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The Mahasatipatthana Sutra This is the most important, most fundamental Buddhist text. The Mahasatipatthana Sutra teaches the 4 foundations of mindfulness. "Mindful, he breathes in, and mindful, he breathes out." As a child, like many others, I had a good feeling for awareness of the whole body and did some sort of breathing relaxation every night before sleep - then I read the Mahasatipatthana Sutra, and I started counting the breaths like the commentary suggested ... then I started splitting the body into hands arms legs feet ... 10 areas to fit with the counting ... this may have been an interesting exercise in concentration, will-power and discipline, but it had little to do with Buddhas message ... I am not sure that I am competent to interpret the Buddhas teaching for others ... but I am sure there is a need to question his teaching or how it is recorded, and here I am competent. Apparently nothing Buddha said was written down until around 200 years after he died ... by this time his ideas had been rigourously fixed in long-winded repititious formulas. These are boring. - It is difficult to alleviate the suffering in the world by using these tedious and often misleading texts. |