Part 2 - The Meaning of Sati from 'What Does Mindfulness Really Mean' by Bhikkhu Bodhi
.

A problem in hermeneutics, with intimate bearings on the actual
practice of meditation, concerns the exact meaning of the word
sati both in general and in relation to Buddhist contemplative
activity. We take the rendering “mindfulness” so much for
granted that we rarely inquire into the precise nuances of the
English term, let alone the meaning of the original Pāli word it
represents and the adequacy of the former as a rendering for the
latter. The word “mindfulness” is itself so vague and elastic that
it serves almost as a cipher into which we can read virtually
anything we want. Hence we seldom recognize that the word
was chosen as a rendering for sati at a particular point in time,
after other terms had been tried and found inadequate.

narrated by Jonathan Nelson

2023

23 minutes 50 seconds

Download Audio (11.6MB)

Audio copyright, 2023 Pariyatti

'Investigating the Dhamma' as a book and eBook can be found at https://store.pariyatti.org/investigating-the-dhamma.

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