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Digha Nikāya · D22 · trans. Maurice Walshe

Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta — The Great Discourse on Mindfulness

Thus have I heard. Once the Lord was staying among the Kurus.1 There is a market-town of theirs called Kammāsadhamma. And there the Lord addressed the monks:

“There is, monks, this one way to the purification of beings, to passing far beyond grief and lamentation, to the dying-out of ill and misery, to the attainment of right method, to the realization of Nibbāna — that is to say, the four foundations of mindfulness.”

Contemplation of the Body

And how, monks, does a monk abide contemplating the body as body?2

Here a monk, having gone to the forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty place, sits down cross-legged, holding his body erect, having established mindfulness before him.

Footnotes

  1. The Kurus were a clan in northwestern India whose territory was renowned, in the suttas, for the wisdom of its inhabitants — the Buddha is said to have given his deepest teachings there. ↩

  2. The repetition “body as body” (kāye kāyānupassī) emphasizes direct observation rather than conceptual reflection about the body. ↩

Table of Contents

Digha Nikāya

Majjhima Nikāya