teaching.
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The Foundations of Mindfulness
(the Satipatthana Sutta)
When the Buddha was in the land of the Kurus, he told
the monks: The systematic four-stage training of atten-
tion is the only way to overcome suffering, to purify the mind,
to enter the true path and attain Enlightenment. What are
these four?
The monk lives intently contemplating his body, clearly
understanding and mindful of it, having abandoned all
desire and aversion toward the world. Likewise he lives
examining his emotions, his states of mind, and his thought.
He lives alone, reliant on no one, attached to nothing in the
world.
MINDFULNESS OF THE BODY ( KAYA)
How does a monk live contemplating the body? He goes to the
forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty hut. He sits down
cross-legged, holds his body erect, and focuses on the breath
in front of himself.
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Mindfully he breathes in and mindfully he breathes out.
When inhaling a long breath, he thinks: “I am inhaling a long
breath.” When exhaling a long breath, he thinks: “I am exhal-
ing a long breath.” Likewise, he knows when he is breathing
in or out a short breath. He is like a skilled turner who knows
when he is making a long or short turn on the lathe.
He trains himself thinking: “Conscious of the whole body,
I breathe in. Conscious of the whole body, I breathe out. Calm-
ing the whole body, I breathe in. Calming the whole body I
breathe out.”
He carefully observes his own body and the bodies of oth-
ers. He observes how bodily sensations arise and pass away,
and what causes them to do so. He focuses on his body solely
for the purpose of understanding its true nature. And he lives
alone, reliant on no one, attached to nothing in this world.
Furthermore, when walking, a monk thinks: “I am walk-
ing.” When standing, he thinks: “I am standing.” Likewise he
knows when he is sitting or lying down. He calms his breath-
ing and his body in each of these postures.
He is equally mindful when coming and going; when look-
ing forward or around him; when bending and stretching;
when wearing his robes and carrying his bowl; when eating,
drinking, chewing, and tasting; when defecating and urinat-
ing; when walking, standing, sitting, and lying down; when
falling asleep and waking up; when talking and remaining
silent.
He surveys his body upward from the soles of his feet,
or downward from the hairs of his head. He examines the
thirty-two constituent parts of the body and sees them all as
repulsive. He analyzes the body in terms of the four elements.
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If possible, he will examine a corpse throughout the nine stages of decay, thinking: “My body is just like that one and
cannot escape its fate.” In these ways a monk contemplates
the nature of the body.
MINDFULNESS OF EMOTION ( VEDANA)
How does a monk observe the valences of phenomena? When
he experiences a pleasant feeling, he knows: “This is pleasant.”
When he experiences an unpleasant feeling, he knows: “This is
unpleasant.” He also recognizes those valences that are neither
pleasant nor unpleasant. Likewise, he is aware of the positive,
negative, and neutral valences that accompany thoughts.
He carefully observes how valences arise and how they
pass away, and what causes them to do so. He observes this
both in himself and in others. He pays attention to valences
solely for the purpose of understanding their true nature.
And he lives alone, reliant on no one, attached to nothing in
this world.
MINDFULNESS OF STATES OF MIND ( CITTA)
How does a monk contemplate his states of mind? He recog-
nizes the mind that is caught in desire and the mind free of
desire. He recognizes the mind that is caught in anger and
the mind free of anger. He recognizes the mind that is caught
in delusion and the mind free of delusion. He recognizes the
shrunken mind and the distracted mind; the undeveloped
mind and the supreme mind; the restless mind and the settled
mind; the mind that is not free and the liberated mind.
He carefully observes how these states of mind arise and
pass away, and what causes them to do so. He observes this
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both in himself and in others. And he lives alone, reliant on no one, attached to nothing in this world.
He lives observing The Five Hindrances. When his mind is
caught in Desire, he knows: “This is Desire.” When his mind
is free of Desire, he knows: “This is the mind free of Desire.”
He carefully observes how desire arises and passes away, and
what causes it to do so. He learns how to extinguish desire
when it arises, and how to prevent it arising in the future.
In the same manner, he examines the four other Hin-
drances, namely, Anger, Lethargy, Anxiety, and Despair. He
sees how they arise and pass away, and what causes them to
do so. He learns how to extinguish them when they arise, and
how to prevent them arising in the future.
He lives observing The Seven Factors of Enlightenment.
When he is Mindful, he knows it. When he is not Mindful, he
knows it. He carefully observes how mindfulness comes and
goes, and what causes it to do so. He learns how to strengthen
mindfulness when it is present, and how to bring it forth
when it is not present.
Likewise, he contemplates the other Factors of Enlighten-
ment. He carefully observes how Investigation, Energy, Bliss,
Stillness, Absorption, and Equanimity arise and pass away,
and what causes them to do so. He learns how to strengthen
each one of these qualities when it is present, and how to
bring it forth when it is not present.
He carefully observes how The Seven Factors of Enlight-
enment arise and pass away, and what causes them to do so.
He observes this both in himself and in others. And he lives
alone, reliant on no one, attached to nothing in this world.
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MINDFULNESS OF THOUGHT ( DHAMMA)
How does a monk live fully conscious and in control of his
thoughts? He contemplates the five aggregate parts that make
up his sense of self. He understands how the body, percep-
tions, feelings, action tendencies, and consciousness arise and
pass away. He investigates how attachment occurs through the
contact of sense organs and sens
e objects, and understands
how to break free from that attachment.
The monk reflects on The Four Noble Truths that lead to
Nirvana. He understands by direct experience that: Life is
suffering. The cause of suffering is desire. Desire can be extin-
guished. The Eightfold Path of training extinguishes desire
and leads to the end of suffering.
Anyone who practices these four foundations of mindful-
ness for seven years or seven months or even seven days may
expect one of two outcomes: complete enlightenment in this
life or, if some trace of clinging to the world still remains, no
rebirth after death.
The systematic four-stage training of attention is the only
way to overcome suffering, to purify the mind, to enter the
true path, and attain Enlightenment.
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13
The History of Translation
With a little effort the Satipatthana Sutta is not diffi-
cult to understand, yet in the twenty-first century it
is almost completely neglected. It is rarely mentioned in the
psychological or popular literature except as the iconic pri-
mal source. Even people with a serious interest in mindfulness
seem reluctant to examine it, and if you tried to read it your-
self, you would soon find out why.
The standard translation, originating in the Victorian era,
has a semi-biblical, true-believer tone that is quite discourag-
ing. It uses phrases like “sorrow and lamentation,” “sloth and
torpor,” and “the purification of all beings.” It comes from a
bygone age. It probably doesn’t help that nearly all available
commentaries on the Sutta in book form are written by West-
ern and Asian monks who are not native speakers of English.
The first and by far the most important translator of the
Sutta was T. W. Rhys Davids (1843–1922), a British administra-
tor in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the late nineteenth century.
Davids established the Pali Text Society (PTS) in 1881 to make
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the massive quantity of original texts available in English. It took Davids and his scholars over forty years to translate the
whole Pali Canon, but the PTS is still going strong today.
The next translators emerged from a tiny group of West-
erners who became monks in Ceylon before World War II.
The first of these was the monk Soma Thera (1898–1960), who
was born in Ceylon to Latin parents and who became a major
proselytizer of the Sutta after his conversion to Buddhism.
Soma Thera’s 1949 translation and commentary, The Way
of Mindfulness, was the first such exploration of the Sutta
to appear in book form. Unfortunately, Soma Thera adopts
the exhortatory manner of an Old Testament prophet, which
would nowadays deter all but the hardiest reader.
Soma Thera was assisted with his book by Nyanaponika
Thera (1901–1994), a senior monk of German birth. Later,
Nyanaponika produced his own translation of, and commen-
tary on, the Sutta, titled The Heart of Buddhist Meditation:
Satipatthana, published in London in 1962. Nyanaponika’s
intelligent, thoughtful book is a little awkward to read, but is
still perfectly serviceable. It has been the foundational com-
mentary for most Vipassana students since the 1960s.
And the lineage continues. Nyanaponika’s younger asso-
ciate, the American monk Bhikkhu Bodhi (born in 1944),
became and still is the most respected current editor/trans-
lator of the Pali Canon. He edited the latest PTS version of
the Sutta in 1995 as part of the collection The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. Bodhi’s student, a German monk
named Analayo, produced his own superb commentary in
2004 titled Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization. This
book is technically superior to the works of Soma Thera and
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Nyanaponika, but it still exhibits all the caution and conser-vatism of a young scholar monk.
Monasticism is dying out in the West, and Western Bud-
dhist monks are an infinitesimally tiny population. Nirvana
as the Buddha described it now seems to be a dead goal even
for Asians (although it would be impossible to tell for sure).
However, the translators of the Sutta just outlined did or do
take nirvana very seriously. They were or are monks translat-
ing what another monk, the Buddha, said to his own monks
about the only way to enlightenment. Their deep conviction
and allegiance to the monastic life comes through in their
commentaries.
As translators, however, they are all limited by their
excessive respect for the style and authority of Rhys Davids.
We don’t get five different translations from these five men.
We just get a succession of minor tinkering with Rhys Davids’
original. We can think of it as the Standard Pali Text Society
translation. There has been no substantial change to it since
it first appeared.
Rhys Davids was a late Victorian who understandably
wrote like one. He liked archaisms such as “lamentation” and
“abide” and preferred language with a spiritual or biblical fla-
vor (for example, “mindfulness” instead of “attention”). Half
a century later, in 1941, Soma Thera didn’t translate the Sutta
from the original Pali as he could have done. (He was always
compulsively busy.) With the help of the German monk
Nyanaponika, he simply cleaned up Rhys Davids’ rather pro-
lix original translation.
Nyanaponika in his 1962 book used the same transla-
tion he had worked on with Soma Thera two decades earlier.
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Likewise, Bhikkhu Bodhi in 1995 presents the same translation with minor variants, as does his student Analayo in the
2004 book. Even Thanissaro Bhikkhu, an American monk
in a Thai rather than Sri Lankan lineage, leaves the standard
PTS text largely untouched.
It is easy to understand why these translators relied so
unashamedly on Rhys Davids’ fine pioneering work. This was
partly out of respect, but they would also have faced huge dif-
ficulties doing their own translations had they attempted to
do so. The original texts are written in Pali, which was a local
vernacular cousin of Sanskrit. Pali was an oral language with
no written form until three centuries after the Buddha died.
The texts of the Pali Canon were memorized before that time.
Pali now survives only as the language of the Buddhist texts.
Pali scholars have three ways of interpreting the mean-
ing of any word: from its context, from the huge commen-
tarial literature, and from its equivalent meaning in Sanskrit.
In practice, this means that only simple Pa
li words have
straightforward definitions. Important words are more likely
to be “defined” by a sprawling body of often contradictory
meanings, references, and associations. Pali and Sanskrit also
use a common rhetorical device of using a string of similes to
express an idea. This makes the precise meaning of any word
even more difficult to nail down.
Pali scholarship is an impenetrably dense thicket of com-
peting interpretations about minutiae, which I personally
find very discouraging. For example, early Buddhist psychol-
ogy (in a series of texts called the Abhidhamma) is capable
of analyzing a single moment of perception into thirty-seven
constituent parts. Reverential nit-picking analysis has been
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the style of Buddhist scholarship from the very beginning. It is particularly obsessed with lists and the cross-referencing of
lists. This approach brings to mind Ajaan Chah’s criticism of
certain meditators: He said they were like people in a chicken
shed who mistakenly collect the droppings rather than the
eggs.
Another reason that Westerners are discouraged by the
Sutta is that its Buddhism is not at all what they are used to. It is “hard” uncompromising Buddhism, fleshed out on a skele-ton of core beliefs. It never mentions compassion. It is not the
“soft” sentimental Buddhism of popular media and books,
with the bar set so low that anyone can stumble in (“just be
kind”). The Sutta is what the Buddha actually said. It is seri-
ous stuff.
We encounter this original Buddhism in the first words
of the Sutta, asserting the Buddha’s aversion to the world,
and I’m sure many people are repelled by it. The Sutta is
logical, well-argued, and psychologically astute. It is also self-
oriented, pessimistic, and world denying. I argue that it is
quite easy to extract the superb mind-training techniques
from the Buddha’s personal values and beliefs, but I’m not
surprised that few people ever persist long enough with the
Sutta to do that.
A NEW TRANSLATION AT LAST
Here are a few comments on my translation. Pali itself seems
to have been a homely language of the people. It definitely
wasn’t like its cousin: highborn, literary, philosophic Sanskrit.
The Sutta reads as a self-development manual: How to attain
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