Part Three
Chapter Eight
A Slice of Mindfulness
The Buddha once stated that his comprehension of the four establishings of mindfulness was vast:
“Sāriputta, suppose that I had four disciples with a 100-year life span, living for 100 years, and endowed with excellent mindfulness, retention, recall, & keenness of discernment. Just as an archer with a good bow—trained, dexterous, & practiced—could easily shoot a light arrow across the shadow of a palmyra tree, they—endowed with that great an extent of mindfulness, that great an extent of retention, that great an extent of recall, & that keenness of discernment—would ask me one question after another on the four establishings of mindfulness. And I, asked again & again, would answer. Answered, they would remember what I had answered, and they wouldn’t counter-question me about it a second time more. Aside from eating, drinking, chewing, & savoring, aside from urinating & defecating, aside from relieving sleepiness & weariness, there would be no ending of the Tathāgata’s Dhamma teaching, there would be no ending of the Tathāgata’s phrasing of Dhamma statements, there would be no ending of the Tathāgata’s quick-wittedness (in answering) questions; but those four disciples of mine, with their 100-year life span, living for 100 years, would die with the passing of 100 years.” — MN 12
Although the main thrust of this passage concerns the extent of the Buddha’s knowledge, it also makes an important statement about how vast the topic of right mindfulness is: Even with one hundred years of questioning, you couldn’t exhaust it. This point is important to keep in mind as we look carefully at DN 22, for it’s the longest of the many discourses contained in the Canon on the topic of right mindfulness. Many readers assume that because it is so long, it must constitute a self-sufficient and comprehensive treatment of the topic—that, aside from a few details, it contains all you really need to know about the establishings of mindfulness. Yet when we approach it from the background of what we have already learned about the relationship among right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration—and about the role of fabrication in all sensory experience—we can’t help but be struck by a curious lack: When mentioning the various categories to look for in the context of the four frames of reference, it says very little about what to do with them once they are noticed and discerned. In the terms of the standard satipaṭṭhāna formula, it says very little about the role of ardency in establishing mindfulness.
Now, if you view mindfulness as passive, receptive awareness, this lack is unimportant. The categories listed in the discourse are simply ways of noting experience in an impersonal way, reading no “I” into the process, allowing them to arise and fall as they will. The fact that there are no explicit instructions as to what to do with them—especially in the section on feelings and mind states—is an implicit instruction in and of itself: You shouldn’t do anything with them. Just watch them arise and pass away until you develop dispassion for them.
However, this interpretation doesn’t fit in with what we have already learned from other discourses in the Canon: that mindfulness is an act of memory, and the establishing of mindfulness is an ardent, proactive process. It also doesn’t fit in with the role of right mindfulness in relation to all the factors of the noble eightfold path—and to right effort and right concentration in particular. At the same time, this interpretation ignores the role of fabrication in every feeling and mental aggregate: If you view these things as simply arising for you to observe passively as they pass away of their own accord, you’ll miss the hidden role that intention plays in actualizing them from the potentials of your past actions. This will blind you to important areas for the exercise of insight. This interpretation also ignores the need for the exertion of fabrication in developing dispassion for some of the causes of stress and suffering. And of course, if mindfulness were simply a matter of passive receptivity, it’s hard to see why its ramifications would take more than 100 years to describe.
At the same time, the passive-receptive interpretation of mindfulness doesn’t jibe with many passages in DN 22 itself, for a few parts of this discourse actually do give explicit directions as to what to do in a particular context. For instance, there are the proactive trainings in steps 3 and 4 of breath meditation, which are included under the topic of the body in and of itself as a frame of reference. There are also the perceptions of the unattractive parts of the body and of the future state of the body after death. Because these are painful practices (AN 4:163), they involve a great deal of effort to maintain (AN 4:14).
In other cases, some of the categories listed under the other frames of reference contain implicit duties. Under the topic of feelings in and of themselves, for example, three of the categories deal with feelings not of the flesh. These are the feelings divorced from sensuality that are experienced in jhāna practice. This means that they can be tasted only through the exertion of right effort.
Similarly with the topic of mind states: Many of the categories of mind states listed under this topic—such as the concentrated mind, the enlarged mind, and the released mind—refer specifically to the practice of right concentration. These too require right effort to attain.
And as for the topic of mental qualities, the categories of the five hindrances and the six sense media make clear reference to the abandoning of unskillful mental qualities; the category of the seven factors for awakening makes reference to the act of bringing these skillful mental qualities to the culmination of their development, an achievement that can’t be accomplished simply through passive observation. As for the four noble truths, also listed under the topic of mental qualities, we know from the Buddha’s first sermon that these four categories carry implicit duties—and there is no reason to assume that these duties don’t apply here as well.
DN 22 also makes frequent reference, in a recurring refrain, to the process that SN 47:40 calls the development of the establishing of mindfulness. As we have already noted in Chapter Two, this is a proactive process requiring the development of all eight factors of the noble path.
So even though DN 22 only rarely makes explicit reference to the duties of ardency in the establishing of mindfulness, this should not be read as an implicit instruction to do nothing but passively observe. Instead, a careful reading of the text shows that its implicit message is something else entirely: that we have to look elsewhere for explicit instructions concerning the role of ardency in establishing mindfulness.
Had DN 22 been intended as a comprehensive explanation of right mindfulness, the lack of explicit instruction in this area would have been a clear defect in the discourse. However, the organization of the discourse suggests that that was not its intended role.
We can see this from the questions around which the discourse is structured. The Buddha’s standard approach, when giving a talk to a large group of people, was to make a statement about a particular topic, and then to pose questions based on the statement. The body of the talk would then be presented as a series of answers to the questions. In this format, the questions control the range and depth of material to be covered, thus signaling the Buddha’s intention as to what he thinks is useful or feasible to cover in that particular talk. In some talks, the questions cover everything in the introductory statement; in others, only a part. In this second group, the introductory statement sketches out the larger context of the topic, to show how the part covered in detail fits into a larger picture of the path.
DN 22 falls into this second group. The discourse begins with a statement of the full satipaṭṭhāna formula:
The Blessed One said: “This is a path going one way only for the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow & lamentation, for the disappearance of pain & distress, for the attainment of the right method, & for the realization of unbinding—in other words, the four establishings of mindfulness. Which four?
“There is the case where a monk remains focused on the body in & of itself—ardent, alert, & mindful—subduing greed & distress with reference to the world. He remains focused on feelings… mind… mental qualities in & of themselves—ardent, alert, & mindful—subduing greed & distress with reference to the world.”
We will discuss this opening statement more fully in Chapter Ten, but here we will simply note that the questions the Buddha bases on this paragraph cover only a small slice of the material it presents:
“And how does a monk remain focused on the body in & of itself?”
“And how does a monk remain focused on feelings in & of themselves?”
“And how does a monk remain focused on the mind in & of itself?”
“And how does a monk remain focused on mental qualities in & of themselves?”
“And how does a monk remain focused on mental qualities in & of themselves with reference to the five hindrances?”
“And how does a monk remain focused on mental qualities in & of themselves with reference to the five clinging-aggregates?”
“And how does a monk remain focused on mental qualities in & of themselves with reference to the sixfold internal & external sense media?”
“And how does a monk remain focused on mental qualities in & of themselves with reference to the seven factors for awakening?”
“And how does a monk remain focused on mental qualities in & of themselves with reference to the four noble truths?”
In other words, the Buddha limits his attention to only one aspect of the satipaṭṭhāna formula: what it means to remain focused on any of the four frames of reference. No questions are raised about how to be ardent in any of these cases, or about how to subdue greed and distress with reference to the world. No questions are raised about how to use ardency in the stage of the development of the establishing of mindfulness. Nothing is said about an issue that looms large in MN 118: that of whether the last three frames of reference are to be used in the context of remaining focused on the body, or whether they function separately. Instead, attention is focused simply on explaining the range of categories that can fruitfully be kept in mind when directing alertness to any of the four frames.
Given what we know about mindfulness as the faculty of memory, as well as its place among the other factors in the path, we can understand from these facts how DN 22 is meant to be read: not as a guide to passive awareness, or a complete guide to right mindfulness, but as a list of recommended frameworks to keep in mind when trying to develop right mindfulness as a basis for right concentration. As for how to use ardency to shape experience so as to fit into these frameworks, or to deal with phenomena that arise in the context of these frameworks, DN 22 gives only a few implicit hints. Because the Buddha had given explicit instructions on these topics in other discourses, he would have expected his listeners to take the hint to refer to those discourses to fill in the blanks left in this one.
In the next chapter I will focus on the structure of the frameworks provided by DN 22 within the context of the general structure of the discourse as a whole, at the same time drawing on passages from the rest of the Canon to make explicit some of the duties for ardency that are implicit around and within those frameworks. By calling attention to some of the connections between the slice of mindfulness presented in DN 22 and the relevant material in other discourses, I hope to show the practical value of placing this discourse in its larger context and taking it, not as a guide to passive awareness, but as a guide to action. This entails, as the Buddha recommended in MN 95, penetrating its meaning and pondering its agreement with the rest of the Dhamma. The discussion in the next chapter is not intended to be comprehensive—the Buddha’s remarks in MN 12, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, rule that out—but I do hope to give a sense of what can be gained by encompassing a somewhat larger slice of the topic than DN 22, on its own, contains.
