From Heart to Cosmos and Back

Sila Paramita

February 1, 2024
by Larry Ward, PhD

Our world is in a planetary moral emergency. This emergency is deep and wide. It is Earth-centered, planet-wide, social, personal, and spiritual. Our hearts are broken daily by what we see, hear, and endure. It is as if the whole Earth is inviting us to grow or die.

A new planetary morality is emerging as a fresh response to living on the Earth more consciously. This is catalyzing societal, cultural, political, technological, and mental landscapes. Extremes of reactivity abound as we experience this shift at every level of society. This experience has thrown the human family into what has been called a neuro-existential dilemma.

Sila Paramita offers a healing balm to this suffering of body and mind. Its importance lives at the core of Buddhist understanding and practice. It awakens, develops, and sustains the human capacity for wisdom’s perfection.

The original Five Precepts have been taught and transmitted for centuries by all Buddhist traditions. The practice field of Sila Paramita offers a sensible, practical, and personal way to untangle our delusions and knots of separation. The knots of separation from the earth. The knots of separation from one another, all species, and separation from the deathless.

Sila Paramita and the Five Mindfulness Trainings

The Plum Village Sangha continues to make diligent efforts to make the wisdom of the five precepts accessible. Crafting relevant language without losing its depth. Termed by beloved teacher Thich Nhat Hanh as “The Five Mindfulness Trainings”, this expression has its roots in the Five Precepts offered by the Buddha.

They have been expanded and updated so that they represent a way to bring mindfulness into every area of life and context. Rather than hard and fast rules, they offer us a path to cultivate and develop actions of body, speech and mind that can create a more healthy and compassionate world.

I present the first few sentences below introducing each training to provide the flavor. Each step of practice invites the practitioner to receive, learn, and embody the trainings that follow.

1. Reverence For Life

Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating the insight of interbeing and compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals.

2. True Happiness

Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I am committed to practicing generosity in my thinking, speaking, and acting.

3. True Love

Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society.

4. Loving Speech and Deep Listening

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I am committed to cultivating loving speech and compassionate listening in order to relieve suffering and to promote reconciliation and peace in myself and among other people, ethnic and religious groups, and nations.

5. Nourishment and Healing

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming.

Fresh winds, rooted in love

Our time invites us to create a planetary covenant. It can bring fresh winds rooted in love to today's world. We are witnessing shifts in social consciousness including, ecological sustainability, racism, gender equality and LGBTQI+ rights.

A statement from a trends watchers group states, “From climate change to inequality, the world’s most urgent issues are reaching a critical tipping point. And inaction is no longer an option. With the threat of societal and environmental collapse right around the corner, accountability is inescapable. We’re all activists now.”

Because we are all activists, our spiritual health is more important than ever. The practice of the Five Mindfulness Trainings awakens, develops, and sustains the embodied perfection of wisdom. My beloved teacher Thich Nhat Hanh states, “ The Chinese character used for paramita means “crossing over to the other shore," which is the shore of peace, non-fear, and liberation in the present.”

We yearn for peace, safety, and wisdom to gain momentum in our world. Yet our individual and collective habits are centuries old and seek to stay in place. Resistance abounds as we experience this shift. Our encounters with reactivity, extreme dualism and violence point to the depth of change we are in.

Resilience also abounds in this shift. I was blessed by a recent story of 16 practitioners receiving the 5 precepts while in prison. A fresh vision for a life of individual and collective wellness is already present within us. Our encounters with reactivity do not rule the day. The extreme dualism, mental fragility and violence we experience point to the depth of change we are in.

Our moment invites us to give voices to an emerging planetary covenant. It is bringing fresh winds rooted in love to today's world. We are witnessing the melting old patterns of frozen mental, social and institutional constructs. We living a remarkable period of uncertainty and fermentation in our personal and social consciousness including, ecological sustainability, mental wellness, Labor’s resurgence, racism’s accountability, expanding acceptance of gender diversity and LGBTQI+ rights.

Taking refuge in practice

In the midst of this fray Sila shines, pointing the way to goodness, kindness and safety. It is Sila’s shining light that can cause the natural morality in the human heart to rise to the cosmos and come back to serve all beings. It can activate the courage to transcend national egocentric ideologies and the comfort in outdated habit energies.

When we are perplexed on Sila’s path with confusions, temptations and weariness we can take refuge in practices that can help maintain our stability. These include, Samatha, Samapatti, and Dyana.

Samatha, cultivation of body-mind centered calm through meditative/resiliency practices. Samapatti is the practice of non-entanglement with our own or the world's suffering. It is non-attachment to outcome. This is crucial so it remains the Dharma we transit as best we can and not simply our unprocessed sorrow. Dyana cultivates skill and capacities of deeper looking with the realization of insight, here we can recognize and name our patterns of grasping, clinging, and attachment and taste the liberation that is possible as Sila takes up residence in your heart through practice.

You are enhanced as you touch the cosmos perfuming the world with sanity, safety and courage to be peace.