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Buddhism, yoga, and New Age spirituality, and it is usually
explained in spiritual terms. Anyone who attends a course
or reads a book about meditation will likely encounter spir-
ituality as an embedded value of meditation practice within
minutes. The implication is that anyone who is seriously
interested in meditation will need to explore that spiritual
hinterland.
“Mindfulness,” by contrast, is more clearly related to psy-
chology, scientific research, and rational thought. Mindful-
ness practice is more about Stoic acceptance than monastic
withdrawal. It is about coping better with life’s complexities,
changing what you can and adjusting to what you can’t. It is
not about trying to escape from the world. “Mindfulness,” in
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other words, can embrace the whole field of self-observation, self-improvement, and our messy ordinary lives in a way that
“meditation” (as “time out”) never could.
Fortunately, psychologists have now extracted these prac-
tices from the grip of Eastern spirituality. We can be grate-
ful to Kabat-Zinn and the other early writers who managed
to import meditation into the mainstream of Western cul-
ture. Equally important is the fact that people are discussing
“mindfulness” in a serious way. The concept of mindfulness
has finally been met with a critical, analytic language and
an ongoing debate that “meditation” for the most part has
lacked.
And yet, forty-one years after Jon Kabat-Zinn launched
his seminal mindfulness program at the University of Mas-
sachusetts, no consensus has yet materialized about what
mindfulness actually is. Buddhists, psychologists, and pop-
ular writers all have differing views of it. Ignorance of the
past and half-truths are endemic. Poor-quality research and
extravagant promotional claims muddy the waters.
If you feel confused by all this, realize you are not alone.
In 2012 the researchers David Vago and David Silbersweig
summed up what they called “the major problem in the field
right now”: “There remains no single ‘correct’ or ‘authorita-
tive’ definition of mindfulness and the concept is often triv-
ialized and conflated with many common interpretations.”2
Mindfulness is popular for the simple reason that it works,
but it still lacks scientific credibility. Why is this?
Aristotle, who established more scientific disciplines
than any other person in history, said that a science has to
start with a clear axiomatic definition free of ambiguities.
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Unfortunately, “mindfulness” as we now use it has no core meaning that could form the basis of a scientific discipline. It
is a conglomeration of disparate meanings. It is variously used
to describe a meditation practice (Vipassana); a cognitive
function (attention); a psychotherapy (mindfulness-based
cognitive therapy); an ideal state of mind (nonjudgmental
acceptance); a way of life (as with the countercultural imper-
ative made famous by Ram Dass: “Be here now”); and the
essence of Buddhism itself. Throughout this book, and to dis-
tinguish it from the Buddha’s quite different use of the term,
I will refer to this protean bundle as “Modern Mindfulness.”
For ease of use I will define Modern Mindfulness as “a state of
nonjudgmental acceptance.”
Strange to say, “to be mindful” in common usage is not a
confusing term. It has been doing good service in the English
language since the fourteenth century. “To be mindful”
means “to pay attention to what you are doing to avoid mis-
takes or improve performance.” This straightforward mean-
ing is also compatible with the way the Buddha uses the term.
Since there is no dispute that the Satipatthana Sutta is the
source of Vipassana, of mindfulness-based stress reduction,
and of the various permutations of Modern Mindfulness, it
would seem useful to go back to those “foundations of mind-
fulness” and see what the Buddha originally said.
Unfortunately, it is not easy to just dip into the Satipat-
thana Sutta. The standard English translation is almost
indecipherable to a newcomer. It is clogged with long and
numerous liturgical refrains, jargon words, and the Vic-
torian oratory of its first translator. It is hard to hack a way
through all this to the lean and muscular training discipline
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at its core. So nearly everyone who tries to read the Sutta soon gives up or, at best, scavenges a few ideas.
That first translator was T. W. Rhys Davids, a Victorian
administrator in Ceylon. He and his extended team worked
from 1881 to 1925 to translate the vast corpus of early Buddhist
texts from the original Pali language. Without him, that work
might still be untranslated. Because his pioneering efforts
were so magisterial and comprehensive, no one has attempted
a genuinely new translation since. The Pali Text Society (PTS)
that he founded is the unchallenged custodian of that work
in English, and their latest edition of the Sutta, with Bhikkhu
Bodhi as its editor, was published by Wisdom Books in 1995.
I imagine that Bodhi and I agree fairly well on matters of
interpretation, but our translations are vastly different. His
translation fills eleven large pages. Mine takes four smaller
ones. His version omits a few of the thirteen liturgical refrains.
I omit nearly all of them. His version describes at length cer-
tain archaic practices (such as meditating on corpses) that I
pass over in a sentence. Without excluding anything, I give
priority to the practical application of the Buddha’s mind-
training methods for rational twenty-first-century Westerners
like myself. I have tried to highlight the clear lines of the dis-
cipline and avoid getting tangled in detail. (Throughout this
book, when I quote the Satipatthana Sutta, I will be quoting
from my version, included here as chapter 12.)
In the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha builds a systematic
four-stage training program on the concept of attention ( sati)
in a way that would certainly have impressed Aristotle. The
language is plain and direct. The terms are clearly defined.
The methodology and goals are obvious. If the Sutta were
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better known, it would at least give a coherent and logical alternative to the modern versions of mindfulness.
So what exactly is mindfulness, according to the Buddha?
In 1881 Rhys Davids, for his own reasons, chose to translate
the Sutta’s crucial term sati as “mindfulness.” In fact, sati means “attention” in exactly th
e way a modern cognitive psychologist would understand that word. To be more precise,
sati means the kind of purposeful attention that can discrim-
inate good and bad, right or wrong, useful and useless in any
situation.
In the Satipatthana Sutta, the word sati is inseparable
from two other terms that help to define it. It is often linked
to a word ( sampajjana) that literally means “accurate under-
standing” but in practice is used in the sense of “evalua-
tion” or “good judgment.” A clear perception of a sensation,
thought, or emotion lets us evaluate it in the context of our
larger goals.
Furthermore, sati is linked to a word ( atapi) that means
“strong intention.” This implies purpose and goal-directed
behavior. For example, the Buddha’s monks weren’t just sit-
ting around being peaceful, living in the present, and waiting
for insight. They were striving “ardently” to cut off all their
attachments to the world and become enlightened.
The four sections of the Sutta are: Mindfulness of the Body;
Mindfulness of Emotion; Mindfulness of States of Mind; and
Mindfulness of Thought. These are the four “foundations” or
“training disciplines” or “contemplations” or “objects of atten-
tion” that make up the Sutta, and all four are necessary. As
the Buddha said, “The systematic four-stage training of atten-
tion is the only way to Enlightenment.”
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This book loosely follows this fourfold structure. The first ten chapters correspond to the large “mindfulness of the
body” section that opens the Sutta. These chapters cover very
thoroughly, and with some side trips, what we recognize as
standard meditation practice. Done well, this body-based
meditation leads to profound states of tranquility, pleasure,
mental control, and a degree of philosophic detachment. For
readers who regard mindfulness and meditation as being more
or less identical, and who have little interest in the full appli-
cation of mindfulness, these chapters will be quite sufficient.
The rest of this book is the graduate level. In chapters
11–15, I offer my own version of the Sutta. I give a full analy-
sis of the Buddha’s key term sati according to the traditional
commentaries, and I explain how the Sutta works as a train-
ing manual. In chapters 16–22, I explain the training disci-
plines relating to the other three foundations of the Sutta:
namely, mindfulness of emotion, of states of mind, and of
thought. The last four chapters discuss the modern applica-
tions of mindfulness.
The title of the Satipatthana Sutta is commonly translated
as The Foundations of Mindfulness, and this entire book is my
commentary on this foundational text. I will also use the word
“foundation” in another way. I describe how the Sutta, despite
its antiquity, can still be an excellent foundation for a system-
atic mind-training discipline based on meditation. It has cer-
tainly been the foundation for my own practice since 1975. It
has also served as the foundational manual for my career as a
meditation teacher since 1987.
The Buddha was a clear-minded, systematic philosopher,
but we should be willing to acknowledge that his values are
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often at odds with ours. Not everything about traditional Buddhism is automatically benign or unquestionably wise. I
believe it shows him far more respect as a human being to
present his doctrines accurately, rather than airbrush them
for broader appeal.
The Buddha was a real man. We know what he said. There
is no mystery about what he taught. We have tens of thou-
sands of words attributed to him, collected in the colossal
body of original Pali-language texts known as the Pali Canon.
Those texts suggest that he was not at all as sympathetic as
the Buddha of the modern imagination. He hardly ever men-
tioned compassion. That is more of a Tibetan theme. Above
all, he was an ascetic who regarded all sensual pleasures and
worldly pursuits as antagonistic to inner peace.
Many of us will feel that we have a reasonably coherent
idea of Buddhism, but this is more of a modern construction
than we realize. We can think of it as Western Buddhism. It is
typically a mixture of various forms of Buddhism along with
whatever Christian, Stoic, liberal, New Age, psychological,
and spiritual values seem compatible with it. This is vastly
different from original Buddhism. When I talk about Bud-
dhism, however, I will refer only to what the historical Buddha
originally taught. This means that any beliefs and opinions
that I attribute to the historical Buddha can be readily cor-
roborated by the Pali Canon.
DISCRIMINATING ATTENTION OR NONJUDGMENTAL
ACCEPTANCE?
Although this book is a commentary on the Sutta, I still need
to address one huge contradiction in the field. The Buddha
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understood mindfulness ( sati) as the function of discriminating attention. The very purpose of attention is to refine our
capacity for accurate judgment and decision-making in all
matters, big and small. So how did “mindfulness” become so
widely used in a sense that is virtually the opposite: a state of
nonjudgmental acceptance? How did this everyday cognitive
function turn into an ideal meditative state of mind?
The journey that sati takes from the Buddha to Modern
Mindfulness is quite direct, but it mutates each step of the
way. Sati means “attention.” This is basically a verb or an
action. When Rhys Davids chose instead to translate it as
“mindfulness,” he converted it into a noun and a “thing.” This
means that “mindfulness” could then be used as a label for
the ten-day Vipassana retreats based on the Sutta.
When Kabat-Zinn developed his MBSR program from the
ten-day Vipassana retreat format, it was natural for him to call
it “mindfulness-based stress reduction.” However, when he
defined mindfulness itself, he changed its meaning yet again.
Kabat-Zinn was a dedicated Zen practitioner long before he
encountered Vipassana. So he used the word “mindfulness”
to describe not “attention” but the ideal Zen state of mind.
This is usually called sunyata, or “emptiness.”
Since he couldn’t use spiritual terms for his secular pro-
gram, he alluded to it through adjectives instead. He defined
mindfulness as “a state of nonjudgmental acceptance” along
with a passive “openness” to present moment experience. This
is a remarkably accurate, workable description of sunyata, or
“emptiness.” In fact, nearly everything Kabat-Zinn says about
mindf
ulness throughout all his books reflects his strong
identification with Zen.
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To summarize, sati as “attention” refers to an ordinary cognitive function. We automatically or consciously pay
attention to things all day long. Modern Mindfulness, on
the other hand, refers to an ideal state of mind (“emptiness”)
which is really only attainable in meditation. There is room
for both interpretations in the mindfulness field, but it would
help to recognize that they refer to fundamentally different
things.
While writing this book, I have kept several prospective read-
ers in mind. Although this is not intended as a self-help book,
it does contain some spin-off exercises that a novice meditator
can try out immediately. I’ve also considered the keen medita-
tor who is confused by the mindfulness literature; the young
psychologist who wishes she could make more sense of it all;
the researchers who are struggling to define the phenomena;
and the Western Buddhist who has not yet tackled the Sutta. I
hope I can offer something of value to each of you.
I could not have written this book without the help of
many others. I am indebted to the psychiatrists and psy-
chologists who have generously shared their knowledge and
resources with me. I would particularly like to thank Mark
Craigie, Kate James, and Jane Genovese. My thanks are also
due to my friend, colleague, and researcher Paul Majewski,
who has shaped this book in more ways than he can imagine.
Perth, Australia
November 2016
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SOME USEFUL TERMS
Three Definitions of Mindfulness
Vernacular English: to pay attention to what you are
doing to avoid mistakes and improve performance; to
be mindful of one’s actions and their consequences.
Sati: attention, or the conscious perception and eval-
uation of something. The Sutta invites us to systemat-
ically observe our body sensations, emotions, states of
mind, and thought, in order to refine our responses.
Modern Mindfulness: a state of open, nonjudgmental
acceptance usually associated with meditation.