The Secret Recordings of Carmen Segarra

The NY Federal Reserve is supposed to monitor big banks. But when Carmen Segarra was hired, what she witnessed inside the Fed was so alarming that she got a tiny recorder and started secretly taping.

You can now listen to these recordings and hear for yourself how the system is rigged against you!

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has demanded that the Congress immediately investigate this. It is time to put some bankers in prison along with Erbey, Faris and Shepro. It is time to stop exploiting innocent, unsuspecting individuals.

Banks received bailout from the Fed and went on to use that money to increase their profits and fuel a foreclosure economy for companies like Ocwen and Altisource to thrive, who in turn willingly and desperately pushed people out of their homes and ruined their credit history. Today, home ownership is at its lowest and bank and loan servicer revenues at their highest! Who got bailed out and who got sold out?

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/536/the-secret-recordings-of-carmen-segarra

#GoldmanSachs #CarmenSegarra #ElizabethWarren #Ocwen #Altisource

Incline your mind towards kindness

What is Veganism?
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Veganism is the practice of respecting the right of all sentient beings to be free. Vegans practice living in a manner that they do not end up using other sentient beings as resources like food or slaves and avoid exploiting their body and mind.

Thus, vegans do not consume milk or meat or butter or cheese or eggs. They do not use leather or animal-tested cosmetics or anything that comes from an animal or that might have jeopardized an animal's welfare, health or freedom. They practice living in this manner to the extent possible.

When we practice veganism we are promoting compassion and freedom, which are necessary conditions for happiness.

Why do we eat plant based food?
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We eat food that comes from plants like potatoes, rice, wheat, fruits etc. because these vegetables and fruits do not have a central nervous system which is needed to experience pain and joy. Plants are living and conscious but do not have a central nervous system either. Eating a leaf or a fruit or a seed does not cause pain to the plant. Animals have a central nervous system and can experience pain. Plant based food is also healthier.

Why do we not consume animal milk?
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Animals, like cows, produce milk after childbirth. It is meant for the calf. However, these days cows are viewed as a milk producing resource. They are repeatedly impregnated, so they give birth and produce milk. The calf is separated from the mother cow and her milk is stolen by humans and the dairy industry. The mother cow bellows in pain for days and loses her faith in humanity.

Why do we not use leather and other animal derived products?
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Leather, wool, silk etc. come from animals. When animals are killed or enslaved by the modern economy, they suffer just like we do. We do not wish to promote suffering. We believe that all beings have a right to be free. They should not be used as resources. They don't have to die so we can get a silk saree or a leather handbag. The true sign of a beautiful woman is compassion, not her saree or handbag.

Are there alternatives to animal derived products?
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Yes, we easily get soya milk in the stores. We can also easily prepare cashew milk and almond milk ourselves. We can easily find tofu paneer in the stores. We can use leather alternatives like micro-leather and similarly alternatives to wool and silk are easily available. An American company Beyond Meat sells plant based products that taste just like real meat. Replace ghee with healthier alternatives like olive oil or canola oil. Use peanut butter instead of animal derived butter.

(The author, Saurabh Singh, is a student of Thich Nhat Hanh.)

The Three Stages Of Love

What would you say to a person who is in love with someone because that someone is very pretty or very rich? No doubt you think that is not true love. The desire for someone because she is pretty is a sensual desire and the desire for someone because he is rich is a material desire. True love is not a sensual or material desire. What is love and what has this got to do with veganism, you, me, a monk who lives in France and a cloud? I will tell you, but you must be open minded. If you have a concept of love in your mind then you cannot experience true love.

Bring to your mind the day you fell in love. The day your loved one manifested in your life, like sunshine, making your world bright. It was a nice feeling isn't it? That's the first stage of love - coming together (contact). Contact is possible because we have form (body) and consciousness (five senses, mind, manas and store consciousnesses). Contact does not mean beginning. There is no beginning. Your loved one existed even before you met that person. You existed as well and so did love. Contact is coming together. Contact develops into feelings, feelings into mental formations and mental formations into volitions. Depending on the type of contact feelings arise, depending on the type of feelings mental formations arise and depending on the type of mental formation that has arisen we make a decision (volition is the process of making a decision). Our volitions determine the future of our love.

The second stage of love is separation. If our coming together is based on the body or perceptions then we must part. Imagine a person in love with a man who is very rich. She wants material comforts. One day the rich man loses all his money. Then her desires remain unfulfilled. She will be angry, they will fight and will part. If you love someone because she is a girl or a boy, then one day that person will die and you will experience separation. Everyone who has ever loved a conceptual "person" has lost that person. If you love a body or a perception, it will end in suffering. When someone dies we miss them. When we die our children suffer, we are not there to help them when they need our help.

The third stage of love is liberation. How to be free from the suffering of separation? I will tell you, a little bit, today. I know a monk who lives in Plum Village, France. He is my teacher. He is very mindful. One day observing a cloud he realized that a cloud never dies! It transforms into rain, ice, steam but never dies. He then realized that nothing dies. We only fail to recognize the manifestations. We are unable to recognize the cloud when it transforms into rain and miss the cloud. But the cloud has now become water and is closer to us! If nothing dies how can a person die? When we think a person has died, it is because we consider her to be her body. This is so because of our habit of recognizing and discriminating on the basis of the five sense perceptions - body, voice, touch, taste and smell. To be liberated is to be free from the suffering of separation. There are two hurdles that must be crossed - knowledge and perceptions. A cloud can help you with knowledge. A bird can help with knowledge. A teacher can help you with knowledge. But to overcome the hurdle of perceptions you will have to transform your habits. One who practices the Five Mindfulness Trainings is doing just that! True love is the third mindfulness training.

Since separation is because of our habit of recognizing and discriminating on the basis of the five sense perceptions - body, voice, touch, taste and smell, we must first learn to stop making our love contingent upon sensual perceptions. We must stop discriminating on the basis of physical features, manners, their views etc. We cannot treat one race or one sex or one specie with love and another with hatred. Why? If you smoke cigarettes everyday, then it becomes a habit. Then you become a slave to the cigarette. Then you get a lifestyle and ailments that come with smoking.

Once we are ready to look beyond body, we realize that love is not sexual desire. Love is liberating in nature. It makes us happy. Let a bird, a chicken, a cow come to you expecting love. When we practice loving animals, we are transforming our habits. We are practicing love that is not contingent upon how the other person looks. In fact, true love is true love because it is not contingent upon any conditions. Something is true when it does not change. Because of our habits we stop loving people when they change or they say something we don't like etc. We become angry or sad. Such love is like that of a selfish person who says, "I love myself, now you also love me", selfish and subject to change. True love is not contingent upon religion, political views, specie, gender, color etc.

What do you do when you love someone? The selfish lover wants his own happiness. He doesn't care for the loved one's happiness. The true lover wants his loved one to be happy. Will you kill and eat a woman because you love women? Then why do you kill and eat a chicken if you love chicken? We must learn to love all beings without discrimination. We don't hurt someone we truly love. We don't kill them. We don't eat them.

When we begin to practice true love, we are transforming our habits. It is very difficult. It may not happen overnight, not even in weeks but we have to try and make it happen because then all sufferings will end. There is only one vehicle that can free us from suffering in one lifetime and that is not any religion or doctrine or a pill or a person or an imaginary concept. It is true love.

The one who loves us is our true home. We can go home and be happy. The home does not follow us when we go to office. All sentient beings are waiting to love you. It is time you came home!

(The author, Saurabh Singh, is a student of Thich Nhat Hanh.)

#विज्ञप्तिमात्र #Vijñaptimātra #ThichNhatHanh #5Mindfulness #Enlightenment #Veganism

Dealing with adversities

The woman in the picture is vegan activist Benazir Suraiya who was carrying a sign that read "Make Eid Happy For All - Try Vegan" to promote veganism in her Islamic community yesterday (Monday). In a matter of minutes a mob attacked her and threw footwear and stones at her. It was her date with adversity. What do you do when faced with adversity?

Before someone is enlightened (free from sufferings) she has to battle negative forces. Negative forces are difficult situations, negative emotions and mental formations like fear, anger, insecurity, anxiety, sadness, greed, jealousy, contempt, sensual desires, hunger, distraction etc. Buddha had to face all of these difficulties. He was criticized by his friends from the Sānkhya school. He almost died of starvation. He was attacked by the most lethal of Mara's weapons - distraction every time he would try to focus on his breath.

We all have to conquer adversities if we wish to be free from sufferings. It is very difficult because most of us are completely driven by emotions and circumstances. How to break this cycle of slavery? How to battle fear? There are some things we need to understand thoroughly to generate the faith that we need to progress.

The first is the understanding of interdependent co-arising. This is because that is. Everything exists because everything else exists. That is why we wish to bring about a positive transformation in our community. When we understand this very well, we begin to practice the Five Mindfulness trainings (#5Mindfulness) which includes veganism.

The next important concept that we need to understand is that the effect is present in the cause in an un-manifested form and manifests when conditions are right. This is why a little girl can grow into a pretty young woman, a mango seed can turn into a huge mango tree. The pretty young woman comes from the little girl and mango tree comes from the mango tree. If we consider the Earth as the seed then we all emerge from that seed and the Earth is in us as much as we are in the Earth. At no point is there a distance between the Earth and us. Nothing is separate. An atom is in the universe and the universe is in an atom. Separateness is an illusion.

The third understanding is that transformation is illusory like an illusionist's trick. Why is this so? Because if transformation was real something would transform into something else altogether which means something would be created and something annihilated but we know that cannot be. A cloud transforms into water and water can transform into ice and vice versa and evaporate to become a cloud again. At no point is the water annihilated or created.

These three understandings are called - interdependent co-arising, non-self and impermanence. This leads to the understanding the 'you are in me and I am in you'. This is called shunyata (emptiness) or interbeing.  We think that something exists separately because we thing it has a separate self, that there is a distance between the object and the subject and that transformation (like from life to death) is real. Once we have seen through these three illusory aspects and understood interbeing (emptiness) we have the first of the five powers in action - faith. We still have to develop a stronger grip on interbeing and unlock the doors of signlessness and aimlessness. Signlessness is to recognize manifestations. Aimlessness is practicing to recognize that all conditions for manifestation of happiness are present in the here and now. All the three doors are in each other.

The next step is to practice the second power - diligence. We must diligently practice the Five Mindfulness trainings - reverence for life (non violence), true happiness (exploitation free living), true love ( commitment and understanding), mindful speech and mindful consumption. By practicing and promoting veganism we are already doing all of these to an extent but we need to do more. The more we do this, the faster the obstacles of knowledge and perceptions disappear.

In order to do that and to overcome adversities like temptations or frustrations, we have to bring the third power - mindfulness into action. Be mindful that adversity is just another phenomenon. All phenomena perceived by the five senses are like an illusionist's trick - impermanent and have no existence of their own. So keep this in mind and don't be upset or led astray by fear, insecurities etc.

We practice to be enlightened. Just like sports persons who train hard before games, we need the fourth power - concentration to improve our practice. Concentration leads to the fifth power - insight. When insight is fully developed we are past the three doors and there is no more separation from anyone or any condition of joy. Everyone is present, all conditions for happiness are present. No more craving, no more unfulfilled desires.

We must thank adversities because they strengthen our practice. Yesterday, Benazir may have shed tears but they have become a cloud now and one of these days they will transform into raindrops and kiss her cheek and she can dance in the rain!

(The author is a student of Thich Nhat Hanh.)

#विज्ञप्तिमात्र #Vijñaptimātra #ThichNhatHanh #5Mindfulness #Enlightenment #Veganism

Women in Buddhism

One day Sister Chan Khong asked Thay, "Thay, why do women have to take 348 precepts instead of 248 precepts like men. Is there discrimination in Buddhism?". Thich Nhat Hanh explained to her that most of the additional precepts arose due to the prevalent circumstances. For example, a nun was assaulted when she was traveling by herself so a precept was created that nuns would not travel alone.

Precepts are mindfulness trainings that help an individual be free from certain samsaric bonds, negative actions, emotional knots and material dependencies. All monks and nuns are expected to practice the fourteen precepts also known as the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings (#14Mindfulness). The other precepts are not obligatory. Many precepts like 'unless a monk is ill he should only travel on foot' are not followed by most monks and nuns. It would be very difficult for Thich Nhat Hanh to come to India if he were to follow that precept!

We must understand that being enlightened, being a promising scholar, being a monastic and being a Buddhist are not the same. Enlightenment or the knowledge of the dharma is not restricted to the monastic community. Many monks themselves have lived the life of a hermit away from their monastery after seeking ordination. Some of them have even married while continuing to practice the dharma with the same or even greater proficiency. Anyone can be enlightened or acquire exceptional knowledge of the dharma. So a woman has as good a chance of being enlightened as a man.

A monastic community is like any other community. Not all monks and nuns are at the same level. However, by becoming a monk out of free will they have expressed their commitment to practicing the path. The members of a monastic community are provided with access to proficient teachers and dharma resources. The status of a woman in a monastic community depends on the culture and mindset of people who make up that community. You may want to take a closer look at the order before becoming a monk or a nun if you do not have a teacher already.

A Buddhist in the dharmic sense is one who practices the five mindfulness trainings or Panchasila at the very least. Many sects accept one as a Buddhist if one takes refuge in the triple gem (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha). This is the same for both men and women.

The right way to go about if you really wish to dedicate your life to learning and practicing the path is to first find the right teacher or the right environment. The next step is to practice under the guidance of the teacher or by yourself. One who is pessimistic is unlikely to promote optimism. Similarly, one who is unhappy cannot truly show others the way to happiness. The measure of progress is not just the understanding of texts but also how happy you are on the path. We can begin to experience happiness when we begin to develop an understanding of interbeing and interpenetration, impermanence and practice the Five Mindfulness trainings (#5Mindfulness). We can then help others do the same and help them water the seeds of mindfulness. Mindfulness leads to concentration which leads to insight. You can see that this is gender independent.

Here is how Sister Chan Khong found her teacher (as recorded by Andrea Miller):

"“You have a good heart,” Chan Khong’s first Buddhist teacher told her. “With all the generous work that you do, you will be reborn into a wealthy family. Perhaps you will be a princess.” But Chan Khong wasn’t concerned about her next life, much less the possibility of a royal pedigree. Her focus was the present moment: the hungry need food, the sick need medicine, and they need it right now.

“You need to study scriptures more and work to become enlightened,” continued her teacher. “After you are enlightened, you will be able to save countless beings.” The idea was that if she practiced Buddhism diligently, she would be reborn as a man in her next life; then she might become a bodhisattva, and later still a Buddha with miraculous powers. But again Chan Khong felt alienated by these goals. She didn’t want miraculous powers or to be a man, and to her this enlightenment smacked of both sexism and irrelevance.

In the autumn of 1959, Chan Khong had a conversation with a prominent Buddhist monk during which she asked many questions about the dharma. But he didn’t answer any of them. Instead, for each question he took out a book by Thich Nhat Hanh—a monk who Chan Khong had never heard of—and said, “The answer to your question is in here.” Chan Khong would have preferred talking to the monk in front of her, but she agreed to read the material when she had time. Then a month later, Chan Khong attended a course Nhat Hanh was teaching in Saigon. Impressed from the first lecture, she felt she’d never before heard anyone speak so beautifully and profoundly.

The following year, Chan Khong began corresponding with Nhat Hanh. In his first note, he wrote in his impeccable script about the mountain monastery where he lived—the wet wood he cooked with and the cold, singing wind outside. In later notes he addressed Chan Khong’s concern that most Buddhists didn’t seem to care about the poor and that they viewed social work as mere merit work.

According to Nhat Hanh, it was possible to find enlightenment helping those in need—or doing any other activity—as long as it was done mindfully. He believed that Buddhism had a great deal to contribute to society, and he promised to support Chan Khong in her efforts. He planned to bring together people with the same vision and to establish villages to serve as models for development, as well as founding training centers for workers in education, agriculture, and health care.

Thich Nhat Hanh was the teacher she had been looking for."

#Vijñaptimātra #ThichNhatHanh #SisterChanKhong #Pratimoksha #Women #Buddhism

I am Half Agony, Half Hope

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F. W.
"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never." - Jane Austen (Persuasion).

The agony is that of separation. All sufferings arise due to separation. To be separated from our loved ones is suffering. To be separated from conditions that make us happy is suffering. The nature of our existence is such that if we meet, we must part. If we don't, death will do us part. Separation manifests in two dimensions, time and space (distance). The time dimension manifests as impermanence and the space dimension manifests as discrimination between self and others.

The hope is that separateness is an illusion. That one day we will wake up to realize that we never part. That all the conditions for happiness are right here. Love must find a way. We are half agony, half hope.

What gives me the confidence that separateness is an illusion? Separateness is built on the conditions - time and space. Let's look at time. There was a time when a cloud was floating in the sky. Then it transformed into rain and became a river. Then the river with the help of the sun became water vapor and transformed into a cloud again. The other clouds think that the first cloud died. They think that a new cloud is now born. But transformation is continuity. The separation from the dimension of time is illusory. Death and birth, coming and going are illusory. The cloud manifests as a cloud when certain conditions are present, manifests as rain when a different set of conditions are present. If we truly love each other we will learn to recognize each other's manifestations. Then we will meet again, when you are a cloud, I will recognize you and smile at you and you can smile back.

Let's look at the dimension of space. Is it possible for a cloud to be separate from water? Cloud is water. Cloud and water are never separate from each other. We can see the water in the cloud and the cloud in the water. Everything is in everything else. The sunshine, rain, wind, earth are in the tree which bears the fruit that we eat. The sunshine, rain, wind, earth, the tree and fruit are in us. The transformation is illusory. The transformation is based on signs like touch, sound, image, taste and smell. If we cannot see, hear or feel someone we think they are not there but this cannot be true because nothing is ever destroyed. The cloud becomes rain, the water in your tea, the tear in your eye and then a cloud again and then rains again. You can listen to the sound of rain and smile. A cloud is never destroyed. A cloud never dies.

The transformation too is not real because all the while it has been only H2O - two atoms of Hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. We must learn to recognize transformation, to see through transformation.

"You are in me and I am in you. I am the hope in the agony and the agony in the hope. I have loved none but you." - F.W.

#5Mindfulness #ThichNhatHanh #JaneAusten #विज्ञप्तिमात्र #Vijñaptimātra #VijñaptimatraBuddhism #Christianity #Islam #Religion #Spirituality #ManifestationOnly #Vigyaptimatra #India #Hinduism #Buddhism #Buddha #Mahayana  #Prajñapāramitā #Vijnaptimatra #IndianBuddhism #IndianPhilosophy

Meditating On The Five Mindfulness Trainings

Jane Austen wrote in her book, Sense and Sensibility, "I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way."

When I was a child, I used to live with my grandparents. When I was with them, I was very happy. I was safe, comfortable, free from inhibitions. All conditions for happiness were present. My grandmother used to say that I was to my grandfather like a stepney to a scooter. Like a stepney follows a scooter wherever it goes, I would follow my grandfather wherever he went. Now if you told me there is a heaven or nirvana where one can have everything they want, what do you think I'd want? I'd want my grandparents. Perhaps you want to be with your children or parents or friends or someone you are attracted to or a million beautiful women or God or just by yourself.

This aspect too is what we call a self. We are the five aggregates - form (body), feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness. The first four are manifestations of the fifth (consciousness). Consciousness is existence. If we are conscious, we can be happy or sad. We obviously want to be happy. It is for this very reason that we need to learn, practice, experience the Five Mindfulness trainings.

Just like how a dress or a shoe is no good until it fits us, so are the paths to freedom, peace and joy. A shoe that does not fit me is a shoe but not my size. It is not something I'll buy. Similarly the understanding and experience of the Five Mindfulness trainings must be a personal one to really create an impact, to really become a habit.

It must be your own way. So it is necessary then to see how the Five Mindfulness trainings are your own way.

Perhaps, you believe in God. Perhaps, you believe that God created this world, you and me. So did God create this world, you and me with a substance other than God or is God everything and we are a manifestation of God?

Let's say you think that God created us using some substance other than God. In this case, you'd have to admit that God is conscious. Without consciousness it would not have been possible for him to create and we can only connect with God through the bridge of consciousness because you say we are of different substance. Only consciousness is common. It is the bridge.

Can you separate consciousness from the object of consciousness? If you experience, you experience something. Even if it is only a dream or a thought or an imaginary object. Since consciousness cannot be separated from objects, God is connected to all objects of existence. When you kill, humans or animals or contribute to the depletion of natural resources you are actually bringing about a negative transformation of consciousness. This is so because to the consciousness an experience of being killed or being depleted is not a pleasant one. So do you think God will reward you? Do you think God will say, 'Now come, my love, here are a few angels for you to kill in heaven. You have done a wonderful job of destroying life on Earth, now come and destroy life in heaven.' Certainly not. If you want to go to heaven, it is  necessary for you to not hurt objects of consciousness. The Five Mindfulness trainings are designed with the objective of preventing us from hurting others.

If on the other hand you say that everything is a manifestation of God, its as good as saying everything is a manifestation of consciousness. So God and consciousness ultimately are same. So it would be fair to say that any change we experience is a transformation of consciousness/God. Is the transformation, then, real or illusory? If it is real, then God has become something else, is no longer God and you are now one who thinks God and his creation are of separate substances which we have already discussed. If you say the transformation is illusory, then how is this illusion of change manifesting? Change is impermanence. Time is a necessary condition for impermanence to manifest. There have to be at least two moments for change to manifest. Two means separateness. So you would have to agree that impermanence cannot manifest without time and separateness. But you say that everything is a manifestation of God, so separateness must be an illusion.

According to Buddhist teachings, such an existence where causes and conditions are required for manifestation of phenomena is a conditioned existence and such phenomena are conditioned phenomena. God/Nirvana are unconditioned phenomena.

To wake up from this illusion of separateness we will have to practice seeing everything in everything else. To wake up from the illusion of the separateness is also to realize that our loved ones are here, my grandparents, God, a million beautiful women and me are all here. All conditions for happiness are present right here, right now. We will have to be mindful to recognize the conditions of happiness that are present. The Five Mindfulness trainings are our guide to practicing mindfulness.

The Five Mindfulness trainings are - reverence for life, true happiness, true love, mindful communication and mindful consumption.

To practice reverence for life is to practice nonviolence, to avoid aggressive behavior, to refrain from depleting natural resources, to not contribute to anything that can become a threat to conditions that are conducive for life. It is also to practice veganism. To practice the first mindfulness training is also to revere the Five Mindfulness trainings.

To practice true happiness is to not exploit others, including animals and natural resources. It is also to practice veganism. It is also to share what we have.  To practice the second mindfulness training is also to share the Five Mindfulness trainings.

To practice true love is to not take advantage of others, it is a display of commitment, it is an act of transmitting happiness. We can make someone very happy by dedicating ourselves to the cause of making her happy. We cannot do this if our motivation is only to solicit sexual favors. When two people love each other, there is perfect understanding. To practice the third mindfulness training is also to perfect the understanding of the Five Mindfulness trainings.

To practice mindful communication is to not hurt others through speech and other form of expression. To not engage in slanderous or hate speech. We are an expression of existence. To practice the fourth mindfulness training is also to become an embodiment of the Five Mindfulness trainings.

To practice mindful consumption is to only consume what is good for the mind and body. To avoid alcohol, illicit drugs, cigarettes, etc. What we consume transforms us. The fifth mindfulness training is also to consume the Five Mindfulness trainings.

To revere life is also to revere God because God is inseparable from the living. To practice true happiness is also a practice of generosity which brings us closer to God. By practicing true love we connect with God. We truly praise God when through mindful communication we bring joy to others. Mindful consumption leads to mindful transformation that helps us to wake up from illusions and touch God.

If you are a Mahayanist, to practice the Five Mindfulness trainings is also the practice of sila pāramitā. In each of the six pāramitās are the other five pāramitās. So practicing the Five Mindfulness trainings is also practicing the six pāramitās.

If you are a Theravadin, to practice the Five Mindfulness trainings is also the practice of Right Mindfulness. In each fold of the Noble Eightfold Path are the other seven folds. So when we practice the Five Mindfulness trainings we are also practicing the Noble Eightfold Path.

Thus, the Five Mindfulness trainings are the one size that fits all. They are like water, you cannot dislike water. They are the theory of everything. They are not of a religious or sectarian nature and yet they are your personal spiritual experience and practice. They do not teach us to discriminate. They are your own as they are Thich Nhat Hanh's. They are not created, they are universal truths. If we practice the Five Mindfulness trainings, all our wishes are fulfilled. God embraces us, we are enlightened, we cross over to the other shore - Nirvana.

#5Mindfulness #ThichNhatHanh #विज्ञप्तिमात्र #Vijñaptimātra #VijñaptimatraBuddhism #Christianity #Islam #Religion #Spirituality #ManifestationOnly #Vigyaptimatra #India #Hinduism #Buddhism #Buddha #Mahayana  #Prajñapāramitā #Vijnaptimatra #IndianBuddhism #IndianPhilosophy