Rafting Towards Relinquishment

I've gone back and forth on the word sati, and how exactly to translate it, but I now think the typical translation of "mindfulness" is good. So, on our tour of SN 48.10, we now reach the third of the five spiritual faculties, "mindfulness". The text accompanying is, in my translation:

And what, O monks, is the faculty of mindfulness?

Here, O monks, a noble disciple is endowed with mindfulness and carefulness, remembers and recalls what was said and done a long time ago.

Ardent, alert, and mindful, they abide watching the body in the body, having put away covetousness and sorrow for the world.

Ardent, alert, and mindful, they abide watching the feelings in the feelings, having put away covetousness and sorrow for the world.

Ardent, alert, and mindful, they abide watching the mind in the mind, having put away covetousness and sorrow for the world.

Ardent, alert, and mindful, they abide watching the mental processes [or qualities] in the mental processes, having put away covetousness and sorrow for the world.

This, O monks, is called the faculty of mindfulness.

The first interesting thing about this is the initial definition of mindfulness as remembering and recalling. The word translated as "mindfulness" derives from the word for memory. It gets fleshed out in the following list, the four establishings of mindfulness, so it means more than simple recollection. It's worth taking a second to tease out that connection.

One popular interpretation is that it means simply recalling the present. That is, recalling what is right in front of you, right now. However, some scholars (e.g., Richard Gombrich and Bhante Anālayo) have taken another perspective, contextualizing it historically. At that time, the Vedic rituals were memorized and passed down verbatim. Also at this time in Indian history, thinkers were starting to think more abstractly about the mind and about the religious teachings contained within the Vedas. In order to memorize something, some special mental quality must be present, something that makes it easier to remember. It's this quality that is sati. It's a special kind of awareness.

Another interpretation is offered by Ajahn Thanissaro. He observes that the Buddha distinguishes between "right mindfulness" and "wrong mindfulness". Mindfulness is "right" when it works in harmony with the other path factors; when it is guided by right view, and applied via right effort (the four right strivings covered by the last few posts). So, for Ajahn Thanissaro, the connection with memory is that one must be keeping in mind right view, distinguishing skilled and unskilled mental states.

Besides mindfulness/memory, the formula also includes ardency and alertness. It is this latter that is more properly what is typically thought of as mindfulness, that is, a bare, broad-based, nonreactive awareness. It has also been translated as "clear comprehension" or simply "awareness". I like "alert" because simply being aware feels a bit too passive as a translation. Alertness implies more wakefulness, and a readiness to act upon that of which one is aware. The sense of "comprehension" is important, though, because it also means understanding what is going on. It's not a blank awareness, with no knowledge, but a clear understanding of what is happening in the mind or in awareness.

And this is done with ardency. This is done diligently. The untrained mind, or the mind in training, has a tendency to get lost, to get carried away by thoughts, until one is not aware and present, alert and clearly understanding what is happening. Understanding gets complicated into confusion as interpretations and ideas from other times and places get brought to bear on the present experience. Reactions of attraction and repulsion overwhelm the mind, mental composure is lost, and we are trapped again in the world. By applying mindfulness practice ardently, as often as possible, by staying on top of ourselves and our minds and being ready to correct our course as soon as we go astray, we can bring ourselves to liberation.

Continuing my previous post on satipaṭṭhāna, let's now get into the pericope:

Idha, bhikkhave, bhikkhu kāye kāyānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṃ, vedanāsu vedanānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṃ, citte cittānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā vineyya loke abhijjādomanassaṃ, dhammesu dhammānupassī viharati ātāpī sampajāno satimā vineyya loke abhijjādomanassaṃ.

I'm going to break each of the phrases into parts and deal with those parts. There's the starting bit, which is what changes in each repetition, kāye kāyānupassī viharati, vedanāsu vedanānupassī viharati, citte cittānupassī viharati, dhammesu dhammānupassī viharati. That's followed by ātāpī, sampajāno, satimā, and vineyya loke abhijjhādomanassaṃ. I'll take up each of those pieces in turn.

( Let's get to it! )

I decided to give my next Dhamma Talk on satipaṭṭhāna, a word usually translated as "foundation of mindfulness" or "establishing of mindfulness". I think Bhikkhu Anālayo makes a very good argument that these are not great translations, and it probably means something more like "staying near awareness", which is why I titled the talk "Satipaṭṭhāna: The Practice of Staying Near Our Experience." But that translation is not what this post is going to be about.

The most common place to go for instructions on satipaṭṭhāna are, quite naturally, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta from the Majjhima Nikāya (collection of middle-length discourses, or suttas) or a few related suttas. But there's a whole collection of short suttas on the topic in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, which is a collection of very brief suttas organized by topic. Bhikkhu Sujato argues that these represent an earlier strata than the popular sutta in the MN, that indeed the more well-known sutta is actually pretty late in composition. So I've decided to mine that for my talk. And man, there's some gold in there.

Starting with something I touched on in a previous post, that ethical practice is meant to be preliminary to formal meditation practice, which is the reverse of the way it's generally taught in the West (outside of the Asian diaspora, of course). I think this is generally because people coming to Buddhism are fleeing the moralizing of Western religion, with its Thou Shalt Nots and so forth, and are interested in meditation for whatever reason, and in order to win converts Dharma teachers set aside Buddhist morality and teach the meditation part first. But, in fact, the set of practices grouped together as "mindfulness meditation" relies on a solid foundation of ethical living, so doing this does a disservice to what the Buddha taught. Instead, I think it's good to underline it, as well as the fact that the Buddhist approach to ethics is radically different from approaches in which morality is about adhering to absolute rules delivered by a deity in order to avoid eternal punishment.

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