Grief and love are deeply interconnected, and it was my experience of both that led me to write the article “Contemplations on the Five Mindfulness Trainings: A New Paradigm for Racial Justice and the Global Pandemic.” I began writing in 2019 as I supported my brother, Sam, month after month during his treatment for chronic heart failure, which eventually led to his death in February 2020. I was not only grieving his death, but I was also mourning the end of my ambiguous and complicated fifteen-year marriage. This was followed by desperate months of quarantine, isolation, and physical distance due to the Covid pandemic. Each day revealed new and disturbing information about the disproportionate impact of Covid on Black and Latinx people, immigrants, and low-income communities. And then came the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others; the worldwide and national protests calling to defund the police; and the expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement. As each event cascaded into the next, I knew instinctively to turn to the Plum Village mindfulness practice and teachings.

Months before, I had visited Blue Cliff Monastery, a mindfulness practice center in the Plum Village lineage in upstate New York. Just as I was about to walk to the front of the Great Togetherness Hall to offer a dharma talk, a nun had approached me and given me a copy of the Sutra on Transforming Violence and Fear. I turned to this sutra to help me understand my own feelings and the colliding events within the United States and beyond. I read and reflected on the sutra almost daily. Then I began reading the Third Mindfulness Training on True Love because love seemed distant and inaccessible, especially in light of my divorce. Each day, line by line, I read and reflected on this Training and this sutra in the presence of my brother’s death, the global pandemic, and the social upheaval happening all around me.

Shortly after my brother died, protests for racial justice in the United States spread rapidly, with calls for a worldwide reckoning on race in the United States and other countries, I participated in a two-hour virtual healing gathering for BIPOC, led by Ruth King, a respected teacher in the Theravada tradition and author of Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out. It was sponsored by Liberate (now called The Village), a mindfulness app designed for BIPOC. Hundreds of people gathered, expressing grief, rage, and anger. I felt confusion and anger in me as I listened to the speakers. And then Ruth King asked a life-changing question: How do you fight injustice without hating?

Ruth King asked a life-changing question: How do you fight injustice without hating?

The question became a bell of mindfulness for me. I continued to read and reflect on the sutra, the Third Mindfulness Training, and this powerful question. I began to think deeply about the meaning of power, power dynamics, and how to offer my power more skillfully and in greater service to others. Interestingly, my dharma name is Chan Tang Luc—True Sangha Power, or True Power of the Sangha. A dharma name is a personalized name given by a teacher to a student upon their ordination or taking precepts, symbolizing the practitioner’s unique spiritual path. After I received this name at the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings ordination ceremony in 2003, Sister Chân Đức approached me and said, “Power is not what you think it is.” That stayed with me. I have come to understand that she was referring to the Five Spiritual Powers that Thích Nhất Hạnh articulated in his book The Art of Power: faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight.

With all this in mind, the Contemplations on the Five Mindfulness Trainings emerged. I was motivated to write them to understand and make sense of my feelings of numbness, loss, and grief, as well as my outrage over the social upheaval occurring at that time. I spoke to Marisela Gomez, a dear friend and mindfulness practitioner who is now a lay dharma teacher, and we agreed to write an article. The last time we had written an essay together was in 2015, after a white supremacist murdered nine Black worshippers at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. We wrote that essay to better understand our feelings, as a path of self-healing and self-love, and to offer love and support to others who were feeling rage, terror, and so much more.

Sometimes to truly heal from loss and grief, we need to come face to face with a difficult truth, with regret, pain, and old wounds that are asking for a second chance to be lifted up, woven back into our life, cherished, and welcomed home. At times, my life has felt like a long process of coming to terms with a series of losses that led me to seek inner healing and inner peace. In a roundabout way, I was being invited toward forgiveness, peacemaking, and compassionate action, to live and love in the direction of kindness and vulnerability. Yet a period of profound personal losses combined with the events of the time brought me to a place of tender fragility, fear, and anxiety. I leaned on my many friends and family members—and still do.

I was especially supported in this healing process by reciting the Five Mindfulness Trainings, sometimes called the Five Wonderful Precepts, as well as the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Plum Village tradition founded by Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh. These Trainings, which I also refer to as precepts, were offered by the Buddha to his monastic and lay followers as clear guidance to lead an ethical, mindful, and joyful life. Thích Nhất Hạnh has described these precepts in countless books and worldwide teachings as a way to cultivate a peaceful and harmonious life.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings help us answer pivotal life questions:

How should I live?
What energy do I want to bring when I enter a room?
How do I act under the circumstances?
What inner guidance informs my behavior?
What are my values?
What is the world asking of me?

Our individual responses to these questions are shaped by our life experience, our values, and sometimes by our energy, health and well-being, and so much more. Whether we are aware of them or not, each of us probably already lives by a set of precepts, or principles and values. Many of us are guided by common precepts such as truthfulness, honesty, and refraining from stealing and cheating. From a tender age, we are taught these ways of becoming “good citizens” in the world, in the workplace, in our family, and with ourselves.

Some people take these precepts through formal vows, such as codes of school or religious conduct. For many, though, these vows can become wooden, flat, perfunctory, and then forgotten over time. We “set and forget” them and then feel bereft from inner guidance when we most need it. So how do we bring these precepts, this internal guidance system, into our daily life and call on them when we need them the most?

Over the years, in attending retreats with Thầy and the Plum Village community, I have come to understand that the precepts are not linear. Instead, each precept connects and is interdependent with all of the precepts. For example, the first precept on reverence for life is interdependent with the fifth precept on consuming mindfully. Since they are all interwoven, practicing one precept will impact your practice of the others. Not only are the precepts interconnected, but we are also interconnected to each other and all the elements in the cosmos. Because of all this, and because our actions have an impact on others whether we are aware of it or not, when you practice the precepts, you are not doing so for yourself alone, as a separate entity—you are doing so for all beings. What you consume and how you consume will have an impact on yourself, on others, and on the earth.

According to Thầy’s teachings on emptiness, your body isn’t just yours; your body belongs to your parents, society, and future generations. All of these have come together to manifest your body, including the trees, the clouds, and the oceans. Your body and your practice are manifestations of the whole cosmos. To practice the precepts is to support not only yourself but also your ancestors, your parents, future generations, and society. To practice the precepts is to recognize this interdependent relationship between you and the cosmos. The precepts are about cultivating conscious awareness and connectedness, especially now, in a society that has gone numb with divisiveness, too-muchness, and too-fastness.

The precepts are an invitation to be in touch with what is wholesome and beneficial in and around us. They are bells of mindfulness. Ultimately, the precepts are opportunities to live and grow a compassionate life of love, peace, and understanding. We might be challenged in our practice at times, and at those times we need to recommit ourselves and reconnect with spiritual friends who support us on the path toward living a healthy and wholesome life.

–Valerie Brown

Preamble to the Contemplations on the Five Mindfulness Trainings

Let us open to another way of understanding the Five Mindfulness Trainings, guiding principles for mindful and ethical living, which call us toward individual and collective awakening, compassion, and peace. We are interconnected. What happens in one part of the universe affects people everywhere. What happens to the Black body affects all bodies. We are called forward. Global pandemics, the climate crisis, social and economic oppression and upheaval are gateways to suffering worldwide, disproportionately impacting Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; disabled people; people currently and historically subject to poverty, war, and genocide; LGBTQIA+ people; people facing health inequities and premature death; people facing generational displacement; and people with historically socially marginalized identities, including those facing oppression because of their abilities, gender, or immigration status. They, we, are not alone. Our lives and livelihoods are interconnected. We are called forward.

We cannot exist independent of, for example, low-wage workers, health care workers, unhoused people, single mothers, undocumented people, the unemployed and underemployed, and similarly situated people. If one such person lives on the knife edge of racial, ethnic, social, structural, and systemic oppression and discrimination, we are all affected. We are called forward.

The practitioner dwells in the now, recognizing the dualistic nature of equanimity and instability, discrimination and nondiscrimination, ill-being and well-being. We practice right view and compassionate action, moving toward right insight. Aware of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all life, we courageously turn to practice wholeheartedly. We are called forward.

Lighting a stick of incense, listening to the sutras, sitting upright and solid, palms joined, the practitioner looks within, and in concentration the path and fruit of skillful action are revealed. We are called forward.

Speak aloud these words with the sangha voice, a true river of understanding.

Contemplation on the First Mindfulness Training: Acknowledging Beauty as Reverence for Life

Aware of the suffering caused by oppression and generational harm based on racial, cultural, social, and ethnic inferiority and superiority, I acknowledge the beauty and violence inherent in life. I vow to resist being complicit in systems and structures that continue to perpetuate injustice, violence, hatred, and delusion instead of reverence of life for marginalized groups and others. I recognize that each person contributes to my individual and our collective awakening, and to the co-creation of a world that celebrates and affirms differences and similarities. All living beings can teach me something, when I remember to pause, breathe, listen deeply with a calm and open mind and heart, and ask myself, “Is there more?” or “What else is here with me?” I honor and respect all life, guided by right view and right effort.

Contemplation on the Second Mindfulness Training: Belonging and Connecting as True Happiness

Aware of the suffering caused by ignorance and aversion of my own and others’ racial, ethnic, cultural, and social history, its legacy and how this affects me, I am committed to learning and connecting to these histories. Aware that there is no genetic or biological difference among racial and ethnic groups, and that these identities were socially constructed by one group to establish dominance over others, I will turn toward all forms of othering with the aspiration of transforming heart and mind. I know that this history has led to fragmentation inside and outside the body and mind and has brought much suffering to all beings. I will notice when emotions of belonging and othering arise, and I will ask myself, “Why?” Whatever feelings, perceptions, or mental formations arise in me, I will embrace and engage them with love in action. I am committed to practicing right resolve, right speech, right action, and right livelihood so I can help relieve this legacy of racial and social suffering. I will practice looking deeply to see that true happiness is not possible without true connection leading to belonging and understanding.

Contemplation on the Third Mindfulness Training: Cherishment as True Love

Aware of the suffering caused by discrimination and oppression, I vow to transform these seeds in myself, my sangha, and society. I recognize the ways in which I have benefitted or not benefitted, explicitly or implicitly, from systems and structures of injustice. I am aware of the legacy of violence, including unlawful police violence, perpetrated against people of various gender identities, expressions, and sexual orientations, Black people, indigenous people, people of color, disabled people, undocumented people, people suffering mental health challenges, and others who are marginalized. I am committed to looking tenderly at my suffering, knowing that I am not separate from others and that the seeds of suffering contain the seeds of joy. I am aware that narrow interpretations of intimate relationships constrain how we cherish each other in our expression of love, leaving many isolated and alienated. I am not afraid of bold love that fosters compassion, justice, and peace, and tender love that seeks understanding. I cherish this breath, body, mind, and moment as an act of healing for myself and for others. I cherish the liberation of all beings guided by the wisdom and the solidity of the sangha as my path of true love.

Contemplation on the Fourth Mindfulness Training: Vulnerability as Deep Listening and Loving Speech

Aware that vulnerability is the essence of our true nature, our humanness, I vow to risk listening for understanding rather than disagreement. I am committed to generous and courageous listening that bridges differences and supports others who may be different from me. When I am not able to understand others, I vow to come back to my breath and my body, and to offer myself gentle patience. I am aware that loving communication rests on honesty, compassion, and openness that align with my highest aspiration to alleviate suffering. When I have hurt others through my unskillful listening or speech, I vow to practice true beneficial regret, making a good apology that acknowledges what I have done and the harm caused, accepting responsibility and being accountable for my behavior, and offering sincere regret for my actions, knowing that this supports the other person and me. Through my practices of vulnerability, forgiveness, and deep listening, I know that my speech will be guided by love and understanding. Practicing in this way supports right speech and right action and guides me to right insight.

Contemplation on the Fifth Mindfulness Training: Welcoming as True Nourishing and Healing

Aware of the suffering caused by the consumption of an inadequate history of racial and ethnic forms of social segregation and injustice, I am committed to healing myself and the world. I am aware that my thoughts, perceptions, feelings, words, and actions may have been influenced by this history. I vow to understand how I have been influenced by embracing and denying this racial, social, and ethnic history of inferiority, superiority, and equality. I will cultivate joy to nourish me in this aspiration. I will practice mindfulness of the four kinds of nutriments to become aware of how edible foods, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness are all influenced by this history. Practicing with right energy and right resolve, my conscious consumption will be guided by right action that welcomes differences without discrimination. This right insight offers true welcoming on this path to nourish and heal myself, my ancestors, my descendants, my sangha, and society.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings keep us centered in life’s storms and joys and remind us that life is a precious gift. The Trainings are a path to liberation and transformation. Practicing these Trainings supports us toward racial and ethnic reconciliation and social change and heals deep suffering. The Five Mindfulness Trainings help us cross this shore of suffering and bring us to the side of true awakening and love. The Contemplations on the Five Mindfulness Trainings are a commentary to these foundational teachings and are meant to offer another way of understanding Thich Nhất Hạnh’s teachings to live an ethical life. We are called forward.

♦

From Love Is Liberation: Five Contemplations for Daily Ethical Living (2026), courtesy of Parallax Press, parallax.org.