An introduction to The Buddha’s original mindfulness manual, the Satipatthana Sutta.
By David S. Murphy, Ph.D., aka Keisho Ananda
The practice of mindfulness, or bringing one’s focus to the present moment, can be transformative in helping to relieve stress and anxiety, reduce depression, and promote better self-care and compassion, as well as offer many other far-reaching benefits. To truly understand how it can have a positive impact on our lives today, it’s helpful to trace the roots of mindfulness from East to West and explore its Buddhist roots.
One of the most influential advocates of mindfulness practices in Western society is Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., who did his doctoral work in molecular biology at MIT and is now an Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is best known for founding the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic in 1979, and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (CFM), in 1995, which are now part of UMassMemorial Health.
He, along with Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein, perhaps had the biggest influences on bringing mindfulness from the East to the West. While mindfulness practices are usually associated with Buddhism and Hinduism, “It is important to include that some commentators argue that the history of mindfulness should not be reduced to Buddhism and Hinduism, as mindfulness also has roots in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” [1] For example, for at least 15 centuries some Christians practiced a mindfulness meditation that was often referred to as “contemplation.”
Although mindfulness practices have their roots in religious traditions, and some would question whether Buddhism is a religion or a psychological practice, mindfulness has become an accepted secular practice and an evidence-based treatment modality for mental health professionals.
Nevertheless, it is sometimes useful to return to a practice’s roots. Much of mindfulness as we know it today came to the West through Buddhism, and that is a useful place to start. We find The Buddha’s original mindfulness manual in the Satipatthana Sutta.[2]
The Sutta begins with The Buddha stating, “This is the only way, O bhikkhus, for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and lamentation, for the destruction of suffering and grief, for reaching the right path, for the attainment of Nibbana, namely, the Four Arousings of Mindfulness.” This statement lays out the purpose of mindfulness and four arousings, or objects of contemplation. These four are the contemplation of the body, feeling, mind and the Dharma.
Contemplation of the Body
The contemplation of the body begins with following the breath.[3] Much like we do today, The Buddha told his followers, “Mindful, he breathes in, and mindful, he breathes out.” Just as it has done for 2,500 years, focusing on the breath refocuses our mind when it begins to wander. It doesn’t matter if you are practicing mindfulness meditation or, as I do every evening, washing the dishes as a mindful practice. Returning to the breath always re-centers the mind.
Mindfulness breathing, as explained in this Sutta, goes through four states. In the first stage we focus only on the breath. The second leads us to focus on the length of the breath. We note whether our inhalations are long or short and then whether our exhalations are correspondingly long or short. In the third stage, one observes the effect of breathing on the body, and in the fourth stage one guides the breath to relax the entire body.
Once having practiced the four stages of mindfulness breathing one is led, in the Sutta, to be mindful of postures. This is not just restricted to the traditional lotus pose, but to be mindful while sitting, while walking, while laying, and while changing posture. For example, you might be sitting while you read this. How is your posture while you read this? Do you know? While typing this, I took a second to inventory my posture and noted that I had a bit of a slouch, so I adjusted my posture, and now I am sitting up straight. This practice, being mindful of our posture, reminds us that we are not our bodies and that we can, when we pay attention to them, control them like we control our posture.
The third form of contemplation of the body in the Sutta is termed, “mindfulness and clear comprehension.” This asks us to be mindful during our normal, everyday activities. Again, when I am standing at the kitchen window in the evening washing the dishes by hand (one of my favorite mindfulness practices) am I aware of what I am doing and why? I am feeling the scratch on the back of a fork that tells me that it isn’t completely clean, or am I looking out the window across the forest with a thousand-yard stare, or am I contemplating my evening reading? This practice reminds us that we should be mindful in everything that we do.
The next two contemplations are designed to turn us from a body-centric sensual focus and see the body for what it really is. The remaining contemplations that follow this section of the Sutta are just variations on this theme. In general, the first of these two contemplations asks us to see the body as a meat sack. Imagine your body as it really is, a collection of working, moving and flowing bones, muscles, connective tissues, organs and fluids. See your body as it really is. The next contemplation takes us to the four elements, earth, water, fire and air, which represent the four properties of solidity, fluidity, heat and pressure. This leads us to contemplate the body not only as a system of related physical components, but also as a set of processes, digestion and respiration for example, that are in a constant state of change. Our bodies are impermanent because they change second-by-second through the biological processes that continually take place. This, I hope, reminds us of impermanence and the importance of non-attachment.
Contemplation of Feeling
The next contemplations focus on feeling, not of feelings (emotions). One of the foundational teachings of Buddhism is to accept things as they really are, and not as we wish them to be. We tend to seek pleasure and avoid or retreat from pain. These contemplations ask us to look at life as it really is. Sometimes it is pleasurable, other times it is painful, and sometimes it just is.
This is important because pleasant feelings lead to desire, attachment and greed. Attachment, in Buddhism, is one of the factors that keeps us in the cycle of samsara, of rebirth into an unsatisfactory life. Painful or unpleasant feelings, on the other hand, lead to rejection and aversion. Neutral feelings, the feelings that happen when life just is, turn out to not be all that helpful. They cause us to be apathetic, uninvolved, or complacent.
In feeling-based mindfulness, we move from the ability to first identify that a feeling is present to categorizing it as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. For example, I am experiencing an unpleasant feeling. You might then pigeonhole the feeling as trending towards attachment (worldly), or detachment (spiritual). Just as we did with contemplation of the body, with contemplation of feeling we move from the feeling itself to the process of feeling. That is where one begins to understand the impermanent nature of feeling.
Contemplation of Mind
As mindfulness teachers, we understand that everything happens in the mind. When we “see” something, we don’t really see it with our eyes, signals are passed from the rods and cones in our eye, down the optic nerve and into our minds where they are decoded and given meaning.
In this section of the Sutta, The Buddha identifies eight pairs of mental states, and the first three pairs are unwholesome and wholesome:
- Mind with lust . . . without lust,
- Mind with aversion . . . without aversion,
- Mind with delusion . . . without delusion
- Cramped mind . . . scattered mind,
- Developed mind . . . undeveloped mind,
- Surpassable mind . . . unsurpassable mind,
- Concentrated mind . . . unconcentrated mind, and
- Freed mind . . . bound mind.
It is good to learn to concentrate on the first three pairs and identify your current mental state and learn to observe it without attaching ownership. Rather than noting, “My mind is full of lust”, observe, “Lust is present”, or “A mental state of lust is present.” Through not attaching to a mental state, we develop the awareness that mental states flow continuously through our mind like fallen leaves down a stream. There is no need to reach down and take a leaf out of the water, just let it flow by. Like all things, mental states are transient, impermanent.
Contemplation of Dharma
The final foundation of mindfulness is contemplation of dhammas. The word dhamma (Pali) or dharma (Sanskrit) is usually used to mean teachings or laws. In this part of the Sutta, The Buddha has grouped His teachings that lead to enlightenment, the goal of Buddhism. The five groups mentioned in the Sutta, with their corresponding elements, are:
- The five hindrances
- sensual desire,
- Ill will,
- Dullness and drowsiness,
- Restlessness and worry, and
- The five aggregates (skandhas),
- Material form,
- Feeling,
- Perception,
- Volitional activities, and
- The six pairs of sense and sense objects,
- The eye and visible forms,
- The ear and sounds,
- The nose and odors,
- The tongue and tastes,
- The body and tactile objects, and
- The mind and mental objects.
- The seven factors of enlightenment,
- Mindfulness,
- Investigation,
- Energy,
- Rapture,
- Tranquility,
- Concentration,
- Equanimity, and
- The four noble truths
- the truths of suffering,
- The truth of its origin,
- The truth of its cessation, and
- The path that leads to the cessation of suffering.
When contemplating the five hindrances be mindful of their existence and then be mindful of what causes them to arise, how they can be eliminated, and how their arrival can be eliminated in the future. This is the opposite of our reaction to the seven factors of enlightenment. When one of the seven factors arises, be mindful of what caused it to arise and how its presence can be strengthened rather than eliminated.
I think of the five aggregates and the six senses and their sense objects as fetters that chain us to samsara or this cycle of existence. Through mindfulness we can identify when we have been caught in an aggregate or sense snare and then identify and eliminate the cause. It is when we are not mindful of our mental processes that we are led back to the past, forward into the never-arriving future, or a fantasy world of our own making. Mindfulness is the ultimate tool for self-control and self-mastery, and for being present in the present.
Footnotes
[1]. Trousselard M, Steiler D, Claverie D, Canini F. L’histoire de la Mindfulness à l’épreuve des données actuelles de la littérature: questions en suspens [The history of Mindfulness put to the test of current scientific data: unresolved questions]. Encephale. 2014 Dec;40(6):474-80. French. doi: 10.1016/j.encep.2014.08.006. Epub 2014 Sep 5. PMID: 25194754.
[2]. The full text of the Satipatthana Sutta, along with an extensive commentary, is available at https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html.
[3] The Anapata Sati, a more extensive sutta on meditation of breathing is available at https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/ariyadhamma/bl115.html.
Bio
Dr. David Murphy, Ph.D., recently retired from the College of Business at the University of Lynchburg, where he had taught for 22 years and served as the chair of the accounting department for 15 years and as the director of the MBA program for 5 years. He is also known as Keisho Ananda / Dhammacakkhu Ananda, an ordained Sensei (Anagarika) or Dhamma Teacher, and Samana or Monk in the Hongaku Jōdo Compassionate Lotus Tradition, and a member of the Hongaku Peacemaker Sangha. He is an active dharma and mindfulness teacher and is a Transformation Academy Certified Mindfulness Life Coach. He can be reached via email at: davemurphyphd@gmail.com.
