The profound interconnectedness of grief and love served as the catalyst for the creation of "Contemplations on the Five Mindfulness Trainings: A New Paradigm for Racial Justice and the Global Pandemic." The author, Valerie Brown, began this contemplative work in 2019 amidst a period of intense personal loss and societal upheaval. Her journey commenced with supporting her brother, Sam, through his terminal illness, culminating in his death in February 2020. This personal bereavement was compounded by the dissolution of a fifteen-year marriage, followed by the isolating and disorienting months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Black and Latinx communities, immigrants, and low-income populations became starkly evident, intensifying existing societal inequities. This period of personal and collective suffering was further amplified by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, sparking widespread protests and a global re-examination of systemic racism and police brutality.
It was within this confluence of personal tragedy and societal crisis that Brown turned to the Plum Village mindfulness practice and teachings, founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Months prior, a visit to Blue Cliff Monastery, a Plum Village center in upstate New York, had provided her with a copy of the Sutra on Transforming Violence and Fear. This sutra became a vital tool for navigating her own emotional landscape and understanding the colliding global events. Her reflections often centered on the Third Mindfulness Training, "True Love," particularly resonant given the recent end of her marriage and the perceived distance of love. Through daily contemplation of the sutra and this specific training, she sought solace and understanding amidst death, pandemic, and social unrest.
The rapid spread of racial justice protests in the United States following her brother’s death prompted a global reckoning with race. Brown participated in a virtual healing gathering for BIPOC individuals, led by Ruth King, a respected Theravada teacher and author of Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out. The event, sponsored by the mindfulness app Liberate (now The Village), drew hundreds of participants expressing grief, rage, and anger. Amidst the speakers’ testimonies, King posed a question that would become a pivotal point for Brown: "How do you fight injustice without hating?"
This question served as a "bell of mindfulness," prompting deeper reflection on the sutra, the Third Mindfulness Training, and the nature of power. Brown’s own dharma name, Chan Tang Luc, meaning "True Sangha Power" or "True Power of the Sangha," gained new significance. She recalled a conversation with Sister Chan Khong after receiving her name in 2003, where she was told, "Power is not what you think it is." This statement, she now understood, related to Thich Nhat Hanh’s articulation of the Five Spiritual Powers in The Art of Power: faith, diligence, mindfulness, concentration, and insight. These five powers, deeply intertwined with the Five Mindfulness Trainings, became the foundation for her subsequent writing.
Motivated by her experiences of numbness, loss, grief, and outrage, Brown collaborated with her friend and fellow mindfulness practitioner, Marisela Gomez, a lay dharma teacher. Their last joint essay was written in 2015, following the Charleston church shooting, where they explored their feelings as a path to self-healing and offering support to others experiencing similar emotions. This new collaboration aimed to address the complex emotional landscape of 2020 through the lens of mindfulness and ethical living.
The Path to Healing and Compassionate Action
The author’s personal journey underscores the idea that true healing from loss and grief often necessitates confronting difficult truths, regrets, and old wounds. Brown describes her life as a process of coming to terms with a series of losses, leading her to seek inner healing and peace. This path, she notes, has been one of forgiveness, peacemaking, and compassionate action, guided by kindness and vulnerability. However, the profound personal losses combined with the societal crises of 2020 brought her to a state of acute fragility, fear, and anxiety, for which she relied heavily on her network of friends and family.
Her healing process was significantly supported by the recitation and contemplation of the Five Mindfulness Trainings, also known as the Five Wonderful Precepts, and the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings of the Plum Village tradition. These trainings, originally offered by the Buddha to monastic and lay followers, provide guidance for ethical, mindful, and joyful living. Thich Nhat Hanh has extensively detailed these precepts in his writings and teachings as a means to cultivate peace and harmony.
The Five Mindfulness Trainings offer a framework for answering fundamental life questions, such as:
- 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?
These questions, Brown explains, are answered individually based on life experiences, values, and well-being. Regardless of conscious awareness, individuals operate by a set of principles or precepts. While common precepts like truthfulness and honesty are taught from an early age, formal vows can sometimes become perfunctory. The challenge lies in integrating these guiding principles into daily life, especially during times of need.
Interconnectedness and the Practice of Precepts
Brown’s participation in retreats with Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village community illuminated the interconnected nature of the precepts. Unlike a linear progression, each precept is interdependent with the others. For instance, the first precept, reverence for life, is intrinsically linked to the fifth precept, mindful consumption. Practicing one precept inevitably influences the practice of the others. This interconnectedness extends beyond the individual to encompass all beings and the cosmos. Consequently, practicing the precepts is not a solitary act but a commitment made for the benefit of all. The impact of one’s consumption habits, for example, affects not only oneself but also others and the planet.
Drawing on Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings on emptiness, Brown emphasizes that the "self" is not an isolated entity. Our bodies are manifestations of our parents, society, future generations, and the natural world – trees, clouds, and oceans. Therefore, practicing the precepts supports not only the individual but also ancestors, parents, future generations, and society, recognizing the profound interdependence between oneself and the cosmos. In a society often characterized by divisiveness and overwhelming stimuli, the precepts serve as an invitation to cultivate conscious awareness and connectedness, promoting wholesome and beneficial engagement with the world. Ultimately, the precepts are opportunities for cultivating a compassionate life of love, peace, and understanding. The author acknowledges that challenges will arise in practice, necessitating recommitment and connection with spiritual friends who offer support on the path to a healthy and wholesome life.
Contemplations for a New Era
The "Contemplations on the Five Mindfulness Trainings" itself serves as a commentary and an expansion of Thich Nhat Hanh’s foundational teachings, offering a contemporary lens for ethical living. The preamble highlights the urgency of the current moment, marked by global pandemics, the climate crisis, and pervasive social and economic oppression. It underscores the disproportionate impact of these crises on marginalized communities, emphasizing that no one exists independently. The suffering of any individual, particularly those on the "knife edge of racial, ethnic, social, structural, and systemic oppression and discrimination," affects all. The call to action, "We are called forward," resonates throughout the preamble, urging practitioners to engage wholeheartedly with the present moment and the challenges it presents.
The contemplations then delve into each of the Five Mindfulness Trainings, reinterpreting them through the specific context of racial justice and systemic inequity:
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First Mindfulness Training: Acknowledging Beauty as Reverence for Life: This contemplation focuses on resisting complicity in systems that perpetuate injustice and violence. It calls for recognizing the beauty and violence inherent in life and acknowledging that each person contributes to collective awakening. The practice encourages pausing, breathing, and listening deeply to discover what else is present, honoring all life with right view and right effort.
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Second Mindfulness Training: Belonging and Connecting as True Happiness: This training addresses the suffering caused by ignorance and aversion to one’s own and others’ histories, particularly racial and ethnic identities. It emphasizes learning and connecting with these histories, recognizing that racial and ethnic categories are social constructs used for dominance. The contemplation vows to transform othering with the aspiration of transforming heart and mind, noting that true happiness is not possible without true connection leading to belonging and understanding. It commits to practicing right resolve, speech, action, and livelihood to alleviate racial and social suffering.
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Third Mindfulness Training: Cherishment as True Love: This section confronts discrimination and oppression, vowing to transform these seeds within oneself, the sangha, and society. It acknowledges personal benefits or detriments from systems of injustice and the legacy of violence against marginalized groups. The contemplation commits to looking tenderly at suffering, recognizing that seeds of suffering contain seeds of joy. It challenges narrow interpretations of intimate relationships and advocates for a bold, compassionate love that fosters justice and peace, cherishing each breath and moment as an act of healing.
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Fourth Mindfulness Training: Vulnerability as Deep Listening and Loving Speech: This training posits vulnerability as the essence of human nature. It calls for courageous listening to bridge differences and support those who are different. The practice encourages returning to breath and body when understanding is difficult, offering gentle patience. Loving communication is rooted in honesty, compassion, and openness aligned with alleviating suffering. It includes practicing true beneficial regret, offering sincere apologies, and accepting accountability for unskillful listening or speech. This practice guides speech with love and understanding, supporting right speech, action, and insight.
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Fifth Mindfulness Training: Welcoming as True Nourishing and Healing: This contemplation addresses the suffering caused by an incomplete understanding of racial and ethnic segregation and injustice. It commits to healing oneself and the world by understanding how one has been influenced by this history. The practice involves cultivating joy to sustain this aspiration and practicing mindfulness of the four kinds of nutriments (food, sense impressions, volition, and consciousness) to recognize their influence. Through right energy and resolve, conscious consumption is guided by right action that welcomes differences without discrimination, leading to true welcoming, nourishment, and healing for oneself, ancestors, descendants, sangha, and society.
The article concludes by reiterating that the Five Mindfulness Trainings are a path to liberation and transformation, supporting racial and ethnic reconciliation and social change, and healing deep suffering. They are presented as a means to cross the shore of suffering to the side of true awakening and love, offering a commentary on Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings for ethical living, with the persistent call, "We are called forward." This collection of contemplations, originally published in Love Is Liberation: Five Contemplations for Daily Ethical Living (2026) by Parallax Press, offers a profound framework for navigating personal and collective challenges with mindfulness, compassion, and a commitment to justice.
