Brown and Gomez are contemporary Dharma teachers and mindfulness practitioners trained in the Engaged Buddhism tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village community, where the “Five Mindfulness Trainings” are part of daily practice. It was during a time of what they describe as heartache — through the COVID pandemic and in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis — when they “took the space and time to sit together, to reflect on what was arising in our hearts, and to open up to how the current events, if openly acknowledged, might help to reconnect those of us who felt distant from the Trainings and the love and liberation they offer.”
In that spirit they offer “Contemplations on the Five Mindfulness Trainings,” or “the Contemplations,” for short, as supplement to the original Five Mindfulness Trainings, which are also referred to throughout the book, in short, as “the Trainings.” Their focus is social justice and healing of racial trauma. Personally, Brown writes of surviving trauma and serious loss, and Gomez reflects on experiencing the effects of long COVID. Theirs is a book for a world that is suffering.
The subjects of the original Trainings are: Reverence for Life, True Happiness, True Love, Loving Speech and Deep Listening, and Nourishment and Healing. These are introduced from the authors’ original experiences of them, in Chapter 2. Chapter 3, then, is the book’s core, as the authors expand on each, showing its relevancy and application, offering contemplations and accompanying mindfulness practices as “a new interpretation and ethical road map, especially for community organizers, social activists, and historically socially marginalized people who are often on the front lines of social change.”
For a spiritual practice example of this at work, see the excerpt accompanying this review — their Contemplation on the Fourth Mindfulness Training, about vowing “to risk listening for understanding rather than disagreement.”
