MINDFULNESS

The practice of mindfulness is outlined in the Pali canon and is contained within a Buddhist teaching entitled: Satipatthana, which is described as the direct path to realization. The English scholar Thomas William Rhys Davids first translated sati as mindfulness in 1881.

Thus, the English translation that we have used for Satipatthana is mindfulness. If we break the term into its roots, we will find two very important ideas:

Sati- the ability to remember, to recognize and to see clearly.

Thana- a ground or foundation.

Satipatthana- To remember, to recognize and to see clearly this ground, namely the impermanent, unreliable, stressful and self-less nature of experience itself. Learning to navigate with skill, the groundless ground of lived experience. This is accomplished by developing the four foundations of mindfulness.