3.8.1

Lesson 3.8.1 Vibhaṅgasuttaṃ-8 - What Is Sammāsati (Right Awareness)? - A Concern Expressed!

This selection from the Vibhaṅgasutta defines sammāsati, the Fourfold Establishing of Awareness (cattāro satipaṭṭhānā). They refer to the ongoing process of the never ending task of the meditator of observing (anupassī) all manifestations one encounters throughout one’s life. They appear within the respective two physical and two mental manifestations: ‘observing body in body’, ‘observing sensations in sensations’, ‘observing mind in mind’ and ‘observing mental contents in mental contents’. They comprise the path of purification for beings and enable one to overcome sorrow and lamentation, to extinguish suffering and grief, to walk the path of truth and to realize nibbāna. But likewise the Buddha also declared that, if the cattāro satipaṭṭhānā are not practised as they should be, the Dhamma will perish. Therefore, the Introduction to this lesson expresses a concern that current tendencies of misconception of what originated as ‘mindfulness’ based on the Buddha’s teaching has undergone a precarious transformation into distorted practices detached from the Noble Eightfold Path. What commenced about 2600 years ago as sammāsati—to guide those having left the householders life to tread towards nibbāṇa—has completely lost the perspective of liberation and turned into an adaptive better way of a mindfully appreciated life searching for mental calm, stress-reduction and relaxation.