I’m taking a class at Appamada Zen Center on the Buddhist precepts. Yes, I know I’m overextended — full time job, yoga teacher training, NLP activity, this blog — but it meets only once a month on a Sunday evening.

A precept is a commandment, instruction, or order. The Buddhist precepts come from the monastic tradition and have been adapted for laypeople. We use the book Waking Up to What You Do, by Diane Esshin Rizzetto. Here’s a link to it on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Waking-What-You-Intelligence-Compassion/dp/1590301811

Rizzetto presents the precepts as aspirations: “I take up the way of speaking truthfully,” for example.

I view the precepts as an invitation to increased mindfulness. A teacher, a book, and classmates make it a connecting, learning, growing experience.

In class, we’ll be covering one precept from the book per month. We journal at least weekly and assess ourselves periodically. I will be including my journaling here on this blog.