The Interior of Buddhism

Mindfulness — the ordinary miracle.

Sati: attention that knows what it is attending to. The rare state the practice makes common.

Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Mindfulness — sati — means something closer to recollection than to attention: the faculty that remembers to notice. Its classical setting is the Satipatthana Sutta's four foundations (body, feelings, mind, phenomena) and its purpose is explicitly insight, not calm. The modern secular adaptation, stripped of the ethics and the goal, has been enormously successful and is criticized from within the tradition on precisely that ground: mindfulness without the precepts and without the aim of liberation is a technique, and a technique can serve anything.

From the sources — the passages this rests on; concise renderings, cited

Here a practitioner abides contemplating the body as body, ardent, fully aware, mindful, having put aside longing and distress for the world.
Satipatthana Sutta (rendered)
The classical formula — note the ethics built into the last clause.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas

Many paths, one goal: knowledge, devotion, action, discipline. Hinduism · core tenet Go deeper →

Samayika — forty-eight minutes as a monk. Jainism · rite Go deeper →

The four who went into the orchard. Judaism · story Read it in full →

The Philokalia. Christianity · scripture Open the book →

Nitnem — the daily banis. Sikhism · rite Go deeper →

Ascetic discipline liberates. Shaivism · core tenet Go deeper →

The conversation

argument stays attached to the claim it is about All discussion →

Sign in to open the first thread. Everything here is attributed.

Where next

← Stream-entry, and the three stages after it.the previous passage in Buddhism Kensho — seeing your nature. →the next passage in Buddhism Buddhism's Practice roomback up one layer Propose a change to this passageone button — it routes to the review pool