Chapter 7 - Mindfulness

Summary

This chapter addresses some of the discrepancies and anomalies that occur in textual accounts of mindfulness. Analysis begins by comparing three different versions of the core text, the “Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness”, one in Pali and two in Chinese, deriving from three different schools of early Buddhism. Discrepancies exist not only among these three versions but also between this core text and other accounts of mindfulness practice. These inconsistencies have attracted the attention of meditators and scholars alike. Three previous studies are discussed, from which it is concluded that confusion has arisen from failure clearly to distinguish between awareness (of breathing, body posture, etc.) and mindfulness as a mental discipline and that the ancestral practice from which the three versions derive is most likely to have comprised just the components that the three versions have in common.