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The Five Mindfulness Trainings remind us of our deep aspiration to live each day with a calm mind and an open heart. They provide invaluable guidelines for mindful living.

The Buddha’s precepts encouraged his lay followers to abstain from five actions that create suffering: killing, stealing, engaging in sex with inappropriate partners, lying, and using alcohol and other intoxicants. In the Plum Village tradition, we study and recite the precepts as the Five Mindfulness Trainings, a reformulation for our time by Thich Nhat Hanh. The trainings are guardrails on the path of mindfulness that preserve and encourage our practice.

Our commitment to the trainings deepens when we receive them formally in a Five Mindfulness Trainings transmission ceremony. This transmission publicly joins us with the tradition of mindfulness practice passed from teacher to student in an unbroken line from the Buddha, through many generations of Indian, Chinese and Vietnamese teachers, through Thich Nhat Hanh, to us.

As in past years, the Still Water Mindfulness Practice Center will join with the Mindfulness Practice Center of Fairfax to transmit the Three Refuges and the Five Mindfulness Trainings. The ceremony will take place online and in-person (at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Oakton, Virginia) on Saturday, January 6th, 2024, beginning at 9:00 am (Eastern time).

Practitioners who are interested in receiving the trainings on January 7th are invited to participate in preparatory classes. Still Water MPC will offer a series of five classes, each exploring one of the Five Mindfulness Trainings.

1st Training, Reverence For Life: Thursday, November 9

2nd Training, True Happiness: Thursday, November 16

3rd Training, True Love: Thursday, November 30

4th Training, Loving Speech and Deep Listening: Thursday, December 7

5th Training, Nourishment and Healing: Thursday, December 14

The preparatory classes will be offered as part of Still Water’s regular gathering on Thursday evenings, 7:00 to 8:30 pm. A special small group session for those interested in receiving the Mindfulness Trainings will be held each of the Thursdays from about 8:30 to 9:00 .

If you are considering receiving the trainings in January, you are invited to register for the Still Water preparatory classes so we know of your interest. When you register, you will receive a Zoom link for the Thursdays evening classes.

(Information about the MPCF preparatory classes will be on their website.)

We encourage all to attend the in-person and online ceremony on January 6, 2024. It is a joyous and heartening community event and our presence will support those who are receiving trainings. Those who will be receiving the trainings are encouraged to invite their families and friends.

If you would like to receive or renew the Mindfulness Trainings through the Still Water MPC, please complete the online application.

Two of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books spotlight the trainings: The Mindfulness Survival Kit - Five Essential Practices, and For A Future To Be Possible. A helpful eight page commentary on the trainings from Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society is available on the Still Water website.