Not clinging to anything in the world: understanding the Satipatthana refrain
The Satipatthana Sutta is perhaps the central meditation text in the Insight Meditation tradition. It outlines four domains in which we can be mindful:
- body
- feeling tone
- mind
- dhammas / frameworks.
Each of these has subcategories. But today I want to focus on how we interpret and practice the sutta’s instructions, particularly in the refrain. We're asking the question: what is samma sati—appropriate or skilful mindfulness—as the Buddha envisaged it?
Assumptions we might have about satipatthana
It's worth examining what we think these instructions are telling us. This is clearly a practice of knowing what we experience as we experience it. But why?
- If we don’t think too much about it, we can read satipatthana as an instruction simply to really watch these objects really closely, as if the magic is in the object. Like if we’re mindful enough of the breath we’ll find a secret hidden in it, or at least find some respite in the present moment.
- We can also see these as a series of contemplations to run through systematically. But as we’ll see, there are specific ways in which we are asked to contemplate.
- Or we relate to these lists as objects of concentration. Sometimes we might feel as though the point is purely to gather the mind and experience a bit of stillness before heading back into the busy world.
- We can also see this as a list of categories from which experience is constructed, supporting insight.
These are all fine and valid perspectives. Yet I feel there is an essential point of satipatthana which, if overlooked, I feel we'll be missing the point of the practice: not clinging, or we could say letting go.
A unique text
The Buddha is described as naming Satipatthana as a the direct path to realisation, and the sutta ends with an emphatic encouragement that practising this continuously for seven days results in full awakening. So clearly the sutta warrants a careful look to make sure we’re not just practicing from our assumptions about it. What is special about this sutta that warrants this kind of description? What does it say about the essence of Buddhism?
The refrain
To answer these questions, I want to look in particular at the refrain that occurs 13 times at key junctures throughout the Sutta. In many ways it is the heart of the text because it tells us what to do with the objects listed by the sutta.
Here is the refrain as it appears in relation to mindfulness of mind. I've broken it up into bullet points.
- In this way, in regard to the mind we abide contemplating the mind internally ... externally ... internally and externally.
- One abides contemplating the nature of arising... of passing away ... of both arising and passing away in regard to the mind.
- Mindfulness that 'there is a mind' is established in oneself to the extent necessary for bare knowledge and continuous mindfulness.
- And we abide independent, not clinging to anything in the world.
- That is how in regard to the mind we abide contemplating the mind.
—Bhikkhu Analayo, Satipatthana: the Direct Path to Realisation, p. 8.
And again, in a translation by Bhikkhu Sujato.
And so they meditate observing an aspect of the body internally, externally, and both internally and externally. They meditate observing the body as liable to originate, as liable to vanish, and as liable to both originate and vanish. Or mindfulness is established that the body exists, to the extent necessary for knowledge and mindfulness. They meditate independent, not grasping at anything in the world.
—Bhikkhu Sujato, MN 10.
Let's unpack this refrain. In the following, X refers to whichever domain of mindfulness we are referring to. It could be body, feeling tones, mind, dhammas, or some subcategory of these.
Contemplating X internally, externally, and both internally and externally
What do we think this means? This refers to contemplating our topic in ourselves, in others, and both in ourselves and others--presumably at the same time.
Contemplating the nature of arising, passing away, and both arising and passing away in regard to X
Fairly self explanatory, I think. Notice how contemplating impermanence is actually central to satipatthana practice but it often gets somewhat sidelined as it's so easy to focus on the object and forget how we're being asked to attend to that object, what we are supposed to be noticing. We'll come back to this.
It also seems to me that of all the pieces in the refrain this is the most active task. The others are somewhat fulfilled by virtue of us practicing. This is something we can very much choose to do. It’s not presented as a passive result of practice but as a contemplation, a task to be performed.
Mindfulness that there is X to the extent necessary for bare knowledge and continuous mindfulness
It seems like we have a middle way here: enough mindfulness is present to keep us in this state of knowing, non-clinging, and of letting things arise and pass - but it doesn't seem to be about fixating on an object or knowing every detail about that object.
I want to say a bit more about bare awareness here using two quotes from the monk and scholar, Nyanaponika Thera, that are found in Bhikkhu Analayo's book, The Signless and the Deathless.
Bare Attention is the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us, at the successive moments of perception. It is called "bare", because it attends just to the bare facts of a perception as presented either through the five physical senses or through the mind which, for Buddhist thought, constitutes the sixth sense. When attending to that six-fold sense impression, attention or mindfulness is kept to a bare registering of the facts observed, without reacting to them by deed, speech or by mental comment, which may be one of self-reference (like, dislike, etc.), judgement or reflection. If during the time, short or long, given to the practice of Bare Attention, any such comments arise in one's mind, they themselves are made objects of Bare Attention.
—Nyanaponika Thera (1962/1992, 30) in Analayo, The Signless and the Deathless.
Particularly in an age like ours, with its superstitious worship of ceaseless external activity, there will be those who ask: "How can such a passive attitude of mind as that of bare attention possibly lead to the great results claimed for it?" In reply, one may be inclined to suggest to the questioner not to rely on the words of others, but to put these assertions... to the test of personal experience.
—Nanaponika Thera (1968/1986, 4) in Analayo, The Signless and the Deathless.
I feel like bare awareness might often be a more useful term to use than “mindfulness”, although the two are not interchangeable and bare awareness is an aspect of the latter. Yet ”be mindful” is actually not a very specific instruction at all, it’s more than a little vague and is intended differently by different teachers even within the same traditions. If we know what is meant by bare awareness, that’s a pretty specific task and one that will satisfy many of the requirements I think we’re looking to fulfill.
We are also asked to be mindful with a certain continuity, which we can interpret as a steady and persistent inclination to be aware of what is happening at the level of bare awareness: not proliferating but being present to experience. Noticing, "Ah, there is a strong feeling tone here," for example.
Abiding independent, not clinging to anything in the world
Again, this seems to be saying that we are mindful of the object but not grasping it. We are riding the waves of experience, knowing them, but letting them pass through. We are not trying to fix attention on them. There is no refuge in any of these conditioned experiences. We are independent from them.
Perhaps we are beginning to see the difference here between the fixed concentration-only ascetic practices that the Buddha learned as a seeker, and his experience under the rose apple tree in which he discovered a samadhi that was based on a relaxed mindful awareness.
What does this mean in practice?
To summarise what the refrain may be telling us, the purpose of mindfulness of these domains seems to be to:
- stabilise the mind so that we don't drift off into fantasy.
- familiarise ourselves with the constituents of experience.
- provide the experience of arising and passing so that we can understand impermanence (and unsatisfactoriness and not self) but, ultimately...
- these are objects not to be clung to because the essence of Buddhist meditation is letting go, of not making a self from any of object of experience. We abide independent of the object. Not clinging. Not identifying. In other words, letting go.
The Anapanasati Sutta (MN 118) gives us a model of how this works in practice.
- 4 x lines on body
- 4 x lines on feeling tones
- 4 x lines on mind
- 4 x dhammas, starting with impermanence, culminating in letting go.
The heart of the path is quite easy. There's no need to explain anything at length. Let go of love and hate and let things be. That's all that I do in my own practice.
—Ajahn Chah.
What are we letting go of?
In brief, we're letting go our insistence that life accords to our preferences. And we are also letting go of the idea that any of these subcategories could be a refuge. They are impermanent, ultimately unsatisfactory, and not self. There is an interesting and somewhat niche word in the texts, atammayatā, which translates as "Not made of that." And I think it applies here.
So we are not clinging to any of these experiences listed in the sutta. We are allowing them to arise and pass, we are not made of that. There may be an unsurpassed mind, for example, but I am “not made of that.” In other words, we can’t cling to it and make a self out of it.
We are staying with experience but not necessarily a single object
Although the attitude is one of letting go, we are not using that as a bypass to avoid feeling difficulty. Sometimes it may be beneficial to stay with an experience even though it is uncomfortable. We are staying with our experience as it is, with some leeway tuning into various aspects of that experience as intuitive and helpful. The objects in that experience may change, but we are staying present to the flow of experience with bare awareness.
- If we stay with a single object, cultivating a seemingly permanent perception of that object, we will get a certain kind of concentration. For some of these objects it would be a case of staying with the absence of that object.
- If we take an attitude of letting go, it seems to me that we are closer to fulfilling the conditions of the satipatthana refrain.
When we are with the flow of experience:
- We are not making a self out of our experience or that of others’.
- We are in a position of acceptance to what comes.
- We aren’t clinging or trying to control or create experiences, though we may influence the flow.
I think we can see that there is a difference of intention between the idea that we glue our attention to these objects—fixation, concentration—versus a non-clinging awareness that knows objects to an appropriate extent, knows their transience, and releases them effortlessly. We can see what is helpful in the moment.
If you let go a little you will have a little happiness. If you let go a lot you will have a lot of happiness. If you let go completely you will be free.
—Ajahn Chah.
Not clinging is the ideal, not necessarily always the reality
We may not be able to experience this ideal in this particular sitting or moment. It’s also something that will likely become more available as practice matures. When we can’t access non-clinging it may become accessible if we ground ourselves in the body; work with feeling tone, especially the pleasant; and observe the condition of the mind. We can also work with the dhamma frameworks to this end.
How might this look on the cushion?
In my own practice, I currently like to work through the satipatthanas broadly at the top level: body, feeling tone, mind—noticing whatever is prominent within these domains—and then bring in a dhamma theme.
- I steady the mind by grounding in the body, and perhaps observing whichever aspects of the body feel prominent.
- I bring awareness to feeling tone. It doesn't hurt to notice pleasant feeling tones if they are around, to counteract the mind's negativity bias and help soothe the mind and relax the body.
- I notice the condition of the mind, where it is pulled, how fragmented or gathered it is, what it needs to settle further etc, and the impermanence and conditioned nature of mind states.
And the attitude we can have as we do this is itself a dhamma perspective. This is demonstrated in the texts as follows:
- such is material form, such its arising, such its passing away.
- such is feeling tone, such its arising, such its passing away.
- such are mental states, such their arising, such their passing away.
We notice the "signs" of objects arising and we let go. We allow phenomena to arise and pass without clinging.
It's probably a good idea when starting out, or from time to time, to familiarise ourselves somewhat with most or all of these satipatthana subcategories. They might not appear prominently in our experience unless we are at least a little familiar with them.
The forest is peaceful, why aren’t you? You hold on to things causing your confusion. Let nature teach you. Hear the bird’s song then let go. If you know nature, you’ll know truth. If you know truth, you’ll know nature.
—Ajahn Chah.
How might this look in daily life?
Perhaps as above but with more emphasis on being relaxed and aware and working with what presents itself most prominently.
We practice to learn how to let go, not how to increase our holding on to things. Awakening appears when you stop wanting anything.
—Ajahn Chah.
As always, I offer this as a record of my own process of contemplation. Please forgive any errors or misinterpretations.