Four Foundations of Mindfulness

The instruction in MN 10

The discourse describes practice with energy, awareness and mindfulness, setting aside covetousness and distress about the world. Its repeated instructions include observing internally and externally, and knowing arising and vanishing. The refrain returns after each exercise: awareness concerns the body or mental process itself, its arising and passing, and knowing without clinging to anything in the world.

Body

The body section includes breathing, walking and other postures, ordinary activities, body parts, the elements and cemetery contemplations. Clear comprehension extends to going forward and back, looking, bending and stretching, dressing, eating, speaking and remaining silent. The elements contemplation examines earth, water, fire and air in this body; cemetery contemplations apply the observed body’s fate to one’s own.

It’s when a mendicant—gone to a wilderness, or to the root of a tree, or to an empty hut—sits down cross-legged, sets their body straight, and brings mindfulness to the present. Just mindful, they breathe in. Mindful, they breathe out.

Satipaṭṭhāna · MN 10

Feeling tone

The feelings section distinguishes pleasant, painful and neutral feeling, and further distinguishes feelings of the flesh from those not of the flesh. The instruction includes knowing both their arising and passing. MN 10 treats feeling tone separately from the mind’s greed, aversion and other conditions; pleasant or painful feeling is therefore not itself the whole emotional response.

It’s when a mendicant who feels a pleasant feeling knows: ‘I feel a pleasant feeling.’ When they feel a painful feeling, they know: ‘I feel a painful feeling.’ When they feel a neutral feeling, they know: ‘I feel a neutral feeling.’

Satipaṭṭhāna · MN 10

Mind

The mind section distinguishes greed, hate and delusion and their absence, constriction and distraction, concentration and its absence, and freedom and its absence. The practice recognizes the condition actually present: a contracted or distracted mind, a concentrated or unconcentrated mind, a liberated or unliberated mind. The repeated refrain includes internal and external observation and the arising and passing of these conditions.

It’s when a mendicant understands mind with greed as ‘mind with greed,’ and mind without greed as ‘mind without greed.’ They understand mind with hate as ‘mind with hate,’ and mind without hate as ‘mind without hate.’

Satipaṭṭhāna · MN 10

Dhammas

The principles section treats the five hindrances, the five aggregates, the six internal and external sense fields, the seven awakening factors and the Four Noble Truths. The task changes with the framework: hindrances are known together with how they arise and are abandoned; sense experience is examined for the fetters arising through it; awakening factors are known together with how they develop. The Four Noble Truths give the orientation toward understanding suffering and its ending.

It’s when a mendicant who has sensual desire in them understands: ‘I have sensual desire in me.’ When they don’t have sensual desire in them, they understand: ‘I don’t have sensual desire in me.’ They understand how sensual desire arises; how, when it’s already arisen, it’s given up; and how, once it’s given up, it doesn’t arise again in the future.

Satipaṭṭhāna · MN 10

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