Santipada

The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is the most influ­en­tial scrip­ture in Buddhist med­it­a­tion. It is the found­a­tion text for the mod­ern schools of ‘vipas­sanā’ or ‘insight’ med­it­a­tion. The well-known Pali dis­course is, how­ever, only one of many early Buddhist texts that deal with mind­ful­ness. This is the first full-scale study to encom­pass all extant ver­sions of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, tak­ing into account the dynamic evol­u­tion of the Buddhist scrip­tures and the broader Indian med­it­at­ive cul­ture. A new vis­ion emerges from this ground­break­ing study: mind­ful­ness is not a sys­tem of ‘dry insight’ but is the ‘way to con­ver­gence’ lead­ing the mind to deep states of peace.