Satipatthana Sutta Study
The Direct Path to Realization
Sutta on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness

(Excerpts below please credit Rees, Mary. "Being Prayer - Transforming Consciousness: Good News of Buddhist Practice." Houston: Nutshell Publications, 2006.)

The sutta begins with the words, “Thus have I heard.” This is a signal that the teachings are the words of the Buddha, recited by his student and assistant, Ananda, memorized by monks after the death of Gautama Buddha. The suttas were collected for oral recitation at the first Council about three months after the death of Gautama Buddha. At the time “recording” was done through memorization. Because the teachings, the suttas, were memorized and repeated over and over (chanted), sutta teachings are stated briefly and directly and with great redundancy. Yet they capture in brief and pithy phrases, in combination with wonderful stories, the central elements of the teachings. The suttas were handed down in this manner for five hundred years until they were put in written form on banana leaves in Sri Lanka.

The teachings are practices to explore. Through their use we can discover what is true.

The sutta describes four categories of experience, four satipatthanas, which together describe all aspects of human experience. The four satipatthanas include, from most basic to most inclusive:

(1) Experiences of the body and physical sensations (2) Feeling tones, the automatic responses to stimuli of pleasant, unpleasant, indifferent, or neutral (3) Qualities of mind or mind states, which include emotions and various kinds of consciousness (4) Dhammas (dharmas or phenomena), basic teachings and their relationship with aspects, or sutta elements, as they unfold in experience.

Promises

At both the beginning and the end of the sutta, the Buddha promises not only that the path he is sharing will work, but that it is the most direct path to realization. Skillful attention to the four satipatthanas will result in:

• Purification • Overcoming of sorrow and lamentation • Ending of pain and grief • Attainment of the right path (ability to live with skillful means) • Realization of Nibbana (enlightenment)

The concluding segment of the sutta also includes promises that by practicing diligently for even a short period of time, one can attain realization either immediately or at the end of this lifetime.

Supportive Mental Qualities

Practitioners working with these teachings will develop skillful attention and a pliable mind, establishing the following mental qualities:

• Diligence • Clear knowing • Mindfulness • Freedom from grasping and aversion

Primary Themes

Each segment of the sutta is followed by a refrain, like the chorus of a song, stressing a repeated description of how to practice:

• Observing the various objects of attention both in our own experience and in that of others, then seeing that the qualities are universal in nature, not just “mine” or “yours” • Observing that all these phenomena arise and pass away (not just understanding this, but viscerally experiencing it as so) • Observing and analyzing only to the point necessary for seeing and experiencing clearly • Observing without clinging to or rejecting any experience • Observing experience that comes from ordinary consciousness and from aspects of mind that operate outside our mechanistic understandings of mind and reality

Satipatthana : The Direct Path to Realization. Birmingham, UK: Windhorse Publications, 2003.