So yesterday I attended an all day training at the Zen Hospice Center in San Francisco. The training introduced me to different ways of providing practical, emotional and spiritual support to people who need care. We learned about ways to be supportive of the person in need and about our own relationship to caring, suffering and service. It was an awesome training, and our teacher, Jennifer Block, was inspiring and unbelievably funny.

We were also introduced to the 5 precepts. The precepts were created by Frank Ostaseki, the founding director of Zen Hospice. They are designed as “companions on the journey of accompanying the dying.”  But they can also be helpful in our daily life. As Frank writes, “I think of these as five bottomless practices that can be continually explored and deepened. They are not linear and have no value as theories or concepts. To be understood and realized, they have to be lived into and communicated through action.”

Welcome Everything. Push Away Nothing: We don’t have to like what’s happening. We don’t have “to approve or dissaprove. It’s our task to trust, to listen, and to pay careful attention to the changing experience.”  Learn to cultivate “fearless receptivity.” We don’t know what is going to happen or how things will turn out.

Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience: This precept is encouraging us to be real, authentic people. We don’t have to be the expert or the one with all the answers. “In the process of healing others and ourselves we open to both our joy and fear. In the service of this healing we draw on our strength and helplessness, our wounds and passion to discover a meeting place with the other. Professional warmth doesn’t heal. It is not our expertise but the exploration of our own suffering that enables us to be of real assistance. That’s what allows us to touch another human being’s pain with compassion instead of with fear and pity. We have to invite it all in.”

Don’t wait: “Patience is different than waiting. When we wait, we are full of expectations. When we’re waiting, we miss what this moment has to offer. Worrying or strategizing about what the future holds for us, we miss the opportunities that are right in front of us. Don’t wait.”

Find a Place of Rest in the Middle of Things: This means learning to look for a place of rest right in the middle of chaos– not something that happens after all of our errands and chores have been completed. We can experience this type of rest when we bring, “our full attention, without distraction, to this moment, to this activity. This place of rest is always available. We need only turn toward it.”

Cultivate Don’t-Know Mind: Also known as “beginner’s mind” this describes a mind that is open and receptive– not one that is limited by agendas, roles and expectations.  As Frank writes, “We realized that ‘not knowing is most intimate.’ Understanding this we stay very close to the experience allowing the situation itself to inform our actions. We listen carefully to our own inner voice, sensing our urges, trusting our intuition. We learn to look with fresh eyes.”