Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness has become a byword for meditation these days; it is everywhere and has even become part of medical treatment for anxiety and depression. It could be said that Mindfulness is the latest Western craze for solving all your mental ills, and yet, according to the Buddha, this is exactly what it will do. The Satipatthana Sutta details exactly how to practice ‘proper’ mindfulness rather than what you might find in an NHS run Anxiety class. I know it does because I have attended NHS Anxiety Mindfulness treatment and their version of Mindfulness is very watered down, but for good reason. They are treating a particular ailment rather than trying to liberate you from Samsara. That is not to detract from the definite benefits of their systems, the CBT training I went through had definite results regarding the Stress Anxiety I suffer from and I still use their techniques today, including breath meditation, but, as I said, they do not train you fully in Mindfulness Meditation. Only the Buddha and his disciples can do that.

With this in mind I have decided to upload the Satipatthana Sutta. This is the Sutta that details, quite explicitly, exactly how to go about Mindfulness Meditation and the various steps you need to go through for your journey toward liberation. The breath is always in mind, but there are numerous other subjects that you progressively move on to during your practice.

I could enumerate them here but I think it best to let the Buddha speak rather than run the possibility of me leading you astray, so I shall stop wittering on and just leave you to read the Sutta in your own time. As usual, there is a PDF version available for download and printing should you so wish.