Sister Lang Nghiem teaches on the 8th, 9th and 10th Mindfulness Training, True Community and Communication, Truthful and Loving Speech, Protecting and Nourishing the Sangha respectively.
Transformation of our speech and speech patterns is possible. Communication, kindness and loving speech are all trainable and we can learn to speak from a place of non-fear and help others to speak from a place of non-fear.
These three mindfulness trainings firstly enable one to communicate with oneself and recognize what is happening in our body and the feelings and mental formations that arise in our mind. The mindfulness trainings help us to take care of our feelings and discover what wholesome or unwholesome seeds our mental formations are nourishing. Sometimes we tell half-truths when fear motivates us to protect ourselves or self image. Communicating with ourselves leads us to discover what being true to an authentic self really means.
Deep communication with others is only possible with maturity of mind, and in practicing the trainings, we learn ways to ask our loved ones how they are really feeling, to find out what is important to them at a given moment and to ask questions such as “What is your biggest dream?” Do we have the maturity of mind to truly learn about our loved ones and their deepest aspirations?
Sr Lang Nghiem shares stories from her life about how she learns to communicate with herself, experiences with Dharma sharing, establishing true and deep communication with her family and reflections on questions left unasked of loved-ones passed away.
Further reading:
– The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings
You can help us caption and transcribe this video on Amara
