Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization

The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is the teaching on mindfulness and the breath and is the basis of much insight meditation practice today. This book is a thorough and insightful guide to this deceptively simple yet profound teaching.

‘With painstaking thoroughness, Ven. Anālayo marshals the suttas of the Pali canon, works of modem scholarship, and the teachings of present-day meditation masters to make the rich implications of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, so concise in the original, clear to contemporary students of the Dharma.

Unlike other popular books on the subject, he is not out to establish the exclusive validity of one particular system of meditation as against others. Rather, his aim is to explore the sutta as a wide-ranging and multi-faceted source of guidance which allows for alternative interpretations and approaches to practice. His analysis combines the detached objectivity of the academic scholar with the engaged concern of the practitioner for whom meditation is a way of life rather than just a subject of study.

The book should prove to be of value both to scholars of Early Buddhism and to serious meditators alike. Ideally, it will encourage in both types of readers the same wholesome synthesis of scholarship and practice that underlies the author’s own treatment of his subject.’

Bhikkhu Bodhi

THB 595

By Bhikkhu Anālayo, a faculty member at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and a professor at the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of Hamburg. Published by Windhorse Publications (2004). 336 pages.