..续本文上一页breathe you practice the same way: every breath you take generates mindfulness, concentration and insight. The liberating factor is insight. The ultimate aim of the practice is the insight that liberates us from our fear, our ignorance, our loneliness, and our despair. It is that insight that helps us to penetrate deeply into the nature no-birth and no-death, the nature of interbeing. The cream of the Buddhist practice is to touch our true nature of no birth and no death, no separation. We can do that just by very simple practices, breathing in and breathing out, by making a step, by looking, by touching.

　　(Bell)

　　The Mindfulness Trainings should be looked upon as the practice of mindfulness, and not as a set of rules. If you look at them as a set of rules, you are caught by what the Buddha described as the attachment to rituals and rules, and this is not a good thing in Buddhism. You should not be a victim of rules and rituals. So be careful when you study and practice the Five Mindfulness Trainings. Consider them to be an art of mindful living, and not something imposed on you to restrict your freedom. In fact the practice of the Five Mindfulness Trainings will help you to gain more freedom every day.

　　The monastics have their own set of Five Mindfulness Trainings. Do you know that the monks have 250 mindfulness trainings

　　 And also they have twenty-nine chapters of Mindful Manners. It may be helpful to study the monastic codes. It can help us to understand our practice of the Five Mindfulness Trainings. When a monk or a nun walks, he or she is not supposed to talk, because how can you practice walking deeply, generating mindfulness and concentration, if you talk at the same time

　　 So you may have noticed that when a monk talks, he stops. One thing at a time. He is concentrated on what he is talking about, he is concentrated on what he is listening to, and after that he resumes his walking. Every step he makes should generate mindfulness and concentration. His insight depends on that practice.

　　Mindfulness Trainings help to protect you, and you may like to read a book about the Ten Mindfulness Trainings of a novice monk or nun, and the twenty-nine chapters of Mindful Manners. If a novice abides by that practice, he will look beautiful as a monk of nun, because mindfulness is his or her adornment. If you live mindfully in every minute of your life, you become a beautiful person, and the energy of mindfulness that you produce protects you and protects the people around you. When you see a monk sitting with a young lady out of the sight of the Sangha, you know that he is not practicing Mindful Manners. It is inscribed in the monastic code that that is one of the things that you should not do. That is to protect you and to protect that lady. You can sit and talk to a lady, but where the Sangha can see you. That is not a restriction, that is a practice to protect you and to protect the Sangha, because if one member of the monastic Sangha is destroyed, the pain will be felt by the whole monastic Sangha. And I think it is good for the lay community to understand that, in order to help protect the monastics at the same time. Everything should be looked upon as the practice of mindfulness, and mindfulness practice is an art, the art of self-protection and the protection of the world around us, including the world of animals, vegetables and minerals. That is why the energy of mindfulness is our savior, and it is our task to generate that energy every day. The collective energy of mindfulness will really be the savior of our situation, of our families.

　　The day before yesterday we spoke about eight exercises of mindful breathing, and many of you have the book La Respiration Essentielle, Breathe! You are Alive, with commentaries on the e…

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