First foundation of Mindfulness: talk and instructions

MINDFULNESS


The practice of mindfulness is outlined in the Pali canon and is
contained within a Buddhist teaching entitled: Satipatthana,
which is described as the direct path to realization. The English
scholar Thomas William Rhys Davids first translated sati as
mindfulness in 1881.


Thus, the English translation that we have used for Satipatthana
is mindfulness. If we break the term into its roots, we will find
two very important ideas:


Sati- the ability to remember, to recognize and to see clearly.


Thana- a ground or foundation.


Satipatthana- To remember, to recognize and to see clearly this
ground, namely the impermanent, unreliable, stressful and
self-less nature of experience itself. Learning to navigate with
skill, the groundless ground of lived experience. This is
accomplished by developing the four foundations of mindfulness.