So, who is this guide leading us on this journey? Thich Nhat Hanh, affectionately called "Thay" by his students, was a remarkable figure – a poet, scholar, peace activist, and Zen master. He was a man of action whose engagement sprang from deep serenity and insight, spending nearly eighty years as a monk. His life energy was poured into blending meditation and mindfulness with extraordinary actions for peace and social justice, training the next generation of engaged Buddhists and building healthy communities of mindful living to be catalysts for change. He even collaborated with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., sharing a vision for building a "beloved community" to transcend division, discrimination, and hatred. Thay also initiated one of the very first international environmental conferences in Europe and helped rescue boat people. He created a way of teaching mindfulness accessible to millions, sharing his vision with everyone from politicians to CEOs, and developed a simple yet powerful code of global ethics from his personal experience of polarized times. The sources tell us that in our current moment, we face a potent intersection of crises: ecological destruction, climate breakdown, rising inequality, exploitation, racial injustice, and the lasting impacts of a devastating pandemic. It's a situation beyond urgent. To face these challenges effectively, we need to strengthen our clarity, compassion, and courage. The practice of meditation and mindfulness, Thay teaches, isn't an escape; it's a way to still the mind, look deeply, and see ourselves and the world clearly. From this foundation of clarity and insight, we can take appropriate and effective action to transform the situation and create a regenerative culture where all life is respected. Thay believed the world doesn't need another ideology, but the kind of awakening that can restore our spiritual strength. This book, edited by his students, brings together his teachings on deep ecology, engaged action, community-building, and collective awakening. It offers practical ethics to guide decisions, transform habits, and help us touch joy and meaning in each moment. Without this spiritual dimension, we risk losing everything. **The Heart of the Matter: Awakening and Seeing Deeply** One blazingly clear point Thay made is that the one thing we _can_ change, which makes all the difference, is our mind. Our mind is how we interact with the world; it holds our despair, fears, hopes, and dreams. How our mind sees things determines our decisions, actions, and relationships. In Buddhism, it's said that with our mind, we create the world. Our perceptions are shaped by language, culture, and society's tendency to put reality into limiting categories, which hinders our clarity and action to protect the planet and live in harmony. So, what kind of awakening is needed? What do we need to wake up to? Buddhism talks about two levels of truth: conventional truth (labels and appearances) and ultimate truth (deeper reality). To help our society and planet, Thay taught, we need to wake up to both levels. A central text Thay taught is the Diamond Sutra, described as the world's first treatise on deep ecology and a treasure of shared human wisdom. This ancient text originated in India between the second and fifth centuries, with the world's oldest dated printed book being a ninth-century scroll of the Diamond Sutra. The sutra proposes a deep contemplation to give us a breakthrough in how we see the world. It offers a four-part meditation to cut through the stories we tell ourselves about life, helping us get closer to reality as it truly is. It's called the "thunderbolt" or "diamond" that "cuts through illusion," and applying its teachings can provide vast energy and clarity for right action. Waking up, first of all, means waking up to the beauty of the Earth. It's seeing that your body is made of the Earth, sun, and stars, that the sky is beautiful, and the planet is a jewel. It's recognizing the opportunity to be a child of Earth and make steps on this extraordinary planet. Secondly, waking up means waking up to the suffering in the world. It's waking up to the danger the Earth and living species face. This awakening creates a desire to find ways to bring relief, healing, and transformation. This requires tremendous energy. If you have a strong desire, a mind of love, this energy helps you both wake up to beauty to heal yourself and wake up to suffering to help. If you have this strength and mind of love, you are a "buddha in action". If you see suffering but haven't changed how you live, the awakening isn't strong enough. It means you haven't truly woken up. Zen practice sometimes uses shock to wake you up, like a Zen master's shout, which is compared to spring thunder that wakes up life. We need a real awakening, an enlightenment. New laws and policies aren't enough; we need to change our way of thinking and seeing. This is possible, but we haven't really tried yet. Individual awakening is crucial, as collective awakening is made of individual awakening. You must wake yourself up first, and then those around you have a chance. When we suffer less, we are more helpful and can help others change. Peace, awakening, and enlightenment always begin with you. On one hand, we learn the "art of happiness" – being truly present for life to get nourishment and healing. On the other hand, we learn the "art of suffering" – how to suffer less and help others suffer less. This takes courage and love to return to ourselves and care for the suffering, fear, and despair inside. Meditation is crucial for getting out of despair, gaining insight, and keeping compassion alive to be an instrument helping all beings. To meditate isn't escaping life; it's taking time to look deeply. It's allowing time to sit or walk without doing anything else, just looking deeply into the situation and your mind. The practice of Zen, also known as dhyāna (Sanskrit), chan (Chinese), thiền (Vietnamese), means "the practice of reflecting" or "the practice of looking deeply". To look deeply, you need mindful time and concentration to direct your attention and see the true nature of things, whether a cloud, a pebble, another person, or your own emotions. Insight is the outcome of looking deeply and meditating. It's not accumulated knowledge but something you must experience yourself. Zen masters aim to help students transform, not just transmit knowledge. Insight isn't the result of thinking; it's a direct intuitive vision from strong concentration. Real insight has the power to free you from anger, fear, and suffering. Being able to see just once is a significant accomplishment, and if you've seen once, you can see again with determination and diligence. **Cutting Through Illusion: The Diamond Sutra's Wisdom** The Diamond Sutra urges the meditator to "throw away" or release four notions to understand our true nature and reality: the notion of "self," "human being," "living beings," and "life span". The term "throw away" is a strong translation used by Master Tang Hoi centuries ago. If you're caught in these notions, you aren't truly free and cannot be a real bodhisattva (an awakened being helping to relieve suffering). Breaking through these ideas gives you the insight, understanding, and freedom needed to help save the planet. Insight and courage are needed to release an idea. Deep suffering can result from holding onto ideas we can't release. The ultimate truth, which mindfulness and concentration help us touch, is the dimension of non-duality, non-discrimination, and interbeing. All things share the nature of impermanence, non-self, and nirvana. In just two or three breaths, we can wake up to what's inside and around us, seeing we are the world, the cosmos, with no separation. We embrace limitless space and infinite time, and the present moment becomes eternal; we lack nothing. The past, present, and future are all in this moment. Fear, anger, despair, and anxiety arise from wrong notions. When these are removed and reality is seen clearly, suffering is released concretely. Touching reality this way brings right view, which leads to right thoughts, words, and actions. The deep meditation of the Diamond Sutra brings non-fear, non-anger, and non-despair – the strengths needed for our work. With non-fear, even huge problems won't cause burnout; you'll know how to take small, steady steps. Contemplating the four wrong notions helps those working to protect the environment know how to be and act. The insight of interbeing helps you feel more at ease. Removing wrong views and breaking through to the heart of reality are tasks of a meditator. Through contemplating these ideas, ancestors, descendants, and those separated by circumstance become accessible, and we can open up to receive their energy and support. Re-examining our ideas about self, human being, living being, and life span can transform paralyzing despair and release energy and non-fear. Can we hear the voices of previous generations, the next, or other species and the Earth?. The feeling that we must save the planet alone or in this lifetime, or that nothing matters because of eventual destruction, stems from being caught in notions of a separate self or life span. The insight of interbeing breaks the idea that what happens after we die has nothing to do with us. We belong to a stream of life, and this moment is our turn to do our part and pass on what we learn to future generations. It's impossible to save the planet once and for all or on our own. That the planet exists now is a miracle of countless favorable conditions over billions of years, and it will continue to need them. This realization is good news. **Navigating Suffering: The Mud and the Lotus** There is a deep connection between suffering and happiness, like the connection between mud and a lotus flower. When you listen to your suffering and look deeply into its nature, understanding arises, leading to compassion. This is "the mechanics of compassion" – using suffering to create something positive. Just as a lotus needs mud to grow, happiness and compassion can arise from suffering. We often have two mistaken views about suffering. The first is thinking life is only suffering when we suffer. The second is believing we can only be happy when all suffering is removed, which isn't true. We can have conditions for happiness even while suffering exists. Enjoying meditation doesn't require being empty of suffering. We all have suffering, but the art is handling it. You cannot remove 100% of ill-being to be happy; it's impossible. Even buddhas must continue to practice using suffering to nourish their awakening and happiness, just as a lotus needs mud to keep blooming. Touching, embracing, and transforming suffering generates awakening, insight, and compassion. A Zen master told a disciple asking where to find nirvana, "Right in the heart of samsara!". We use fear, despair, and anxiety to create happiness, awakening, and insight. The practice is making good use of suffering to create happiness. Suffering and happiness inter-are; one cannot exist without the other. We must face and transform suffering into happiness and compassion, like using the place where we fall to stand up. Seeing the good when things look bad is difficult, but with enough time and deep looking (meditation), we can see positive aspects. If you can't see it yet, you haven't looked deeply enough. When strong emotions like fear, anger, or despair arise, mindfulness helps. You recognize the feeling, embrace it gently with mindfulness, and it begins to change. This is the miracle of mindfulness. With mindfulness energy (from walking, sitting, or breathing), you embrace fear as gently as light embraces a flower bud, leading to transformation. If the emotion is strong, find a stable position and use long in- and out-breaths, focusing on the rising and falling abdomen, to stop thinking. Stopping thinking is crucial because thinking fuels fear and despair. Don't be afraid; the emotion is like a wave that will pass. Breathing deeply without thinking brings relief. Sometimes, all you see is the "mud" of suffering. Thay's answer was to look more deeply – the lotus is there. Only we can find our own lotuses from our mud. This requires training in basic practices like mindful breathing. **The Action Dimension: Living and Acting from Being** The sources propose an "action dimension" alongside the conventional ("historical") and ultimate dimensions. The historical dimension holds suffering, injustice, and exploitation. The ultimate dimension is where you dwell in peace and non-doing. The question is, how to touch the ultimate dimension when suffering in the historical dimension to stop fear, despair, and loneliness?. The action dimension is the realm of bodhisattvas, the energy that brings the ultimate into the historical, allowing us to live our life of action relaxingly and joyfully, free from fear, stress, and despair. Everyone should be a bodhisattva, bringing the ultimate into the present moment to arrive, stop running, be relaxed and joyful, and make peace possible. Enlightened people have freedom and spiritual strength, are not victims of their environment, see themselves clearly, know who they are, and understand reality (their nature and society). This understanding is a precious gift of Zen. Their way of being is Zen's most fundamental positive contribution. Zen trains people in this understanding and a healthy, resilient, balanced way of life. Art and thought stemming from Zen insights share these qualities. Cultivating ease and freedom depends on awakening. The world needs awakening to restore spiritual strength. With real awakening, we see the situation clearly and reclaim our sovereignty as human beings from problematic social and economic systems. The way out is a new way of living that restores sovereignty and humanity. Action, awakened action, should be based on the foundation of being. If you lack peace, understanding, or tolerance, or are burdened by anger and anxiety, your action will have little value. The quality of action depends on the quality of being. Zen speaks of the "action of non-action". Some do little but their presence is crucial; others do much but society becomes more troubled because their foundation of being isn't good. Sometimes doing nothing accomplishes a lot; sometimes doing a lot accomplishes nothing helpful. Even meditating a lot might not transform anger and jealousy. In the historical dimension, actions are needed to save, nurture, heal, and reconcile. But in the ultimate dimension, you can do everything relaxingly and joyfully, without worries. This is "acting the non-acting action" – being active but so relaxed it seems like nothing, enjoying every moment because you act from a base of non-action, without striving. In this way, actions express love, care, and awakening. It's not that we _have_ to act; if awakened, action naturally takes us. We can't avoid it. The ideal is the "businessless" person – free, at ease, no longer striving. This person is very active in helping the world and relieving suffering but isn't carried away by surroundings or work. They don't lose themselves in ideals or projects. Actions shouldn't be for praise, fame, profit, or avoidance; they should be out of love. Doing something out of love brings happiness. Doing something without love brings suffering. The important thing is not to lose ourselves in action; remain sovereign, at ease, and free. Engaged Buddhism combines spiritual practice with social action. Sister Chan Khong is highlighted as a pioneer of Engaged Buddhism and a bodhisattva, blending practice with helping the poor, delivering aid in war zones, attending peace talks, organizing environmental conferences, and establishing communities for mindful living. Her actions were rooted in compassion, focusing on touching the hearts and humanity of everyone she met to awaken them to truth. She knew success depended on this, not just documents or political support. Her love and charisma won hearts, showing what "love in the action dimension" looks like. Engaged Buddhism happens anytime you practice mindfulness, whether walking, sitting, or drinking tea mindfully, because you do it to preserve yourself in order to help the world. Working with young activists, Thay saw how easy it was to burn out and knew practice was essential for survival. Community-building became a medicine to survive. People who are very active but not operating from compassion can be tired, jealous, frustrated, and angry. Knowing limits and organizing life for balance is crucial. Working with community provides collective support and helps you not get lost in the work. Having courage to say no is necessary to avoid losing yourself, which is a loss for others and the world. Preserving yourself preserves your opportunity to serve. **Training the Mind: Mindfulness and Ethics** Mindfulness, concentration, and insight are three energies that help generate happiness and handle suffering, known as the "triple trainings". The practice of meditation (bhāvanā) means to train or cultivate, bringing joy, peace, and freedom into existence. Forgetfulness is the opposite of mindfulness, pulling you away into past, future, projects, anger, or fear. Practicing mindfulness in simple daily acts strengthens the seed of mindfulness. With more mindfulness comes more concentration, leading to deeper, clearer seeing. Decisions become wiser, actions have better quality. Mindfulness and concentration deepen relationships. Formal study is necessary, but in itself, it doesn't lead to transformation and awakening. Many spend years studying for diplomas, believing it brings happiness, but few train to handle sadness, anger, listen compassionately, or use loving speech. Learning to transform emotions and use loving speech and deep listening can make you a hero capable of offering happiness. Mindfulness is a path, not a tool. It's not a means to an end like productivity or success. In true mindfulness, the destination (compassion, freedom, awakening, peace, non-fear) is reached with every step. True mindfulness cannot be separated from ethics. If insight is real, it changes how you see and how you want to live. Developing radical insights requires a regular, solid practice of meditation and mindfulness, including silence, sitting still, and time in nature. It also needs a framework for being mindful in daily activities like working, consuming, speaking, listening, and interacting. Mindfulness is for the "three-dimensional reality of our daily life". Applying insights to reality helps walk a path of transformation. The Five Mindfulness Trainings are a Buddhist contribution to a global spirituality and ethic. They offer a spiritual practice for true happiness, love, protecting life, restoring communication, and healing the planet and ourselves. They are a way out of the world's difficult situation. Insights of no-self and interbeing are a firm foundation for changing life and behavior. Right action flows naturally from these insights. Following the trainings helps you become a bodhisattva protecting cultures and saving the planet. They are an ethical compass. The excerpts introduce five key themes explored through the trainings: - **Reverence for Life (ethics of non-violence):** Recognizing how what we consume (news, media) can trigger fear, hatred, and violence within us. The challenge is being present to notice this and recognizing small actions contributing to harm. It asks if we participate in or are privileged by systems built on violence. It's training toward actively cultivating a mind of non-violence in daily life. Creating sacred spaces at home for practice supports this. The training text is an object of contemplation to reflect on everyday life and actions, challenging intentions and inspiring reverence. - **Deep Simplicity (reconsidering ideas of happiness):** We need to re-examine what makes us happy. Our ideas of happiness can lead us to sacrifice time and health chasing things, when conditions for happiness may already be present. Awakening is available now by breathing mindfully and being present. True happiness is being understood, loved, and having the power to understand and love others. Without understanding and compassion, even with wealth and power, one is cut off and unhappy. True happiness is grounded in freedom – not to destroy, but to enjoy life, love, and be free from negative emotions and being consumed by busy-ness. - **Right Fuel (mindful consuming):** This training involves seeing everything we read, watch, listen to, and consume as food impacting our body and mind. Sense impressions are a key nutriment. Consuming can be toxic if it fills us with hatred, despair, anger, or fear. We consume to seek excitement or avoid discomfort and suffering inside, potentially becoming addicted without finding fulfillment. True fulfillment comes from love and peace generated internally. Mindfulness helps us encounter the wonders of the present moment. Maintaining balance between work and nourishing ourselves is crucial for sustaining effort without burning out. It's about the content (is it polluting?), the time spent, and what consuming takes us away from (loved ones, nature, self-presence). Mindful consuming is an art; there are no absolutes. It requires vigilance to notice how consumption affects us (tension, fear vs. joy, connection). Taking control of our attention is hard due to external forces designed to exploit preferences. A strategy for mindful consuming is needed, including setting limits and having a plan for handling feelings when not consuming. - **Brave Dialogue (deep listening and loving speech):** This training is about restoring communication and building bridges. It involves the skills of deep listening and compassionate speech, especially in a polarized world. Deep listening is learnable. It involves being fully present, listening with your whole person, following your breathing, and noticing/embracing your own reactions without interrupting. The goal is to allow the other person to express everything, even painful or false things, to understand their deepest fears and concerns. It requires keeping compassion alive, listening to the pain behind the words. Loving speech is the counterpart, transforming anger or rage into fierce, loving compassion that sustains action without burnout. It's about being open to changing your view and seeing interbeing with others. - **True Love:** Thay taught about intimacy and the importance of nurturing life force, bringing a "spring warmth" to practice. Practice helps us feel more alive and use vitality and love for good. The training text is an invitation to reflect on pain points in relationships and create conditions for healing and fulfillment. True love is boundless, embracing not just one person but the whole world. It's the love of awakened people, buddhas, and bodhisattvas. It's possible to enlarge your heart to embrace the whole planet. A path of love is what's needed, like a North Star to guide us out of the forest, not necessarily a destination itself. **The Strength of Community (Sangha)** Community, or sangha, is vital. The Buddha prioritized building a sangha after enlightenment. Martin Luther King Jr. called it the "beloved community". When facing overwhelming suffering alone, it seems little can be done, but with a community, something is possible. Communities of mindful living demonstrate that happy lives are possible with few possessions, focusing on building friendship, solidarity, compassion, and love rather than chasing wealth or fame. These communities can devote energy to spiritual practice, Earth protection, and rural reconstruction. They can share resources and cultivate land. This brotherhood and sisterhood energy cannot be bought. Master Linji taught that all you need is simple sustenance and "good spiritual friends" – people who help you open your eyes and be your true self. Building community requires commitment to guard speaking and avoid creating harm. Unskillful "truths" can damage trust. Plum Village communities train in calm, compassionate expression and letting go of fighting for views. They use deep listening sessions to understand the root of friction. Inclusive communities value diverse experiences and perspectives, uplifting marginalized voices. They develop skills in deep listening and compassionate speech to reach harmony with diverse views. Strong communities offer spiritual solidarity, generate collective insight, and serve as refuge and renewal. You can cultivate community spirit anywhere. It can start small with colleagues, neighbors, or friends, sharing time, speaking from the heart, and listening. The main task of a mindful living community is cultivating brotherhood, sisterhood, and harmony. This refuge nourishes hope and makes everything possible. Mindful communication is important for keeping communication open, sharing views, and reaching collective insight and consensus. Sangha-building takes time and patience, requiring sitting, eating, talking, and working together to cultivate collective energy. This support helps members continue for a long time without burning out. The community is a refuge, always moving towards more awareness, understanding, and love. **Fueling the Journey: Aspiration and Nourishment** Aspiration, or volition, is one of the Four Nutriments. What do you want to do with your life? Looking deeply helps you find your deepest desire. Desire can be healthy or unhealthy. A good aspiration is wanting to suffer less, be happier, return to yourself, create joy, nourish yourself, and help others do the same. It's wanting to embrace and transform your suffering to help others. This good aspiration is bodhicitta, the mind of love. When overwhelmed by suffering in the world, we may feel helpless. Aspiration provides the energy to sustain ourselves and do something to reduce suffering. It's more than wanting money or success; it's wanting to change civilization, help people heal and live deeply, and help Earth restore its beauty. This is bodhicitta, a good source of nutriment. With this intention, leaders could potentially reverse problematic directions. Is it Zen to dream? Bodhicitta, the mind of love, isn't just a dream; it's a reality, a living energy giving faith and hope. Dreams can become reality each moment, slowly, becoming so real we can touch them now. Cultivating deep aspiration is important in Mahayana Buddhism to become a true bodhisattva. It's the aspiration to transform yourself and help others. This aspiration can coexist with aimlessness ("businesslessness"). Aimlessness means not putting something far away to attain, recognizing you are already what you want to become. Everything you seek (peace, well-being, happiness, love) is already here; there's no need to keep searching. Living your aspiration deeply in the present moment touches eternity. In Buddhism, means and ends are identical: the path _is_ happiness, the practice _is_ healing. As an engaged meditator, aspiration is essential fuel. We need to tend this fire. Being clear about how you want to live and nurturing aspiration is a powerful antidote to despair. Without it, facing world suffering can be overwhelming. Healing from burnout requires time in nature, with loved ones, and caring for body/mind to heal deep pains. It also involves keeping the fire of aspiration alive. Besides volition (aspiration), sense impressions (what we consume) are another nutriment. We need to be vigilant about what we let into our mind through our senses, as it can be toxic. Guarding our mind is like a warrior's strategy. It means consciously choosing our "food" – our media, conversations, experiences. Courage and honesty help see the effect of consumption on ourselves and the planet. Asking about the sustainability of the growth economy, mastery of attention, and the true cost of goods can reveal truths that wake us up and transform habits. This requires a warrior's strength, a meditator's patience, and an artist's openness. Habits can be deeply ingrained, transmitted through generations, or held by society, so change can reveal a lot about ourselves and ancestors. Aligning choices with values helps find healthy fuel. **Spiritual Power: Cutting Off, Understanding, Love** In Buddhism, there are three kinds of power everyone can seek that make you and others happy, unlike wealth or fame. 1. **Power of cutting off:** The power to cut off cravings, anger, fear, despair, or jealousy. These are like flames. With the "sword of understanding," you see the danger ("the hook") in cravings and cut free. 2. **Power of understanding:** Cultivating mindfulness and concentration to look deeply, get insight, and liberate yourself from wrong views and misunderstanding. Manjushri, the bodhisattva of understanding, holds the sword of wisdom to cut through misunderstanding. Wisdom helps solve difficulties, making you rich in insight and freedom that cannot be stolen. 3. **Power of love:** The power to love, forgive, and accept others and the situation as it is. If we can't accept, we get stuck in reacting. With love and acceptance, we are free to respond with kindness and wisdom and change the situation. The capacity to accept and forgive is tremendous power. Investing time in these three powers brings more happiness to yourself and others. With this power, wealth or fame won't make you a victim; you'll use them to help others and the planet. It's okay to have money if you use it to realize your compassionate ideals. "Voluntary poverty" or living simply isn't against having money but choosing to have more time for the wonders of life and loved ones, being rich in moments rather than just money. **Taking On the World as a Koan** A Zen koan is a question for contemplation, something of deep concern that you invest your whole being into understanding and transforming. Holding a koan is like being struck by an arrow, carrying it day and night until insight brings liberation. The suffering in the Middle East, racial injustice, or the suffering of the planet can be taken as a koan for humankind. However, as a human family, we've been too busy, getting distracted by the next crisis after briefly paying attention. Working on a koan isn't just intellectual; it's burying it deep in your mind and mobilizing all your strength, energy, mindfulness, and concentration to embrace the difficulty. Insight can come from you or be collective. When a koan is worked on at the community level, it's powerful. Conferences in a Buddhist spirit should include meditation and contemplation for collective insight. **Wrapping Up and Ideas to Explore Further** So, we've journeyed through Thay's perspective, seeing that saving the planet and ourselves begins within – with waking up, training our minds through mindfulness and meditation, transforming our suffering, and cultivating compassion, insight, and aspiration. Action flows from being, not just doing, and is ideally rooted in love and understanding. The Five Mindfulness Trainings offer a practical ethical framework for navigating daily life with awareness and compassion. Community (sangha) provides essential support, nourishment, and a space for collective insight and action. This isn't just theory; it's a path to walk, step by step, breath by breath. It's about bringing deep insights into the historical dimension of our lives and the world. It takes courage to look deeply at suffering, both personal and collective, and to transform our habits. It's about finding true happiness not in chasing external things, but in the present moment, in interbeing, and in connecting with others and the Earth. It's a call to be a bodhisattva in action, using spiritual power (cutting off, understanding, love) to contribute to a more just and regenerative culture. Now that you have this briefing, what questions does it spark for _you_? Here are a few thoughts to consider as you explore these ideas further: - How might you practice "looking deeply" in your own daily life? What situations or feelings could be illuminated by mindful attention? - The Diamond Sutra asks us to release notions of self, human being, living beings, and life span. Which of these feels most challenging to let go of, and why? - Consider the "No Mud, No Lotus" idea. Can you identify suffering in your life that has already led to understanding or compassion? How might you consciously use current difficulties as "mud" to cultivate something positive? - Reflect on the "action of non-action." How might you integrate more "being" into your "doing," whether at work, at home, or in engagement with the world? - Think about the Five Mindfulness Trainings. Which training theme resonates most with you right now? Which feels like the biggest challenge? - How might you intentionally build or strengthen community (sangha) in your own life, however small, to find refuge and collective energy? - What is your deepest aspiration? How can you nourish it and keep its fire alive amidst the challenges you face? - How can you become more mindful of the "nutriment" you consume through your senses – your media, conversations, and experiences? - Could you take a global or personal challenge that concerns you deeply and approach it as a "koan" for deep contemplation?