Samma sati is right mindfulness. Sati is also translated as “bare attention”. It contrasts with the familiar mode of consciousness, which uses impressions as inspiration for its experiential confabulations. Those are the papañca elaborations, or embellishments, which are used as springs for the expression of latent defilements.

The Buddha described four foundations of sati.

1. Kayanupassana contemplation of the body
2. Vedananupassana contemplation of feeling
3. Cittanupassana contemplation of the state mind
4. Dhammanupassana contemplation of phenomenon

As one who wants to break a wild young calf
Would tether it to a stout stake firmly, here,
In the same way the yogi should tie fast
To meditation’s object his own mind. (Buddhaghosa)

The four foundations

The four foundations are described most elaborately in the Pali cannon in the Satipatthana Sutta.

Each foundation should be contemplated in these 7 ways (and this is a meaning of “contemplating the body in the body”, “feelings in feelings”, “mind in mind”, “phenomenon in phenomenon”).

1. Annica
2. Subject to dukkha
3. Annata
4. By way of turning away or not by way of delight
5. By way of freedom from passion for it
6. With thoughts making way for cessation, not for origination
7. Not by way of laying hold on it, but by way of letting go.

Most of the methods for each of the four foundations can be examined internally (in one’s own self) or externally (in another’s self).

Meditation object by personality type

Four personalities are defined, according to whether one is (A) dull-witted or (B) keen-witted, and also whether (C) of a craving type or (D) theorizing type.

• The dull and craving should attend foremost to kayanupassana
• The keen and craving to vedananupassana
• The dull and theorizing to cittanupassana
• The keen and theorizing to dhammanupasana

There are also categories according to whether one is seeking (E) samatha or (F) vipassana.

• The dull seeking samatha to kayanupassana
• The keen seeking samatha to vedananupassana
• The dull seeking vipassana to cittanupassana
• The keen seeking vipassana to dhammanupasana

There are also categories according to which vipallasa illusion one wishes to cast out.

• The illusion of beauty is cast out by kayanupasana
• The illusion of pleasure is cast out by vedanaupassana
• The illusion of permanence is cast out cittanupasana
• The illusion of ego is cast out by dhammanupasana

Kayanupassana (body)

What he sees that is not (properly) seen;
What is seen that he does not (properly) see;
Not seeing (properly) he is shackled clean;
And he, the shackled fool, cannot get free.

“What he sees” – when we see ourselves or another, as a man or a woman, we do not properly see these things. We perceive them by way of wrong comprehension. We fail to get at our object by way of rupayatana sense base (in the highest sense). “What is seen” – when there is a body seen it is not seen as the sense basis which truly exists: the collection of primary and derived materiality. Thus we are “shackled”, thinking this is mine, and I this self.

The body is contemplated in the 7 ways above.

Subjects of kayanupassana

The most famous of these is the anapanasati sati of breathing, which is described as the mulakammatthana root meditation subject. It is directly divided into four steps: sati of long in breaths out out breaths, sati of short in breaths and out breaths, the body of the breath, and the calming of the body of the breath.

There is sati of deportment.

There is sati of the 32 parts of the body.

There is sati in which the body is analysed into elements.

There is sati of the cemetery.

Regarding clear comprehension

When the cannon talks of comprehension, it talks of satisampajañña sati with clear comprehension, which is applied to action. It is the discerning of things rightly, entirely, and equally. It is divided into four subjects:

1. Perceiving the purpose of the action (and worthiness of purpose, and growth-indcuement of purpose)
2. Perceiving the suitability of the action
3. Perceiving the (resort) range of the meditation within the action
4. Perceiving without delusion, viz. seeing action as an impersonal process devoid of a controlling ego entity (annata)

Regarding sati of deportment

Deportment is described mostly in terms of 4 postures: walking, standing, sitting, and laying down.

As one observes their deportment, they can ask themselves, “Who goes, whose going is it, and on what account is this going?” Contemplation will reveal that (who goes?) there is no living being or person that is going, (whose going is it?) the going does not belong do any being or living person, and (on what account is this going?) it is on account of the diffusion of the process of oscillation born of mental activity.

When  there arises a thought, “I shall go” (or stand, sit, lay down, etc), that thought produces the process of oscillation, and that process of oscillation produces an expression as bodily movement.

This contrasts with the false answer, that there is a soul that contacts the mind to sense organ to object. This is false since a study of causality within deportment reveals only an oscillation of dhamma (and no first mover).

The cannon describes clear comprehension of deportment in the following:

1. Going forward and backward (related to each of the 4 postures)
2. Looking straight on and looking away from the front
3. Bending and stretching of the limbs
4. Wearing a robe or using a thing
5. Partaking of food and drink
6. Toilet
7. Postures

Regarding (2) looking straight and away: In this way one comes to comprehend the eye sense base and the eye consciousness. In this way the phenomenon of seeing can be dissected, to realize that it is an amalgamation of these: eye (as support condition), visible object (as object condition), the act of turning (as condition of proximity or contiguity), light (as a condition of decisive support), beginning by feeling (as conascence condition).

Regarding (3) bending limbs: It is suitable to move the limbs when meditating sufficiently to achieve a one-pointedness that is being prevented, and this should occur within the range of what is sufficient.

Regarding (4) wearing a robe: The suitability of the item is known by its practicality and worthiness. The item is known through non-delusion by knowing that it does not affect anything, just as a tree is not affected by garlands, neither good garlands nor bad garlands. So too: one suffering from sores is unconcerned by the value of the bandages they are given, so long as they are adequate.

Regarding (7) postures: This includes knowing whether a posture is of long, middle, or short duration. When changing from one posture to another, one can know that “the bodily and mental things which existed during the time of the walking (etc), ended just at the time walking (etc).” (Nb. other behaviours, like silence and non-silence can be treated similarly).

By comparing over and over again how everything ends within its own time, and does not continue into a next thing then (the commentary says) “the mind enders the life-continuum, the unconscious.” Further, by lying down and knowing that “the body is unconscious; the bed is unconscious; the body does not know ‘I am lying down on a bed’; the bed does not know ‘on me a body is lying down’,” and thus too the mind enters the life-continuum.

Regarding sati of body parts

There are 7 skills described in study:

1. Repetition of the 32 body parts verbally
2. So too, mentally
3. Determining parts by colour
4. So too, by shape
5. So too, direction (e.g. above/below navel, upper/lower side)
6. Determining the space occupied by a part
7. Comparing positions and dissimilarities of parts

There are 10 skills described in reflection:

1. Taking each part serially
2. Doing it not too quickly
3. Or slowly
4. By warding off mental rambling
5. Processing from concept of part to repulsiveness of part
6. By gradual elimination of the less clear parts
7. By way of the part that is the source of ecstasy
8. By way of the discourse of Adhicca
9. So too, Sitibhaua
10. So too, Bojjhangakosalla

Regarding sati of elemental nature of body

This refers the traditional 4 modes of materiality

1. Extension
2. Cohesion
3. Caloricity
4. Oscillation

A simile is given of the yogi as butcher. By the dissection of the body (into elemental phenomenon), the body disappears, just as a cow disappears when it is butchered and its materials appear as flesh.

Regarding the cemetery contemplations

There are 9 cemetery contemplates described, categorizing stages of bodily decomposition and dispersal.

He thinks of his own body thus, ‘This body of mine too is of the nature as that (dead) body, is going to be like that body, and has not gone past the condition of being like that body.’

Vedananupassana (feeling)

This regards vedana qua affective or hedonic tone, and its sati regards the three types: attracting, neutral, and averting.

Pleasure should be contemplated as the stuff of suffering. Pain should be contemplated as the condition of bringing out trouble, like a thorn. Neutrality should be contemplated because of manifested non-mastery, and as transiency.

The vedana are contemplated in the 7 ways, and also regarding the ti lakhana in these 5 ways:

1. By way of momentary dissolution
2. By way of our lack of power to control
3. By way of the trickling of the dirt of defilement
4. By way of the pain of vicissitude
5. By way of the constituents of life

Vedana can be contemplated:

1. Into 3 types: pleasant, unpleasant, neither pleasant nor unpleasant
2. Into 2 modes: corporeal, or non-corporeal
3. According to clarity
4. According to impermanence
5. Into the 3 types × 2 modes × 6 sense bases
6. Attending to one’s own vedana or to another’s

Regarding (3) clarity: Pleasure and pain appear clearly, but when there is neither pain nor pleasure then the feeling that appears is unclear. It can be grasped by methodically knowing, “At the disappearance of the pleasant and the unpleasant, the neutral feeling occurs, which is contrary to the pleasant and the unpleasant.” The simile is given of a tracker who sees prints leading upwards to a boulder and downwards from a boulder, and thus know that the deer also went across the boulder.

Regarding (4) impermanence: When there is 1 of the 3 types one knows that the other types are absent; one knows that this feeling was not present before; one knows that it is impermanent and changing.

Cittasnumpassana (mind)

Citta is often translated as mind, but here refers to “state of mind”, which is mean a single act of consciousness.

One conscious state arises
And quite another ceases,
In sequence, like a river’s flow,
These states (of mind and matter) go.

The citta are contemplated in the 7 ways above, and in the 5 ways above (described for vedana).

The citta are contemplated via their colouring by the cetasikas mental factors. These are mental concomitant to every citta. There are 16 cetasikas described, and the most accessible for contemplation include these 8:

1. The mind with lust
2. Without lust
3. The mind with aversion
4. Without aversion
5. The mind with delusion
6. Without delusion
7. The cramped mind
8. The scattered mind

Regarding (5) with delusion: this is twofold, whether accompanied by doubt or by agitation.

Regarding (7) the cramped mind: this is owing to want of interest in the object or lack of pleasure.

Regarding (8) This refers to a dominant agitation (since the mind is always agitated). It is called “scattered” (or distracted) because it spreads outside its object by way of diffused thinking.

Dhammanupassana

Here the term dhamma is used in the sense of nissatta-nijīvatā the phenomenal, as opposed to the substantial or noumenal.

The dhamma are contemplated in the 7 ways above, and in the 5 ways above (described for vedana).

This is applied by way of the:

• Five niravana hindrances
• Five khandas aggregates
• Six ayatana sense bases
• 7 bojjhanga factors of enlightenment
• 4 ariya sacca noble truths

The niravana are attended to by laying hold of them amongst the mental objects of one’s mind, or another’s mind.

The khandas are attended to by laying hold of each, knowing it as “this and no further,” (i.e. separate from the other 4 forms).

The ayatana are attended to by way of the internal and external objects (nb. the external form of the mental base is the mind object). By attending to the physical form of the base (e.g. the physical eye qua sensory apparatus). By by of knowing the form of the object (e.g. via the 4 forms of corporeality: kamma, consciousness, climate, nutriment). By way of the 10 fetters that arise dependent on both the base and the forms they observe.

The bojjhanga are attended by knowing when it is present and when it is absent. By knowing how the factor came to be and how it comes to be absent.

Sources:

• The Way to End Suffering by Bhikku Bodhi
• The Power of Mindfulness by Bhikku Nyanaponika Thera
• The Way of Mindfulness: The Satipatthana Sutta and Its Commentary by Bhikku Soma Thera