The Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10), the Discourse on the Establishing of Mindfulness, is the text I keep coming back to. Everything in Prosoche traces back to its four foundations.
The Four Foundations
- Kayanupassana - Mindfulness of the Body
- Vedananupassana - Mindfulness of Feeling Tones
- Cittanupassana - Mindfulness of Mind States
- Dhammanupassana - Mindfulness of Mental Phenomena
Why This Matters
Modern mindfulness often focuses solely on the first foundation (body awareness, especially breath). The Satipatthana framework reveals a more comprehensive approach:
- Feeling tones (vedana) - the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral quality of each experience - are particularly relevant to understanding craving and aversion
- Mind states reveal the texture of awareness itself
- Mental phenomena include the hindrances and factors of awakening
Where It Meets Modern Research
The four foundations were not written as a neuroscience programme, but three of them have a modern echo I keep running into:
- Body (kayanupassana) and interoception - Lisa Feldman Barrett’s constructed emotion theory, and the 2018 review by Khalsa and colleagues on interoception and mental health. See Interoception.
- Feeling tone (vedana) and reward prediction error - Dr. Judson Brewer’s work on craving. See Vedananupassana.
- Mind states (cittanupassana) and the default mode network - Brewer’s 2011 PNAS study of meditators, in whom self-referential mind-wandering quietens with practice.
Bhikkhu Analayo’s work is the textual anchor for all of this. The neuroscience is other people’s, and I try to keep the two clearly labelled.
Further Reading
- Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization by Bhikkhu Analayo
- Perspectives on Satipatthana by Bhikkhu Analayo
- The original Satipatthana Sutta (MN 10 and DN 22)