Receiving the Mindfulness Trainings

By Judith Toy

In the 1980s, Thich Nhat Hanh formalized a way for people to deepen their commitment to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha within a worldwide community of engaged Buddhists. First, people may commit to following the Five Mindfulness Trainings, adapted by Thay from the traditional five Buddhist precepts. Second, people may study the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, receive Sangha mentoring, and subsequently apply to join the lay Order of Interbeing (OI). When receiving the Five and Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, a practitioner is given a new Dharma name. In some cases, Thay may invite people to take a third step: becoming a Dharma teacher in this tradition.

The Five Mindfulness Trainings are worded in such a way that all over our planet, people who aspire to wake up, find common ground within them. As a clear and concrete expression of the Buddha’s teachings, they embrace 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.

 Double Belonging 

I do not dip my big toe in the water of a pool; I dive headfirst into the deep end. In the mid-nineties, a few years after beginning to read Thay’s books, I heard him speak in New York City at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. At the same time, I read his new book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, and was floored. That this teacher was able to marry Christian and Buddhist ideals in such a clear and unbiased way seemed to me like a miracle.

What stopped me from considering transmission of the Five Mindfulness Trainings was that I did not want to renounce my Christianity. Then I heard that Thay kept a statue of Jesus on his altar. I read his book and began to understand the idea of double belonging. I immediately aspired to join Thay’s Order of Interbeing. I approached my first Zen teacher, Patricia Dai-En Bennage, and asked if she could help.

“I’m not really qualified to mentor you, Judith,” she answered. “But I can put you in touch with Lyn Fine, who founded the New York Metro chapter of the Community of Mindful Living, Thich Nhat Hanh’s lay Sangha there.”

A Loving Mentor 

The two-and-a-half-hour bus ride from New Hope, Pennsylvania turned out to be well worth the wait. Lyn Fine is a quiet, petite power pack of a woman. She received the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings in 1989. Soon after we met in 1995, she received Lamp Transmission, encouragement to teach, from Thay. She was able to model Thay’s clear and gentle approach for me. More than that, Lyn climbed onto the joy side of my depressed Libran scales, stood there, and did not get off until they were in balance again. To Lyn I owe my awakening to the middle way.

After meeting her the first time, I willingly began taking the trip to Lyn’s vintage, high-ceilinged New York apartment, where she lived with her mother, Leonore. It was a revelation to me that in their personal living space they hosted Days of Mindfulness, bringing the New York City public into their living room. Always by example, Lyn taught me how to chant the Heart Sutra, how to listen to a Dharma talk without busily taking notes, how to practice indoor and outdoor walking meditation, how to use the chanting book, and how to invite the mindfulness bell in the OI way.

Lyn often delivered her love gazes to me—looks that one young person called “eye hugs.” Her long, attentive looks into my eyes said, “Dear One, I am here and you are here, and I cherish you in this moment.” At first I wasn’t sure how to respond. But soon enough, I calmed down and dropped my separate self, returning her gaze with focus and affection. My speech was as direct as Lyn’s eyes. I let her know straight away that I was interested in ordination, which meant taking the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings and becoming an OI member and lay minister. But first things first—I needed to enter the stream by receiving the Five Mindfulness Trainings in a ceremony Lyn was authorized to offer.

She began visiting our Pennsylvania farm, soon afterwards dedicated as Old Path Zendo. My husband Philip and I followed Lyn’s lead, inviting the public into our home for mindfulness practice and retreats which she led. She gave her first Dharma talk, ever, at Old Path Zendo.

A Beautiful Dream 

In an age-old ceremony one October afternoon in 1996, Philip and I touched the earth side by side as we received the Five Mindfulness Trainings from Lyn. I felt like we were moving in slow motion, as if in a beautiful dream. She gave me the lineage name Clear Light of the Source, and Philip, Flowing Stream of the Source.

The memories we gathered from those times are precious as breath: Lyn arriving in the zendo with a stack of books, papers, and a glass of warm water, wearing her Mona Lisa smile and making a nest on her cushion; Lyn’s soothing voice as she taught pebble meditation to the children of our Sangha; Lyn playing “Na mo Bo tat Quan The Am”* on her recorder; each of us scattering ashes of a Sangha member’s son into the garden while Lyn played her flute.

After some years in Pennsylvania, my husband and I moved to North Carolina and became founders of the Cloud Cottage Sangha. From time to time at Cloud Cottage, a Dharma teacher offers transmission of the Five Mindfulness Trainings as a way of deepening our commitment to this way of life. We try to remind new folks that these are not commandments or laws of Buddhism; they are more like a flower opening to the sun.

In two spring events hosted by Cloud Cottage this year, eighteen people received the trainings. Maggie, Joe, and Bambi were among them.

On the Right Path 

Maggie Schlubach is a retired wedding planner who became Brave Action of the Heart in one of our ceremonies, led by California Dharma teacher Peggy Rowe Ward. Maggie says, “My biggest hesitation about receiving the trainings—and it took me several years to make this decision—was that I would not live up to my commitment.”

For Maggie, who approached her decision in a slower, more processed way than I, the ceremony inspired “a sense of wonder and gratitude. And I feel changed—more at peace and more certain that I am on the right path. I feel loved and appreciated, and feel like we have an extended family, especially on Sunday mornings at tea and when we plan events together.”

A Spoke in a Wheel 

Joe Lily is a five-star chef, and his new wife Laura Domincovic is an anthropologist. Together, they touched the earth to receive the trainings along with Maggie and several others in our ceremony. For extra encouragement, Philip and I bequeathed our lineage names to Laura and Joe. Joe is now Flowing Stream of the Heart, and Laura, Clear Light of the Heart.

Joe feels he has been living the trainings for years. “(I’m) not saying I have perfected them, but this commitment will help bring me closer to them. I had no hesitation about receiving them, just elation. During the ceremony I felt honored, excited, and lucky to have found this fulfillment in my lifetime. Many people live their whole lives and never truly explore their spiritual desires.”

I asked Joe if he felt changed after receiving the precepts. “The results are not in yet,” he said. “Actually, what I expect is a more gradual, stable growth over the rest of my life. I feel like a small part of this beautiful Sangha, like a spoke in a wheel, contributing enough to help the wheel roll, but not so much that the wheel collapses in my absence.”

Bathed in a Lineage Stream

Yoga teacher, dancer, and percussionist Bambi Favali, Deep Rhythm of the Heart, was inspired to receive the Five Mindfulness Trainings because she knew that when she set goals and commitments, “rather than just floundering around,” she would be likely to keep them. And she wanted group support on her spiritual journey.

“If I don’t attend Sangha, I feel guilty, because I feel I have not honored my commitment. My biggest question was: what if I fall short of my commitment? I had no issue with the trainings themselves because they align perfectly with my belief system and lifestyle.”

Immediately after the transmission ceremony, Bambi’s husband underwent double knee surgery and she became his caregiver. “I did not want to leave him, so I got out of rhythm with my intention right away.” Bambi now enjoys ride-sharing with a friend to help support her renewed commitment to attend Sangha gatherings and Days of Mindfulness. She feels that her name, Deep Rhythm of the Heart, aligns her “with the pulse of all that is.”

For Bambi, the Sangha is an extension of her spiritual family. The ceremony “felt like I was being bathed in the stream of the lineage of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Buddhism, like being inducted into the stream of the energy of the masters. It feels to me that deep inside I have known these things and done these things before, and in this lifetime, I am reintegrating this aspect of my soul energy.”

“On a very deep level there is the reintegration into a bigger consciousness, and remembering, and seeing it in the words of the Mindfulness Trainings. Hearing them recited in our Sangha each time is another awakening into the beauty and depth of the teachings.”

If we live according to the Five Mindfulness Trainings, we are already on the path of a bodhisattva, one who lives for the sake of others. Knowing we are on that path, taking each step with our spiritual family, we are not lost in confusion about our life in the present or fears about the future.

* “Na mo Bo tat Quan The Am” means “Homage to the bodhisattva who hears the cries of the world.”

Judith Toy, True Door of Peace, is author of the book Murder as a Call to Love, published this year. She and her husband Philip Toy, True Mountain of Insight, have led Days of Mindfulness and retreats in the U.S., and Ireland, and Scotland. They practice with Cloud Cottage Community of Mindful Living in North Carolina.