Patcha

Mods: If there is a better place for this thread, please move it. It's not 12 step based, or solely alcohol or drug focused, so I didn't know where to put it.

I am not a Buddhist but I do my best to practice the 5 precepts daily and also the 8 precepts on occasion as a spiritual top up. To keep me accountable I'm going to make a daily vow to maintain the precept of abstaining from intoxicants (generally known as the 5th precept). Feel free to join in if you want to. I follow the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who teaches compassion-based mindful meditation and I'll post a quote from him or another dharma teacher each day, too.

The 5 precepts are:

No killing
No stealing
No sexual misconduct
No wrong speech
No intoxicants

They aren't in a specific order of importance and there are many interpretations of the precepts, including what constitutes "intoxicants", so I'm not looking for a debate, please.

I was taught that even one drop of alcohol darkens the mind, and I want to have a bright, luminous mind. Alcohol causes me suffering and my suffering causes me to cause suffering to others. So, I'm making a daily vow to abstain from intoxicants and to practice compassion-based mindful meditation.

If anyone is interested, I use the Plum Village app and do morning and/or evening 20 or 30 minute meditations each day. I started with 10 minutes and grew from there. I have learned a lot from youtube videos of talks by Gelong Thubten, a Tibetan Buddhist monk who teaches secular mindful meditation.