Meet Your Best Friend: Sati

We invite you to once again marvel with us at the meditative, cognitive, emotional, psychological... tools of the Buddhadharma. This time, we focus on sati, mindfulness or attention. Like any thousand-year-old tradition, Buddhism is vast—there are so many corners still to be discovered! That’s why we propose deepening our understanding of sati.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that this is a topic we are particularly interested in. Not only because attention is the central quality we cultivate in all our weekly courses, but because this preference is obvious in our articles. Until now, we have continually emphasized the need to denounce the partial, biased, or even perverse uses of calm-abiding meditation techniques in our context. We have also presented some of its benefits; we’ve shared some techniques for cultivating attention; we’ve addressed its alliance with relaxation and with vigilant introspection... In short, it's clear that this matters to us.

So we return to it once more, to learn from expert voices who have studied it, written about it, and, most importantly, cultivated it daily with deep care and trust. Now, they share with us the fruits of this intimate relationship. We draw from the reflections and studies of the Buddhist canon by Analayo, an expert in early Buddhism and a monk of German origin; Alan Wallace, a writer and expert in samatha meditation, a lay American Vajrayana practitioner; and Bernat Font, an expert in the Pali canon, translator, spokesperson for secular Buddhism, and lay Catalan practitioner.

WHAT IS SATI

It would be wonderful to have a single, clear, and distinct definition of what sati is. However, considering that Buddhism is a tradition with a temporal and geographic scope comparable to all Western philosophy from the Greeks to the present, we can understand why that’s not the case: there are various understandings of mindfulness. Still, we will try to present it in a general way.

A constant observation is that sati is related to memory. This is how Buddhaghosa, a renowned Theravāda teacher, explains it: “Through it, they remember, or it itself remembers, or it simply is remembering: this is mindfulness.” This definition requires clarification. Anyone who has tried to cultivate sati will have noticed that one of the most common distractions is memories, recollections. How do we resolve this paradox? Analayo explains that attention is similar to the attitude we have when we need to retain information from a talk we are listening to and cannot take notes. That type of listening and alertness allows us to retain and later remember the experience. This is the relationship that Analayo attributes between memory and attention.

Another important feature is that sati must be established. In other words, it’s not a quality automatically present in our experience. The flow of consciousness is always there, but that doesn’t mean attention accompanies it.

Furthermore, sati is characterized by receptivity. Analayo illustrates this aspect with a recurring metaphor: understanding attention as a good friend.

From the very moment we wake up in the morning, our good friend sati can already be there, as if waiting for us. She’s ready to accompany us throughout the rest of the day, encouraging us to remain receptive and open, gentle and understanding. She never gets angry if, by chance, we forget her. As soon as we remember her, she is right there with us again.

The beauty of thinking of attention this way is that establishing it is not forced—it has nothing to do with tense hyper-concentration. Rather, its presence feels like “an open receptivity and a gentle alertness to whatever is happening.” That’s why teachers like Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche, when introducing people to mindfulness meditation, insist that the practice is about learning to “feel comfortable in your own skin.”

Another necessary clarification is that attention is compatible with the use of concepts. In fact, its cultivation requires some knowledge; that is, it isn’t limited to the capacity for presence. Let’s recall a classic definition of attention, one shared by the monk Nāgasena with King Milinda in a well-known dialogue:

Mindfulness, when it arises, brings to mind wholesome and unwholesome tendencies, flawed and flawless, inferior and refined, dark and pure, along with their counterparts.Mindfulness, when it arises, follows the paths of beneficial and non-beneficial tendencies: these tendencies are beneficial, these not; these tendencies are useful, these not. Thus, one who practices yoga rejects non-beneficial tendencies and cultivates the beneficial ones.

Relying on this quote, Allan Wallace again emphasizes the ethical and philosophical context of meditation practice, which requires discernment about what is healthy and what is harmful. This “clear comprehension” is the main ally of sati: sampajañña. Although, as Analayo says, we must not confuse practicing with making intellectual digressions about the practice, it’s true that fertile meditation requires instruction, reflection on what is beneficial, and guidance on how to measure progress.

ITS PRIVILEGED COMPANION: INTROSPECTION

This cognitive ally of presence is known by various names: “clear comprehension,” “introspection,” or even “situational awareness.” What do we need to know about introspection?

Introspection is a reflective faculty. Compared to attention, which can be directed at very different objects—from a distant galaxy to a tickle in the throat—introspection attends to that with which I immediately identify: my mind and body. Wallace adds that introspection is “an expression of intelligence”; that is, it discerns: it monitors our actions of body, speech, and mind, and evaluates them. In meditation practice, we need this ability to identify distractions from the object of attention and apply the appropriate antidotes in response. But this same capacity accompanies us throughout the day, in considerations like: is it wise to say this or not? Is now a good time to bring up this issue, or should I wait? Am I exaggerating the situation with this account, or is it accurate? In short: what I find in my experience—is it beneficial or harmful?

Bernat Font finds the same emphasis on the alliance between attention and introspection in the oldest presentation of the Buddhist path. In his first teaching, when presenting the eightfold path, the Buddha explains the domains that must be observed in practice, which include view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, attention, and collectedness. In a linear interpretation, sati is preceded by right effort and followed by samādhi: “collectedness,” “mental unification,” or “stability.” Right effort consists of directing our energies toward what benefits us and others, and thus ceasing to promote harmful states or actions. This discernment frames the practice of sati, which is made possible through the cultivation of wise effort. And through attention, we access samādhi, a state of unification of the mind characterized by non-reactivity, wholly wholesome. It would be impossible to arrive there with a neutral focus of attention that gives the same space to arrogance as to tenderness.

ATTENTION AT THE SERVICE OF UNDERSTANDING

This close collaboration between attention and discernment is one of the hallmarks of this contemplative tradition. Wallace explains that the practice of attention and of very high states of concentration (samādhi) was very common in the Buddha's time. Ascetic practices, retreat from work and family life to devote oneself entirely to contemplation, the choice to be a wandering yogi—none of this was unusual. The Buddha benefited from this culture but was not satisfied with the highest refinement of attention, with simply achieving stable meditative absorptions, free of afflictions and distractions. He wanted to go further.

With a refined, equanimous, and light mind, he dedicated himself to investigating experience, and in doing so generated meditations designed to see through our delusions: vipassanā, or penetrating insight. His contribution to this rich contemplative culture was to point out that the union between attention and understanding, between samatha and vipassanā, was the formula for definitively freeing oneself from reactivity, conflict, and slavery to habitual patterns. To do this, sati is essential: it cuts through the constant past and future projections that cloud our perception. Sati interrupts these associations and introduces filters that bring us closer to how things really work—for example, allowing our perception to access reality through the lenses of impermanence, vulnerability, interdependence, or the absence of inherent essence.

UNDERSTANDING AND THE GOOD LIFE

For these reasons, attention, even at its highest development, is not definitively liberating. At the same time, it's undeniable that it greatly smooths the path. To understand the causes of suffering and how to respond to it, we need collectedness and a certain ease in our own skin. Sati is that anchor that serves as a refuge no matter what happens to us. Analayo illustrates this with a simile of six animals, all tied to each other, pulling strongly in different directions. The strongest one drags the others until it gets tired and another takes over. These are the six sense doors, whose loudest stimuli capture our attention. Sati in the present experience is like a post firmly planted in the ground, to which the animals are tied. Sooner or later, they tire of pulling and lie peacefully around the post.

Another interesting image compares our reactive mind to fire that quickly ignites dry wood; to water poured freely into an empty container; or to a stone that, when thrown, sinks into a mound of wet clay. In contrast, through the cultivation of sati, reactivity does not find open doors. It makes our mind like damp wood that won’t ignite; a full container that can’t hold more water; or a solid door against which a ball bounces without the slightest tremor.

The ability not to be at the mercy of the most colorful or shocking stimulus, to leave behind an anxious relationship with stimuli, provides a self-esteem that calms us. And it has nothing to do with the fantasy of controlling everything. No matter what happens, sati will be waiting for us, like a good friend: patient and without resentment, ready to accompany us in discovering the best we can embody.

Bibliography

• Alan Wallace (2011). Minding Closely: The Four Applications of Mindfulness. Shambhala Publications.

• Analayo (2018), Satipaṭṭhāna Meditation: A Practice Guide. Windhorse Publications.

• Bernat Font (2020), curso “Formas de estar presente. Los cuatro satipatthana”. Casa Virupa.