The Satipatthana Sutta

Posted By Mahabodhi on Feb 13, 2024 | 0 comments

Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…

© Mahabodhi Burton

19 minute read

This excerpt is from the chapter ‘The Undiscovered Foundations’ and it explores the basic structure of the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha’s central teaching on mindfulness.

The path of mindfulness

Mindfulness has been touted as a great solution to the problems of modern life, and many Westerners today will have been introduced to the concept. While respectfully touching upon its origin in Buddhism, advocates of mindfulness move quickly to emphasize its non-religious nature, citing its universal applicability in current times. Chewing a raisin with awareness or looking at a flower mindfully; these are examples of sensory experiences which can be practised and appreciated by anyone, regardless of their belief system. Such sensory experiences provide us with a cue to slow down and notice our life, and to not let it pass by in ‘busyness.’

In our fast-paced world, time itself has become the shrine at which we, as mindfulness practitioners, might worship in three-minute bursts as we take breathing spaces from the sphere of digital information that dominates many of our lives: never-ending emails, burgeoning apps, smart phones constantly interrupting us with social media notifications and alarm reminders, all catching us in an endless stream of information.

Mindfulness practices help us to manage our reactions and agitations, supporting us in releasing tension. So, we build mindfulness into our day; we might share our meditation sessions with friends and strangers on meditation apps, we’ll chew our food more slowly, and we’ll build a structure of awareness into our day. We fit mindfulness into our lives, experiencing its benefits.

This is good, it works, it’s definitely worth doing, and it’s certainly better than not doing it, but mindfulness has so much more potential and scope. For some, mindfulness is deeply embedded in every single aspect of the living of life. The most advanced Buddhists practice, or strive to practice, the ‘full-works’ of mindfulness, encompassing connectedness with others, ethics and actions, the imagination and insight, the whole of life, the whole shebang, all of it.

Whilst modern mindfulness emphasizes the development of awareness in the present moment, its actual origin in Buddhism was exclusively concerned with whatever is life-affirming or life-denying, in Buddhist terms ‘skilful’ or ‘unskilful’, ethical, not ethical.

In the early days of Buddhism mindfulness was encountered by the Greeks who settled the Indian subcontinent in the wake of Alexander’s conquest. The Greek king, King Menander, sought to understand this intriguing religion. Upon enquiring about the mark of mindfulness, he was told that mindfulness is to be aware of that which is ‘light’ and that which is ‘dark’ and to stay with the light (beneficial, etc). No mention of the present moment. In its Buddhist conception, mindfulness was inherently and inseparably about ethics, when this is understood as action objectively leading to happiness and well-being.^[1]

We all want to be happy; no-one wakes up aspiring to be really unhappy. Every single thing we do, every action we take, is aimed at our comfort and happiness, whether we are conscious of it or not. But do we really investigate our actions? How often do we bring awareness to our actions to see if they bring happiness? Probably not all that often; and it is only when we do this on a regular basis that we begin to more assuredly guide our lives towards happiness.

There are two conditions, within ourselves, that are required if we are to bring happiness into the world for both ourselves and others. Firstly, we need to want it, which we do through developing the quality of metta  or loving kindness. Secondly, we need to know HOW to bring happiness about. This is the work of mindfulness. Mindfulness tells us whether we are experiencing happiness or suffering. It also tells us whether our responses to life, the things that we are doing and the views we hold, are creating happiness or suffering. Through practising mindfulness and metta  we get to the nub of the matter; we realize that happiness is not accidental. Happiness is not about luck. It is firmly in our own hands. Metta helps us to care about our experience and that of others, and mindfulness is the intimate act of bringing ourselves closer to bringing that about.

The philosopher Heidegger said we need to remember that we are here in the world, as if thrown here, and he thought that the appropriate response to this was ‘to care.’ Similarly, the Buddha said ‘I teach two things, suffering and the end of suffering.’ He wasn’t interested in what the world was or what he could know of it—such questions were philosophical distractions from the central question: ‘What do we need to do to overcome suffering and to be happy?’ His answer: mindfulness.

This idea is reflected in the injunction within secular mindfulness today to ‘be aware on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally.’ This involves looking after oneself by practising the body scan; stopping periodically and returning to one’s experience in order to become centred; and trying to notice when one is reacting rather than responding creatively to one’s experience. These broad-brush strokes of mindfulness practice bring relief and hold suffering at bay. But mindfulness can be so much more. The Buddha talked about the four foundations of mindfulness. He said that the practice of them led directly to Enlightenment, to becoming a Buddha, to dwelling in the state of Nirvana.

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness

The four foundations of mindfulness are the Buddha’s foremost teachings on mindfulness, recorded in the Satipatthana Sutta of the Theravada Pali Canon.

1. ‘Mindfulness of body’ (kaya), mindfulness of our tangible physical experience, both of one’s own body and bodies and material objects in the world
2. ‘Mindfulness of feeling’ (vedana), mindfulness of our felt experience of pleasure, pain or the absence of either
3. ‘Mindfulness of mind’ (citta), mindfulness of our mind’s response to its experience, including thoughts, emotions and quality of attention
4. ‘Mindfulness of mental objects’^[2] (dhammas), hereafter referred to as ‘views’, mindfulness of our views and opinions

It is crucial that we have a precise understanding of these important terms, as they are the key components in the Buddha’s teaching on mindfulness; in evaluating what they might be I have assumed two criteria;

1. Does my adopted analysis include everything that I understand in my own experience is essential and relevant to the practice of mindfulness?
2. Does explaining a term in a particular way contribute to an optimum workable system?

Body

An example of the former is my explication of the term ‘body.’ It is obvious that, in terms of the objects of experience that have a bearing on happiness and well-being, the state of our physical body has a bearing on our happiness, but so do the tangible objects of the world; in their multiplicity these exert a distracting force—in their unity a concentrating force, upon the mind.^[3] Observation of the tangible world leads to knowledge of its nature, and this too has a consequence for happiness.

Feeling

My explication of the term ‘feeling’ is standard Buddhism: vedana is the Pali for feeling. The Oxford English Dictionary definition of ‘feeling’ includes ‘emotional reaction;’ ‘intuitive understanding;’ ‘vague belief;’ ‘opinion;’ ‘tendency to respond emotionally;’ ‘sentiment;’ ‘impression.’ Some of these states are primarily feelings themselves; some are responses to feeling; what they all have in common is they involve an experience; of pleasure, pain, or its absence, and this, very explicitly, is what vedana is. It is pleasure; it is pain; it is neutral feeling.^[4] For instance, when we are bored the mental state present is boredom, the feeling a neutral one.

Vedana is frequently translated as ‘sensation’, but if we understand sensation as purely physical this cannot be right; feeling also has mental and emotional forms.^[5] But if we more correctly think of sensation as physical feeling only, this leaves room for the other three main forms of feeling mentioned in the Buddhist texts: mood or mental feeling (cetasika vedana😉^[6] and worldly feeling (samisa vedana)^[7] and spiritual feeling (niramisa Vedana.)^[8]

The Satipatthana Sutta teaches the monk to be mindful of what he is feeling, and whether it is pleasant, painful or neutral, this serves two purposes.

• First, let’s assume that the monk’s aim is to achieve (the highest) happiness for himself and others. If he never stops to see whether he is happy he will never know to what extent he has achieved his goal, and will likely pursue activities beyond the point of their fruitfulness. Similarly, he needs to recognize his experience of pain before he can change the conditions that led to it, and thus alleviate it.
• Secondly, how he responds to any feeling has a certain consequence for himself and others. Knowing this, he strives to be mindful of feeling, both in himself and in others, and moderates his response, rather than reacting unthinkingly. Only mindfulnesswill help the monk discern that sensation which will drive him towards Awakening and it is here that he places his attention and his effort.

Mind

And with ‘Mind’ I have chosen the Mahayana interpretation, incorporating the emotions. We can think of mind as what the ancient Greeks called psyche, including not only the process of thinking, but also the emotional life and the activity of paying attention. It is the sum of all the ways that a person responds to their experience.

Citta is essentially the state or ‘shape’ of the Mind – including the mental and the emotional, upon which the monk works to bring himself closer to Awakening.^[9]

The Buddhist understanding of Mind differs from that in English culture, where mind is generally understood to be connected with thinking, reasoning and knowledge, and where the emotions are connected with the heart centre and are ‘lumped in’ with feelings. Buddhist practice is concerned with every aspect of the psyche which;

1. has a consequence
2. can be changed

therefore, the concept of Mind in Buddhism (citta) has three dimensions meeting these criteria, the capacity for which are present all of the time simultaneously;

1. the quality of paying attention
2. the quality of emotion
3. the quality of thought

Meditation gives us the best conditions to consciously take up these three aspects of mind, investigate to what degree they conduce to happiness or suffering (for ourselves and others), and work to transform them as sources of happiness.

Views

I have arrived at ‘Views’ as my translation of dhammas, and this is how. Dhamma roughly is ‘what can be remembered’ or ‘what can be borne in mind’ (dharetabba), hence the translation of dhammas as ‘mental objects’ and sometimes as ‘phenomena.’^[10] ‘Mental objects’ doesn’t tell us very much about what dhammas are, although two things we do hold in the mind are ‘concepts’ and ‘images.’

Buddhism teaches that we have not just five but six senses, with the mind being the sixth sense called manas. As humans we have evolved to make assessments about the world around us. These assessments can be at the level of thought, although prior to thought, evolution taught us the more gut-level instinctual response of fight or flight, where information resides at the visceral level on a ground of learned experience. According to Sagaramati, a view is a deeply ingrained attitude, not simply an opinion; it arises on one or all of Buddhism’s grounds for faith: reason, intuition and experience.

When we come across something that meets one of these criterion as a means either for survival, to avoid pain, or to bring joy and fulfilment, we don’t need to consciously make an effort to place that ‘mental object’ in our mind, it naturally gets stored there. In this way views naturally arise based upon a mix of feelings, gut instincts, and reasons; in fact, often it is emotion that plays the bigger role, only for us to later come up with rationalizations for the views we hold.

The process of bearing a mental object in mind, i.e. in the mind-sense manas,^[11] involves apperception or recognition (Sanskrit: samjna; Pali: sanna.) Through life we are taught the conventional conceptual meanings of concrete objects and abstract concepts: chair, desk, popularity. Once we know these as names, we can recognize them when we see them. But we also recognize images: a person’s face, a landscape, a painting, a visualized Buddha.

‘Although when manas is translated as ‘mind’ dhammas tends to be rendered accordingly as ‘thoughts’ or ‘ideas’, note that dhammas qua the object of manas as the sixth sense faculty refer not only to thoughts, ideas or concepts, but to mentality in its broadest denotation: dhammas are the objects when one, for instance, remembers, anticipates or concentrates on something. There are six modes of cognitive awareness and five physical sense faculties; anything else is dhamma.’^[12]

The way that these ‘mental objects’ constellate in our minds into a perspective comes to be our worldview or belief system, within which certain ideas and images predominate in the moment. These ideas and images tell us what we really believe in; dictating our behaviour, no matter what we might think we believe, and make up our perspective.

View as mental perspective

Dhammas are to the mind-sense what visual forms are to the eye:^[13] just as a visual perspective is formed when the eye looks through^[14] a field of visual objects, a mental perspective or view forms when the mind-sense ‘looks through’ a field of mental objects (dhammas). As an illustrative example, a materialist who is also an optimist will likely imagine themselves enjoying various happy experiences in the forefront of their consciousness, whilst thoughts about traditional religious concerns including life after death will be pushed back into the background of their mind or be absent altogether. On the other hand, the political theorist who is pessimistic by nature will likely experience dystopian images of society in the foreground of their mind, with concerns about personal material comforts relegated more to the background. And based on each’s perspective, they act in the world appropriately: by amassing wealth or practising political activism.

The Pali word Dhamma (Sanskrit: Dharma) in Buddhism means The Truth or the teaching of the Buddha. A problem with this word being used cross-culturally—in Buddhism and Hinduism– is that is that where dhamma indicates ‘a way of seeing’, ‘the truth about things’, ‘what is (really) there’, what is seen is implicit in the worldview of the person doing the seeing; the Hindu understands Dhamma as the individual’s caste duty, within which the freedom and opportunities of the lower castes are restricted; the Buddhist understands it as the Buddha’s teaching leading to the alleviation of suffering for all sentient beings; two contradictory aims. Like the word ‘Truth,’ the word Dhamma necessarily means different things to different people, essentially reflecting their view of the world. When I talk about a Dharmic viewpoint I specifically mean the Buddhist one.

We cannot but have views. I render dhammas as ‘Views’ because through practicing Mindfulness of dhammas we bring mindfulness to the way that we see things, asking ourselves if our views conduce to Awakening or not. In the Satipatthana Sutta the Mindfulness of dhammas section contains five sub-sections, each of which expresses the Buddhist view in a particular area:

1. The five hindrances
2. The five constituents of the person
3. Fetters associated with the six sense bases
4. The seven factors of Awakening
5. The four Noble Truths

For instance, in the section on the five hindrances, we ask ourselves if we really see the mental states of sense desire, hatred and so on as hindrances to happiness; maybe we don’t. The key idea is that through mindfulness of dhammas we can shift our view from whatever it is presently to a Dharmic perspective (in the Buddhist sense) where we do see them as hindrances.^[15]

It is by dwelling on Dharmic ideas and images; by reflecting on the validity of our perspective through Dharma study and reflection; by bringing to consciousness the concepts and images (i.e. mental objects) that we tend to dwell on that we can offer a critique of our views from a Dharmic perspective. But because emotion plays a key part in the construction of our views, if we are to satisfy that side of ourselves we need to find ways of influencing our emotions in a positive way around a Dharmic perspective, for instance through the regular submersion in aesthetics or by practising Buddhist devotion.

The whole context that we engage in is of key importance: it is through thoroughly ‘weaving our lives’ in and around Buddhist thoughts, Buddhist images and Buddhist social situations, that we come to site our mind more firmly within a Dharmic context.^[16]

We tend to hold certain views simply because we have been brought up with them or we have come to feel comfortable with them (especially views about ‘the self’.) However, it is an open question as to whether ALL views are essentially views about happiness and well-being. I suggest that they are: each living being possesses a thirst (tanha) for fulfilment / completion^[17] in their area of concern: whether they are a political animal or technology geek, their interest will in some way be linked to happiness, even if that is just taking up Scientism as an escape from the uncomfortable realities of life.

All views are strategies to reduce suffering; this doesn’t mean that everything comes down to psychology, it goes much deeper than that; the Buddha taught that all worldlings (Pali: puthujjana)^[18] are mad; desperate to survive, to be happy, to feel like they understand what is going on even when they don’t, they come up with views inextricably tied up with all of the above.

The monk’s view, then, encompasses not just what he thinks he believes on a conscious level, but also his unconscious fears, hopes and desires (as indicated by the mental objects that dominate his mind). These all thrust concepts and images into his mind for him to consider, and they contribute towards his view. It is not what we think that mainly determines what we do, but our unconscious emotions, which our activities can mask. We might know that something is a good idea but we still cannot bring ourselves to do it because of our more dominant, and unconsciously held, views. If we believe at the unconscious level that we can’t live with our feelings all kinds of wonky and irrational actions might ensue which help us dampen them down.

Wisdom (prajna)

Views are simply the ‘operating perspective’ that a person holds at any one time. They give a person their ‘map’ of the world, out of which one set of actions flows rather than another. As such they are crucial, and primary. It is our views that determine how we act, and so we need to bring mindfulness to them to make sure that they are Right View, the view which according to the Buddha leads to happiness for ourselves and others. We arrive at Right View through three routes; we observe our experience, we accept the feelings we cannot change and we reflect upon our views; our views may be negatively affected by the fact that we don’t observe the world closely for what it is, don’t accept our experience when it is difficult and don’t reflect on our views. In such cases our views are likely to lead to suffering. Mindfulness of Views works to transform all views, conscious and unconscious, to be conducive to Awakening. When this is the case, the monk can be said to possess wisdom or prajna.^[19]

Mindfulness of all Four Foundations

In the Sutta the Buddha teaches his disciples to be mindful of each of the foundations in turn, beginning with mindfulness of the body, continuing with mindfulness of feeling, moving onto mindfulness of the mind, and culminating with mindfulness of dhammas. Whilst the teaching is presented in this linear fashion, obviously the foundations are intended to be practised simultaneously.

Buddhism aims to bring happiness into the world at the level of basic human needs, as part of the single goal of alleviating suffering and the attainment of Enlightenment for all beings. It also teaches the cultivation of happiness that is not reliant upon ‘the world’–worldly happiness, but which is reliant upon ethical mental states cultivated most frequently within meditation practice. This is known as spiritual happiness. And beyond that, Buddhism points us towards relying on the happiness that comes from Awakening itself—‘more spiritual than spiritual happiness’—which is unconditional, transcending all of the conditions of human existence.

If we are to evaluate the goal of Buddhism in terms of happiness, it is a happiness that is based on the highest good, the greatest welfare for all sentient beings. It is not, and will never be, at the expense of suffering elsewhere. The ‘ultimate’ happiness developed at the level of Awakening, the unshakeable happiness of Nirvana, comes when we know that we are free from greed, hatred and delusion, and so are satisfied with our experience no matter what; we have no wish to harm another, and we see the way forward clearly, in terms of everyone’s wellbeing. Not only that, we are keenly motivated to help all beings to achieve this highest happiness. We will still experience pain, such as physical illness, but we will no longer agonize about the experience. The Buddhist project to relieve suffering only stops when all suffering has been relieved.

The four foundations are the four aspects of experience which can be said to make up the whole person. The Buddha teaches that the four foundations of mindfulness are to be our refuge, rather than seeking refuge in the world, since together they encompass every source of happiness and suffering there is. These are the places–the only places–from which happiness (and ultimately Awakening) and suffering originate and if we can bring mindfulness to each foundation, we can change them from being a source of suffering to a source of happiness (or Awakening). Once we overcome every imaginable source of suffering, we attain Nirvana.

The Buddha teaches thus:

The monk is to ‘contemplate’ each of the foundations in the following ways.

• With passion (atapi)—he is to throw his heart into each Foundation as a refuge
• With mindfulness (sati)—he is to hold each Foundation within awareness, with an eye to whether it leads to happiness (and Awakening) or not.
• And with clear comprehension (sampajanna) including mindfulness of purpose—he is to know WHY he is contemplating each Foundation, and the unique and specific significance of it.

Clarity over domain

Attending to each Foundation, the monk is asked to contemplate it ‘in and of itself.’ This simply means that when they are aiming to be mindful of one particular Foundation, in one particular moment, they work only on that Foundation and not any another. This clarity is important because the central insight that the Buddha had into the nature of reality was that reality is governed by the Law of Conditionality. The monk gains and maintains this perspective of Conditionality, looking for and aligning himself with the happiness that reality can actually offer, by withdrawing from the world, into meditation, ‘setting mindfulness to the fore.’ Rather than seeking happiness or pleasure in the world of the senses,^[20] he applies mindfulness to the four foundations of mindfulness and makes them the basis of the path to happiness.^[21]

The Satipatthana Sutta is mostly understood to be a foundation for contemporary vipassana (insight) meditation practice as a path to Nirvana, but it can also be a framework to understand the conditions in play within that path. Conditionality is not the same doctrine as cause and effect, which only purports to deal with isolated conditions; the sun might shine because of the thermonuclear reactions going on in its core, but as with any situation, if we look carefully enough, there are a myriad of conditions in play.

For instance, human emotion; the main cause (or condition, according to Buddhism) for an emotion is an experience giving rise to a feeling. For example, wandering around in our summer shorts we stub our toe on a tree root (the experience), at which we experience pain (the feeling) and subsequently feel anger or embarrassment (the emotion).

How we respond emotionally will also depend on other conditions at play in the situation, for instance our views. When we stub our toe, it will be less likely that we will have a strong negative reaction if we are used to taking knocks, and have an expectation that such things will happen, than if we have led a more protected life, Then, the thought; ‘This should not be happening’ follows hard on the experience, followed by anger or despair.

In addition to this, how we respond emotionally will depend on where we have placed our attention; it is a well-known fact in pain management that a person can distract themselves from pain by directing their attention to something else, and consequently by changing what emotion they experience. While we might say that emotion is conditioned primarily by feeling, it can also be moderated by our view or by the focus of our attention:^[22]

Naturalness (Dharmata)

One consequence of the Law of Conditionality is that when the conditions that support it is in place a process with happen naturally, it doesn’t require an act of will. An example given in the Buddhist scriptures is that when a person has a conscious practice of ethics and they see that they have done something harmful, they naturally feel remorse;

‘For a person endowed with ethics, consummate in ethics, there is no need for an act of will, “May freedom from remorse arise in me.” It is in the nature of things that freedom from remorse arises in a person endowed with ethics, consummate in ethics.’^[23]

In the same way when we sit in meditation posture, rather than holding our body up through an act of will—which only introduces tension into our experience—we just let our body sit there, naturally, and if we can concentrate on balancing our skeleton so that it takes the bodies weight down to the ground, the muscles of the body can feel confident that they will be supported, and can relax, like an unfurled fist. As the mind and emotions need only be minimally involved with the body, they are then free to engage with whatever aspect of experience they wish to focus on.

To achieve anything, we just have to make sure that the conditions that support it are in place; it will then happen naturally.

The Sutta refrain

The Sutta lays out the foundations one by one, beginning with body. At the end of each section and sub-section of the Sutta there is what Analyo calls the Sutta’s ‘refrain’, instructing the monk to work with the foundations in three particular ways, which we need to bear in mind as we consider the four foundations

• The refrain introduces the idea of being aware of each foundation both ‘internally’ and ‘externally’ to cover all instances of them. Commentators often say that ‘internal’ and ‘external’ refer to the foundation within oneself and within others. A more likely interpretation is that ‘internal body’ refers to those aspects of one’s physical experience that are within one’s control—for instance aspects of one’s physical body, and ‘external body’ refers to those aspects which are not–for instance the objects of the external world.
• The refrain introduces the idea of being aware of each foundation ‘arising and passing away.’ Theravada commentators often narrow this to reflecting on each foundation’s impermanent nature, but ‘body’, ‘feeling’, ‘mind’ and ‘views’ are all governed by the Law of Conditionality; they condition, and are conditioned by, each other. The monk needs to take this into account, if he is to work with them and transform them.
• The refrain introduces the idea of balancing attention to the foundations, so as not to under-emphasize any important condition.^[24]

The chapter goes on to explore the way in which the Four Foundations of Mindfulness interact with each other through the Law of Conditionality, in a manner similar to the cognitive model from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and thus manifest the path to Nirvana.

^[1]The Questions of King Milinda is a Buddhist text composed sometime between 100 BCE and 200 CE that purports to record a dialogue between the Buddhist monk Nagasena and King Menander, who ruled over the Indo-Greek kingdom of Bactria. Menander asks Nagasena what the mark of mindfulness is and he replies that mindfulness ‘counts up’ what is beneficial and unbeneficial, bright and dark (i.e. skilful and unskilful) and it takes up the skilful and lets go of the unskilful, clearly tying mindfulness in with ethics (and therefore with loving kindness). Whilst paying attention, purposefully and non-judgementally, in the present moment may contribute towards happiness, it is clear that mindfulness can best be generally viewed as awareness applied to whatever leads to happiness. Applied to the four foundations of mindfulness transforms them to be conditions to attain the ultimate happiness of Nirvana.

^[2] Nyanaponika Thera has ‘mental contents.’ See Nyanaponika Thera. (1975) The Heart of Buddhist Meditation. Rider. p57.

^[3] In the Sutta the Buddha teaches the practitioner to be mindful of the body ‘internally’, ‘externally’ and ‘both internally and externally.’

^[4]Buddhism has only one word: sukha, for both pleasure and happiness; sukha can be the experience of sunshine on one’s face; the pleasure of getting what one wants; the bliss experienced in meditation; or the blissful freedom of Nirvana. There is also only one word: dukkha, for both pain and suffering. The Buddha likened dukkha to an ill-fitting chariot wheel; it can be anything from the pain of stubbing one’s toe to losing a close family member; or even a catastrophic collapse of meaning in one’s life. Neutral feeling – asukhamadukkha – is neither pleasure nor pain.

^[5] Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism has ‘feeling’ as; ‘the physical or mental sensations that accompany all moments of sensory consciousness.’

^[6] The ‘second arrow’ in the Sutra of the Arrow.

^[7] Niramisa Sutta SN 36.31.

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] The Theravada view of citta differs substantially from this: Rupert Gethin says that ‘Citta is defined very simply as consciousness of an object.’ ‘Abhidhamma Concept of Attention – Rupert Gethin.’ Dharma Thought. YouTube. 15 April 2013. See 7:33 mins.

https://youtu.be/UoJgtXHmWTQ

^[10] According to Buddhaghosa the term dhammas has a generalisation so wide and loose that it ‘includes “everything” that can be known or thought of in any way,’ thus it has been rendered ‘phenomena.’ Buddhaghosa. (1991) The Path of Purification: Visuddhimagga. Buddhist Publication Society. p186.

^[11] Noa Ronkin. (2005) Early Buddhist Metaphysics: the making of a philosophical tradition. RoutledgeCurzon. P44.

^[12] Ibid. p38.

^[13] ‘As to the eye, the organ of vision, correspond visible things (rupa,) so to the organ of the inner sense, manas, correspond non-corporeal mental things (dhamma.)’ Collected Wheel publications. Volume V, Numbers 61-75. Buddhist Publication Society, Sri Lanka. (2008) p369.

^[14] Perspective: ‘seeing through’: from the Latin per-, through + specere, to look.

^[15] Likewise, we might be under the impression that the person is not constituted by five impermanent and interconnected constituents (skandhas) but is fixed; or that engagement with the six bases of sense consciousness is not a potential fetter to spiritual development; or that those listed are not the factors leading to Awakening; or that the Four Noble Truths do not describe the human situation at the highest level: for example, suffering is not inherent in existence.

^[16] A context reflects how a particular set of ideas, practices, institutions and associations are woven together (context; con-, together; texere. to weave).

^[17] ‘(Tanha) is a notion that is best understood … as a metaphor that evokes the general condition that all unenlightened beings find themselves in in the world; a state of being characterized by a “thirst” that compels a pursuit for appeasement, the urge to seek out some form of gratification. In other words, tanha is a metaphor for the existential and affective ground underlying the whole of samsaric existence, the ground out of which spring the various strivings for satisfaction, fulfilment and meaning.’ Morrison, R. (Dharmachari Sagaramati) ‘Three Cheers for Tanha’ Western Buddhist Review. Vol. 2. 1997.

^[18] Puthujjana; ‘One of the many folk’; a ‘worldling’ or run of the mill person. An ordinary person who has not yet realized any of the four stages of Awakening.

https;//www.wisdomlib.org/definition/puthujjana#buddhism

^[19]‘ Prajna is present in one who “possesses wisdom directed to arising and passing away, which is noble and penetrative, leading to the complete destruction of suffering”; it is ‘seen’ in the four Noble Truths. (Samyutta Nikaya 1670-1)

^[20] ‘A monk lives contemplating the body (feeling, etc). in the body, ardent, clearly comprehending (it) and mindful (of it), having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief.’ Soma Thera. The Way of Mindfulness: The Satipatthana Sutta and Its Commentary. Access to Insight. Accessed 8 March 2019.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/soma/wayof.html ‘Having overcome covetousness and grief in this world’ means no longer looking to the world of sense experience for one’s ultimate satisfaction.

^[21] Including being aware of sense experience: which is different from relying on it as a source of happiness.

^[22] If you are familiar with a secular mindfulness course you will have implicitly encountered the principle of Conditionality in the way that pleasant and unpleasant events arise in relation to particular bodily states, feelings and thoughts. Observing how pleasure and pain arises from somewhere, not randomly, allows us to work with it creatively; an important principle when we are considering stress.

^[23] Cetana Sutta. SN 12.38.

^[24] For example, one is as aware of one’s physical sensations as one is of one’s thoughts.