This essay will be devoted to a close textual analysis of those portions of the Satimpatthana Sutta which I think are justly regarded as providing a scriptural basis for modern Mindfulness practice, described in another essay Mindfulness Meditation.
The Satipatthana Sutta occurs in two versions, a shorter version at MN 10, and a longer version at DN 22. The title Sati-patthana, which I think is best understood as the setting-up (patthana) of mental alertness (sati), giving rise to the common modern English translation as “Mindfulness.” It seems likely that sati “mindfulness” here is what is referred to as samma-sati “right mindfulness,” constituting the seventh element of the noble Eightfold Path.
The opening of this sutta speaks of cattāro sati-patthana, often translated as “the four foundations of mindfulness.” But “foundations” seems out of place as a translation of patthana in the context of this sutta. That is, what follows in this sutta makes it clear that cattaro “four” here refers to four classes of meditation-objects, so cattaro sati-patthana is better understood as four ways of “setting up” (patthana) Mindfulness, four classes of phenomena that a person can take as objects of “mindful” attention.
The four classes of meditation objects described in this sutta are:
(1) kaya, body, including bodily processes and sensations,
(2) vedana, feelings,
(3) citta, states-of-mind,
(4) dhamma, mind-objects.
I think that there is nothing especially important about the details of this list. This four-item list is just one more of several universalizing devices occurring in the Pali suttas. In this case it is meant to include all possible objects of self-awareness, everything a person meditating could be possibly be aware of about her own physical/mental/emotional being. (Examples given of being mindful of kaya “body,” make it clear that “body” here refers to one’s own physical body as well as bodily activities like breathing. This is in accord with modern Mindfulness practice, which is generally done with eyes closed, one’s attention being focused on one’s own body and inner life, rather than on material “bodies” making up the external world.)
Text and Comment.
The longest part of the Satipattana Sutta relevant as the basis of modern mindfulness meditation is a long section at the beginning, focused on awareness of kaya “body.” “Body” here turns out to refer mostly to everyday bodily processes and activities such as breathing, walking, talking, and so on.
The first part of this section envisions a monk sitting in a cross-legged meditation position, paying attention to breathing.
And how, bhikkhus, does a bhikkhu abide contemplating kaya as kaya (kāye kāya-anupassī viharati)? Here a bhikkhu, gone to the forest or to the root of a tree or to an empty hut, sits down; having folded his legs crosswise, set his body erect, and set up mindfulness (satim upatthapetva). Ever mindful (satova) he breathes in, mindful he breathes out.
Breathing in long, he understands (pajanati): ‘I breathe in long’; or breathing out long, he understands: ‘I breathe out long.’
Breathing in short, he understands: ‘I breathe in short’; or breathing out short, he understands: ‘I breathe out short.’
He trains thus: ‘I shall breathe in experiencing the whole body’ (or “everything bodily,” sabba-kāya-patisamvedī); he trains thus: ‘I shall breathe out experiencing the whole body’...
In the next section, this sutta envisions a monk continuing this practice of attention to bodily processes after he has risen from the traditional meditation posture, and goes about his daily business.
When walking, a bhikkhu understands: ‘I am walking’; when standing, he understands: ‘I am standing’; when sitting, he understands: ‘I am sitting’; when lying down, he understands: ‘I am lying down’
[he] acts in full awareness (sampajāna-kari) when going forward and returning… acts in full awareness when looking ahead and looking away… acts in full awareness when flexing and extending his limbs… acts in full awareness when wearing his robes and carrying his outer robe and bowl… acts in full awareness when eating, drinking, consuming food, and tasting… acts in full awareness when defecating and urinating… acts in full awareness when walking, standing, sitting, falling asleep, waking up, talking, and keeping silent.
These instructions closely match instructions given to E.H. Shattock, who in the 1950’s went for a two week meditation retreat at a meditation center in Rangoon established by a prominent Burmese Mindfulness teacher Mahasi Sayadaw. In this retreat, the sort of attentive awareness of all everyday bodily activities described above was supposed to be practiced without a break while engaged in everyday activities, during every waking moment for however long the retreat lasts. (See Shattock, An Experiment in Mindfulness p. 68)
The description of practice here is itself very clear. But I think a puzzle remains about its purpose. The meditating monk is not trying to change anything. Breathing goes on as it normally does. And he goes about his everyday life as he normally does, walking, sitting, eating, lying down, and so on. The only change seems to have to do with the fact that, in the normal case, all these activities take place in a relatively unthinking way. When I am eating, I’m normally not paying much attention to the process of eating itself. Picking up food, chewing, and so on, are just happening rather automatically, while I pay attention to other things. What is different here is just that when I am engaged in Mindfulness meditation I am shifting my attention: Things that normally happen in the background of my awareness, are now made objects of conscious attention.
So one important question that deserves some attention here is the purpose of this practice, how exactly is it supposed to help make progress on the Buddhist path to Enlightenment/Nibbana.
Some indication of this purpose is given near the beginning of this sutta, which says of the practice of “contemplating body” (kaya) described above:
He abides contemplating kaya as kaya, ardent (ātāpī), fully aware (sampajāno), mindful (satimā), putting away desire and distress regarding the world (vineyya loke abhijjhā-domanassa).
“Ardent” in the first part here seems to emphasize the importance of a high degree of mental alertness. Putting away “desire and distress” (abhijjhā-domanassa) does seem to support modern Mindfulness teachers who emphasize neutral (or “bare”)awareness. The meditator should try to be a neutral observer of all bodily processes and activities going on in everyday life, having neither abhijjha “desire” that they take place in some certain way, nor experiencing domanassa “distress” that they are happening in some other way than desired. This begins to suggest also what I argue is part of the purpose of this meditation practice: This is practice in being for the moment a liberated human subject, that is an aware subject free of desires or aversions for whatever this aware subject is aware of.
Another part of a refrain repeated frequently in this sutta elaborates on this idea by advocating paying a kind of attention that is a bare minimum necessary for being aware, and connects this to “not Clinging” and to being “non-dependent” (a-nissito) a term used elsewhere in the suttas to describe Nibbana.
This refrain says then:
Mindfulness (sati)
that “body exists” (atthi kayo’ti)
is present (paccupatthitā hoti)
just to the extent necessary (yavad-eva)
for mere knowledge (nana-mattaya)
[and] mere awareness (patissati-mattaya).
And he dwells non-dependent (a-nissito ca viharati)
not clinging to anything in the world (na ca kiñci loke upādiyati).
“Mere awareness” (patissati-mattaya) is presumably the origin of a description some give of this type of meditation as the practice of “bare awareness.”
Here I’ve cited only the passage having to do with one kind of meditation-object, “body.” This sutta goes on to repeat verbatim what this passage says about “body,” applying this to the other three classes of meditation object mentioned in this sutta (vedana/feelings, citta/states-of-mind, and dhamma/mind-objects).
As to the terminology used in this repeated refrain, we find a-nissito, “non-dependent” as a description of the Buddhist ideal as the state of a person who has severed all essential dependencies on any phenomena making up the world-perceived. And “not clinging to anything in the world” is one of the main ways that of describing Nibbana throughout the suttas. This reinforces my suggestion above that the kind of awareness described here is practice in as much as possible being in the ideal relation to the world which is the state of Nibbana.
Other terms used can be related to these same ideas. For example, sati “mindfulness” here is associated with “mere knowledge and awareness,” awareness that stops at awareness of the bare existence of whatever one is aware of. This suggests again a kind of limiting of one’s attention, just focusing alert attention to what exists, without any further engagement or involvement in whatever it is that one is aware of.
Here it is worth citing again a passage from Buddhist teacher Nyanaponika Thera describing in a more detailed way the meditation practice that he identifies as the kind taught in the Satipatthana Sutta. What this sutta calls “mere knowledge and mere awareness,” he calls “bare attention.”
Bare Attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us, at the successive moments of perception. It is called ‘bare’ because it attends just to the bare facts of perception as presented either through the five physical senses or through the mind which, for Buddhist thought, constitutes the sixth sense. When attending to that sixfold sense impression, attention or mindfulness is kept to a bare registering of the facts observed, without reacting to them by deed, speech, or by mental comment which may be one of self-reference (like, dislike, etc.), judgement or reflection. If during the time, short or long, given to Bare Attention, any such comments arise in one’s mind, they themselves are made objects of Bare Attention, and are neither repudiated nor pursued, but are dismissed, after a brief mental note has been made of them. (Nyanaponika Thera. The Heart of Buddhist Meditation. p. 30)
Comments earlier above suggest the purpose of this practice described by Nyanaponika: Paying alert but non-reactive and neutral, “bare” attention, devoid of “desire or distress,” about what one attends to, is a direct way of achieving Buddhist liberation, standing in an ideal, liberated relation to the world-perceived.
I think what is being described here can also be explained in terms of object-ification. That is, normally when I am breathing, awareness of breathing takes place very much in the background of my awareness. Paying alert attention to breathing object-ifies the breathing, making it more clearly an object-of-awareness for me-as-aware-subject.
In some ways, becoming more consciously aware of breathing puts me more in touch with breathing. But paradoxically it also separates me-as-attentive-subject from the breathing. Whereas before I was simply unconsciously absorbed in the breathing process, making breathing an object of my attention brings about more separation between me-as-aware-subject, and the breathing which is more clearly an object-of-awareness for me-as-subject.
This is even more clear in the case of feelings (vedanā) the second class of meditation-objects mentioned in the Satipatthana Sutta. If I am angry, for example, in the normal case I am angry. I am taken up in the anger, absorbed in the anger. When I am angry, there is no distance between myself and the anger. But if I consciously take the anger as an object-of-attention, this object-ifies the anger. Anger is no longer part of me-as-subject. I put distance between myself and the anger. Anger is over there, an object observed by me as subject. And I am over here, a subject paying neutral attention to the anger. In the ideal case I am neither involved in the anger, desiring to be angry, nor distressed by being angry, nor involved in trying to rid myself of the anger. By being a non-reactive observer, I free myself from reactions of “desire-[and]-distress” (abhijjhā-domanassa) about the anger, free that is both from “desire” I have about the anger, and also from “distress” caused by the anger. In this way I practice being a liberated person, someone free from Clinging to, or dependence on, any particular emotional state, or anything else I perceive happening in my being.
As I would put it, when you become aware of feelings that you disapprove of, do not rush to try to get rid of them or repress them. This can be a manifestation of Craving and Clinging. Such feelings are contrary to a self-image you are attached to. Learn to pay disengaged attention to them. This “object-ifies” them. Making them “objects” of disengaged awareness is at the same time becoming a person (an “I”) separate from them.
Similar ideas are found in the writings of another modern Mindfulness teacher, Ajahn Sumedho, who speaks of “objectifying” uncomfortable feelings you might feel when meditating after a hectic day:
If, after a hectic day, you try to stop all your mental reactions… it will lead to failure, then you’ll feel you can’t meditate. So instead… you have to learn to objectify the feeling of being scrambled… You have to recognize that those feelings and ideas are just objects of your mind, and you are a witness to them… objectify that, rather than resisting or trying to make the confusion refined or peaceful. (Sumedho, The Mind and the Way. p. 100)
In another place he speaks similarly of the case of noticing feelings of anger when meditating:
As you meditate, you’ll notice that when anger is there, you can know it. Now if anger were your true nature you wouldn’t be able to observe it–you would be the anger. But anger comes and goes. It is merely a changing condition; it is not you (ibid. p. 106)
In the first quote above, Sumedho is probably speaking Buddhist language when he speaks of unpleasant feelings as “objects of your mind,” that is, dhamma, or “mind objects” perceived by introspective mano while mediating. I suggest this is also true of his language at the end of the second quote, when he says that “… anger comes and goes. It is merely a changing condition; it is not you.” That is, like all “mind-objects” one might observe at meditation, angry feelings should be ideally regarded as just one more set of phenomena belonging to the category of Impermanent sankhara “conditions” making up the world-perceived, driven by impersonal laws of Dependent Arising, which should be regarded as an-atta “not you.” Seen in this light, Mindfulness practice could be seen again as directly realizing the ideal of “regarding all conditions in the world as an-atta,” “not me.”
So on this understanding, the purpose of Mindfulness practice can be described by saying that this is practice in being a liberated person. This understanding contrasts with a very different understanding of the purpose of Mindfulness, probably responsible for another name, “insight meditation” sometimes given this practice today, because its purpose is understood as allowing the meditator to directly perceive–gain “direct insight” into–the true nature of reality (that reality really is the way Buddhist teaching says it is).
Connection to some other elements of Buddhist teaching.
In Early Buddhism Overview (2) I described in some detail how I think Mindfulness practice is related to other elements of Buddhist teaching. Especially relevant here is its relation to the psychological aspect of Dependent Arising: In the case of a normal person still in the grip of underlying tendencies to Craving and Clinging, any phassa, cognitive “contact” with any object-of-awareness, stimulates an automatic and involuntary response driven by this same Craving and Clinging. Bare awareness, as the practice refraining from any response to what one is aware of, by this very fact is practice in directly freeing oneself from these involuntary reactions.
Here it will be helpful also to relate Mindfulness practice to some metaphors for Enlightenment discussed in a later essay Metaphors for Nibbana in the Pali suttas.. That is, consider these as metaphors interpreting the significance of this concrete practice when considered in the overall context of the Buddhist worldview.
– A human subject still in the grip of Craving/Clinging is a subject trying to “find support” in, or “find a home in,” something belonging to the world-perceived. A subject practicing disengaged awareness is striving to become a free-standing “homeless” subject, no longer seeking such support and now existing “un-supported” by anything perceivable, even within his own being.
– This is a subject who can be said to have “escaped from the mind” escaped even from any essential connection to anything happening in his own mind, that is, to any dhamma, “mind object,” the fourth category of meditation-objects listed in this sutta, consisting in any mental/emotional conditions or processes one might perceive going on in one’s own inner life.
– This subject can also be described as a “stopped” mind, a mind no longer compulsively reaching out in involuntary Craving for meaningful engagement with anything outside itself.
– This subject is instead a human subject who has “laid down the burden” of entanglement with the frustrating world, able now to rest happy (sukha) and content (santusita) in itself..
– This disengaged subject can be described as a subject who resists being “born into” the world of change and becoming, who now resides instead in an “unborn” region. This subject exists, but it exists having no essential connection to anything in the world-perceived.
– Existing now in a state disconnected and separated from the world of perceivable objects, this subject has itself become non-perceivable, invisible even to the all-seeing and omniscient Gods.
But if we understand all these images of the “invisible” subject having “escaped from the world,” as metaphors interpreting the experience of bare disengaged attention, this means we cannot take them completely literally. That is, Mindfulness is not a state in which the human perceiving subject no longer exists, or is no longer perceiving anything at all. This is rather a state of highly alert attention to whatever the meditator might become aware of in his own being. What the meditator should aim for is not absence of cognitive contact, but a certain kind of cognitive contact, contact devoid of engaged reaction to whatever the meditator is aware of.
It is in this sense that Mindfulness more closely resembles the state of a person leading an Enlightened life in the world–when compared to the physically secluded life of a hermit or a monk in a monastery. Jhana-meditation (explained and discussed in The Pali Suttas and the Bhagavad Gita: Some Hindu/Buddhist Comparisons and Contrasts) is more suited to the life of a hermit or monk. This may be one explanation of why it is that Mindfulness, rather than jhana-meditation, predominates today in circles of non-monks interested in Buddhism but still engaged in ordinary family and business life in the modern world.
Appendix. Vipassana: Mindfulness as “insight” into the nature of reality.
I want to return now to the issue of the purpose of Mindfulness meditation, more specifically differences between my concept of this purpose, and concepts found in the writings of some recent Theravadin meditation teachers.
Consider for example the concept of this purpose described in an introduction to the MN version of the Satipatthana Sutta (Kindle 671) written by Bikkhu Bodhi, a very learned Theravadin scholar.
Bodhi first speaks of “detached observation” as the meditation practice taught in this sutta. Then he says that detached observation is the means by which the meditator can
pierce through to the net of conceptual projections in order to see things as they really are. To see things as they really are is to see them in terms of the three characteristics–as impermanent, as painful or suffering, and as not self.
“Impermanence… suffering, and not-self” are sometimes called the “the Three Marks (ti-lakkhana)” of all existing things. Although no mention is made of the Three Marks formula in the Satipatthana Sutta, this seems to have become prominent in descriptions of the purpose of Mindfulness meditation found in the writings of several modern Theravadins. The basic idea is that bare awareness is a means of directly experiencing the true nature of reality as it is (undistorted by “conceptual projections” as Bodhi says). But the added supposition here is that reality as it is, exists exactly as Buddhist doctrine says it exists.
This explanation seems responsible for the name often given to this meditation practice today: vipassana or “insight” meditation, considered as a means of gaining direct insight into the nature of reality as it is pictured in Buddhist doctrine.
The first thing I want to note here how implausible it is that a meditator not already familiar with Buddhist teaching, just through (“unconceptualized”) bare awareness, would pick out Impermanence, dukkha, and non-self as the most salient characteristics of reality as it is for everyone everywhere More likely, then, the process whereby a meditator might come to see the Three Marks as the chief characteristics of reality itself, would necessarily involve actively thinking about how what is being experienced matches up with these specific Buddhist teachings the meditator has previously learned about.
The kind of active thinking involved is indeed well described in a discourse given by a Burmese monk Mahasi Sayadaw (1904-1982), a person very influential in spreading Mindfulness in Southeast Asia in the mid 20th century. In an address significantly called Satipatthana Vipassana, Mahasi attempts a detailed explanation of how it is that a meditator might match up what he is observing to the Three Marks: .
[when the meditator proceeds] with the practice of contemplation, after some time one notices that nothing remains permanent, but that everything is in a state of flux. New things arise each time… Whatever arises then passes away immediately, and immediately another arises, which is again noted and which then passes away… One therefore realizes that “things are not permanent”… This is insight into impermanence (anicca-anupassana-ñana).
Then one also realizes that “arising and passing are not desirable.” This is insight into suffering (dukkha-anupassana-ñana). Besides, one usually experiences many painful sensations in the body, such as tiredness, heat, aching, and at the time of noting these sensations, one generally feels that this body is a collection of sufferings. This is also insight into suffering.
At every time of noting it is found that [bodily and mental phenomena] occur according to their respective nature and conditioning, and not according to one’s wishes. One therefore realizes that “they are elements; they are not governable; they are not a person or living entity.” This is insight into non-self (anatta-anupassana-ñana). (https://archive.org/stream/TheSatipatthanaVipassanaMeditation/MahasiSayadaw-TheSatipatthanaVipassanaMeditation_djvu.txt. Accessed 2/27/19.)
What Mahasi describes here pretty obviously involves active reflection and thinking, actively picking out particular aspects of his meditative experience, and thinking about how these aspects of his experiences are related to teaching about the Three Marks that he will have previously learned about.
Interestingly for present purposes, in a different address on meditation (recorded in Goldstein The Experience of Insight, p. 54-81), Mahasi calls attention to a point I argued above: that actively thinking about Buddhist teachings cannot be done at the same time one is trying to practice bare attention, which is the essence of the kind of Mindfulness practice also taught by Mahasi.
For example, in one section of the address in question (ibid. p. 68-71), Mahasi alternates between describing the meditator reflecting on particular Buddhist teachings, and then warning that not too much time or attention should be given to such “reflecting.” Active reflecting interferes with the practice of bare “noticing.”
Such reflections [on Buddhist teachings] come to the meditator while he is noticing any object as it arises. He does not stop doing so to take time to reflect. While noticing objects as they arise, he experiences these reflections so quickly that they appear to be automatic.
The meditator, then, must note: reflecting, reflecting, recognizing, recognizing, and continue noticing objects as usual. Such reflections will be many in the case of persons with a strong intellectual bent…. Be that as it may, energetic noticing must be made of all these reflections. Noticing them will result in their reduction to a minimum, allowing insight to progress unimpeded by an excess of such reflections. (Ibid. p. 69).
In other words, rather than getting actively involved in thinking about the content of Buddhist teachings he is reflecting on, the meditator practicing Mindfulness should not focus on the content of various teachings, but should focus instead on the act of reflecting itself as a psychological phenomenon (a dhamma or “mind-object”), and make this psychological phenomenon itself the object of bare noticing.
Later, describing such reflecting as “comprehending” the relation of meditation objects to Buddhist teachings, he again warns against “yielding to… excessive reflection.”
such comprehension occurs often to one who yields to reflection…. Such excessive reflection… is an obstacle to the progress of insight… Hence no special attention should be given to reflections. While giving more attention to the bare noticing of objects, the meditator must… also notice these reflections as they occur, but he should not dwell on them….p.71-72
Notice that, although Mahasi describes reflection on Buddhist teaching as an obstacle to the “progress of insight,” the term “insight” here has nothing to do with directly experiencing (gaining “insight into”) reality as characterized by the Three Marks. “Insight” refers to the “bare noticing of objects.” And it is clear that actively reflecting on how objects of meditation relate to Buddhist teaching about the Three Marks is an obstacle to “insight” when insight is identified with the practice of “bare noticing.”
My main point: Although meditation reflecting on Buddhist teaching can of course serve a very useful purpose, it is really incompatible with the practice of Mindfulness as bare, non-reactive, uninvolved awareness. A person might well practice both these kinds of meditation at different times, just not at the same time.
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