The introduction to the Setting-up of Mindfulness prints a disagreement that was still open in 1910. The renderings of sati already in use run from "Conscience, Spence Hardy" through attention, meditation and "Memory, Oldenberg" to "Insight, Neumann" and "Thought, Pischel". Each maps sati onto a faculty a Western reader already owned, and the page before rejects conscience for importing an inner monitor. The translators' own case is comparative: against the Upanishads' stress on intuition, the Buddhist doctrine is "dependent not on intuition, but on grasp of actual fact". That is an argument for a word not already claimed by Western theology or psychology. Mindfulness, used throughout this translation, later became the standard English term.
Dialogues of the Buddha, Part II — trans. T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids (1910)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (T. W. and C. A. F. Rhys Davids). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
On the other hand though Sati (Smrti) does not occur in any ethical sense in pre-Buddhistic literature, it is possible that the Buddhist conception was, in one way, influenced by previous thought. Stress is laid in the Upanishad ideal on Intuition, especially as regards the relation between the soul, supposed to exist inside each human body, and the Great Soul. In the Buddhist protest against this, the doctrine of Sati, dependent not on intuition, but on grasp of actual fact, plays an important part. This opposition may have been intentional. On the other hand, the ethical value of Mindfulness (in its technical sense) would be sufficient, without any such intention, to explain the great stress laid upon it.
The following are some of the proposed translations of
Sati:—
Conscience, Spence Hardy, 'Manual,' 412.
Attention, Spence Hardy, ' Manual,' 497.
Meditation, Gogerly, ' Ceylon Buddhism,' 584.
„ Childers, ' Dictionary.' 2
Memory, Oldenberg, ' Vinaya Texts,' I, 96.
„ E. Hardy, ' Buddha,' 40.
1 See Mrs. Rhys Davids's 'Buddhist Psychology,' p. 16, note 1 ; and note 1 above on Vol. I, p. 81.
2 He renders kayagata sati, where the word occurs in its technical sense, as 'meditation on the body.' He has other renderings for popular usage.
Y 2
p. 1
Contemplation, Warren, ' Buddhism in Translations,' 353.
Insight, Neumann, ' Majjhima,' I, 85.
Thought, Pischel, < Buddha,' 28.
„ Oldenberg, 'Buddha' (English translation),
128.
The other word in the compound that gives the title to this Suttanta is Pa^/dna — which would mean etymologically ' putting forward, setting forth.' It does not occur in pre- Buddhistic literature. It has not been yet found in the Nikayas in its concrete, primary, sense ; or in any connexion except this. Buddhaghosa here paraphrases it, exegetically only, by gocara, which is the feeding- ground, resort, of an animal. The mediaeval use of the word (in its Sanskrit form) was in the sense of starting off, going away, departure. It is the title of the most often quoted book in the Abhidhamma, and there means probably Origins, Starting-points, as it gives under twenty- four categories the paccayas (causes) of phenomena. In one passage of a fifth-century commentator (Tat. I, 78.5) the Abhidhamma Pi/aka as a whole is said to be samantapa//Mna, ' having (or giving) the settings-on-foot, the points of departure, of all things.' Childers gives the word as a neuter. It is masculine throughout our Suttanta. But he analyses the compound (sub voce u pa ////an a m), not into Sati + pa////ana, but into Sati + upa////ana. This is a possible contraction, and Buddhaghosa gives it as an alternative explanation which he does not adopt. Had we adopted it, the rendering of the title would have been ' The gettingready of Mindfulness.' Neumann renders it ' Pillars of Insight,' and Warren ' Intent Contemplations.' Neither of these is much more than a distant cousin of the Pali.
It is not easy at first sight to understand the choice of just those four fields or areas (comp. pa////ana = thana = gocara), to which, in this Suttanta, ' mindfulness ' is to be applied, or in respect to which it is to be set up. We need ourselves to be mindful, lest, in interpreting them, we follow too closely European points of view. In trying to avoid this danger, we do not consider our choice of terms leaves nothing to be desired, or to be explained. 1
The ethical desirableness of Sati, as the instrument most efficacious in self-mastery, lay in the steady alertness of inward vision which it connoted, whether past or present experience was contemplated. In discussing it, the Buddhist was concerned, not with the outer world as such, but with the microcosm of his subjective experience, and with the vehicles thereof — sense and mind. These he is here represented as considering under the fourfold aspect of —
- (1) kaya, physical structure and activities,
- (a) vedana, the emotional nature, first as bare feeling, then as having ethical implications.
(3) citta, conscious life, consciousness or intelligence, considered under ethical aspects.
(4) d ha mm a, with its subdivisions —
(#) the Five Hindrances.
(b) the Five Groups.
(c) the Six Spheres of Sense.
(d) the seven Factors of Enlightenment.
(e) the four Aryan Truths.