Friday, August 24, 2007

The Practice of Mindfulness -"The four bases of mindfulness"



This is the foundation of mindfulness practice taught by the Buddha, leading to wisdom and ultimate liberation from suffering. This sutta is called the Satipatthana Sutta.
At the end of sutta Buddha said if someone diligently practices this it is possible one to get fully enlightened in seven days.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Dr. Walpola
Through a mutual friend I discovered this site, and I am navigating my way through it. It must take a lot of time to keep it up to date, and I wonder how you do it given your many other responsibilites. Its with deep gratitude I write this request. The translation by Soma Theral especially the commentary is rather difficult to follow given the tangled english translation. I wondered whether you had come across a more intelligible translation, since you have trod on this path before me.

Dr. Piyal Walpola said...

Hi Tara,
Thank you for visiting my blog. Hope it will help your path, even in a small way. Sathipattana sutta is "main door" which leads to the path. The Sinhalese MP3 version by Ven. Kiribathgoda Gnananda is very good. You can download form his web site. The best English discussion of this is by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, in his Sathipattana course. You can contact him at this site http://www.bhavanasociety.org
Piyal