Dear Thay, dear Sangha,

After the 21-Day Retreat in Plum Village last summer, a group of European Wake Up friends gathered for their monthly sessions online. Many were inspired to study the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. At this moment, several Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings study groups within the Wake Up community in Europe, the United States, and internationally are meeting every month. This planted a seed in my mind to explore the trainings further in the Mindfulness Bell.

For the Summer 2019 issue, after Mitchell Ratner and I brainstormed which topics to focus on, Plum Village announced the 2018-2019 Rains Retreat would focus on the study of the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings. I saw this as a sign to deepen our practice of the trainings.

Thanks to feedback about featuring international guest editors, I invited Teri West, a Dharma teacher from England who received Lamp Transmission in 2016, as a guest editor for the Autumn 2019 issue.

We received so many heartfelt submissions since the beginning of this year that Teri and I agreed to continue exploring the trainings. In this issue, we hope the reflections on taking care of our anger, true community and communication, right livelihood, and other trainings will nourish your bodhicitta.

May the offerings and beautiful artwork bring you peace and joy.

Hong-An

Conscious Aspiration of the Heart

Dear Thay, dear Sangha,

I first thought of receiving the Fourteen Precepts, as they were then known, purely for the sake of credibility.

During a 1996 retreat in England, Thay asked for a practice centre to be founded in the UK. He provided a photograph of himself as a sixteen-year-old monk to place in the centre, and gave the centre its name, Being Peace.

I wanted very much to help. I was pointed to a couple of people in brown jackets who had begun to talk about fulfilling Thay’s wish. They said it would be a good idea for me to become an Order of Interbeing Core Community member, so that our very small community would know I was committed to deepening my practice and to the community. On first reading the trainings, I thought I was already practising some and had been doing so long before visiting Plum Village.

I had led an unusual life: leaving school at fifteen, supporting myself from an early age in a way that was not always the most ethical, and experiencing addiction, my own and others’. Eventually, my husband’s heroin use became dangerous for my two young children, and I became a homeless single parent. I was given a council flat and learned to feed and clothe us on state benefits. Once the children were at school, I trained to be a secretary so I could earn a living. In the fifty or so years since, I’ve found more interesting ways to make a living. But the words in the transmission ceremony resonate with me still: “your highest career.” I’d never had a career, and this one felt very satisfying.

Before receiving the Five Precepts in 1992, I had never wished to join any community. Following a life-threatening infection in the mid-70s, however, I vowed to become a “better” person. The Five Precepts, which were described as a “recipe for a happy life,” seemed a jolly good way to continue my journey with the added support and companionship of a spiritual family.

To receive the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, therefore, felt a good move. I couldn’t disagree with any of the trainings and saw how committing before the community would support my wish to become a good citizen and take further steps on the path of engaged practice. If it would also help me to help create Plum Village UK, then why not?

I was raised by atheists. I had no religious leaning and believed in nothing apart from my own experience and capabilities. When I read that by asking to receive the trainings I would still not be bound to any teachings, even Buddhist ones, I felt even more confidence in joining the community.

I see the trainings as not only a mirror but also as a micro-scope, a tool to examine my thoughts, feelings, and actions. Practising them, I began to learn a great deal about myself and was often not happy with what I learned, especially where my children were concerned. I also began to see how my own childhood experiences had led to my behaviour as a teenager and young adult. I developed compassion for my young self, which led me to become less judgmental and more compassionate towards others.

The Ninth Mindfulness Training has been the most challenging and rewarding. As a professional storyteller for over fifteen years, I tended to tell “the whole story.” If someone asked a simple question, my answer included a great deal of backstory, even if one sentence would have done. I saw that I needed attention and approval.

I realised how, while in conversations or meetings, my inner commentary often drowned out what others were saying, or judged whose opinions were worth listening to. I now enjoy listening more and speaking less. And sometimes I indulge in sarcasm or teasing; I offer gratitude to my brothers and sisters in the community who have reminded me that I have been less than mindful when speaking with others.

In my bathroom is a 1920s print of a woman going through the pockets of a man’s coat. Underneath is written, “Les paroles s’envolent, les écrits restent.” [The spoken word is fleeting, that which is written down is here to stay.] I feel honoured to be the guest editor for this issue of the Mindfulness Bell. I enjoyed read-ing all the articles and poems submitted, and I trust that the words
in this issue will offer you, the readers, insights and inspiration.

Teri West

True Door of Virtue