Vipassana - Sati Once Meant Memory

The Present Moment

The word vipassana is now heard more often in meditation apps than in monasteries. Mindfulness almost always comes along with it, and the explanation is usually the same: rest your attention in the present moment and watch whatever arises without judging it. Since 1979, when Jon Kabat-Zinn opened a stress reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and built an eight-week program stripped of its Buddhist setting, that explanation has spread into hospitals, companies and schools.

Look up sati, the Pali word this practice is named after, and the first meaning you find is, surprisingly, memory. A practice of attending to the present moment takes its name from a word for calling up what has passed. The mismatch is not a translator's slip. It is the best way into the question of what vipassana actually does.

Stopping and Seeing Through

First, the names. Vipassanā is seeing (passanā) apart (vi), seeing through. The Chinese translators rendered it guan (觀), observing. Its partner is samatha, the mind settled and still, rendered zhi (止), stopping. A short sutta in the Aṅguttara Nikāya sets them side by side.

Dve me, bhikkhave, dhammā vijjābhāgiyā. Katame dve? Samatho ca vipassanā ca.

Mendicants, two things play a part in true knowledge. What two? Samatha and vipassana.

The sutta goes on to separate their work. Developing samatha develops the mind, and greed is given up. Developing vipassana develops wisdom, and ignorance is given up (AN 2.31). In another sutta Ānanda sorts the paths walked by those who reached arahantship into four: developing vipassana preceded by samatha, developing samatha preceded by vipassana, developing the two yoked together, and the case of a mind seized by restlessness about the teaching that at some point settles inward, becomes unified, and the path is born.

Within the suttas, then, vipassana is not a name that stands alone. Order and emphasis vary from person to person, but stopping and seeing through travel as a pair. Vipassana becoming the name of a self-contained system of practice is a modern development, which we will come to. In East Asia the same pair became zhiguan (止觀), the backbone of Tiantai practice.

Sati Was Memory

Sati comes from the root smṛ, to remember. Its Sanskrit form is smṛti, which in India is also the name for the whole body of tradition handed down by memory. The suttas define sati the same way. Asked what the faculty of sati is, one of the five faculties, the Buddha answers:

Idha, bhikkhave, ariyasāvako satimā hoti paramena satinepakkena samannāgato cirakatampi cirabhāsitampi saritā anussaritā.

Here, mendicants, a noble disciple has sati. Endowed with the highest sati and discernment, they remember and recall what was done long ago and said long ago (SN 48.9).

In 1910, translating the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya, T. W. Rhys Davids took the problem head on in a note. Etymologically, he wrote, sati is memory. But as happened to so many everyday words at the rise of Buddhism, it took on a new connotation, so that "memory" alone becomes an inadequate and misleading translation. The English word he used was mindfulness, and that word became today's mindfulness.

Chinese rendered sati as nian (念), a character that carries thinking of, keeping in mind and not forgetting all at once. Right mindfulness (正念), the seventh limb of the eightfold path, is this same sati. So is the nian of nianfo, the practice of calling a buddha's name. What the new connotation Rhys Davids spoke of actually was, and whether the old sense of memory really fell away, can only be found by reading the sutta itself.

Establishing Sati in Four Places

The fullest teaching on sati practice is the tenth sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, said to have been given while the Buddha was staying at Kammāsadamma in the land of the Kurus. It opens:

Ekāyano ayaṁ, bhikkhave, maggo sattānaṁ visuddhiyā, sokaparidevānaṁ samatikkamāya, dukkhadomanassānaṁ atthaṅgamāya, ñāyassa adhigamāya, nibbānassa sacchikiriyāya, yadidaṁ cattāro satipaṭṭhānā.

Mendicants, this is a path going one way: for the purification of beings, for passing beyond sorrow and lamentation, for the ending of pain and distress, for attaining the right way, for realizing nibbāna. That is, the four establishments of sati.

The opening word ekāyana was long translated "the only way," but literally it is closer to a path that goes straight in one direction, and the commentary itself lists several readings side by side. The four are body (kāya), feeling (vedanā), mind (citta) and phenomena (dhamma).

Observing the body begins with the breath. One goes to a forest, the root of a tree or an empty hut, sits cross-legged with the body upright, and sets sati in front.

So satova assasati, satova passasati. Dīghaṁ vā assasanto 'dīghaṁ assasāmī'ti pajānāti.

With sati they breathe in, with sati they breathe out. Breathing in long, they know "I breathe in long."

The sutta adds the image of a lathe turner: as a skilled turner, making a long pull, knows he is making a long pull, and making a short one knows it is short. Observation of the body then continues through the postures of walking, standing, sitting and lying down, clear knowing in every movement from going out and coming back to eating and drinking, the parts that make up the body from head hair to urine, the four elements, and nine stages of a corpse left in a charnel ground.

Observing feeling means knowing whether the present feeling is pleasant, painful or neither. Observing the mind means knowing a mind with greed as a mind with greed, a scattered mind as scattered. Observing phenomena works through the five hindrances, the five aggregates, the six sense fields, the seven factors of awakening and the four noble truths.

A Refrain That Keeps Returning

Read the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta aloud and the same passage comes back like a refrain at the end of each observation.

'Atthi kāyo'ti vā panassa sati paccupaṭṭhitā hoti. Yāvadeva ñāṇamattāya paṭissatimattāya anissito ca viharati, na ca kiñci loke upādiyati.

Or sati is established in them that there is a body, just to the extent needed for knowing and for recollection. They dwell independent, not grasping at anything in the world.

The word here is paṭissati, sati with a prefix of return: recalling again. Explaining how one knows that a body is present right now, the sutta once more uses a word of memory. The new connotation Rhys Davids spoke of did not discard memory. Sati is memory that has changed direction, from the power to call up past events to the power to keep in mind, without losing it, what is to be seen now. Having decided to watch the breath, one does not forget that one decided to watch the breath. At the moment one has drifted off into thought and comes back, what brings about that return is sati.

The refrain has one more line. One sees in the body the nature of arising, the nature of vanishing, the nature of arising and vanishing. What shows up on an object while sati holds it is impermanence, and seeing through that is vipassana. Sati holds the place; vipassana sees from it.

Reading the Chinese Satipaṭṭhāna Alongside

The same sutta survives in Chinese as the ninety-eighth sutta of the Madhyama Āgama (中阿含經), the Nianchu jing (念處經), translated by Gautama Saṅghadeva in the Eastern Jin. Its opening lines up almost exactly.

有一道淨眾生 度憂畏 滅苦惱 斷啼哭 得正法 謂四念處

There is one path that purifies beings, carries them across worry and fear, extinguishes pain and affliction, ends weeping, and attains the true Dharma: the four establishments of mindfulness.

Read side by side, though, the two versions also diverge. The Pali opens the body section with the breath; the Chinese opens with the postures of walking, standing, sitting and lying down, and breathing comes fifth. The Chinese has items the Pali lacks: when a bad thought arises, correct it with a good one, the way a carpenter snaps a chalk line and trims the wood straight with a sharp axe; and clench the teeth, press the tongue to the palate, and subdue the mind with the mind. Feeling is rendered not as shou (受) but jue (覺). The two texts show one teaching taking on its own shape as it passed through the mouths of different early schools.

The ending differs in a more interesting way. Both say that whoever develops the four establishments for seven years can expect final knowledge in this life or non-return, and both shorten seven years to seven months and then to seven days. The Pali stops at seven days. The Chinese goes one step further.

置七日七夜 六五四三二 置一日一夜 若有比丘比丘尼少少須臾頃立心正住四念處者 彼朝行如是 暮必得昇進 暮行如是 朝必得昇進

Let alone seven days and nights, or six, five, four, three or two; let alone a single day and night. If a monk or nun, even for a brief moment, sets the mind and rightly abides in the four establishments of mindfulness, practicing so in the morning they will surely progress by evening, and practicing so in the evening they will surely progress by morning.

Carrying a Bowl of Oil

The most vivid picture the suttas give of what sati feels like is in the Saṁyutta Nikāya. A crowd gathers at the rumor that the finest beauty in the land is dancing and singing. Through that crowd, between them and the dancer, a man must carry a bowl filled with oil to the brim. Behind him walks a man with a drawn sword, who will cut off his head on the spot if he spills a single drop.

Api nu so puriso amuṁ telapattaṁ amanasikaritvā bahiddhā pamādaṁ āhareyyā?

Would that man stop attending to the bowl of oil and let himself be distracted by what is outside?

The mendicants answer no, and the Buddha explains that the bowl full of oil stands for sati directed to the body (SN 47.20). The man does not pretend not to see the dance. The music reaches him and the crowd presses in. He simply does not forget the bowl in the midst of it all. This is far from a scene of relaxed watching as things drift past. Here sati is a guarding that never slackens.

The sutta just before it features two acrobats on a bamboo pole. The teacher proposes that they look after each other; the apprentice answers that if each looks after themselves, both will get down safely. The Buddha says the apprentice is right, and adds one line: looking after yourself, you look after others; looking after others, you look after yourself (SN 47.19). The ways of looking after others he names are patience, harmlessness, loving kindness and sympathy. Sati does not end as a technique for someone sitting alone.

On Not Judging

Go back now to the explanation we began with. Watching without judging is about half right. The mind observation of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta does not scold a mind with greed for being bad. It knows a mind with greed as a mind with greed, nothing more. Naming what is there as it is, adding neither self-reproach nor excuse, is clearly one pillar of the practice.

But the sutta does not stop there. The passage on the five hindrances continues:

Yathā ca anuppannassa kāmacchandassa uppādo hoti tañca pajānāti, yathā ca uppannassa kāmacchandassa pahānaṁ hoti tañca pajānāti, yathā ca pahīnassa kāmacchandassa āyatiṁ anuppādo hoti tañca pajānāti.

They know how unarisen sensual desire arises, how arisen sensual desire is given up, and how sensual desire once given up does not arise again in the future.

This is not evaluation-free observation. It is knowing what is harmful, and how it comes to be and how it ends. The qualifiers attached to every observation point the same way: ardent (ātāpī), clearly knowing (sampajāno), possessed of sati, having put away covetousness and distress for the world. Sati does not work alone. It moves together with effort and clear knowing, and its destination is not a pleasant mood but the end of suffering.

Here the old sense of memory comes back to life. What sati remembers is not only the present object. It also remembers what one set out to do, what is harmful and what is beneficial, and where this path leads. Setting judgment down means setting down the reactions we pile on, not forgetting the direction. What modern mindfulness programs have achieved in hospitals has its own worth, but the sati of the suttas carries a wider map. That map is called the eightfold path, and right mindfulness is one of its eight.

The Revival in Burma

Modern Burma did much to make vipassana what it is today, the name of a practice spread around the world. For a long time, even in Theravada countries, deep meditation was considered the business of a few monastics. At the end of the nineteenth century, under British colonial rule, as fear grew that Buddhism itself might collapse, Ledi Sayadaw (1846~1923) began teaching that lay people too could study Abhidhamma and practice vipassana.

The man who turned this current into a mass movement was Mahasi Sayadaw (1904~1982). Invited to Rangoon in 1949 by Prime Minister U Nu among others, on December 4 of that year he began instructing the first twenty-five meditators at the Thathana Yeiktha center. Within a few years more than a hundred centers using the same method had sprung up across Burma. The Mahasi method takes the rising and falling of the abdomen as its basic object and notes everything that arises with a brief mental label. During intensive retreats, sitting and walking alternate, and most of the day is spent in sati.

Around the same time U Ba Khin, from Ledi Sayadaw's lineage, and his student S. N. Goenka built ten-day courses around sweeping attention through bodily sensations, and these too spread worldwide. Westerners who learned the practice went home and founded centers, which in turn influenced people like Kabat-Zinn. The mindfulness in the app sits at the far end of this long chain.

Vipassana reached Korea from Sri Lanka, Thailand and Myanmar from the late 1980s. Because it was easy to learn and simply followed methods written in the suttas, it spread quickly among lay people as well as monastics, and for a time a debate ran over whether ganhwa seon or vipassana was closer to the Buddha's original practice.

Three Paths

This site now has four posts on practice. Nianfo, which holds on to the Buddha through the voice, runs a little differently; the other three paths, which work with the mind while seated, enter the same place from different directions.

Ganhwa seon drives thought into a dead end with a single unsolvable question and tears the net of concepts. Esoteric Buddhism first puts on the hand gestures, sounds and images of the awakened, and confirms that they were one's own all along. Vipassana adds nothing. With no koan and no mantra, it watches, without losing them, the breath, sensations and mind already in motion.

The three also have a long history of criticizing one another. From the ganhwa side, vipassana is a gradual practice that stalls at dissecting its objects; from the vipassana side, the koan is a later invention with no basis in the suttas. Still, the ailment the three guard against is the same: stillness that is not awake. Dahui called it blankness (無記); the Visuddhimagga warns that when concentration outruns effort, idleness overwhelms the mind, and says that sati is needed everywhere. Each path devised its own tools to avoid that ailment.

For Someone Sitting Down for the First Time

Of the three paths, vipassana is the easiest to begin alone. No initiation is needed, and the object is already in the body. Even so, intensive practice is best done where there is a teacher. Long sitting can bring up unexpected reactions in body and mind, and then someone is needed to check in with.

Alone, start with the breath. Do not control it; let it come and go as it does. Long, know it is long; short, know it is short. When you notice you have been carried off by thought, do not count it as failure; come back. That return is the very muscle being trained. On days when sitting is hard, walk, and watch the foot lift, move forward and set down. In the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta walking carries the same weight as sitting.

There is no need to sit for long. As the Chinese Satipaṭṭhāna says, abiding rightly even for a moment carries the morning's practice into the evening. Just guard against one thing: making calm the goal. Calm may follow, but the work the suttas entrusted to sati is not calm. It is seeing clearly.

Sati Once Meant Memory

That sati means memory seems odd at first. Why name a practice of the present with a word about the past? After reading the sutta, though, one leans toward thinking the word was exactly right. We miss the present not because we lack the ability to see, but because we forget what we set out to see. Watching the breath, we forget the breath; walking, we forget that we are walking. Sati is the power that notices the forgetting and brings us back.

The man carrying the bowl of oil does not turn away from the beautiful dance. He simply does not forget what is in his hands. Only on top of that remembering does vipassana see: that what arises passes away, that there was nothing to hold on to from the start.