Walk on the Bamba Rope |

“This is the direct path to the purification of beings, to overcoming sadness and lamentation, to the fading away of pain and anguish,
to achieve the true path, to the realization of nibbāna, namely the four foundations of Sati.” – The Buddha – Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, M10

Chapter 17 - Correct Consciousness (Sammā-sati)

PEMASIRI THERA: The seventh factor of the eightfold path is right consciousness, sammā-sati. Sati is the Pali term meaning a kusala – healthy state of mind. It is the state of mind that is inextricably linked to what is healthy and beneficial, not mixed with or touched by anything harmful. When we perform healthy actions, sati is present. It is present when we are generous and present when we are kind. It is present when you take care of a meditation center, when you observe the five or eight precepts and follow the eightfold path.

"All the beneficial states of the mind," said the Buddha in Aṅguttara Nikāya, "are sati." Everybody.

Acts of generosity performed without expectations are acts that are being performed with sati. When we help people without expectation, we are helping them with sati. When you clean the floor in the meditation room, without any expectation, you are cleaning yourself with sati. And when one performs any virtuous action without expectation, one is performing it with sati. Sati means observing the five and eight precepts without expectations and following the eightfold path without expectations.

Actions carried out with expectations are not carried out with sati. Acts of generosity in which there is an expectation of being reborn in a good heaven in the future, of acquiring praise, fame, or of obtaining anything, are not wholly healthy acts of generosity and therefore are not being performed with sati. Generally, any act of generosity is a beneficial act, but at the moment when expectations are present, there is no sati. Similarly, if we are observing precepts, expecting to arrive at an eternal plan or to obtain good future results, our state of mind has not reached the level of sati, our minds mingle with ignorance at this point.

Despite the fact that an effort is made to observe the precepts to translate a beneficial state of mind, there is no sati at the moment when expectations are present.

The concept of a healthy state of mind existed even before Siddhartha became the enlightened Buddha: people kept the precepts and practiced generosity, kindness and compassion. There was already a tradition of developing a healthy state of mind and this state of mind was called sati. Sati was practiced in an effort to achieve favorable results, such as a birth in a permanent place where they would live in peace for all eternity. People did not practice sati to achieve anything other than this kind of results.

Siddhartha realized that practicing sati in this way only led to decay and death, only perpetuating endless suffering in samsara, and set out on a quest to find a more satisfying form of liberation. Eventually, Siddhartha discovered that overcoming decay and death required conducting the body, activities performed with the body, experiences of the body and the mind, and all thoughts of the mind, completely in the sense of healthy and beneficial. By training his body and mind in this way, Siddhartha attained enlightenment and became the Buddha, subsequently teaching liberating truths to all who wanted to hear. As a result of these teachings, the goal of practising sati has changed from merely achieving conditional results subject to deterioration and death, to a goal of going beyond decay and death and achieving the unconditioned – nibbāna. The Buddha called this form of practice the noble ariyan sati, sammā-sati.

Through the practice of sati, we free ourselves from saṃsāra. Sati means we have no expectations. There is only the thought that our existence in the saṃsāra is dukkha and that here there is only decay and death. Only going beyond it, overcoming it, is the only thought in our minds. That's sati. Only this singular thought in mind, that what we are all seeking is to go beyond saṃsāra, beyond decay and death.

Attention

Paying attention, manasikāra, is similar to sati: Conscious attention is present. Attention, however, is only the faculty of our minds to observe phenomena. It is nothing more than this faculty of observation. By paying attention, we turn our minds to objects of experience.

Imagine a room. There are many people in the room and a guard on duty at the entrance. The duty of the guard is to open and close the door of the room, that's all. He doesn't do anything else. The guard never wanders and talks to the people inside the room, and never wanders outside the room. No, no. The guard only stays at the entrance of the room, opening and closing the door. This room is our mind, the people in the room are the factors of our mind, and the guard who opens and closes the door is our faculty of attention.

By using our faculty of attention, we turn our minds to the objects of experience. Paying attention is nothing more than directing our minds to a variety of different objects. It is a neutral faculty that supports the performance of healthy actions, neutral actions and harmful actions. This is the nature of beings. The eel has its head like a snake and its tail like a fish. When an eel sees a snake, it turns its head to the snake, when it sees a fish, it turns its tail to the fish.Manasikāra (attention) is an eel, sometimes it turns to what is healthy and others to what is harmful and nefarious.

DAVID: The paradox is that of a skilled, capable thief.

PEMASIRI THERA: Yes, yes. When a thief breaks into a house, he uses his faculty of attention, manasikāra. He is very attentive to walking, to speaking, and to all movements. Maybe he'll come through the roof. If a thief makes a mistake and gets caught, we say: “Hey, you don’t have sati”. But it is wrong to say this because actions performed with sati are free of expectations and, of course, a thief hopes to gain something. Therefore, your form of attention is not sati. Having no expectation, even in performing good deeds, is the cause for the attainment of nibbāna.

DAVID: “Having no expectations” is the cause for nibbāna – this is radical.

PEMASIRI THERA: When people are new to meditation, and forget something, we also say: “Hey, you don’t have sati.” We say this in order to develop your consciousness, but after a certain time we have to explain to them what sati is and what is simply paying attention, manasikāra. But to help meditators who are just beginning to develop a practice, we say: “You don’t have sati”.

Now, for example, I'm doing a lot of different things and I put my glasses on the table. After our fight, I'm gonna get up and go somewhere. There's a chance I'll forget where I put my glasses on the table right now.

Some people may say ‘Pemasiri has no sati. This teacher has no conscience.” But these people are wrong to say this because my forgetfulness is not a sati lapse. It's true, I may be paying little attention to where I put my glasses, but I still have my sati, my healthy state of mind. That's all that's going on. Many people think that forgetting is a lapse of sati. We can't say that.

Even when practicing sati correctly, a very good meditator sometimes forgets things – he may be washing at the edge of the well and forgetting the soap bar or toothbrush because he is not directing his attention, his manasikāra, to the soap bar or to the toothbrush. Instead, at that particular moment in time, the practitioner directs his attention to some other object of experience, such as his mind. The meditator is simply not directing the faculty of attention to the soap bar or toothbrush, and as a result, forget about them.

Paying attention, manasikāra, is merely the faculty of being aware of an object of experience, any material or immaterial object of experience. It's nothing more than that. Through our faculty of attention, we change our minds from one object of experience to another object of experience. Our attention continually changes from one object to another, and then to another. It's just the ability to be aware of what's going on. If we direct our attention to remembering everything that happens, we will remember everything that happens. Paying attention, manasikāra, is purely the directing of the mind to an object of experience. We connect our minds with any object of experience to which we direct our attention. These objects of experience can be healthy, pernicious, or neutral. Manasikāra is not necessarily linked to a healthy state of mind. That's not sati.

Sati is a healthy state of mind, a conscious state of being healthy, which is always only associated with beneficial experience and never associated with harmful experience. Fully aware of the behavior, people who keep sati never let their minds out of a healthy state. They are always directing their attention to healthy ​​experience objects. The guard at the entrance of their minds only opens the door to what is healthy and never opens the door to what is harmful and harmful. If the man who forgets the bar of soap is a good practitioner and is practicing sati correctly, he is always directing his attention to beneficial objects. He forgets about the soap bar simply by not directing his attention to the soap bar. Forgetting the bar of soap does not mean that your mind is coming out of a healthy state of being, of sati. It just means that there was no attention on that particular object of experience, the soap bar. Nothing more.

In Western books translated about meditation, I read statements about sati that make no sense at all. In one of these books, a conversation between a student and his meditation teacher is used to illustrate the concept of sati.

“Did you meditate?” asked the teacher.

“Yes”, said the student. “I was practicing sati”

“Where did you leave your shoes?”

“Near the door.”

“Which side of the door?”

“I don’t remember.” The student forgets where his shoes are, but knows he took them somewhere near the door.

“So you don’t have sati,” says the teacher. “Get out!” And the teacher sends the student away.

If the student was a good practitioner, he would do all his actions with sati and yet it would be possible for him to have forgotten where he left his shoes. At the time, he took off his shoes, and may simply not have directed his healthy state of mind to take off his shoes. Nothing more. It is because good meditators carry out all their activities – bathing, brushing their teeth, taking off their shoes, or whatever – in a healthy state of mind, that they carry them out with full sati. This student may have forgotten where he left his shoes, simply because his sati was directed to some other experience like his mind and not to his shoes, having failed only this student. If this was the case, the student's mind did not run away from what is healthy. He kept his sati.

To teach these two distinct concepts – sati and manasikāra – as if they were the same concept is a big mistake. Sati is different from manasikāra: A healthy state of mind is not the same as simply paying attention to something.

It took me a long time to understand the difference between these two concepts. When I was a young practitioner, I made an effort to perform all my actions with a healthy state of mind: without expectation and without letting my mind fall into a harmful state. But sometimes I forgot where I left some of my belongings.

“You”, said my teacher, “have no sati”.

“What is it then” I asked, “sati ,and what is it just to remember everything?” I realised that I could be very attentive while performing malicious and harmful actions, and I also noticed that I usually later even remembered those malicious and harmful actions. So as much as I meditated, I doubted that sati was just being attentive and remembering, and that doubt became a problem for me. I respected my teachers because I knew they were teaching me in the right way, but I had a problem with this particular aspect of their teachings, which emphasized attention and remembering.

Only when I started reading Tipitaka did I begin to understand the difference between manasikāra and sati. The Buddha spoke aboutmanasikāra and sati as two separate topics. Manasikāra is substantially different from sati. Manasikāra simply supports all our states and actions. The duty of the guard, our faculty of attention, is only to open and close the door of the mind to the factors of the mind. It's just. Just be there and do this duty: Open and close the door of the mind. Manasikāra helps us to carry out all our actions, be they beneficial, neutral or harmful. When manasikāra helps us perform harmful actions, it is connecting with ignorance. Sati, on the other hand, never binds ignorance and only supports the performance of healthy actions. Sati always binds only wisdom, pañña. Nothing connects to sati except wisdom – absolutely nothing. This is what defines sati beyond demanasikāra.

In fact, when we diligently train to pay attention to the objects of our experience, we develop a high level of conscious attention that functions as sati. Many years ago, I trained this manasikāra aspect of the teachings, and now, if I decide that from this moment on I will pay good attention to every action performed, every action will be performed with an attentive state of mind. All my physical actions – even the blink of an eye – will be experienced with good attention, and then I will be able to remember much of them. But this is not sati, because there is no realization of wisdom, no progress.

Realization requires transferring and directing our attention from harmful objects to healthy objects. When we do this, our attention is called yoniso-manasikāra. And because sati is always part of the state of mind associated with what is healthy, yoniso-manasikāra supports the realization/development of sati. Paying attention presents itself easily and automatically, but paying attention in a completely healthy way, with yoniso-manasikāra, does not occur automatically, it takes effort and work/development.

The Buddha once taught 500 thieves. After developing their powers of attention to very high levels, thieves only needed wisdom to direct their harmful attention toward beneficial/healthy attention. Upon hearing the word of the Buddha, the thieves gave up their desires and expectations, and realized this wisdom.

Comprehension of lucidity

When the Buddha described sati, he usually included the term sampajañña. Sampajañña means to see clearly the characteristics of existence. With sampajañña, we are aware of an experience as it arises and aware of it as it ends. Sampajaña is lucid understanding. There is clarity of consciousness.

By linking sati to sampajañña, sati-sampajañña means that our healthy state of mind and our clarity of consciousness are well developed; We never let a state of mind arise divorced from good. We are fully aware of our actions and consider our actions, right in the middle of carrying them out, wisely. At this level of well-developed lucidity, all our physical actions, feelings, and mental states are healthy. Every act and experience that occurs in our mental processes is transformed into something healthy and beneficial. When we work with sati-sampajañña, we work with right understanding and right thought. We differentiate mentality from materiality and work wisely.

Each morning, the sun chases away the darkness of the night. We see objects that we did not see at night and there is no doubt in our minds about the identity of these objects. There's no confusion. When the morning sun's rays reach a pure drop of dew, the pure drop of dew gives a wonderful reflection of the morning sun. The sunlight shines in the pure drop of dew.

The sun is nibbāna, darkness is ignorance, the pure drop of dew is a mind in sati, and seeing clearly is sampajañña. Purity combined with seeing clearly is sati-sampajañña. The pure and lucid mind of sati-sampajañña is in the light of Nibbāna. It is a luminous state of mind. And even if this state of mind is only a reflection of nibbāna and not yet the truly attained nibbāna, it shines like nibbāna which is not to be confused with any ignorance. It is a state full of wisdom, where there is no confusion about experiences. Any object, anything that enters our field of experience, is known without confusion. When we are in the light of nibbāna, in sati-sampajañña, we know the true nature of existence. The darkness of our ignorance is driven away and we see objects with clarity and understanding.

Another drop of dew is muddy. It does not reflect the morning sun, it is a mind mixed with ignorance. Without sati-sampajañña, without a healthy state of mind and without clarity of consciousness, the muddy dewdrop will never shine like nibbāna. Never.

When we train in sati-sampajañña, we act wisely at every moment of our lives and easily walk our way. We consider our meditation practice and the routine of our daily lives as one and the same thing, united. With our meditation practice embedded in every piece of our lives, we can be involved in any activity, without conflict, because we are always seeing clearly and always free of expectations. When we have sati-sampajañña, we are the pure drop of dew and the Nibbāna shines.

There are two types of people with sati-sampajañña: arahats and meditators who consciously perform all their actions without expectations. There is no attachment or aversion, just seeing it lucidly. To be free from suffering, we must develop our sati-sampajañña.

Cap. 17 – Right Mindfulness from the book:

“Walking the Tightrope – Talks on Meditative Development
with Pemasiri Mahathera” by David Young – Buddhist Publication Society,

Kandy, Sri Lanka

Translation: Dhammiko Bhikkhu