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

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

Introduction

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

The Four Satipatthanas

1. The Contemplation of the Body

Mindfulness of breathing — This segment sets up the foundational practice of concentration. The practitioner goes to a quiet place, sitting in an alert but comfortable posture and turning attention, bare attention with no overlay of thought, to just the body, particularly to the breath of the body, the breathing body, and, according to some commentaries, to spaciousness of mind and to the mutual nature of both space and mind/body.

The postures of the body — The practitioner applies bare attention and awareness not only to breathing and to body, but also to the body in all postures, specifically including sitting, standing, lying down, and walking.

Mindfulness with clear comprehension — The intention here is to move from simply being aware of experience through bare attention, a passive practice, to one of recognizing process, then choosing skillful actions and avoiding unskillful ones. The practice involves expanding mindful attention to all activities and movement.

The reflection on the parts of the body — In this practice attention is turned to the organs and fluids of the body. Attention to bodily parts is considered an especially good practice for those attached to beauty of the body, bringing the practitioner to familiarity with the ordinariness of its component parts. (It may also be helpful in reducing revulsion to parts of the body considered ugly or distasteful.)

The reflection on the material elements — Here, through exploration, the practitioner discovers that the body, like all other planetary life, is composed of four basic elements: earth or hardness and firmness, water or flow and movement, air or cohesion and lightness, and fire or temperature. (Space can also be included. Space is not mentioned specifically in the Satipatthana Sutta, but is present in other suttas.)

The nine cemetery contemplations — In this practice the practitioner becomes very clear about the temporary nature of being a body by visualizing or observing the decay of a corpse in its various stages of dissolution.

2. The Contemplation of Feeling

The contemplation of feeling most formally applies to amoebic-like responses to stimuli that arise below the level of conscious participation — instantaneous bodily reactions that trigger pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, or indifferent feeling tones. These feeling tones are not volitional. One can’t cause them to happen or not happen, but can observe the way they influence the body and mind. In actual practice, the contemplation of feelings is more often involved a little further along in the process. Mindfulness or attention is turned toward subsequent experiences of grasping or aversion in response or reaction to the felt sense of pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent. In daily life the process is often only noticed well into a reactive mind state or emotion.

3. The Contemplation of Consciousness or Mind States

Contemplation of consciousness refers to awareness of qualities or states of mind. Among the unwholesome are specifically mentioned the three poisons of anger or aversion, lust or grasping, and ignorance, plus a fourth, restlessness. Four wholesome states are also identified: liberated mind, concentrated mind, unsurpassable mind, and great mind.

4. The Contemplation of Mental Objects or Phenomena

This segment of the sutta introduces fundamental teachings. It invites exploration of these teachings and their relationship to aspects of experience previously investigated in the sutta.

The five hindrances — The basic qualities of mind that prevent clarity, mindfulness, and awareness are: restlessness, sloth and torpor, grasping, aversion, and doubt.

The five aggregates of clinging — Aggregates are elements of the process of consciousness or awareness. They include: body or materiality consciousness perception or cognitions feeling and formations or volition

The six internal and external sense bases — Sense bases include both the organs that receive information (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin and nervous system, and mind6), considered external sense bases, and the internal experiences of objects (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching or sensing, and thinking).

The seven factors of enlightenment (awakening factors) — The factors of enlightenment are wholesome factors of mind that both support mindfulness and arise because of it. They can be thought of as (1) mindfulness, the central and mediating factor; three calming factors: (2) tranquility, (3) concentration, and (4) equanimity; and three energizing or active factors: (5) investigation, (6) energy, and (7) joy.

The four noble truths — (1) There is suffering, (2) but there are causes for suffering (the fundamental cause is not seeing clearly, not seeing things as they are, and therefore clinging to them). (3) In recognizing causes, particularly lack of clarity, suffering can end. (4) The end of suffering can occur through clarity or through practice of the eightfold path. The eightfold path can most briefly be described in three categories: wisdom, concentration or mind training, and ethical behavior. A way to describe the four noble truths phenomenologically is: (1) Phenomena arise. (2, 3) We react unconsciously or respond consciously. (4) Each response conditions succeeding arisings of phenomena and creates future circumstances dependent upon our current behavior. Skillful behavior conditions wholesome unfoldings. Unskillful behavior conditions unwholesome results. Wholesome responses create continued options for further freedom from suffering.

Bibliography of Translations, Commentaries, and Practice Manuals

Insight Meditation Teachers

Goldstein, Joseph. The Experience of Insight: A Simple and Direct Guide to Buddhist Meditation. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1983.

Goldstein, Joseph, and Jack Kornfield. Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1987.

Kornfield, Jack. A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.

Kornfield, Jack. A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.

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