SUTTA 10

[^133]: This is one of the most important suttas in the Pati Canon, containing the most comprehensive statement of the most direct way to the attainment of the Buddhist goal. Virtually the identical sutta is found as well at DN 22, though with an expanded analysis of the Four Noble Truths attached, which accounts for its greater length. The sutta, its commentary, and copious extracts from its difficult but illuminating subcommentary have been presented together in translation by Soma Thera in The Way of Mindfulness. A very readable translation of the sutta, with a modern commentary excelling in clarity and depth, will be found in Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation.

[^134]: This town is said by some scholars to have been in the vicinity of modern Delhi.

[^135]: The Pali reads ekāyano ayam bhikkhave maggo, and virtually all translators understand this as a statement upholding satipatṭhāna as an exclusive path. Thus Ven. Soma renders it: "This is the only way, O bhikkhus," and Ven. Nyanaponika: "This is the sole way, monks." Nm, however, points out that ekāyana magga at MN 12.37-42 has the unambiguous contextual meaning of "a path that goes in one way only," and so he rendered the phrase in this passage, too. The expression used here, "the direct path," is an attempt to preserve this meaning in a more streamlined phrasing. MA explains ekāyana magga as a single path, not a divided path; as a way that has to be walked by oneself alone, without a companion; and as a way that goes to one goal, Nibbāna. Though there is neither canonical nor commentarial basis for this view, it might be maintained that satipatṭhāna is called ekāyana magga, the direct path, to distinguish it from the approach to meditative attainment that proceeds through the jhānas or brahmavihäras. While the latter can lead to Nibbāna, they do not do so necessarily but can lead to sidetracks, whereas satipatṭhāna leads invariably to the final goal.

[^136]: The word satipatṭhāna is a compound term. The first part, sati, originally meant "memory," but in Pali Buddhist usage it far more frequently bears the meaning of attentiveness directed to the present - hence the makeshift rendering "mindfulness." The second part is explained in two ways: either as a shortened form of upatṭhāna, meaning "setting up" or "establishing" - here, of mindfulness; or as patthāna, meaning "domain" or "foundation" again, of mindfulness. Thus the four satipatṭhānas may be understood as either the four ways of setting up mindfulness or as the four objective domains of mindfulness, to be amplified in the rest of the sutta. The former seems to be the etymologically correct derivation (confirmed by the Sanskrit sm_tyupasthāna), but the Pali commentators, while admitting both explanations, have a predilection for the latter.

[^137]: MA says that in this context, "bhikkhu" is a term indicating a person who earnestly endeavours to accomplish the practice of the teaching: "Whoever undertakes that practice...is here comprised under the term 'bhikkhu.'"

[^138]: The repetition in the phrase "contemplating the body as a body" (käye käyänupassī), according to MA, has the purpose of precisely determining the object of contemplation and of isolating that object from others with which it might be confused. Thus, in this practice, the body should be contemplated as such, and not one's feelings, ideas, and emotions concerning it. The phrase also means that the body should be contemplated simply as a body and not as a man, a woman, a self, or a living being. Similar considerations apply to the repetitions in the case of each of the other three foundations of mindfulness. "Covetousness and grief," MA says, stands for sensual desire and ill will, the principal hindrances that must be overcome for the practice to succeed, enumerated separately below in §36.

[^139]: The structure of this sutta is fairly simple. Following the preamble, the body of the discourse falls into four parts by way of the four foundations of mindfulness: I. Contemplation of the body, which comprises fourteen exercises: mindfulness of breathing; contemplation of the four postures; full awareness; attention to foulness; attention to the elements; and nine "charnel ground contemplations" - reflection on corpses in different stages of decomposition. II. Contemplation of feeling, considered one exercise. III. Contemplation of mind, also one exercise. IV. Contemplation of mind-objects, which has five subdivisions - the five hindrances; the five aggregates; the six sense bases; the seven enlightenment factors; and the Four Noble Truths. Thus the sutta expounds altogether twenty-one exercises in contemplation. Each exercise in turn has two aspects: the basic exercise, explained first, and a supple- mentary section on insight (essentially the same for all the exercises), which indicates how the contemplation is to be developed to deepen understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. Finally the sutta concludes with a statement of assurance in which the Buddha personally vouches for the effectiveness of the method by declaring the fruits of continuous practice to be either arahantship or non-returning.

[^140]: The practice of mindfulness of breathing (ānāpānasati) involves no deliberate attempt to regulate the breath, as in hatha yoga, but a sustained effort to fix awareness on the breath as it moves in and out in its natural rhythm. Mindfulness is set up at the nostrils or the upper lip, wherever the impact of the breath is felt most distinctly; the length of the breath is noted but not consciously controlled. The complete development of this meditation method is expounded in MN 118. For an organised collection of texts on this subject, see Bhikkhu Nānamoli, Mindfulness of Breathing. See too Vsm VIII, 145-244.

[^141]: MA: The phrase "experiencing the whole body" (sabbakāyapatisamivedī) means that the meditator becomes aware of each in-and-out breath through the three phases of its beginning, middle, and end.

[^142]: The "bodily formation" (käyasankhāra) is defined at MN 44.13 as in-and-out breathing itself. Thus, as MA explains, with the successful development of the practice, the meditator's breathing becomes increasingly quiet, tranquil, and peaceful.

[^143]: MA: "Internally": contemplating the breathing in his own body. "Externally": contemplating the breathing occurring in the body of another. "Internally and externally": contemplating the breathing in his own body and in the body of another alternately, with uninterrupted attention. A similar explanation applies to the refrain that follows each of the other sections, except that under the contemplation of feeling, mind, and mind-objects, the contemplation externally, apart from those possessing telepathic powers, must be inferential.

[^144]: MA: The "arising factors" (samudayadhammā) for the body are the conditions on account of which the body has arisen - namely, ignorance, craving, kamma, and food - together with the concrete fact of the moment-bymoment origination of material phenomena in the body. In the case of mindfulness of breathing, an additional arising factor mentioned by the commentaries is the physiological apparatus of respiration. The "vanishing factors" (vayadhammā) for the body are the cessation of the causal conditions and the momentary dissolution of material phenomena in the body.

[^145]: MA: For the sake of a wider and wider and higher and higher measure of knowledge and mindfulness.

[^146]: The understanding of the bodily postures referred to in this exercise is not our ordinary natural knowledge of our bodily activity, but a close, constant, and careful awareness of the body in every position, coupled with an analytical examination intended to dispel the delusion of a self as the agent of bodily movement.

[^147]: Sampajañña, also translated as "clear comprehension" (Soma, Nyanaponika), is analysed in the commentaries into four types: full awareness of the purpose of one's action; full awareness of the suitability of one's means; full awareness of the domain, that is, not abandoning the subject of meditation during one's daily routine; and full awareness of reality, the knowledge that behind one's activities there is no abiding self. See The Way of Mindfulness, pp. 60-100; The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, pp. 46-55.

[^148]: In later Pali works the brain is added to the above list to form thirty-two parts. The details of this meditation practice are explained at Vsm VIII, 42-144.

[^149]: These four elements are explained by Buddhist tradition as the primary attributes of matter - solidity, cohesioni, heat, and distension. The detailed explanation is found at Vsm XI, 27-117.

[^150]: The phrase "as though" (seyyathäpi) suggests that this meditation, and those to follow, need not be based upon an actual encounter with a corpse in the state of decay described, but can be performed as an imaginative exercise. "This same body" is, of course, the meditator's own body.

[^151]: Each of the four types of corpse mentioned here, and the three types below, may be taken as a separate and selfsufficient subject of meditation; or the entire set may be used as a progressive series for impressing on the mind the idea of the body's transience and insubstantiality. The progression continues in §§26-30.

[^152]: Feeling (vedana) signifies the affective quality of experience, bodily and mental, either pleasant, painful, or neither, i.e., neutral feeling. Examples of the "worldly" and "unworldly" forms of these feelings are given at MN 137.9-15 under the rubric of the six kinds of joy, grief, and equanimity based respectively on the household life and renunciation.

[^153]: The arising and vanishing factors for feeling are the same as those for the body (see n.144) except that food is replaced by contact, since contact is the condition for feeling (see MN 9.42).

[^154]: Mind (citta) as an object of contemplation refers to the general state and level of consciousness. Since consciousness itself, in its own nature, is the bare knowing or cognizing of an object, the quality of any state of mind is determined by its associated mental factors, such as lust, hate, and delusion or their opposites, as mentioned by the sutta.

[^155]: The paired examples of citta given in this passage contrast states of mind of wholesome and unwholesome, or developed and undeveloped character. An exception, however, is the pair "contracted" and "distracted," which are both unwholesome, the former due to sloth and torpor, the latter due to restlessness and remorse. MA explains "exalted mind" and "unsurpassed mind" as the mind pertaining to the level of the jhānas and immaterial meditative attainments, and "unexalted mind" and "surpassed mind" as the mind pertaining to the level of sense-sphere consciousness. "Liberated mind" must be understood as a mind temporarily and partly freed from defilements through insight or the jhānas. Since the practice of satipatṭhāna pertains to the preliminary phase of the path aimed at the supramundane paths of deliverance, this last category should not be understood as a mind liberated through attainment of the supramundane paths.

[^156]: The arising and vanishing factors of mind are the same as those for the body except that food is replaced by mentality-materiality, since the latter is the condition for consciousness (see DN 15.22/ii.63).

[^157]: The word rendered here as "mind-objects" is the polymorphous dhammā. In this context dhammā can be understood as comprising all phenomena classified by way of the categories of the Dhamma, the Buddha's teaching of actuality. This contemplation reaches its climax in the penetration of the teaching at the heart of the Dhamma the Four Noble Truths.

[^158]: The five hindrances (pañcanīvaraṇā) are the main inner impediments to the development of concentration and insight. Sensual desire arises through attending unwisely to a sensually attractive object and is abandoned by meditation on a foul object (as in §10 and §§14-30 ); ill will arises through attending unwisely to a repugnant object and is abandoned by developing loving-kindness; sloth and torpor arise by submitting to boredom and laziness and are abandoned by arousing energy; restlessness and remorse arise through unwisely reflecting on disturbing thoughts and are abandoned by wisely reflecting on tranquillity; doubt arises through unwisely reflecting on dubious matters and is abandoned by study, investigation, and inquiry. The hindrances are fully eradicated only by the supramundane paths. For a fuller treatment, see The Way of Mindfulness, pp. 119-130; Nyanaponika Thera, The Five Mental Hindrances; and also below, MN 27.18 and MN 39.13-14.

[^159]: The five aggregates affected by clinging (pañc'upādānakkhandhā) are the five groups of factors comprising the individual personality. The aggregates are discussed in the Introduction, p. 26, and are analysed and explained in terms of their origin and disappearance at MN 109.9.

[^160]: The internal bases are, as shown, the six sense faculties; the external bases, their respective objects. The fetter that arises dependent upon the pairs may be understood by way of the ten fetters explained in the Introduction, pp. 42-43, or more simply as attraction (greed), aversion (hatred), and the underlying delusion.

[^161]: How the seven enlightenment factors unfold in progres- sive sequence is explained at MN 118.29-40. For a more detailed discussion, see Piyadassi Thera, The Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

[^162]: "Investigation of states" (dhammavicaya) means the scrutiny of the mental and physical phenomena presented to the meditator's mind by mindfulness.

[^163]: The commentaries explain in detail the conditions that conduce to the maturation of the enlightenment factors. See The Way of Mindfulness, pp. 134-149.

[^164]: With this section, the contemplation of dhamma as mindobjects culminates in the understanding of the Dhamma in its core formulation as the Four Noble Truths. The longer Mahāsatipatṭhāna Sutta of the Digha Nikāya gives extended definitions and elaborations of each of the truths.

[^165]: Final knowledge, añña, is the arahant's knowledge of final deliverance. Non-return (anägämitā) is, of course, the state of a non-returner, who is reborn in a higher world where he attains final Nibbāna without ever returning to the human world.