Satipatthana

• 1. Introduction

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  Satipatthana is a Pali compound that has been translated at least three different ways. Scholars have rendered it as the establishment of mindfulness, the presence of mindfulness, and the foundations of mindfulness. None of the three readings has fully displaced the other two in modern scholarship.

  The Satipatthana Sutta is probably the most influential meditation text in modern Theravada Buddhism. The teachings of the Vipassana movement are built directly on this one text. Every major Buddhist tradition preserves some version of the same teaching, though modern Theravada and the Vipassana movement are especially known for treating it as a path toward insight into impermanence, said to lead to a first taste of liberation. In popular understanding, the practice has narrowed further still into simply staying calm through bare awareness.

  So which translation comes closer to what the Buddha meant by this compound word? And how did one meditation instruction come to anchor an entire modern movement while still splitting scholars over its grammar?

• 2. The Roots Of Sati

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  Smṛti, the Sanskrit root behind the Pali word sati, originally meant to remember, to recollect, to bear in mind. The idea comes from the Vedic tradition of remembering sacred text word for word. According to scholar Robert Sharf, in the Satipatthana Sutta the term sati means to remember the wholesome dhammas, teachings that include the five faculties, the five powers, the seven awakening factors, and the Noble Eightfold Path. In practice, though, sati is usually interpreted less as recollection and more as observing and watching, being aware and attentive to whatever is happening in the present moment.

  Upatthana, from Sanskrit upasthāna, carries connotations of attendance, waiting on, looking after, and ministering care. Patthana, a second possible root, means setting forth or putting forward, and in later Buddhist literature it also came to mean origin or starting point. Depending on which root scholars choose, the compound becomes presence, establishment, or arousing of mindfulness, each stressing a mental quality that exists alongside or leads into mindfulness. The alternative reading, foundation of mindfulness, instead stresses the object used to gain mindfulness.

  Bhikkhu Analayo argues that foundation of mindfulness is supported by the Pali commentary, but the underlying term for foundation barely appears in the Pali nikayas at all, showing up first only in the later Abhidhamma. The term for presence or establishment, by contrast, runs throughout the nikayas and matches the Sanskrit equivalents of the same phrase, which leads Analayo to conclude that presence of mindfulness is the more likely original meaning. Bhikkhu Bodhi reaches a similar preference for establishment of mindfulness, but by weighing textual context rather than etymology, noting one exception at SN 47.42 where foundation fits the passage best. The translator Soma, writing earlier, simply used both foundations of mindfulness and arousing of mindfulness.

  According to Analayo, sati does not literally mean memory. It means, in his words, "that which facilitates and enables memory." In this context, sati is an awareness of the present moment, paired with the discipline to remember to stay in that awareness when attention wanders. Rupert Gethin, tracing satipatthana to sati plus upatthana, calls it "a quality of mind that stands near" or "serves the mind." He even renders it simply as "presence of mind." Bhikkhu Bodhi describes sati as bare attention, a detached observation of what is happening within and around a person in the present moment, in which judgments are suspended or simply registered and dropped.

  That same debate over a single word follows the practice into its earliest written sources. Those sources range from the Satipatthana Sutta itself to counterparts preserved in Chinese translation.

• 3. Echoes Across The Canon

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  In the Pali Tipitaka, the four satipatthanas appear throughout the Satipatthana-samyutta. That chapter, the 47th of the Samyutta Nikaya, alone contains 104 of the Buddha's discourses on the subject. The same material appears again in the Majjhima Nikaya as MN 10, and once more in the Digha Nikaya as DN 22, which is mostly identical to MN 10 but adds a section on the four noble truths.

  The Sarvāstivāda school preserved its own version in the Saṃyukta Āgama, numbered 99 in the Taisho Tripitaka, devoting an entire section to what it calls smṛtyupasthāna. According to Bhikkhu Sujato, the Sarvāstivāda Smṛtyupasthāna Sūtra leans toward emphasizing samatha, or calm abiding, while the Theravadin version leans toward vipassana, or insight.

  Two further Chinese parallels survive. One is Madhyama Āgama number 98, belonging to the Sarvāstivāda school. The other is the Ekottara Āgama's Ekāyana Sūtra, possibly transmitted by the Mahāsaṅghika school. Madhyama Āgama 98 lists the four jhanas and a perception of light under mindfulness of the body, and it counts six elements rather than four. Even with these differences, the versions share a broadly common structure.

  The Theravada Abhidhamma preserves yet another version, in a text called the Vibhaṅga, whose formulation differs from the Satipatthana Sutta itself. Scholars Johannes Bronkhorst and Bhikkhu Sujato argue that the Vibhaṅga's version is actually the earlier of the two, since it includes fewer elements than the sutta version does. Mahayana texts took up the same four smṛtyupasthānas as well, among them the Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra and Asanga's Abhidharmasamuccaya. Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend states plainly that "the persevering practice of smṛtyupasthāna is called samādhi."

  Working backward through these parallel versions, Johannes Bronkhorst reached a conclusion in 1985. He argued that the earliest form of mindfulness of the body covered only the body's impure parts.

• 4. The Fourfold Formula

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  Mindfulness in the early texts is said to be established in four ways. The first is mindfulness of the body, kāyagatā-sati in Pali. The second is mindfulness of feelings, vedanā-sati. The third is mindfulness of the mind, citta-sati. The fourth is mindfulness of principles or phenomena, dhammā-sati. Rupert Gethin translates the shared basic formula as an instruction to dwell watching the body, watching feelings, watching mind, and watching dhammas, in each case ardent, comprehending clearly, and overcoming both desire for and discontent with the world.

  Grzegorz Polak argues that this fourfold structure has been misunderstood by the developing tradition, Theravada included, as four separate objects of attention. Polak instead reads them as an alternate description of the jhanas themselves. By his account, they track the six sense-bases one must notice and the feelings that arise from sense contact. They also track the altered states of mind the practice produces. Finally, they track the shift from the five hindrances toward the seven factors of enlightenment.

  The satipatthanas belong to a wider list Buddhism calls the seven sets of states conducive to awakening. Early sources describe the practice as ekā-yano, a term translated in several different ways. Soma renders it as the only path. Analayo and Bodhi render it as direct path. Sujato renders it as path to convergence, meaning convergence toward samādhi. Sujato places satipatthana within a longer sequence of training: a student first renounces in search of peace, takes up rules of conduct, and practices restraint and mindfulness in daily activity. The student then withdraws to a secluded dwelling, establishes mindfulness through satipatthana meditation, and only then develops the four jhanas that lead to liberating insight.

  Texts such as MN 44.12 state directly that "the four satipatthanas are the basis for samādhi." The discussion of the three trainings found in MN 44.11 lists satipatthana under the heading of samādhi itself. Bhikkhu Sujato concludes from this that satipatthana's prime role is to support jhāna, a reading Rupert Gethin affirms by pointing to discourses such as SN 47.10 and SN 47.8.

  Thanissaro Bhikkhu goes further, arguing from suttas including SN 47:40 and MN 118 that developing these four frames of reference is a precondition for jhana itself.

• 5. Parts Elements And Decay

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  The Satipatthana Sutta instructs a meditator to examine the body from the soles of the feet to the top of the hair, described as enclosed by skin and full of many kinds of impurity. What follows is a list of anatomical parts: hair, skin, teeth, internal organs, and bodily fluids. This meditation is often called asubha, or contemplation of the unattractive.

  U Sīlānanda instructs students to first memorize all thirty-two parts of the body by reciting them. Only after that does a student learn each part's color, shape, and location. Bhikkhu Bodhi notes the practice is done using visualization as an aid, and the early discourses compare it to sorting through beans or grains in a bag, a detached rather than disgusted way of looking at one's own body.

  A second exercise turns to four physical properties the texts call mahābhūta. Earth means solids, water means liquids, air means gases moving in and around the body including the breath, and fire means warmth. The early texts compare this contemplation to how a butcher views and cuts up a slaughtered cow into its separate parts. Analayo says the practice is meant to loosen the sense of ownership over the body.

  A third exercise asks the meditator to contemplate a corpse through its stages of decay, from a fresh body to scattered bone dust, done in a charnel ground or through visualization alone. The Ekottarika-āgama version has the practitioner reflect, "my body will not escape from this calamity." It adds, "this body is impermanent, of a nature to fall apart." The early sources link this contemplation to greater motivation for practice.

  Analayo sums up the aim of all three exercises as detachment from the body through understanding its true nature. The early discourses compare mindfulness of the body to a strong pillar used to tie up wild animals representing the six senses. The Kāyagatāsati-sutta adds that this same practice helps a meditator endure physical discomfort.

• 6. Feelings And The Untamed Mind

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  Mindfulness of feelings asks a meditator to notice whether an experience carries a pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral tone, what the texts call vedanā. Analayo describes this as recognizing the affective tone of present-moment experience before it leads to further mental reaction. The early discourses compare feelings to sudden fierce winds in the sky, and to different types of guests staying in a guest house.

  Most early sources further divide feelings into sensual, or worldly, and non-sensual, or spiritual, categories. A pleasant feeling tied to sense pleasure leads toward unwholesome tendencies, while a pleasant feeling tied to mental concentration leads toward wholesome ones instead. The Madhyama-āgama version adds bodily and mental feelings as a further pair, and the Ānāpānasati Sutta's account of vedanā adds rapture and mental activities, broadening the category toward something closer to emotions or moods.

  Contemplation of the mind, or citta, begins in every early source with noticing the presence or absence of three unwholesome roots: lust, anger, and delusion. The Anaṅgaṇa-sutta illustrates the stakes with a simile of a bronze dish. A person who buys one but never cleans it lets it grow dirty, just as a mind left unattended by mindfulness accumulates unwholesome states.

  Analayo describes this contemplation as a middle path between two failures. One failure is dwelling only on one's flaws until inspiration is lost. The other is pretending to a purity one has not actually reached. The early discourses in SĀ 1246 and AN 3.100 compare the gradual removal of unwholesome states to refining gold ore, initially covered in rock, sand, and fine dust.

  This same contemplation of mind, Analayo notes, culminates in honestly recognizing how far one's practice has developed. That question is exactly what the fourth domain of mindfulness turns to answer, by naming the hindrances still standing in the way.

• 7. Hindrance And Awakening

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  The Satipatthana Sutta names five specific hindrances a meditator must notice: sense desire, ill will, sloth-and-torpor, restlessness-and-worry, and doubt. Early discourses in MN 43.20 and MN 68.6 link the jhanas directly to abandoning these five. They describe the hindrances as ones that "choke the mind, robbing understanding of its strength." AN 5.13 adds that an untended mind stays "not soft, nor workable, nor radiant, but is brittle."

  Instructions preserved in SĀ 715 give each hindrance a specific antidote. Desire is countered with contemplation of unattractiveness. Ill will is countered with loving-kindness. Sloth-and-torpor is countered with energetic thought or with perceiving light. Restlessness-and-worry is countered with calming thought, and doubt is countered with contemplating dependent origination. The Saṅgārava-sutta adds that removing the hindrances brings an increased ability to learn and remember what has been studied.

  The other set shared across every version of the formula is the seven factors of awakening, satta bojjhaṅgā. A meditator notices each factor's presence, how it arises, and how it can be developed further. SĀ 729 and SN 46.27 state that cultivating these factors is "supported by seclusion, supported by dispassion, and supported by cessation, culminating in letting go."

  The Aggi-sutta and its parallel at SĀ 714 note that investigation, energy, and joy work as antidotes to sluggishness. Tranquility, concentration, and equanimity counter agitation instead, and mindfulness itself is said to be useful in every circumstance. SĀ 718 and SN 46.4 compare mastering the seven factors to a king who changes clothing throughout the day according to need.

  According to the Anāpānasati-sutta and its Saṃyukta-āgama parallel, the seven factors also unfold in a loose ascending order. Mindfulness itself is nourished by the four satipatthanas, and energy is nourished through the four right efforts. Later teachers would argue over that order just as fiercely as they argued over the word satipatthana itself.

• 8. An Ongoing Argument

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  Bhikkhu Sujato labels the dominant modern reading of this practice the vipassanāvāda. In this view, the Buddha taught two systems, samatha and vipassanā. Samatha, on this view, came before the Buddha and is treated as not truly Buddhist. Vipassanā alone, by this account, can develop the concentration needed to suppress the hindrances. Under this view, the Satipatthana Sutta becomes the single most important discourse the Buddha taught on meditation, its essence reduced to moment-to-moment awareness of mind-body phenomena rising and falling.

  Scholar Tse-fu Kuan counters that there is probably no explicit indication in the Canon that liberation comes from sati alone, without the jhānas also being attained. Analayo separately criticizes teachers of the so-called dry insight approach. He cites U Pandita's instruction to "attack the object without hesitation... with violence, speed or great force." Analayo attributes that instruction to a misreading of the Abhidhamma term apilāpeti.

  Sujato notes that the Thai forest tradition rejects the samatha-versus-vipassanā split altogether, treating the two as complementary practices meant to be developed together. Thanissaro Bhikkhu points to suttas including MN 125 and AN 8:63, which equate the successful completion of satipatthana practice with reaching the first level of jhāna.

  In Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, the same four practices appear as the four close placements of mindfulness. They are discussed in commentaries on Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra by figures including Pawo Tsugla Trengwa Rinpoche and Kunzang Pelden, who lived from 1862 to 1943. A related text, the True Dharma Application of Mindfulness Sutra, survives in Tibetan, Chinese, and Sanskrit manuscripts, dating from between the second and fourth centuries CE, and is cited by figures including Atisha.

  The nineteenth-century scholar Ju Mipham, who lived from 1846 to 1912, described specifically Vajrayana versions of these same four practices. His gloss for mindfulness of feeling describes transforming ordinary felt experience directly into what he calls gnosis characterized by great bliss, a destination the earliest reciters of the Pali suttas never had in mind.