The monastery was very peaceful during the week after all the folks from last weekend’s retreat left. This weekend was another retreat for college students, but there were about half the amount of people, and I wasn’t walking right into it, so it was OK. When did college students get so cute and fuzzy? When I went to college, everyone looked so mature, you know, adult like. Anyway, I feel like I haven’t matured much from college, so I was able to relate to these kids more than the adults from last week. I had some great conversations.

I met a woman whose company and conversation made such an impression on me that by the end of the weekend, I adopted her as my first “Dharma sister”. We may never see each other again, but that’s OK, it was that connection, at that time that counts. She’s on her own spiritual path, and her background is more Tibetan Buddhism.

We both took the Five Mindfulness Trainings this morning in the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition (I think she had already taken similar ones in a Tibetan tradition). It’s like receiving precepts or taking vows, but not. They’re not prohibitions or commandments. They are things to keep in mind to guide us and strive for, even if we end up “breaking” them. That’s one of the beauties of Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition. They’re not there to restrain or suppress us or to make us feel guilty if we fail to maintain them, but to strive for wisdom in both our successes and failures.

I had my reservations about taking all of them. In particular, the fifth one, which is a mindfulness training against ingesting physical or mental toxins, and an express mindfulness not to drink alcohol. First of all, as long as I’m here at the monastery or if I follow the monastic path, that’s no problem. But if I return to secular life, I’m not going to lie to myself, I will drink alcohol. Second of all, I understand the social problems associated with alcohol, however, I’m not convinced of any arguments for the explicit prohibition against alcohol. It just seems arbitrary and my drinking patterns withstand all the arguments I’ve read and heard.

A main argument was that even if you drink in moderation, you affect people around you, especially your family members who might see you drinking, and they might be prone to having alcohol problems. Fair enough, but that’s not an issue with me, since for the most part no one sees me drinking. How about social drinking, where going to a bar is central to maintaining one’s social life? Drinking socially might be colluding and enabling one of your friends who might end up with a problem. Fair enough, that’s a reason to engage this mindfulness training on a deeper level. One monk was telling me how he used to be able to go out with friends to a bar before he became a monk, and he just wouldn’t drink. He didn’t need alcohol as a social lubricant. But in this case, drinking or not drinking doesn’t seem to be the main issue. The fact that you’re even at the bar is colluding and enabling because your very presence at a bar suggests alcohol consumption, even if you aren’t actually drinking alcohol.

I understand the focus on alcohol as a problem and a target for mindful consumption, but the explicit prohibition seems arbitrary to me. My personal pet peeve target for mindful consumption would be using fossil fuels. Here at the monastery, the act of turning on a car is done mindfully, presumably; there is a mindfulness verse for it. However, I don’t think the concept of turning on a car is done mindfully, because that would entail not turning on a car unless it’s really necessary. Turning on a car for me is just as bad as having a drink, even worse because we generally seem to think it’s OK without thinking of the global consequences of simply turning on a car. Turning on a car drives wars. And monastics drive fossil fuel vehicles from one hamlet to another – a quarter of a mile, a ten minute mindful walk. They have an electric golf cart, but why not have more for intra-monastery transportation? Why not have more bikes? The hill will give them strong legs and is good for their cardio-vascular system.

So I can maintain the mindful consumption of the fifth mindfulness training without abiding by the explicit prohibition on alcohol. I might even go so far as to give up any social drinking to maintain it, stop hanging out at bars, not go to events where alcohol consumption is central (I said I might). In exchange, I’ll keep riding my bike and keep talking about the toxic consumption of fossil fuels which poisons our bodies, other peoples’ bodies, and our environment.

I don’t think the fifth mindfulness training has an explicit prohibition on cigarette smoking. I’m telling you, it’s arbitrary.