goes on at great length as to the qualities of various diets. Here, as well as in most yoga texts, food is grouped according to the three gunas, or fundamental qualities of nature: sattva, rajas, and tamas.
Sattva, in the context of the gunas, refers to the state of tranquility, balance, clarity, and harmony. A metaphor for sattva can be the surface of a body of water on a windless day that is clear, fully reflective, and undisturbed by any ripples or waves. Rajas is the state of activity and agitation. The image is that same body of water on a very windy day, with its surface disturbed by waves and ripples, causing great distortions in its reflectivity. And tamas is the state of inertia, dullness, and heaviness. Imagine that body of water now stagnant, covered in a layer of scum and algae, quite unreflective. Then, imagine our minds to be like that body of water. All true yogic practices are designed to cultivate a more tranquil, calm, clear, and truly reflective mind, over the busy, distorted mind state of rajas or the dull heaviness of tamas.
The traditional yoga teaching is that since foods have these qualities, to live a yogic lifestyle implies choosing foods (along with all other practices) that lead to ever greater sattva. It is taught that food should help the mind to develop tranquility; it should not stiffen or harden the body with toxins; and it should be able to be digested without wasting a lot of energy.
Sattvic foods are natural, ideally organic, not overly processed, refined or excessively spiced, and include whole grains, legumes, fresh nuts and seeds, fresh vegetables, and, when easily digestible, milk and milk products such as paneer, the soft, unsalted cheese used in much Indian cooking. They are free of additive colors or chemicals. If sattvic foods are prepared with a lot of spices, or are made to be overly sour, hot, or salty, they are said to become rajasic, and are thought to produce restlessness in the body and mind. Other rajasic foods include the flesh of animals freshly slaughtered. All foods that are old, stale, overcooked, and “left-over” in any sense are seen as tamasic. This includes the flesh of animals slaughtered more than a day or two ago.
Besides the quality of the food itself, the tradition states that the ambiance should be pleasant, quiet, tranquil, and well ventilated. Also, the food should be well chewed so as to aid in the digestion and assimilation of the nutrients. Eating slowly and moderately are of such importance that it has been said that it is better to fast than to eat fast! Drinking water should be pure and at room temperature (never iced) and imbibed before or after eating and avoided while eating.
Within the Buddhist yoga tradition, some argue that flesh eating is appropriate because there is scriptural evidence that the Buddha himself ate animal flesh. It has been widely taught that the Buddha’s consumption of spoiled boar’s flesh led to his death (which is hardly a recommendation for flesh eating!) In fact, most scholars now believe that the phrase usually translated as “hog’s meat” should in fact be translated as an objective genitive and so would read as “food loved by pigs,” or “pig’s joy”; in other words, a tree mushroom or truffle, of which pigs are extremely fond.
Many have long taught that the Buddha said it was acceptable to eat flesh if it was not killed expressly for you, but we have to ask how plausible it is that the Buddha would sanction the eating of animal flesh in all circumstances except when someone had reason to suspect that the animal had been killed specifically for them? If the Buddha had in fact uttered such statements, that would mean that with the exception of the handful of people who were offered flesh from an animal killed just for them, and of course hunters, slaughterers, and fishermen, everyone else could freely eat meat! This flies in the face of the teaching of nonharming, which makes the one who causes another to take life equally culpable and also implies that slaughtering and butchering were approved of by the Buddha, while the Pali canon elsewhere clearly states that these are trades forbidden to Buddhists.
Some Mahayana teachers and practitioners argue that vegetables are sentient beings, so not only is it no more compassionate or virtuous to be a vegetarian, but it also sets up a false hierarchy based upon discrimination to become vegetarian! I would merely argue that the first precept does indeed encourage the cultivation of reverence for all life. And, yes, it is true that vegetables are alive. I would go further and admit that I am quite aware that when I boil water for my tea, I am destroying countless beings that live within the water. But to say that because vegetables are also alive, it doesn’t make sense to choose to be a vegetarian (so we might as well go ahead and enjoy our hamburgers) is to ultimately make a fatuous argument.
Finally, as regards the argument for vegetarianism, we in the West cannot blindly ignore the horrendous cruelty of factory animal “food” production. Because of their living conditions and the modes of their slaughter, animals live in fear, pain, and suffering. To eat the flesh of their bodies is to be fully implicated in their pain—and in the causes and conditions of their terrible state.
As for the fifth precept, again, some teachers and schools interpret it to mean total abstinence from alcohol or other mind-altering drugs, while others maintain that it allows for limited consumption, as long as one doesn’t be
come inebriated or mentally fuzzy.
By extension, this precept also relates to other forms of mental intoxication, as the phrasing of Thich Nhat Hanh’s fifth mindfulness training makes explicit. We can drug ourselves with television, movies, books, computer games, conversations, etc. We can even zone ourselves out with dharma books! The main point is that we should avoid using anything to deaden ourselves to what is happening at any given moment.
Notice that the fifth training doesn’t tell us what books or movies or foods are toxic to our body or consciousness. It is up to us to practice awareness in order to see for ourselves the effects of various media and to then choose that which promotes clarity and harmony and to let go of that which dulls the mind or body. We are back to choosing that which is sattvic over that which is rajasic or tamasic.
PART TWO
CULTIVATING MINDFULNESS: REMEMBERING THE PRESENT
CHAPTER FOUR
WHAT IS MINDFULNESS?
THE CULTIVATION and maintenance of mindfulness is such an important—indeed central—aspect of Buddhist practice that the Buddha included it not only as the penultimate limb of the Eightfold Path but also as the first of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, which we will discuss a bit later.
Mindfulness Yoga Page 8