Audio (TCP7, Day 02): Four Establishments of Mindfulness, Nine Stages Stage One (Sthāpayati)

A short talk on the four establishments of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna) and the first stage of śamatha (calm abiding) training, sthāpayati — simply placing the mind on the breath — followed by a 25-minute self-guided silent meditation. Covers the three types of wisdom and the Buddha’s mindfulness-of-breathing instructions.

Sakya tradition · IBA Kathmandu · The Complete Path (TCP) 2026 · English · Talk + silent sit

For the full Sanskrit/Pali/Tibetan glossary and nine-stages reference table, see the Glossary and Summary for Morning Meditations.

Transcript

Okay, very good. So, good morning dear friends. Welcome to the second of our morning meditation practice sessions. Thank you to Mathias who has very kindly, in addition to all the work that he does during the whole day, to make sure that we can hear his Holiness clearly and also translation, etc.

He is supporting us to have sound and recording and translation this morning and also, therefore, thank you very much to our translators, Dandu Fursa, Nadiya and Hwamu. Also, call your bubble. Here also, gratitude to you for bringing your energy, your enthusiasm for these fundamental practices, these foundational practices.

So foundational that the Buddha himself, when he was asked by Ananda, somehow in the role of secretary to the Buddha, we can say, what should I tell people when they come to visit Bhagavan when you are not available? And the Buddha suggested that Ananda can simply tell them that he is practicing mindfulness of breathing.

So the awakened one felt this practice was so important that it not only constituted the beginning of his journey, but it also was the practice that he continued until its end in that body.

And for those who are familiar with the early suttas, the texts recording the words of Shakyamuni Buddha recorded, passed down to us in the Pali language at first orally and later in written form, these practices are key in the four establishments of mindfulness. The first establishment, mindfulness, gone into the body. Kāyagatāsati.

And if you’re familiar also with the five paths framework for the cultivation, in the Mahayana tradition you will also recognize these four establishments as the first group in the path of accumulation. So their importance is maintained all the way into the Yogācāra, the Mahayana path.

And while we do not have the time or scope to go into the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta, the sutra on the four establishments of mindfulness in any great detail, hopefully these sessions, the theory in these sessions will be in the form of review for most of us, reminders and orientations or reorientations in our city meditation practice.

We can know that the first exercise in the first establishment of mindfulness, kāyagatāsati, mindfulness gone into the body or kāyānupassanā tracking the body, anupassanā has this implication, this meaning of closely following. The first exercises in that group of instructions is none other than mindfulness of breathing. Ānāpānasati — āna and apāna, in-breath and out-breath, and sati.

Mindfulness is how we often receive sati or smṛti, translated, but it is of course related to memory, to recollection. A very important concept in the North Indian context, that time and place in which the Buddha studied, practiced and taught, because everything that you needed to know in order to practice, you would have to receive from a teacher and remember.

You didn’t have great libraries, books that you could borrow, let alone download to your device and scroll through when you needed to remember what it was that you were supposed to be doing when you sat down on your cushion. You had to remember. But the Buddha, perhaps also seeing the risk if we just assume that by memorizing the texts, our understanding will flourish, will bear fruit.

He recognized that we also need to remember something very important and that something is none other than what is happening right now, thinking about the past, caught in regret, not chasing after what has not yet happened, anxiety, worry for the future, clearly knowing what is going on here and now.

And this kind of nutshell or summary condensed instruction repeats throughout the instructions for mindfulness gone into the body in Satipaṭṭhāna. It is present in the Anapana Sati Sutta as well, the Sutra on full awareness of breathing. The Buddha invites us to bring energy, ātāpī, to be ardent, ardiente in our practice.

Jingjin [精進 jīngjìn, “energetic effort” — Chinese gloss], in Chinese I believe, like a strong or energized in our practice, to clearly understand what it is that we are doing. Samprajanya in Sanskrit, Samprajanyo, Zhengzhi [正知 zhèngzhī, “clear knowing” — Chinese gloss], clearly knowing.

Zhengzhi, mindfulness, bringing those two into balance and not clinging to or pushing away any aspect of our experience.

If we can remember just these four attitudes to our practice, then we have very good foundation for not just samatha but also vipaśyanā practice, not only for calming the mind, for stopping, zhi [止 zhǐ, “stopping” — Chinese gloss for śamatha], but also for the arising of insight, guan [觀 guān, “seeing” — Chinese gloss for vipaśyanā], also for the arising of a different way of seeing.

And these two ingredients, the stopping and looking deeply as it is translated in the Plum Village Zen tradition, Master Thich Nhat Hanh, these two ingredients are the method, if you like, that the Buddha is sharing with us. And afterwards there are, of course, many, many skillful means in order to bring that path to fruition.

And together we have the very good fortune to be in this time and place to receive detailed instructions on such methods from His Holiness. And in some small way perhaps our time together in the morning is a way for us to prepare our mind for that receiving.

Many skillful means, many systems, but what I would like to propose is that in these sessions we lean into the system that is brought to us through the Yogācāra, to the Mahayana approach in general, based on the nine stages. So this is familiar to us in the elephant chasing tanka, the ox herding pictures also in the Zen tradition. These are nine stages of bhāvanā, of cultivation.

This word should be familiar to us. We have the three types of knowledge here. Who can remember those? We have the knowledge from listening, from our study reading perhaps these days, śrutamayī-prajñā. We have the knowledge from our own questioning, reflection. I have shared with our translator some vocabulary.

I’m just making sure I don’t leave them behind when I throw out a Sanskrit term like śrutamayī-prajñā without any warning like that. cintāmayī-prajñā, this knowledge from our reflection and questioning. cintā, related to citta, thinking, mind.

And we have of course the last, and maybe we can say the most important, this is related to the authenticity of experience that His Holiness referred to yesterday. bhāvanāmayī-prajñā, the knowledge arising from our own direct cultivation, our own seeing, our experience. bhāvanā related to bhū, that we hear also in bhūmi, in bhūta, kind of the ground if you like, that which allows becoming.

So for this reason, cultivation, because it has this image of a farmer tending to the soil, is a helpful one. So as in the Christian contemplative tradition, we use the word meditation often for Bhavana, it has a little bit this kind of implication of thinking, but here we see that that is just one part of the practices that we need in order to bring this knowledge into fruition.

There is thinking, but then there is also this cultivation. And the other reason that I feel that cultivation is a good way to remember, to consider the practice of meditation, that when we sit down to practice this, we are not so much meditating, but cultivating, is because it gives this image of a skillful gardener who has an objective perhaps to harvest a certain fruit or flower.

They have the seeds, but they know that there’s no way to bring out the fruit next year’s harvest directly from the seed. If they crack it open, it is destroyed. But what they can do is choose an appropriate location, prepare the soil, plant the seed, provide the necessary water, sunlight, nutrients, and allow that plant, that sprout to grow from its own side naturally, not forcing.

And so in the first step of the nine stages, all we are asked to do in this cultivation is simply place the mind on the object of our choosing, Sthāpayati. Step one, placing. Neizhu [內住 nèizhù, “inner abiding” — Chinese gloss for stage one].

As I mentioned yesterday, in contrast to the usual mode of our daily life experience where the mind hops from object to object, here we are simply invited to choose an object and to invite the mind to rest in connection with that object in preference to all the other possibilities.

The different feelings in the body, sounds outside, thoughts of past and future, just this placing the mind on the object of our choosing.

And in the Ānāpānasati, as in Satipaṭṭhāna, those two key texts, also in the Bhāvanākrama, the texts that transmit to us these nine stages, Śrāvakabhūmi, Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra, the first object that we invited to consider, as the Buddha himself suggested, the breath. So yesterday, for those who were present, we did kind of a guided meditation, finding the breath in the body.

Because if that object is not clear to the mind, the tendency will be for the mind to slide away into something that is more interesting. So if we can find a place in the body where the breath feels clearly sensible to us, that we can touch the feelings of the breath or find the place where the breath touches us, then we have a solid starting point for this placing.

And it’s important to note also, we will go through and meet the hindrances, review the faults in the practice and effective antidotes to those faults. But for now, we can just recognize that the type of attention, the type of close focus that we tend to bring in this stage is quite forceful. It requires a lot of energy. We can even kind of give rise to some tension.

The word concentration in the English for this aspect of focusing on one object kind of gives us this sense of tightness somehow, of narrowness restriction. And there is a particular word, forceful attention, bala-avahana-manasikara. We will come back to this one. Slowly, this type of forceful attention will give way to a more easeful type of attention.

But for now, we can just be aware that this tendency is present to pushing, to kind of fighting with our attention. And we can recall already that in those four attitudes that the Buddha himself has shared in those early texts, there is this aspect of energy, of atapi. There is this aspect of letting go also, of not chasing after a particular type of experience.

And there is this factor of mindfulness balancing these two, keeping in check that pushing energy, but also rousing us when we begin to become distracted or a little bit lax or lazy. So we will come back to these again and again, these hindrances and antidotes, the balancing factor of mindfulness. But for now, that is already enough talking.

My proposal is that in these sessions, we alternate between instruction followed by guided meditation and instruction followed by silent sit, so self-guided. So in this way, we have an opportunity both to rely on prompts to guide us through certain steps, to keep certain concepts clear, and also developing capacity to guide ourselves through this process in our own practice.

And we’ll hopefully conclude with enough time for a question or two. But for now, let us enjoy about 25 minutes of silent sitting. We can re-establish ourselves in our comfortable posture, inviting that sense of groundedness, but also uprightness, space for the breath.

We can give rise to a clear motivation, not just for ourselves, though we experience some benefit of calm, of clarity, but that calm and clarity is something that we can offer to others, doing our part to bring a moment of peace into the world. We can also identify a clear intention for this particular sit, the logistics, if you like. How am I sitting? What am I doing today?

For each of us, it may be different. Maybe I’m just working with finding the breath in the body. Maybe I’m working with a continuity of attention. Maybe I’m working to find the subtle breath in the body, whatever it may be, giving rise to that intention clearly, so that you remember what to come back to when distraction has taken you away.

And then we can begin the gentle process of recollecting our awareness, giving rise to mindfulness, balancing that energy and relaxation, that letting go, clearly knowing what it is that we are doing, relaxing the body, letting go of distractions as they arise and pass.

So as we conclude, you might like to give yourself a gentle massage for the face, head and neck, shoulders, arms and hands, lower back. You may like to adjust your sitting position. And this brings us very near to our conclusion. But we just have a few moments if there are any practical questions that would like to be clarified. We have a microphone here. Mathias, very kindly, will deliver.

Yes, we do have one. Raise your hand if you have a question. Did we have a question at the back? Yes, we did. The four. Which four? There are so many fours. There are also threes and twos, fives, sixes. There are four Satipaṭṭhānas, of which we are just meeting the first, kāyānupassanā. There are also four qualities of attitude in the refrain in the Satipaṭṭhānas, sutta, ātāpī, sampajañña, satimā.

Is it this four? So these four are in a kind of a refrain in the Satipaṭṭhāna. The first is kind of an energy, diligence, atapi, related to tapas in the yoga tradition, this heat, yogic heat. Some friction is happening, some work is being done, requires energy. Sampajañña implying clear understanding, clearly knowing what it is that we are doing.

So often smṛti, samprajanya, they go together, mindfulness and clear understanding or awareness is translated in different ways. Satimā is that mindfulness, sati, smṛti. And then we have this not clinging. So setting aside grasping and aversion for the arising of saṃsāra. So is this maybe the four that you mean? Yeah.

So this refrain is woven throughout the first part of the Satipaṭṭhāna sutta as a kind of a quality of attitude that we can bring not only to samatha but also as you can see because it has this kind of non grasping aspect. It is suited for an object that is changing like in daily life. So it is also appropriate for a vipaśyanā relationship to our experience. Okay.

So with that I think we will conclude. Thank you once again to those who joined our morning meditation session which began at 7 45 and continues for one hour until this time. You are very welcome to join if you are able. We have thanks to the generosity and energy of our translators. We have also Chinese and Spanish translation available.

And yes, if you could support those of us who are choosing to come for the beginning of the session, it is much appreciated if you would either come at that time and join or wait outside until we have concluded which is around about this time. So thank you very much everyone and see you again.