As mindfulness is increasingly embraced in the contemporary world as a practice that brings peace and self-awareness, Bhikkhu Analayo casts fresh light on the earliest sources of mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition.
The Satipatthana Sutta is well known as the main source for Buddhist teachings on mindfulness and its place in the Buddhist path. Ten years after Analayo's acclaimed study of the Sutta, his current work, Perspectives on Satipatthana, brings a new dimension to our understanding by comparing the Pali text with versions that have survived in Chinese. Analayo also draws on the presentation of mindfulness in a number of other discourses as they survive in Chinese and Tibetan translations as well as in Pali.
The result is a wide-ranging exploration of what mindfulness meant in early Buddhism. Informed by Analayo's outstanding scholarship, depth of understanding and experience as a practitioner, this book sheds fresh light on material that is central to our understanding of Buddhist practice, bringing us as close as we can come to the mindfulness teachings of the Buddha himself.
