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Overview | Location/Dir. | Parking | Protocol | Newcomer Info | Subs. Teachings
Sangha Teachings
1. Mindfulness is the quality of relaxed embodied awareness.
2. With diligent practice, this awareness becomes infused with wisdom and compassion.
3. Diligent practice requires commitment, which is composed of faith, energy, investigation,
will power, and patience.
4. Wisdom is seeing your true nature and the nature of all things with clarity, acceptance, and humility.
5. Wisdom comes through insight which is the fruit of right mindfulness.
6. Compassion is the heart’s quiver that responds to suffering.
THE FIVE PRECEPTS
The Precepts are a tool for combining mindfulness with ethical behavior (sila) in daily life. They are taken at the beginning of every meditation retreat in order to create a safe community (sangha). Likewise, you can utilize these precepts in your daily life to discover those situations where your mind is contracting into grasping and therefore causing suffering.
The Five Precepts:
1. I take as a training precept to refrain from taking life.
2. I take as a training precept to refrain from taking that which is not freely given.
3. I take as a training precept to refrain from sexual misconduct.
4. I take as a training precept to refrain from unwise/unskillful speech.
5. I take as a training precept to refrain from intoxication that clouds the mind.
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Some people find that they are more comfortable stating the precepts positively because they find it more inspiring. Likewise, some people have crafted their own expanded or elaborated positive version because it adds momentum to their mindfulness in daily life.
The following is a sample of positively stated and elaborated version of the Precepts. Feel free to use these or make your own.
The Five Precepts Stated Positively
1. To the best of my ability, I will protect and support life and encourage the fulfillment of potential for love and understanding in others.
2. To the best of my ability, I will take only what is freely given and vow to practice gratitude and generosity.
3. To the best of my ability, I will respect and support on-going relationships, honor my commitments, and practice discernment between the beauty of Eros as a feeling and the compulsiveness to act it out.
4. To the best of my ability, I will say what is true, useful, and timely and practice deep listening such that both my speaking and listening reflects loving-kindness and compassion.
5. To the best of my ability, I will maintain a clear and alert mind that is aware of its motivations, moment to moment, such that it can discern between what is the cause of suffering and what is not the cause of suffering.
