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PHENOMENOLOGICAL
REFLECTIONS ON
MINDFULNESS IN THE
BUDDHIST TRADITION
Erol Čopelj
Phenomenological Reflections on
Mindfulness in the Buddhist
Tradition

This book offers an original phenomenological description of mindfulness

and related phenomena, such as concentration (samādhi) and the practice
of insight (vipassanā). It demonstrates that phenomenological method has
the power to reanimate ancient Buddhist texts, giving new life to the
phenomena at which those texts point.
Beginning with descriptions of how mindfulness is encountered in
everyday, pre-philosophical life, the book moves on to an analysis of
how the Pali Nikāyas of Theravada Buddhism define mindfulness and the
practice of cultivating it. It then offers a critique of the contemporary
attempts to explain mindfulness as a kind of attention. The author
argues that mindfulness is not attention, nor can it be understood as a
mere modification of the attentive process. Rather, becoming mindful
involves a radical shift in perspective. According to the author’s account,
being mindful is the feeling of being tuned-in to the open horizon,
which is contrasted with Edmund Husserl’s transcendental horizon. The
book also elucidates the difference between the practice of cultivating
mindfulness with the practice of the phenomenological epoché, which
reveals new possibilities for the practice of phenomenology itself.
Phenomenological Reflections on Mindfulness in the Buddhist Tradition
will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in phenomenology,
Buddhist philosophy, and comparative philosophy.

Erol Čopelj received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Monash University,

Australia and Warwick University, UK. His published work has appeared
in Husserl Studies, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, and
The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological
Philosophy (2020).
Phenomenological
Reflections on
Mindfulness in the
Buddhist Tradition

Erol Čopelj
First published 2022
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2022 Erol Čopelj
The right of Erol Čopelj to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this title has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-032-10718-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-11249-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-21905-7 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219057

Typeset in Sabon
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
With a deep sense of gratitude, I dedicate this book to my
parents: Snježana and Jasmin Čopelj.
Contents

Acknowledgements viii
Preface ix

Introduction 1

PART I 13

1 Mindfulness in Literature and Everyday Life 15

2 The Definition of Mindfulness in the Pāli Nikāyas 27

3 Mindfulness in the Contemporary Literature,

a Critical Analysis 61

PART II 113

4 Mindfulness in the Husserlian Context 115

5 Radicalising the Reduction 148

6 A Phenomenology of Mindfulness, and

Related Phenomena 196

7 Mindfulness in Action 227

Conclusion 273

Index 282
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Brian Carr from Asian Philosophy for the
permission to publish a modified version of my article, “Mindfulness
and Attention: Towards a Phenomenology of Mindfulness as the Feeling
of Being tunedin”, as a part of Chapter 3.
Preface

This study represents the fruit of a creative and contemplative act,

executed as a response to a need to resolve a certain disharmony brought
about by the friction of two forces sedimented deep in my personality.
One is the tendency towards phenomenological practice, which I
understand—at the best of times—as the practice of looking deeply
into what at first appear as the most ordinary things until something like
a hidden dimension announces itself therein, “a secret glimmering” to
borrow the words of the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō.1 The other force
manifests as a disciplined commitment to the contemplative life, which in
my case strongly gravitates towards “the Path of the Elders”, otherwise
known as Theravāda Buddhism. Understanding this disharmony in more
depth will help illuminate the nature of this study and demarcate its
potential audience: those in the optimal state to benefit from an
engagement with it. The contrast between two images will help bring
the disharmony into view.
The first image is from Edmund Husserl who, at one place, describes the
reality that manifests before the phenomenological gaze as “…the infinite
open country of the true philosophy,” as the “promised land.”2 This
image strongly reflects the feelings that I myself felt while learning the
phenomenological art and putting it into practice. The feeling was one of
finding a way of opening up the most ordinary things so as to disclose the
infinite complexity that hides in their heart, of hearing that mysterious
grinding of the finely tuned mechanisms that are incessantly churning
away behind the mundane world. The enthusiasm had me in its grip
for a number of years, during which I pursued my phenomenological
adventures with zeal and purpose. At some point, however, it struck me
that in principle, there is no end to phenomenological explorations. Each
discovery opens the way to another, and that one to another, and so on.
Every discovery can be put into question, nothing is absolutely certain and
there is, in the end, only endless repetition, questioning and discussion. I
expected something, something profound to appear from the horizon. But
the more energetically I moved towards that illusive point, the more
energetically it seemed to move away from me. This gave birth to some
x Preface
heavy existential questions. I asked myself: what is the ultimate point of all
this? Where does it all lead? What am I doing with my life? While I could
not supress the desire to venture on phenomenological adventures, neither
was I able deny my heart’s deep longing for rest and stillness, for some
kind of certainty, finality and sense of real purpose. Phenomenology alone
proved itself incapable of fulfilling that need.
The other image is embodied in an often-repeated expression found in
the texts of Pāli Buddhism: “the spiritual life has been lived and what
needed to be done has been done!” In these texts, this utterance expresses
the moment when the disciple reaches the end of the path, realises the
nibbana, the unconditioned state, and becomes an arahant, an awakened
one. It has been my experience, however, that one gets a feeling of “having
done what needed to be done” even during the relatively early parts of the
contemplative path, provided that one sets out on the journey in a serious,
courageous and uncompromising way. And that is what I did during those
years when I failed to find meaning in my ordinary interests, and in
phenomenology in particular. An illustration will help show what I have in
mind here.
For most of my life I was subject to a particularly powerful negative
mood, about which I shall speak again in the study itself. This mood was
with me for so long that it came to form a part of my personal identity.
Up to the point about which I am just about to speak, I could not
have imagined being totally freed from it, except perhaps temporarily.
Some years ago, however, during an intense meditation retreat, this
mood completely dissolved, never to return again—and I knew this for
certain in that moment. In relation to that mood at least, I can confidently
say: what needed to be done had been done! Nowhere else, including
in my phenomenological descriptions and analyses, had I experienced
such a radical self-transformation and such certainty about particular
experiential possibilities offered by human existence. I had found the
meaning I was looking for and, from then, I gave my life over to the
contemplative endeavour. I could not stop my phenomenological pursuits
altogether, but they now seemed like a bad habit, something I would shake
off in time.
As would become clear in in due course, however, when done honestly
and in a proper context, phenomenological practice was not a bad habit
but an essential moment of the contemplative endeavour itself. Allow
me to explain. There are two distinct phases in the development of
contemplation (in the Buddhist sense of the word). The first necessitates
the suspension of the ordinary analytic and discursive faculty, on which
the classical phenomenology that I was practicing draws on and depends.
Learning to suspend the discursive faculty is a necessary precondition for
realising even the lowest degrees of stillness and mental unification,
qualities associated with mindfulness. From here, the next step involves
the development of wisdom and understanding, and that calls for the
 Preface xi
analysis and discernment of phenomena. It is at this point that the true
worth and power of my phenomenological training exhibited itself. When
my meditation practice was going well and when I was able to still the
mind, phenomenological seeing became natural, almost effortless and full
of purpose. It was only with the return to the ordinary, non-contemplative
and mundane way of relating to the world that phenomenology seemed
pointless, without ultimate meaning and value.
Not everything that takes place in the depth of our being is known
explicitly at the time that it takes place. So, during this period of my
life, the harmonious relationship between contemplative practice and
phenomenology existed in the implicit background of ordinary awareness.
I would only feel the harmony in those rare moments when I was able to
still and unify the mind and direct it towards the discernment of
phenomena. At the explicit level of understanding, I continued to feel
the disharmony. A turning point came when, at some indeterminate point,
the idea formed that I should direct the phenomenological gaze at the
contemplative practice itself. This idea immediately struck a chord with
the harmony that was already playing out in the implicit background and,
in that moment, I knew that this was a step I had to take in order to
harmonise the two sides of my personality. Thus, the following kinds of
questions were born. Phenomenologically speaking, what is mindfulness
or contemplation? What is the nature of the relationship that binds
mindfulness and phenomenological analysis together? Being someone
deeply immersed in the works of classical phenomenology, I was
naturally to ask: What are the implications of these questions for our
understanding of the main phenomenological themes? In particular, what
is the difference between the practice of contemplation and that of the
epoché? I wrote this study in order to address these questions and thereby
to harmonise the disharmony. As I sit here and write these words, I can
confidently say that, in this respect at least, what needed to be done has
been done.
For the most part, this study is written in the classical phenomenological
style. In this kind of writing, the point is not simply to state the conclusions
of one’s investigations, leaving it to the reader to stamp them with “true”
or “false”. Nor is it primarily a matter of giving long arguments that
have their basis in more or less questionable propositions. To write
phenomenologically is to include, not just the conclusion of the analysis,
but the steps taken to get there, including some of those that led to dead
ends, the possibilities tried, tested and rejected. These steps function
something like those of a mathematical proof in the sense that following
them is an essential component of seeing the truth of the conclusions to
which they lead.
What may strike the reader as unorthodox in the writing is the inclusion
of passages that depict certain events from my personal life. Writing in this
way is a means for me to bridge the gap between understanding a
xii Preface
description emptily (on the merely intellectual and discursive level), on
the one hand, and actually concretely seeing and experiencing the
phenomenon to which it points, on the other. I have allowed these
passages to stand because I believe that they can help the reader bridge this
same gap either directly or by motivating them to undertake analogous
reflections on their own lives. Another reason for including these personal
reflections has to do with the nature of the contemplative endeavour
itself. In the case of contemplative phenomena in particular, such as
mindfulness, it is especially important to understand and appreciate the
difference between mere intellectual understanding and actual realisation
of that which has been understood. Now, in attempting to make the
transition from intellectual understanding to actual realisation one is
bound to encounter certain obstacles and difficulties. The nature of these
obstacles and the tools to which one must resort to overcome them will
differ depending on the nature of one’s character. Knowing oneself on the
psychological and existential level can therefore play a vital role in
overcoming these difficulties and understanding what practices are
suitable for oneself. Again, I hope that the reader can use my reflection
as a template to undertake analogous reflections on their own situation.
And if someone with a character similar to mine comes across this study
they should be able to make use of these examples in a more direct way. In
any case, given the way that I write and reflect, which always involves
making the abstract concrete and the concrete abstract, only someone else
could have written in a different way.
I expect that this study will be of most obvious benefit to someone in
the grip of a disharmony similar to the one I described above, which
can be broadly construed as a disharmony between the intellectual and
the contemplative life. As the process of reflecting and writing helped
me harmonise the two forces, I believe that this study—as the fruit
of that process—can assist others in a similar way. It could also be of
benefit to phenomenologists who have an interest in contemplative
practices and traditions but who have little or no direct experience with
either. What such individuals will find here, expressed in a familiar
language and style, is a description of phenomenological dimensions to
which these practices correspond, which they aim to evoke and which
the traditions, and in particular Theravāda Buddhism, speak about.
On a related point, I believe that Theravāda Buddhism, when
understood in its true significance, should strike a special chord with
phenomenologists, who incline away from metaphysical speculation
about the absolute principles and towards concrete experience and
exploration of the immediate, multi-dimensional reality. It is the
Mahayana strain of Buddhism that can be described as putting an
emphasis on the absolute, metaphysical standpoint. Theravāda, by
contrast, is commonly taken to be a somewhat sterile doctrine, a
peculiar combination of ethical and psychological teachings that only
 Preface xiii
speaks of suffering (commonly understood as a psychological fact) and
its cessation. To understand it in that way, however, is to fail to
appreciate the significance and profound meaning that constitutes the
Doctrine of the Elders. In my view, this doctrine is not in conflict with
the Mahayana or any other tradition that emphasises the absolute
truth. The Theravāda doctrine can be understood as an art—something
like what Husserl of the Prolegomena calls a “normative discipline”3.
As such, it lays down a programme and a practice for cultivating and
developing certain factors (the “enlightenment factors”), which are
more or less immediately accessible and which can be said to constitute
the boundary between ordinary phenomenology and that which is
beyond ordinary human experience. Without such an art, there is
a real danger that the absolute principles spoken of in the purely
metaphysical traditions will remain mere conceptual constructs. The
art aims at concrete realisation and experience. This approach, which
involves uncovering and developing certain phenomena that are
present just below our ordinary experience and which this study will
present in a phenomenologically digestible way, will be of special
appeal to phenomenologists: the individuals who are moved by wonder
to explore the multi-dimensionality of the more or less immediately
accessible, phenomenological dimensions.
I also speak to serious contemplators who may have no familiarity
with phenomenology but who are interested to see what its methods
have to offer in regard to describing the phenomena that they
know on the direct, experiential level. If these individuals can put in
the effort to work through the phenomenological language and style of
presentations, I believe that they too will find something of real value
here. Lastly, I should mention those individuals for whom the value of
a philosophical or a phenomenological study is to be found exclusively
in its contribution to the existing, scholarly literature, the novelty of its
arguments, the number and breath of the texts that it takes into
account and so on. While this study probably has something to offer
even here, I would like to emphasise that its primary aim is to
demarcate and describe certain phenomenological and experiential
dimensions, and to help the reader make the transition from words and
ideas that constitute the texts to the concrete phenomena to which they
point. This will not be to everyone’s taste but at least I have given
a sufficient warning of what the reader can expect to find in the
following pages.
I am grateful to Brett Allen, Zakaria Garmsiri, Kevin Berryman and
Yuko Ishihara, all of whom have played an important role in the
formation of this book. I would also like to thank Peter Poellner and
especially Monima Chadha, the supervisors of my Ph.D. thesis: the
seed from which this book sprung. I am also very thankful to Bhikkhu
Bodhi for so kindly taking the time to read over part one of the
xiv Preface
manuscript and for his extremely insightful comments. Most of all, I
am grateful to my parents for providing me with the space wherein
I was able to discover my vocation, and the freedom and confidence
to give myself to it wholeheartedly and single-mindedly. I take full
responsibility for what is (and what is not) written in this book, and
also for the tone with which it is delivered.

Notes
1 Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and Other Travel
Sketches (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966). Introduction. The full quotation
reads: “Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if
you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your
subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the
object and you do not learn. Your poetry issues of its own accord when you
and the object have become one – when you have plunged deep enough into
the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there. However well
phrased your poetry may be, if your feeling is not natural – if the object and
yourself are separate – then your poetry is not true poetry but merely your
subjective counterfeit.”
2 Edmund. Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans.
W.R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Routledge, 2012), xlix.
3 Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations Volume 1, trans. J.N. Findlay (New
York: Routledge, 2001). Prolegomena To Pure Logic, Chapter Two.

Bibliography
Bashō, Matsuo. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and Other Travel
Sketches. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.
Husserl, Edmund. Logical Investigations Volume 1. Translated by J.N. Findlay.
New York: Routledge, 2001. 1901.
Husserl, Edmund. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology.
Translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Introduction

Human existence offers a wide range of experiential possibilities. Some

of these, such as the possibility of experiencing reality through the five
sense faculties, will unfold naturally and passively in the course of
“normal” human existence. Others need either to be cultivated in-
tentionally or will only come into being in special circumstances, such as
the possibility of lucid dreaming or practicing phenomenology. Whether
the possibility is intentionally cultivated or unfolds spontaneously, in
either case the individual actually undergoes the experience in question
or establishes a particular state of being. This is what it means to know
an experiential possibility from the inside, directly. Direct knowledge
and acquaintance can, and ordinarily does, have certain more or less
remote consequences in the intersubjectively accessible dimension of
reality, which is knowable through the external senses and the discursive
faculty. To know an experiential possibility only through its external
manifestations in this domain is to know it indirectly.
Mindfulness is one of the experiential possibilities offered by human
existence. As we shall see, in certain circumstances this possibility can
unfold spontaneously. But it can also be intentionally cultivated through
practices explicitly designed for that end. In either case, one becomes
directly acquainted with the phenomenon. Having arisen, this phenom-
enon has an essence: an intrinsic intelligibility and an invariant structure
that distinguishes it from other phenomena. This essence can be articu-
lated and explicitly understood. This can be accomplished through the
phenomenological method. Proceeding on the basis of these convictions,
this study aims to disclose and articulate the essence of mindfulness (and
related phenomena) and in that way to answer the question: what is
mindfulness?
Regarding the indirect manifestation or the secondary effects of
mindfulness, there are, first of all, the ancient and contemporary written
materials that verbally describe what being mindful is like, how this state
can be developed, and what possibilities it opens up. Another effect of
establishing mindfulness, one to which our contemporaries tend to as-
sign an especially high value, is the corresponding modification in the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003219057-1
2 Introduction
structure and function of the brain. For those who need it, there also
seems to be some empirical evidence that establishing mindfulness can
reduce physical and emotional suffering. It has even been suggested that
the forces at work behind our consumer-driven, capitalistic society have
found in mindfulness a powerful tool for pushing their own agenda;
according to this view, the ability to reduce stress by regulating one’s
internal states—a function attributed to mindfulness—prevents people
from reacting to outer forces (such as the large corporations), which are
claimed to be the “real” cause of that stress. It has been suggested that
this has led to the endeavour to commodify mindfulness, to wrap it up
and sell it as a product.1 These and other similar phenomena, which are,
to repeat, only the effects or consequences of establishing mindfulness,
can be known and investigated by individuals who may have no direct
acquaintance with mindfulness itself, or who may refuse to draw on any
such direct experience out of principle of “scientific neutrality”—which
is no less absurd, in my eyes, than the idea that the blind are in a better
position, because they are not “swayed” by their experiences, to know
colours than those that can see and experience colours directly.
For the most part, that is precisely what is going on in the current
frenzy of research activity sweeping through the academic world and
which has, for one reason or another, made mindfulness the focus of its
research efforts. The academics are busy asking: how is mindfulness
depicted in the ancient and modern texts? How does mindfulness alter
the structure and function of the brain? What is the impact of mind-
fulness on society and the wider culture? The assumption at work behind
these and similar research efforts is that gathering enough of such facts,
and devising theories to describe and organise them, will eventually lead
to an understanding of mindfulness, what it really is, in itself. This study
wholeheartedly rejects that assumption. The only way to truly know the
phenomenon is to go to it directly, to be acquainted with it as an ex-
periential possibility. Where this study does engage with the secondary
effects of establishing mindfulness, it does so not because it believes
that that by itself will lead to a true and direct understanding of the
phenomenon but because of two other reasons.
First, since there is a tendency to identify these secondary effects with
mindfulness itself, this study refers to them in order to show that this
identification is mistaken. Second, some of these consequences, and in
particular the written materials wherein the experience of mindfulness
is depicted, will serve this study as guiding clues, as aids for the task of
going back to the phenomenon itself and depicting its essence. And
with such direct knowledge in hand, it is possible to understand the
secondary facts in a true way by tracing them back to their source, the
root from which they spring as so many branches. In so far as this
study is concerned, the most important of these guiding clues is a body
of ancient Indian literature known as the Pāli Nikāyas, a collection of
 Introduction 3
discourses attributed to the historical Buddha, Gautama. In these texts,
the experiential possibility to which I have so far been referring to
with the English term “mindfulness” constitutes a key step on the path
towards spiritual awakening. The role of the Nikāyas in this study will
be discussed in more detail below.
I said above that the articulation and explicit understanding of the
essence of mindfulness calls for the exercise of the phenomenological
method, which is another one of the experiential possibilities offered by
the human state of existence. In this case, too, it is vital to distinguish the
direct and indirect knowledge of this experiential possibility. The direct
knowledge of phenomenology has its secondary effects, the most obvious
being the body of written material known as the “classical phenomen-
ological literature.” And much of that which passes for phenomenology
these days is exclusively concerned with this literature, which is meti-
culously studied, both conceptually and historically, and whose ideas
are applied in different and interdisciplinary ways. Regardless of how
far this scholarly activity is developed, if one fails to secure a direct
experience with the phenomenological way, one’s understanding will
remain external and indirect. To give an analogy, no matter how much
one studies the texts of poetry and the life of the poets, unless one ac-
tually writes some and establishes oneself, however inadequately, in the
poetic way of relating to the world, one is destined, at best, to become
someone who knows about poetry but never a poet, the one who knows
the matter itself. The same is true of phenomenology. I will therefore
forego a detailed scholarly exposition of the phenomenological method
at this point and proceed in full confidence that the results will speak for
themselves. Having exercised the phenomenological function to some
degree, an opportunity will present itself in due course to engage the
phenomenologists and their ideas directly, by the means of an internal
critique—the nature of which will be explained in more detail below.
At this point it will suffice to say that to practice phenomenology is to
practice distancing ourselves from the human colourings of the phe-
nomenon, from the meanings that the phenomenon acquires in virtue of
being apprehended in the human perspective, of becoming open to it,
allowing the phenomenon to manifest as it is in itself, and to unfold its
own possibilities, which constitute its essence. Next it is a matter of al-
lowing this essence—the invariant form that survives all contingent
variation—to emerge into explicit awareness and understanding and
then, perhaps, to clothe this essence in the garment of words and for the
purpose of sharing the knowledge acquired with others.
I will pause here in order to address an objection that the stated aims
are destined to draw from the contemporary world. According to the
prevalent point of view, there is no such thing as a knowledge of es-
sences, of things as they are in themselves that would be independent of
all relative perspectives, whether individual or collective. The endeavour
4 Introduction
to demarcate and describe the essence of a phenomenon, from this point
of view, is bound to seem like a doomed enterprise. It is not easy to
ignore the fact that this view permeates the contemporary ways of
thinking about mindfulness, and the Buddhist doctrine more generally.
To illustrate this, consider the following quotations from some of the
better-known writers in the field.
Georges Dreyfus is of the opinion that: “Buddhism is a plural tradition
that has evolved over centuries to include a large variety of views about
mindfulness. Hence, there is no one single view that can ever hope
to qualify as ‘the Buddhist view of mindfulness.’”2 For Evan Thompson
“Buddhism has no single, agreed-upon traditional understanding of
mindfulness. Rather, Buddhism offers multiple and sometimes in-
compatible conceptions of mindfulness”3 and he also says that “… the
idea that there’s such a thing as a distinct ‘mindfulness’ component,
which is isolable from the social context of meditation practice … is
likely a mistake, because many of the experienced benefits of mindful
practice, whether religious or secular, are inseparable from the social and
communal settings of the practice.”4 In the same spirit, John Dunn
writes that “… any attempt to speak in the singular of ‘Buddhism’ ne-
cessarily obscures actual diversity in philosophy and practice by masking
it with our own, particular notion of what ‘Buddhism’ in the singular
might be,” and goes on to say that the “same problem of diversity ap-
plies…” in the case of “mindfulness” itself.5 The general opinion seems
to be that the existence of diverse manifestations of mindfulness implies
that the phenomenon lacks a true essence that could be disclosed through
philosophical and phenomenological reflection and analysis.
Rejecting this opinion, this study proceeds on the conviction that
mindfulness has an identity, an essence that distinguishes it from other
phenomena. This is not to deny that mindfulness can appear in different
ways. It can. But it is mindfulness itself that offers the possibility of
appearing differently. It is the essence of mindfulness that unifies the
diverse appearances into appearances of the one, identical phenomenon.
This unity is not arbitrarily imposed on the diverse appearances through
some finite faculty of the human subject. It does not arise from the desire
to “mask” the diversity, to impose a concept on the experiential chaos,
so as to organise it and be able to deal with it. The unity exists prior to
and as a condition of possibility for the diversity, with the philosophical
and phenomenological task being to disclose this unity and allow it to
emerge into explicit understanding and awareness. The best way to
“argue” for this conviction is to allow the results to speak for themselves.
And while that is what we shall do, it will perhaps not be out of place at
this point to make a few more remarks on this important theme.
Generally speaking, a word is not the phenomenon to which it refers.
In particular, the word “mindfulness” is not mindfulness, the phenom-
enon. Looking at the matter from the perspective of Buddhism, when the
 Introduction 5
Buddha spoke of mindfulness in his discourses, he was trying to draw the
attention of his audience towards a particular experiential possibility.
What experiential possibility did the Buddha have in mind? How does it
differ from and relate to other, kindred experiential possibilities? These
are the crucial questions. By following the “clues” of the Nikāyas, it is
possible to circumscribe this experiential possibility, to cultivate it, and
to disclose and describe its essential structure. In one sense, then, to
describe this phenomenon is to give an account of the Buddhist view of
mindfulness. This is not incompatible, however, with the idea that the
meaning of “mindfulness” evolved and changed over the centuries as
the Buddhist tradition altered and divided itself, as things in samsara are
condemned to do.
It is possible that, in later traditions, while the word “sati” or
“mindfulness” continued to pick out the same phenomenon as in the Pāli
texts, this phenomenon now came into view from a different perspective
and assumed a different form. There is nothing too perplexing here. As
with everything else, mindfulness offers the possibility of adjusting itself
to the contingencies of time and place. Just as the ocean offers the
possibility of assuming a different form depending on whether it appears
to a human being or a fish, so mindfulness can appear differently de-
pending on the contingencies of the being to whom and in whom it
manifests. That does not imply that mindfulness lacks an essence. It
means that, in addition to its essential structures and possibilities, it also
offers certain contingent possibilities that will only unfold in certain,
specific circumstances. It is true, moreover, that two appearances of
mindfulness may on the surface look very different, and that it will not
always be a straightforward task to distinguish their underlying unity.
Despite being mammals, whales look like and for a long time were
thought to be fish. It took careful observations and considerations to
find the truth. Something similar, I propose, is true in the case at hand.
This is, then, one sense in which mindfulness may have “evolved” and
“changed” throughout the course of history, although it is more accurate
to speak of it as “re-manifesting” itself.
It is also possible that, in certain cases, the referent of the word
completely altered; that “mindfulness” came to refer to something
other than what it referred to originally. In that case, it is necessary to
gather the courage and say that whoever uses the term to refer to
something else is not using it in the way that it was originally used in
the tradition(s). And that what is now being spoken of with the same
term is, in truth, not mindfulness. Here there is always the danger of
entering the domain of purely verbal disputes. While I would prefer to
not dwell there too long, it is nevertheless also worth noting the pos-
sibility that, in certain circumstances, the referent of the word
“mindfulness” was completely lost and that, instead of using it in order
to reach the thing itself, people started to value the word for its own
6 Introduction
sake. Here idle chatter has won the day, a day that, if the following
remarks of Bhikkhu Bodhi about the current usage of the word are
anything to go by, may very well be our own: “… the word ‘mind-
fulness’ is itself so vague and elastic that it serves almost as a cipher
into which we can read virtually anything we want.”6
It is now time for an overview of the study and, first, how it ought to
be engaged. Imagine that you are looking over the shoulder of an artist,
who is sitting in front of the canvas, brush in hand, attempting to draw a
portrait of something that is, at first, hardly discernible in the far dis-
tance. The painting develops in stages: the blank page, a black and white
sketch, the addition of detail and colour and hopefully, at the end, a clear
vision of the object. This study is meant to unfold in front of the reader
in an analogous manner. Now, before the brush even touches the can-
vass, the artist must have some understanding, no matter how vague and
indefinite it may be, of that which he wishes to depict. Otherwise, how
would he even begin to focus on that as opposed to anything else? Just
so, even at this point of our phenomenological study, there is a vague
and indiscriminate understanding of what mindfulness is and how it
differs from other phenomena. Everything that will take place henceforth
(the focusing upon the phenomenon, the discriminating of it from other
things, the depiction of its essential structures, etc.) can be understood as
an attempt to recollect this understanding and to allow it to develop into
an explicit vision.
As to its structure, from a bird’s eye perspective, the study is divided
into roughly two phases, which constitute its two parts. The objective of
part one is to set down the black and white sketch of the phenomenon,
and to distinguish it in a rough way from other things with which it may
be confused. Building upon this, part two adds detail and colour to the
sketch through a rigorous and sustained phenomenological investigation.
What follows now is an overview of the individual chapters that con-
stitute the two parts.
In terms of getting the most out of this study, it would be extremely
helpful if the reader had some experience with the practice of cultivating
mindfulness, and some success therein. The study could then play the
role of helping such a reader explicitly and phenomenologically under-
stand that which is already familiar on the direct, experiential level. If
that is not the case, however, then it becomes especially important to
understand that mindfulness is an intrinsic possibility of human ex-
istence and that, as such, it can manifest spontaneously in specific cir-
cumstances. And, in all likelihood, you yourself probably had an
experience like this, although you may not have known that explicitly at
the time. The first task is to remember these spontaneous occurrences of
mindfulness, and in that way to help the phenomenon enter into
awareness. Chapter 1 of Part I is there to help with this act of re-
membering. It does so primarily by resorting to certain passages from
 Introduction 7
literature that, or so I claim, depict events, situations, and places where a
person spontaneously enters into the mindful way of relating to reality.
This chapter also takes the first step towards discerning the form of this
experience, thereby putting down the initial marks on the phenomen-
ological sketch.
Chapter 2 sharpens these lines and adds others through an engage-
ment with the teachings of the Pāli Nikāyas on the theme of mind-
fulness and the practice of cultivating it. The Pāli word commonly
translated into English as “mindfulness” is “sati,” which derives from
the Sanskrit “smrti” and carries the sense of remembering, recollecting,
and keeping-in-mind. This chapter is focused on the succinct, short
passage wherein mindfulness is defined in the Nikāya and which
forms the basis of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, which is, in the words of
Bhikkhu Bodhi (2011), “the most influential text in the Pāli Canon on
the systematic practice of mindfulness….”7 Defining “sati” here means
situating it within a wider phenomenal context wherein it necessarily
co-exists with certain other factors. Just as colour demands the co-
existence of visual extension and shape, with which it coheres together
in the concrete whole that is the visual object, so sati demands sup-
plementation by certain other factors, with which it exists within the
concrete whole called “anupassanā,” here translated as “the con-
templative standpoint.” In particular, according to these teachings, sati
is co-joined with an implicit understanding (sampajañña) of things as
they are, which offers the possibility of being developed into explicit
understanding and wisdom (pañña). One of the key questions that this
study attempts to deal with concerns the nature of this connection
between mindfulness (sati) and understanding (sampajañña). The dis-
cussion of these matters in the Nikāyas is succinct and to-the-point,
and it is no straightforward task to bring these teachings to life and
concretely demarcate the phenomena to which they refer. For this
reason, interpretation guided by direct experience is necessary, a theme
that Bodhi touches upon in the following passage:

For four centuries, the Buddhist scriptures were preserved and

transmitted orally, from one generation of reciters to the next. This
method of transmission required that the compilers of the
Buddha’s discourses compress the main points into simple repeti-
tive formulas that were conducive to easy memorization. Thus
when we consult the texts to find out what they mean by sati, what
we mostly encounter, instead of lucid explanations, are operational
demonstrations that indicate, in practical terms, how sati functions
in Buddhist psychology and meditation practice. It is from these
that we must tease out the word’s implications, testing them
against each other and evaluating them by personal reflection
and experience.8
8 Introduction
The main objective of Chapter 2 is to develop an interpretation of sati,
its relation to its supplements (and sampajañña in particular) and to try
to determine, in a preliminary way, how all these factors cohere together
within the contemplative standpoint. At the end of this chapter, the
practice of cultivating mindfulness appears on the phenomenological
canvass as the practice of tuning-out of our desires and tuning-in to the
intrinsic intelligibility of the things itself. Mindfulness as the potential
fruit of that practice is here described as the feeling of being tuned-in to
this intrinsic intelligibility: as the state of lucidly awareness and im-
mediate understanding (sati-sampajañña).
Chapter 3 of Part I is a critical analysis of the contemporary attempts
to explain and describe this lucid awareness, immediate understanding,
and the nature of their relation. There is something like a consensus in
the contemporary literature that mindfulness or lucid awareness is a kind
of attention. But the literature is split on the question of the kind of
attention that it is. For the “Quietists” mindfulness is bare attention: the
kind of attention that arises with the removal of higher order cognitive
activity, such as judging, remembering, evaluating, and so on. For the
“Cognitivists,” mindfulness is a kind of attention that brings into play a
special kind of cognitive activity, a kind of recollective function that
allows an object to be kept in working memory and therefore in the grip
of attention for longer than is ordinarily the case. While I agree that the
question of the relationship between mindfulness and attention is an
important one, I question whether it is the most important question that
a phenomenology of mindfulness needs to concern itself with. Does at-
tention constitute the very definition of mindfulness or, rather, does
attention only take the form of mindful attention where mindfulness
has already been established? I raise a similar question regarding the
cognitive processes that, according to some contemporary thinkers, ac-
company mindfulness and in terms of which they try to explain the
immediate understanding (sampajañña) co-joined with mindfulness. Do
these cognitive processes belong to the very definition of mindfulness
or, rather, does cognition only take the form of “mindful cognition” or
“mindful reflection”when it occurs within a mind where mindfulness
and immediate understanding have already been established?
The first part of Chapter 3 is mostly negative, trying to demonstrate
that mindfulness is not attention. At the culmination of that discussion,
however, the question remains: what is mindfulness in positive terms? In
response, in the last part of this chapter I propose that mindfulness ex-
emplifies something that Matthew Ratcliffe calls “the feeling of being”
or “existential feeling.”9 Feelings of being are differentiated from other
intentional feelings in that they are not directed at particular objects or
situations within the world but rather determine the all-encompassing
sense of what it means to be in the “world” in the first place. And ex-
istential feelings are differentiated between themselves by the kind of
 Introduction 9
possibility that they open up or disclose. On this basis, here mindfulness
is described as the feeling of being tuned-in. This puts certain questions
before us: what kind of a possibility does mindfulness, as the feeling of
being tuned-in, open up or disclose? And in what sense can mindfulness
be described as an all-encompassing shift in perspective? How does being
tuned-in open the possibility of understanding things as they are? These
questions set the stage for Part II of this study, which attempts to develop
the phenomenological sketch of Part I, through a more rigorous and
sustained phenomenological investigation of the phenomenon.
According to the account sketched out in the first part of the study, to
cultivate mindfulness is to cultivate a certain kind of perspectival shift or
attitudinal change. How does this relate to the shift in perspective that
plays a vital role in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, namely the shift
from the natural to the transcendental attitude and which can be brought
about through the phenomenological epoché and the reduction? That is
the question with which the first chapter of part two is primarily con-
cerned. I attempt to show the practice of the epoché presupposes certain
phenomenological dimensions that Husserl does not explicitly recognise.
It is in terms of these structures, which implicitly present in the back-
ground of the phenomena that Husserl does describes, that I then further
develop the phenomenological description of mindfulness. This is what I
call an “internal critique.” In particular, I try to show that the epoché
presupposes a kind of possibility that I call “thingly possibilities”: the
possibilities of the things themselves. Just as in Husserl’s account in-
tentional possibilities fill in the transcendental horizon, thingly possibi-
lities fill in what I call the “open horizon.” Having uncovered these
structures on a deeper level than the one on which Husserl operates, I
then describe the cultivation of mindfulness as the practice of tuning-out
of the transcendental horizon and intentional possibilities, and tuning-in
to the open horizon and thingly possibilities. The potential fruit of that
practice is mindfulness: the feeling of being tuned-in to the open horizon
and thingly possibilities.
In Chapter 4, I tried to show that there are certain phenomenological
dimensions presupposed by the practice of the epoché and the reduc-
tion, which Husserl does not explicitly recognise and describe and in
terms of which it is possible to develop a phenomenological account of
mindfulness and the practice of cultivating it. From a certain per-
spective, it is possible to describe this critique as calling for a radica-
lisation of the epoché and the reduction. To this someone may respond
that post-Husserlian phenomenologists have already radicalised these
notions. “And,” this person may add, “had you paid more attention to
the ‘radicalisation of the reduction’ found in the post-Husserlian
phenomenological writings, you would have seen that it was super-
fluous to introduce such notions as ‘thingly possibilities’ and the ‘open
horizon’, for the phenomenological dimensions that you try to
10 Introduction
demarcate with these concepts have already been well articulated and
described by other phenomenologists.” I should have been more at-
tentive to the history of phenomenology, or so the objection goes.
Chapter 5 was written as a response to this line of thought. It tries to
show that post-Husserlian phenomenologists were no more aware of
these contemplative dimensions than Husserl himself. This study con-
siders three attempts to radicalise the reduction: Martin Heidegger’s
notion of Angst, Michel Henry’s invisible, auto-affective dimension,
and Jan Patočka’s a-subjective phenomenology. Far from disclosing
that dimension characterised by lucid awareness, immediate under-
standing, thingly possibilities, open horizon, and so on, the phenomena
emphasised by these phenomenologists presuppose these structures.
The negative project of showing that mindfulness or contemplation is
not any of these things has the positive effect of helping us further
accentuate what it is.
Up to this point, the study has mainly proceeded by the means of a
dialogue with existing ways of thinking, and phenomenology in par-
ticular. Chapter 6 leaves this dialectical method behind and attempts a
direct description of the phenomenon. Gathering together the positive
findings of the earlier chapters, here the attempt is made to study the
experience of someone (myself) as they go from engaging the world in
a more or less ordinary way, setting the intention to practice mind-
fulness of breathing (ānāpānasati), to practicing tuning-out-tuning-in
and establishing the feeling of being tuned-in to the breath. This in-
vestigation brings into view many fine-grained details that characterise
that dimension in terms of which mindfulness and contemplation are
to be accounted for phenomenologically. On the background of this
detailed phenomenological description of mindfulness as the feeling of
being tuned-in to the open horizon, this chapter also offers a com-
plimentary description of concentration (samādhi), which is described
as the narrowing down of the open horizon to one of its sub-horizons.
From the Buddhist point of view, the kind of mindfulness and con-
centration described in the first part of this chapter is “right” or
“wholesome.” The second part of this chapter offers a complimentary
description of two other kinds of mindfulness and concentration,
which are considered “wrong” or “unwholesome” from the Buddhist
point of view.
While the last chapter made important strides towards a phenomen-
ology of mindfulness and related phenomena, it also left us without an
answer to some important questions, such as: how does mindfulness as
the feeling of being tuned-in to the open horizon make possible the
practice of insight (vipassanā)? How does vipassanā lead to the wisdom
(pañña), the understanding of things as they are? An important yet albeit
undeveloped element of the phenomenological account developed so far
is the particular kind of effort that the practice of tuning-out-tuning-in
 Introduction 11
calls for and which is referred to in Pāli as “ātāpi.” Phenomenologically,
what is the nature of this effort, and how does it different from more
familiar kinds of effort? Chapter 7 attempts to deal with these questions
by scrupulously observing two individuals as they go about actually
engaging in the practice of tuning-out-tuning-in and, on that basis, cul-
tivating the immediate understanding (sampajañña) into explicit vision
of things as they are (pañña). The reader may be surprised to hear
that the first of these individuals is Edmund Husserl himself. By taking
apart one of his most impressive phenomenological investigations (the
unfolding of a straightforward perception into a categorial intuition
described in the Logical Investigations) I try to show that, without being
explicitly aware of the fact, Husserl was actually practicing tuning-out-
tuning-in. The other individual is the great meditation master from the
Thai Forest Tradition of Buddhism: Ācariya Mahā Boowa, who actual
practice is an embodiment of the teachings of Pāli Nikāyas that have
guided this study throughout.

Notes
1 Cf. Ronaled E. Purser, McMindfulness How Mindfulness Became the New
Capitalist Spirituality (London: Repeater Books, 2019).
2 Georges Dreyfus, “Is Mindfulness Present-Centred and Non-Judgmental?
A Discussion of the Cognitive Dimensions of Mindfulness,” Contemporary
Buddhism 12, no. 1 (2011): 42.
3 Evan Thompson, Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in
Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press,
2014), 194.
4 Evan Thompson, Why I Am Not a Buddhist (New Heaven and London: Yale
University Press, 2020), 121. It should be noted that in speaking of a possible
“distinct mindfulness component”, Thompson is speaking about a hypothe-
tical neurological structure that, according to some views of the reductionist
type, can be identified with mindfulness. In other words, here Thompson is not
directly targeting the view that mindfulness has an essence that is independent
of all contingent factors. But a reader of his writings will find it difficult to
bypass the impression that this is also his, implicit, target. I engage with
Thompson’s view in chapter three of part one.
5 John Dunne, “Toward an Understanding of Non-Dual Mindfulness,”
Contemporary Buddhism 12, no. 1 (2011): 72.
6 Bhikkhu Bodhi, “What Does Mindfulness Really Mean? A Canonical
Perspective,” Contemporary Buddhism 12, no. 1 (2011): 22.
7 Ibid., 21.
8 Ibid., 23.
9 Cf. Matthew Ratcliffe, Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the
Sense of Reality (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Bibliography
Bodhi, Bhikkhu. “What Does Mindfulness Really Mean? A Canonical Perspective.”
Contemporary Buddhism 12, no. 1 (2011): 19–39.
12 Introduction
Dreyfus, Georges. “Is Mindfulness Present-Centred and Non-Judgmental? A
Discussion of the Cognitive Dimensions of Mindfulness.” Contemporary
Buddhism 12, no. 1 (2011): 41–54.
Dunne, John. “Toward an Understanding of Non-Dual Mindfulness.”
Contemporary Buddhism 12, no. 1 (2011): 71–88.
Purser, Ronaled E. Mcmindfulness How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist
Spirituality. London: Repeater Books, 2019.
Ratcliffe, Matthew. Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense
of Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Thompson, Evan. Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in
Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2014.
Thompson, Evan. Why I Am Not a Buddhist. New Heaven and London: Yale
University Press, 2020.
Part I
1 Mindfulness in Literature and
Everyday Life

Mindfulness is not accessible only to Buddhist monks and their ilk. It is

an experiential possibility open to all of us, right here in the midst of
ordinary life. In fact, it is probable that you yourself have experienced
this state at some point or another, although you might not have known
this explicitly at the time. This is true in my own case. When later in life
I succeeded in intentionally cultivating mindfulness to some degree with
the help of practices explicitly designated for that end—the nature of
which is discussed in the following chapter—I recognised this experience
as something not altogether alien, as a way of relating to the world that I
fell into spontaneously throughout my life, and especially in childhood.
This chapter is oriented around the fact that some of the best writers
have taken note of such spontaneous experiences and tried to describe
them. With the help of these passages, this chapter aims to awaken in
you, the reader, the feeling of what being mindful is like. This means
that, as superbly put together as they are, the literary passages are not
here simply for your aesthetic pleasure but to steer a hidden part of
yourself into life. Having woken up the phenomenon, by highlighting the
key characteristics that these passages attribute to it, this chapter also
begins outlining its phenomenological form and structure. The ensuing
chapters make this form more and more definite until, hopefully, the
phenomenon stands clearly before the mind, distinguishing itself from
everything else with which it may and tends to be confused.
The following passages allow for different interpretations, and what I
interpret to be descriptions of mindfulness someone else may interpret as
descriptions of something else.1 I mention this to prevent the reader from
being distracted by the thought that I am twisting the meaning of the
passages in order to serve my own ends. I am not trying to say that these
passages must be interpreted as descriptions of mindfulness. Nor am I
claiming that their authors had that purpose in mind. But I do believe
that they can be taken in that way, and that is how I will take them.
I begin with a personal example. This is my father’s encounter with,
what I believe to be, the mindful state. A little background first. My
family comes from Kasindol, a small town not very far from Sarajevo,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003219057-3
16 Literature and Everyday Life
Bosnia, and Herzegovina. A vibrant little river splits the town in half as it
stretches in two contrary directions. In one direction, the river surges
towards the rustle and bustle of Sarajevo, with its pubs and cafés. My
father tells me how he would spend time at such places, drinking raki-
ja—the Yugoslav version of vodka—smoking cigarettes and getting in-
volved in the social and political events of his day. But it quickly becomes
clear to anyone who takes the time to get to know him that that is not
where his most cherished memories rest. He speaks with awe and
wonder about that which he found when he followed the river in the
other direction. In that direction, the Kasindol river leads into a thick,
largely unexplored forest, where he fished trout, picked mushrooms, and
received other gifts that nature sent his way. When his legs became
heavy, he recalls with nostalgia shimmering behind his eyes, he would
rest his backpack, forget his fishing rod and find a soft patch of grass on
which to stretch out. Slowly and invariably, perhaps following a short
nap, something would sneak up on him. And when it grabbed him this
something would erase him from this world. This is no fancy description.
My father speaks quite seriously when he says that in these moments it is
as if he ceased to exist. And with his absence for the first-time reality
would bloom into life: the clouds slowly and patiently striding across the
clear blue sky, the gentle murmur of the river, the whispering con-
versation between the trees, all would become magical, wondrous. And
as this state deepened, he recalls, that which usually appears as distinct
and separate, including himself, would merge into a kind of harmonious
unity. He once illustrated this by asking me to imagine a wheel with the
different colours painted on it. And then to imagine the wheel as spin-
ning really fast, and it keeps spinning until the different colours merge
into a homogeneous and undifferentiated quality. The different colours
stand for the distinct phenomena of which our everyday, ordinary world
is made, the homogeneous quality represents the reality that revealed
itself to my father in these moments. These experiences, he says, would
refresh him completely, and memories of them served him as an un-
faltering source of strength upon which he drew when faced with the
endless, trivial difficulties and agitations that he encountered when he
followed the river in the other direction. I had not the slightest doubt
that what my father was describing was an experience of mindfulness,
something I try so hard to harness in my meditation practice, and which I
myself felt in situations similar to those depicted in his memories.
A description of experiences similar to my father’s can be found in
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Memoirs from the House of the Dead, a work
inspired by the author’s experience while a prisoner in Siberia.2 The
establishment of mindfulness is often, but certainly not always, preceded
by some kind of anguish, a mood that arises as one begins to disconnect
from ordinary life. This is certainly so in the case of Alexandr Petrovich
Goryanchikov, the main character of the novel and whose anguish finds
 Literature and Everyday Life 17
its source in the fact of his imprisonment. In prison, the conditions are
arranged in such a way as to prevent the prisoner from pursuing the
desires that defined their pre-prison existence, such as socialising, raising
a family, the freedom to go wherever one wants, and so on. While one is
longer able to pursue such desires, that does not mean that they are
annihilated from the mind. Rather they now float painfully in front of
the prisoner’s awareness in the form of unrealisable and frustrated
longings—“if not for these conditions, I could do all that.” It is this
tension—between what the prisoner is capable of in the conditions that
he finds himself in and the kind of life he could live in different
circumstances—that make prison life so tormenting.
This tension, as Dostoevsky is about to tells us, is especially amplified
in spring, the season that in ordinary circumstances opens up a whole
range of simple pleasures, such as strolling through the fresh green grass
underneath the clear blue sky. The prisoner senses these gifts of spring,
and senses them very keenly. But they remain out of reach. “Even a man
in fetters…” Dostoevsky writes

… was moved by the advent of the fine weather, which awakened

even in him vague aspirations, striving and longings. I think that
men pine more bitterly for freedom in the bright sunshine than in the
grey days of winter or autumn, and this was noticeable amongst all
the prisoners.3

Goryanchikov shared his own impressions of such torments:

The spring had its effects on me also. I remembered how sometimes I

gazed hungrily through the gaps in the stockade, and how I used to
stand for long periods leaning my head against the fence and looking
obstinately and insatiably at the green grass on the fortress rampart
and the sky whose blue grew deeper and deeper. My restlessness and
longing increased every day and the prison became more and more
hateful to me.4

Because his mind is still holding onto the dreams and desires of his pre-
prison life, and because the current conditions are such that he is unable
to move towards their realisation, because of all that anguish and mel-
ancholy arise in Goryanchikov’s mind with an incredible force, and he is
brought down by a sense of hopelessness. This anguish hides from him
the intrinsic beauty of the surrounding reality—the greening grass, the
distant sky, etc.—which, at this point in the narrative, are only appre-
hended as unusable means towards non-pursuable ends, as a kind of
painful reminder of his confined freedom. Goryanchikov experiences the
surrounding reality only vaguely, as if through a fog or a veil. But this
very hopelessness, in certain circumstances, forces him to find a whole
18 Literature and Everyday Life
new, more intimate connection with the surrounding reality, and leads
him to the discovery of a different and much more fulfilling kind of
freedom. The shift from the old attitude to the new takes place at a
special spot by the river Irtysh:

I speak of that river-bank so often because that was the only place
from which God’s earth could be seen, the pure bright distance and
the free, lonely steppes, whose wild emptiness had a strange effect on
me … on the river bank you might forget yourself; you would look
at the vast, solitary expanse as a captive gazes at freedom from the
window of his prison. To me, everything there was dear and lovely:
the bright hot sun in the unfathomable blue sky, the songs of the
Kirghiz tribesmen carried from the farther bank (ibid., p. 276).5

The contrast is striking. In the light of his anguish, the surroundings are
suffocating. With the dimming of that light and “the forgetting of self”
they take on a very different significance. Freed from the sense of being
mere means for his unrealisable ends, they reveal themselves as they are:

You would gaze for a long time and finally you would distinguish
the beggarly, sooty tent of some nomad; you would see the wisp of
smoke near the tent and the Kirghiz woman busy there with her two
sheep. It was all poor and savage, but it was free. You would make
out a bird in the clear blue translucent air and tenaciously follow its
flight for a long time; now it skimmed the water, now it disappeared
in the blue, now it reappeared, a scarcely discernible speck…Even
the poor, sickly flower I found in the early spring in the cleft in the
stony bank—even that arrested my attention…6

This is a state of mind where the self is forgotten, the surroundings

bathed in a positive light, things freed to exhibit their own intrinsic
nature and to move to their own rhythm and where attention becomes
fixated in a quite usual manner—how many of us would stay so long
with such a mundane thing as a flower fading by the side of the road?
Keiji Nishitani (1982, p. 8) comments:

The things that Dostoevski draws attention to—the curling smoke,

the women tending her sheep, the poor hut, the bird in flight—are
all things we come in touch with in our everyday lives. We speak of
them as real in the everyday sense of the word, and from there go on
to our scientific and philosophical theories. But for such common-
place things to become the focus of intense a concentration, to
capture one’s attention to that almost abnormal degree, is by no
means an everyday occurrence.7
 Literature and Everyday Life 19
There is no evidence in these passages that Goryanchikov was in-
tentionally trying to bring about some special state, as a meditation
master might do. It cannot therefore be said that he was engaged in any
kind of meditation practice, or that he had any such skill. The trans-
formation occurs quite spontaneously and all he needed to do was to
place himself in that special spot by the Irtysh.
The entire segment of Goryanchikov’s consciousness that I have been
considering can be represented with an image of a line divided into two
sections. Their border is the spontaneous shift from one state of mind to
the other. The section to the left of the border represents the old, an-
guished state of mind and the events that lead to the shift (e.g. the at-
tentional changes, being placed in a particular situation). The segment
on the right represents the state of mind that arises after the shift, which
is characterised by the absence or forgetfulness of self and the discovery
of something like a hidden dimension in the most ordinary things. The
feeling of melancholy associated with the earlier state is replaced by a
positive feeling tone, which paints everything with the sense of being
“dear and gracious.” Attention, too, functions differently: before the
shift, it was fixated upon his personal (non-pursuable) desires, now it
effortlessly follows and fixes upon reality as it moves to its rhythm.
The place and setting, such as the river Irtysh was for Goryanchikov,
can play an important role in helping summon such spontaneous shifts
in perspective. Even a place as humble as the toilet, as the Japanese
author Junichiro Tanizaki writes in his In the Praise of Shadows, when
designed with such higher possibilities in mind, can help one break
with one’s ordinary routine and rediscover a different, much more
intimate way of experiencing the surrounding reality. “[T]he Japanese
toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose” Tanizaki writes, “…a place of
unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond associations with the beauties
of nature,” it “… is always apart from the main building, at the end of
a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss.”8 This is so, I
suspect, because by removing one physically from the main place of
residence, such a toilet can also mentally distance one from the desires
and preoccupations associated therewith. “No words can describe…”
Tanizaki writes “… that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking
in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing at
the garden.”9 “I love to listen from such a toilet to the sound of softly
falling rain…” Tanizaki reflects, going on to describe the sense of
intimacy, a kind of blurring of boundaries that usually separate one
from the surroundings and which can occur in this, the humblest of all
places:

… there one can listen with such a sense of intimacy to the raindrops
falling from the eaves and the trees, seeping into the earth as they
wash over the base of a stone lantern and freshen the moss about the
20 Literature and Everyday Life
stepping stones. And the toilet is the perfect place to listen to the
chirping of insects, or the song of the birds, to view the moon, or to
enjoy any of those poignant moments that mark the change of the
seasons.10

Moving on towards the next example, we meet Levin Konstantin, a

character from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.11 Levin, a farm owner,
has decided to join his workers (Muzhiks) in the annual mowing of
his fields. Levin came to this decision because, Tolstoy (2002) writes,
“… once last year, coming to the mowing and getting angry with the
steward, Levin has used this remedy for calming down—he had taken a
scythe from a muzhik and begun mowing.”12 It seems that in this kind
of labour Levin has found a way of escaping unwholesome states
of mind, such as anger. Now, on the day when the mowing is to
take place, a heated debate with his older brother left Levin feeling
“… himself roundly beaten, but together with that he felt that his
brother had not understood what he had wanted to say.”13 Beaten,
frustrated, and misunderstood. And that is not all there is to Levin’s
misery: we find him dreading the upcoming labour itself. Levin, you
see, is quite inexperienced with the scythe, and in informing the
workers that he will be joining them he is anxious about being unable
to keep up and he self-consciously anticipates that he will be the butt of
their jokes. While not quite to the degree that we saw with
Dostoevsky—who is after all imprisoned—the reader gets a definite
impression that, at this point, Levin’s mind is filled with all sorts of
anxieties, worries, and agitations.
Levin begins the work. At first, as anticipated, he struggles to keep up
with the peasants and grows tired to the point of almost giving up. His
misery multiplies. But just as he is about to embarrassingly voice his need
for rest, the other workers stop of their own accord, as if the whole
labour was governed by some invisible, finely tuned mechanism. The
timely break tremendously refreshes Levin. The pattern repeats again,
and again: exhaustion, break and rejuvenation. Slowly, Levin stops
struggling and completely lets go into the rhythm of the work. As he does
so, single-mindedness and focus begin to grow in his consciousness,
cleansing it of superfluous thought: “He thought of nothing, desired
nothing, except not to lag behind and do the best job he could.”14 And
so the transformation begins:

The longer Levin mowed, the more often he felt those moments of
oblivion during which it was no longer his arms that swung the
scythe, but the scythe itself that lent motion to his whole body, full
of life and conscious of itself, as if by magic, without a thought of it,
the work got rightly and neatly done on its own. These were the
most blissful moments.15
 Literature and Everyday Life 21
As Levin loses the sense of being a doer, an agent who must plan and
think everything out, he begins to engage the work in an entirely new,
and quite unexpected way:

They finished another swath and another. They went through long
swaths, short swaths, with bad grass, with good grass. Levin lost
all awareness of time and had no idea whether it was late or early.
A change now began to take place in his work which gave him
enormous pleasure. In the midst of his work moments came to
him when he forgot what he was doing and begun to feel light, and
in those moments his swath came out as even and as good as
Titus’s.16

Tolstoy uses such expressions as “moments of oblivion” and “state of

unconsciousness” to describe Levin’s state of mind. And these are good
descriptions. Compared to our normal state of mind (which is constantly
flooded by thoughts, memories, expectations, and other such things) the
state that Levin finds himself in is quite different. It is a silent and open
way of relating to the world. But, in an important sense, this state is the
very opposite of oblivion, of unconsciousness. It is rather that only now,
with the extinguishing of explicit mental chatter, everything blooms into
life and becomes fully aware.
Just contrast the way Levin’s body becomes “full of life and con-
scious of itself” with the way the body appears, or rather fails to ap-
pear, in the normal, desire-driven kind of activity that underlies and
powers the more ordinary and familiar modes of being. Here the body
is experienced as a peculiar instrument; it is not apprehended for itself
but withdraws into a kind of a background from where it is utilised for
the purpose of manipulating the surrounding environment, a phe-
nomenon that Jean Paul Sartre describes in the following passage,
which begins with the example of how the hand is experienced in the
act of writing:

… the hand is at once the unknowable and non-utilizable term

which the last instrument of the series indicated (“book to be
read—characters to be formed on the paper—pen”) and at the
same time the orientation of the entire series. But I can apprehend
it—at least in so far as it is acting—only as the perpetual,
evanescent reference of the whole series. Thus in a duel with
swords or with quarter-staffs, it is the quarter-staff which I watch
with my eyes and which I handle. In the act of writing it is the
point of the pen which I look at in synthetic combination with the
line of the square marked on the sheet of paper. But my hand has
vanished; it is lost in the complex system of instrumentality in
order that this system may exist.17
22 Literature and Everyday Life
As Levin is released from such “instrumental practice” and into a non-
intentional doing, his up to then “evanescent,” “lost,” or “withdrawn”
(whatever adjective you want to use) body emerges into the foreground
of awareness. And when Levin described himself as “feeling light” he is
pointing to the fact that this foregrounding of the body is associated
with a positive feeling tone of some kind. Tolstoy (ibid.) describes the
feeling that overtakes Levin in this moment as a kind of “blissfulness”
and as an “enormous pleasure.” For Dostoevsky’s Gorianchikov, recall,
everything became “dear and gracious.”
Levin is not only the subject to this transformation; he is also a witness
of it in those around him (take special note of how the old man’s
awareness of his body is described here):

The old man, holding himself erect, went ahead, moving his turned-
out feet steadily and widely, and in a precise and steady movement
that apparently cost him no more effort than swinging his arms
while walking, as if in play, laid down a tall, uniform swath. Just as
though it were not him but the sharp scythe alone that swished
through the succulent grass.18

To the forgetfulness of the self, foregrounding of the body and arising of

a deep equanimity it is now possible to add a kind of effortlessness to
the characteristics of the state of mind that arises after the shift. This last
quality is nicely captured in Muriel Berbery’s commentary on these
Tolstoyan passages:

Gradually, [Levin’s] movements are freed from the shackles of his

will, and he goes into a light trance which gives his gestures the
perfection of conscious, automatic motion, without thought or
calculation, and the scythe seems to move of its own accord. Levin
delights in the forgetfulness that movement brings, where the
pleasure of doing is marvellously foreign to the striving of the
will…19

The new state that Levin finds himself in is easily shattered by the re-
appearance of conscious effort: “… as soon as [Levin] remembered
what he was doing and started trying to do better, he at once felt how
hard the work was and the swath came out badly.”20 Consider also the
alteration that takes place in Levin’s experience of time. A little later in
the narrative, Levin is surprised that “… the muzhiks had been mowing
without a break for no less than four hours” and that he “… did not
notice how the time passed. If he had been asked how long he had been
mowing, he would have said half an hour—yet it was nearly dinner
time.”21
 Literature and Everyday Life 23
Berbery gives a wonderful example of non-instrumental practice of her
own, which illustrates that such a state can be realised even in intellectual
“work” and which I therefore quote with no small degree of pleasure:

Freed from the demands of decision and intention, adrift on some

inner sea, we observe our various movements as if they belonged to
someone else, and yet we admire their involuntary excellence. What
other reason might I have for writing this—ridiculous journal of an
ageing concierge—if the writing did not have something of the art of
scything about it? The lines gradually become their own demiurges
and, like some witless yet miraculous participant, I witness the birth
on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of
me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor
thought I might want to know. This painless birth, like an
unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure, and with neither toil
nor certainty but the joy of frank astonishment I follow the pen that
is guiding and supporting me. In this way, in the full proof and
texture of my self, I accede to a self-forgetfulness that borders on
ecstasy, to savor the blissful calm of my watching consciousness.22

In Gorianchikov’s case, this quality of effortlessness is present in the way

that his attention follows the natural rhythm of the surroundings: the
rising of the smoke, the flight of the bird through the air, and so on.
These descriptions produce the impression of a kind of rhythm that
sharply contrasts with the ordinary one that we are all so used to, the
rhythm of chasing some desire or other.
This contrast is vividly depicted in another one of Tolstoy’s passages,
this time from War and Peace. We join Andrei Bolkonski on the bat-
tlefront of the French–Russian war. In the passages leading up to the one
that describes “the event”—the moment, I contend, when Andrei enters
into the mindful state—and which I will quote shortly, Andrei is wholly
occupied with such worldly concerns as gaining promotion and re-
cognition for some act of heroism that he is constantly and obsessively
looking to perform in battle and, in the moment just prior to the event,
with the outcome of a struggle taking place near him between a French
and a Russian soldier. While strenuously trying to determine the out-
come of the struggle, Andrei is struck by a bullet. As he falls towards the
ground, a remarkable transformation takes place in him:

“What is this? Am I falling? My legs are giving away,” thought he,

and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the
struggle of the Frenchman with the gunners ended, whether the red-
haired gunner had been killed or not, and whether the cannon had
been captured or saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was
24 Literature and Everyday Life
nothing but the sky—the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably
lofty, with grey clouds gliding slowly across it. “How quiet,
peaceful, and solemn, not at all as I ran”, thought Prince Andrei—
’not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the
Frenchman with frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop:
how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky!
How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am
to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that
infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not
exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!23 (Tolstoy,
1941, p. 299).

How wonderfully Tolstoy contrasts the rhythm of the human pursuits

with that of the reality of the sky and the clouds as they are in them-
selves! The “effortlessness” I have been speaking about is reflected in
such terms “peace” and “solemnity” that Andrei feels as he simply lets
himself drift with the clouds above him. Note also Andrei’s
surprise—“How was it I did not see that lofty sky before?”—that he
could have been so oblivious to something, so peaceful and pure and, yet,
not entirely foreign.
The experiences depicted by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy’s writings share
many common elements: the forgetfulness of the self, tuning into the
intrinsic rhythm in the surrounding world, which comes with a certain
effortlessness and a positive feeling tone, and in both cases the most
ordinary things reveal a quite extraordinary side. But there are also some
points of difference. Goryanchikov’s state, and Andrei’s too, is asso-
ciated with a kind of detached observation of the surrounding environ-
ment. Levin, by contrast, finds mindfulness in a special kind of activity,
in non-instrumental practice. Does this imply that what we have in our
hands are really different phenomena? Not necessarily.
But it does point at something very interesting: that neither pure de-
tached observation, a kind of looking without doing, nor non-
instrumental practice are essential to mindfulness, if indeed all of these
cases are taken as instances of mindfulness, as I am encouraging the
reader to take them. That leaves the possibility open that detached ob-
servation and non-instrumental doing belong to a class of phenomena
some members of which are essential to mindfulness, just as a flower is
neither blue nor red necessarily but is necessarily some colour. This can
be illustrated through another example. Arguably, one can be anxious
without experiencing either resentful memories, negative thoughts, and
projections or images. But it is plausible that anxiety is necessarily as-
sociated with some such phenomenon. In the same way, we can think of
mindfulness as being necessarily associated with neither detached ob-
servation nor non-instrumental doing but as nevertheless being
 Literature and Everyday Life 25
necessarily associated with and serving as the ground for some experi-
ence from that class. More will be said about this later.
With the above, we have put down the first lines of our phenomen-
ological sketch of mindfulness. It is now time to add further detail to it
by considering how the phenomenon is depicted in a key Buddhist text
dealing with the subject: the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta.

Notes
1 The very possibility of this fact—that the “same” description can refer to
quite different phenomena—itself calls out for an explanation. But I will not
go into this here.
2 Fyodor Dostoevsky, Memoirs from the House of the Dead, trans. Jessie
Coulson, ed. Ronald Hingley (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press,
1956).
3 Ibid., 267.
4 Ibid., 272.
5 Ibid., 276.
6 Ibid.
7 Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1982), 8.
8 Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, trans. Thomas; Seidensticker G.
Harper J., Edward (Stony Creek: Leete’s Island Books, 1977), 3.
9 Ibid., 3–4.
10 Ibid.
11 Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
(London: Penguin, 2002).
12 Ibid., 175.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 178.
15 Ibid., 179.
16 Ibid., 178.
17 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, ed. Hazel Estella Barnes and Mary
Warnock (London: Routledge, 2003), 347.
18 Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 178.
19 Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, ed. Alison Anderson
(London: Gallic Books, 2008), 275.
20 Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 178.
21 Ibid., 178–79.
22 Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, 275–76.
23 Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude, The World
Classics, (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), 299.

Bibliography
Barbery, Muriel. The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Translated by Alison Anderson.
London: Gallic Books, 2008.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Memoirs from the House of the Dead. Translated by Jessie
Coulson, edited by Ronald Hingley, 1861–62. Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1956.
26 Literature and Everyday Life
Nishitani, Keiji. Religion and Nothingness. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1982.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness, edited by Hazel Estella Barnes and
Mary Warnock. London: Routledge, 2003.
Tanizaki, Jun’ichirō. In Praise of Shadows. Translated by Thomas J. Harperand
Edward G. Seidensticker. Stony Creek: Leete’s Island Books, 1977.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa
Volokhonsky. London: Penguin, 2002.
Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. The
World Classics. London: Oxford University Press, 1941.
2 The Definition of Mindfulness
in the Pāli Nikāyas

To establish mindfulness is to undergo a shift in perspective. This is a

shift from the ordinary way of relating to the world to a way of being
where ordinary things reveal an unexpected, quite extraordinary di-
mension. While this dimension was never entirely absent, before the
shift, it lay dormant beneath the surface of ordinary life, as a seed always
ready to sprout under the right conditions. It is with the idea that to
establish mindfulness is to undergo a perspectival shift that I now ap-
proach the teachings in what are known as the Pāli Nikāyas, a collection
of discourses attributed to Gotama the Buddha. In the Nikāyas, mind-
fulness (sati) is succintcly defined by the following formula: “ātāpī
sampajāna satimā vineyya loke abhijjhā-domanassaṃ.”1
An expanded version of the definition occurs at the beginning of a
discourse titled the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta (henceforth, “the Sutta”), which is
the authoritative text on the practice of mindfulness in the Pāli Canon.2
This is what it says:

Here, monks, in regard to the body a monk abides contemplating the

body, diligent, clearly knowing, and mindful, free from desires and
discontent in regard to the world. In regard to feelings he abides
contemplating feelings, diligent, clearly knowing, and mindful, free
from desires and discontent in regard to the world. In regard to the
mind, he abides contemplating the mind, diligent, clearly knowing,
and mindful, free from desires and discontent in regard to the world.
In regard to dhammas, he abides contemplating dhammas, diligent,
clearly knowing, and mindful, free from desires and discontent in
regard to the world.3

In the Sutta, the Buddha opens up and expands upon the definition,
explaining in detail how each phase of the practice ought to proceed and
concluding with the claim that this method leads directly to the un-
conditioned state (nibbāna), which can, according to this discourse, be
realised within the minimum of seven days! This chapter offers an
interpretation of the definition, which involves demarcating the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003219057-4
28 Mindfulness in the Pāli Nikāyas
experiential possibilities to which the different terms that constitute it
refer. A detailed exposition of the entire discourse is beyond the scope of
this study, however. While the focus is on the Sutta, where necessary the
discussion freely draws from other Pāli discourses, its commentaries, as
well as on non-Pāli Buddhist and non-Buddhist texts. And, as always,
whether implicitly or explicitly, the direct acquaintance with the phe-
nomenon in question plays a major role in guiding the interpretation
and the reflections.
It is worth emphasising, to begin with, the distinct tone with which the
above passage is delivered. In contrast with the literary descriptions of the
last chapter, coloured as they were by sentimentality and feeling, the voice
issuing the above instruction is lucid, sober, and free of sentimentality. If
there is a feeling behind it, it is one of a general preparing his troops
for combat. Indeed, the war imagery is very apt to describe the life of one
committed to this practice. Note, next, that defining mindfulness (the
usual translation of “sati”) here means listing the phenomena (which are
above translated as diligence, clear knowing, freedom from desires and
discontent in regard to the world) without which mindfulness (or to be
more specifically “right” mindfulness (sammā sati)) could not exist. This
chapter begins making sense of these co-existing phenomena, of how they
fit together with mindfulness, and what “co-existence” means in this
context. The remainder of this study further develops this account in a
phenomenological manner. The immediate question is: does anything in
the Sutta or the Nikāyas speak in favour of the idea that establishing
mindfulness involves a shift in perspective?
The Sutta does not explicitly mention such a shift. But I believe that it is
there implicitly. To see that, consider the following. Even before a person
takes up the Satipaṭṭhāna practice, they have some kind of an under-
standing of the objective domains to which mindfulness will be applied,
i.e., body, feelings, mind, and dhammas.4 This “ordinary” or “everyday”
understanding is not only responsible for the ability to use the body, for
example, but also for differentiating it from other phenomena. It can be
said more generally that ordinary understanding has already cut up reality
into distinct regions of facts, it has established boundaries between phe-
nomena, and it is only because of the existence of this understanding that
the Sutta’s instruction to turn towards these phenomena in order to un-
derstand them in a new and more truthful manner even makes sense. From
this we can take the lesson that, implicitly, the Sutta is instructing the
practitioner to undertake a shift in perspective from the everyday to a
“contemplative” or “mindful” understanding.
Further support for the idea that becoming mindful involves a per-
spectival shift can be found in the Sutta’s bivalent title. “Satipaṭṭhāna” is
a compound term that can be understood in two ways: either as a
combination of “sati” and “paṭṭhāna” or of “sati” and “upaṭṭhāna.”5
“Paṭṭhāna” means foundation, base or cause. “Upaṭṭhāna” has two
 Mindfulness in the Pāli Nikāyas 29
meanings. On the one hand, it means setting up or establishing some-
thing. On the other hand, it carries the sense of presence, in the sense of
being present to something.6 There is here an ambiguity between the
process of setting up sati, on the one hand, and the foundation or base
upon which sati is established, on the other. Now there is a tendency, in
both the traditional commentaries and the contemporary literature, to
choose one meaning over the other, as Bodhi writes:

Thus the four satipaṭṭhānas may be understood as either the four

ways of setting up mindfulness or as the four objective domains of
mindfulness … The former seems to be the etymologically correct
derivation … but the Pali commentators, while admitting both
explanations, have a predilection for the latter.7

But the ambiguity can be taken as an informative one and as pointing at

the difference between the process of setting up or establishing sati, on
the one hand, and to the state of affairs where sati has actually been
established and where one is actually present to the object in question,
on the other. To put it differently, the process of establishing sati leads,
or potentially leads, to a shift in perspective after which sati is actually
established. Moreover, in the discourse titled Vanapattha Sutta (“Jungle
Thickets”), the Buddha points out the possibility that, while a disciple is
living in a remote place and undertaking the practice of cultivating
mindfulness, “… his unestablished mindfulness does not become estab-
lished,”8 which suggests that one may attempt to establish the mindful
way of being and nevertheless fail to do so, which again points at the
difference between the experience of establishing mindfulness and ac-
tually having it established.
At this point I would like to explicitly distinguish the phase before the
shift from the one that comes after it (here the reader may recall the
image of the divided line depicted in the last chapter). That which takes
place before the shift can be described as the process or practice of
cultivating mindfulness. After the shift, one is actually being mindful.
This is analogous to the difference between falling and being asleep;
while the one can lead to the other, and while they are obviously con-
nected in important ways, these are nevertheless different phenomena.
For reasons to be discussed next, instead of speaking of establishing
“mindfulness” and being “mindful” it may be more accurate to speak of
this as the difference between establishing and being established in the
contemplative standpoint.

2.1 The Contemplative Standpoint

“Contemplation” translates into Pāli as “anupassanā.” This term is de-
rived from the verb “anupassati,” a compound made up of the verb
30 Mindfulness in the Pāli Nikāyas
“passati,” meaning to see and the emphatic “anu.”9 “Anu” can also carry
the meaning of along or together with. This suggests that the kind of
contemplation now in question represents a close-seeing-of-how-the-
phenomena-fit-together (the dashes between the words are there to em-
phasise that these distinct qualities constitute a single, unified whole).
To put it differently, contemplation is a seeing with a definite and in-
extricable cognitive dimension; seeing and cognising being to anupassati
what heads and tails are to a coin. The definition uses the term “viharati”
in order to describe the manner in which the practitioner relates to anu-
passanā. This term carries the sense of abiding, dwelling, or sojourning.
This further suggests that this state of contemplation is not a momentary
conscious event (such as an act of judgement or consciousness) but
something that opens up the possibility of being dwelled in for an extended
period of time, as one can be said to dwell and exist in the dream state.
What is the relation between anupassanā and the other phenomena
listed in the definition (i.e., diligence (ātāpi), clear knowing (sampaj-
añña), mindfulness (sati), freedom from desires and discontent in regards
to the world (vineyya abhijjhādomanassa), and the objective domain at
which the contemplation is to be directed)? I interpret Bodhi literally
when he says that these phenomena and sati in particular are parts of
anupassanā.10 According to this way of looking at things, anupassanā
does not belong on the same logical level as the other factors that feature
in the definition, and to think of it as just another item on the same list is
to commit a category mistake, akin to the error that one makes when one
conceives of the university as being just another item on the list that
includes the cafeteria, the library, the auditorium and so on.11 Rather,
anupassanā is the whole of which the other factors are constitutive parts.
To put it phenomenologically, the factors mentioned in the definition
are moments or non-self-sufficient aspects of the contemplative stand-
point.12 But the contemplative standpoint cannot be reduced to its parts;
what is in question here is not a mere sum but an organic or founded
whole. This, I hope, will become clearer as the discussion unfolds. For
now, the ontological status of sati or mindfulness (to focus on the factor
that is of special interest here) can be compared to that of colour, the
existence of which depends on some instance of visual spread and shape
with which it co-exists in the context that is the concrete visual thing.
Analogously, sati depends on the other factors listed in the definition
with which it co-exists within the concrete whole that is anupassanā, the
contemplative standpoint.
If this is so why, then, is the Sutta called the Satipaṭṭhāna? Why the
emphasis on that which is in truth only an aspect of a larger whole? Would
it not have been more accurate to title the text something like the
Anupassanāpaṭṭhāna Sutta? I believe that the commentary raises a similar
question in the following way: “Why is the Arousing of Mindfulness
 Mindfulness in the Pāli Nikāyas 31
intended by the word ‘way’? Are there not many other factors of the
way…?”13 And the answer is given: “To be sure there are. But these are all
implied when the Arousing of Mindfulness is mentioned, because these
factors exist in union with mindfulness.”14 This point, which is a good
one, can also be put in the following way. Whenever the phenomenon that
“sati” designates is brought before the mind, certain other phenomena are
necessarily co-apprehended as a kind of accompanying background. This
is true even if this accompanying background is not explicitly understood
and articulated. Again, it is instructive to compare this to colour: to
imagine a colour is necessarily to also imagine a definite instance of visual
spread and shape (even if one does not usually focus upon this accom-
panying background in an explicit way) all of which together make up
the concrete whole which is the (imagined) visual thing. The idea here
is that sati is comparable to colour, (at least some) of the other elements
mentioned in the definition to visual spread and shape, and anupassanā
to the visual thing.
It should now be clear why instead of cultivating “mindfulness” and
being “mindful” it may be more accurate to speak of cultivating the
“contemplative standpoint” and actually being in or establishing in
that standpoint. And in this chapter, I generally prefer the latter ter-
minology. But when, either in this chapter or in the forthcoming ones,
the occasion calls for emphasising the aspect of the contemplative
standpoint that is mindfulness or sati, I resort to speaking of culti-
vating mindfulness and being mindful. In general, the hope is that the
context makes the meaning clear.
It is now possible to define the aims of this chapter more precisely. Given
that the contemplative standpoint (anupassanā) can be understood as a
special kind of a whole or totality, the main task of this chapter is to grasp
and define the whole as such by, so to speak, allowing it to shine through
its parts. While different parts of the whole will be distinguished, this
activity does not imply the fragmentation and destruction of the whole.
The process of bringing the parts into view and understanding their
structure and interrelations will proceed by always keeping the whole in
mind as the background context within which its parts make sense.
Now, when I speak of “the whole” here I really have in mind two
different wholes, which correspond to the two phases before and after
the shift in perspective. The establishing phase is arguably much more
dynamic (for its factors are brought into existence sequentially) than
the phase after the shift (where the factors co-exist simultaneously). The
establishing phase is perhaps best described as a temporal whole and,
in this sense, it can be compared to a melody whose parts, the tones, are
spread out in time. Like the blotches of paint that constitute a painting,
the parts that make up the contemplative standpoint itself can be taken
as existing simultaneously.
32 Mindfulness in the Pāli Nikāyas
The difference between cultivating the contemplative standpoint and
being in it opens up the possibility that some of the factors mentioned in
the definition are aspects of the establishing phase, that others make up
the contemplative standpoint itself, while multivalent terms can be taken
as designating aspects on either side of the process. The question: what
factor belongs in which phase? will guide the following analysis of the
phenomena that feature in the definition, beginning with the objective
domain to be contemplated.

2.2 The Objective Domain

The contemplative standpoint is cut into two dimensions: the “sub-
jective” and the “objective.” To understand this correctly, it is essential
to keep in mind that the subject–object dichotomy can occur on many
levels and different degrees of subtlety, with the familiar opposition
between an embodied human subject and an outer object being the most
familiar case. In the current context, the “objective” is not being used to
designate external things accessible through the sense faculties. Rather,
it stands for the objective dimension of the contemplative standpoint.
According to the teachings of the Nikāyas, this dimension ought to be
restricted to the body, feeling, mind, and dhammas. As “objects” of
contemplation these phenomena must be distinguished from its “sub-
jective” moments: those aspects of the contemplative standpoint that do
not manifest as the explicit theme but which are nevertheless present as
the very structure of the standpoint in question. These objects ordinarily
constitute the personality, the being that we usually identify with, the
“me, mine and myself.” Because this fourfold objective domain is the
material out of which the personality is constructed, it is ordinarily ap-
prehended as being inner, as constituting the inner sphere of the person.
As such this inner domain contrasts with and is opposed to the outer
domain, which encompasses such phenomena as the colours and shapes
out of which “external” sensuous objects are constructed.15
Establishing the contemplative standpoint allows the practitioner
to become aware of and to understand the impermanent, fragile, dis-
integrating nature of the objective domain. In order to cultivate this
awareness and understanding into wisdom, the Sutta instructs the
practitioner to abide “… contemplating the nature of arising …
the nature of passing away … and the nature of both arising and
passing away” of the objective domain. This awareness and under-
standing can lead to the insight that no permanent and substantial self
or personality can be constructed from such a chaotic and fluctuating
basis. Established in the contemplative standpoint, the practitioner
surveys the objective domain, lucidly aware and immediately under-
standing: “this is not me, this is not mine, this I am not!”. The question
now is: how does the objective domain manifests within the
 Mindfulness in the Pāli Nikāyas 33
contemplative standpoint? What is the distinct way in which the
object—of whatever kind it is—appears in this state of mind?
It will be helpful to pause at this point in order to explain to the reader
not familiar with the phenomenological method and ways of enquiry,
precisely what it is that such questions are asking. According to a fun-
damental phenomenological principle, there are different ways or man-
ners of appearing. For example, an external thing necessarily appears in
an adumbrated way, where it shows one of its profiles while keeping the
others hidden. Phenomena such as utensils, feelings, values, and num-
bers, just to give some examples, have a different mode of manifestation.
This is to say, from a different angle, phenomena are given differently in
perception, feelings, moods, and so on. From the phenomenological
perspective it therefore makes good sense to ask: how does the object
appear in the contemplative standpoint?
This question can be interpreted in at least two ways. (1) How does
the object appear within the practice of establishing the contemplative
standpoint? (2) How does it appear within the contemplative standpoint
itself? To illustrate what this difference is getting at, it may help to
contrast the way that an object (say the body) appears in the process of
falling asleep, on the one hand, and how the body (fails to) appears in
the state of sleep itself, on the other. The following discussion begins
by focusing on the appearance of the object in the establishing phase.
The question of how it appears within the contemplative standpoint will
be taken up subsequently.
Regarding the body in particular, which will serve the purpose of an
example, the instructions say: “… in regards to the body a monk abides
contemplating the body….” Ñānamoli translates this as: “… abides
contemplating the body as body.”16 Bodhi as “… dwells contemplating
the body in the body….”17 This is an answer to the above question:
within the contemplative standpoint the body appears as body. More
generally, to one established in the contemplative standpoint, the object
appears as the object that it is. But what does that mean?
In his commentary on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, Anālayo presents one
possible way of answering this question. He notes that in the Nikāyas
contemplation stands for “… an examination of the observed object
from a particular point of view” where “… particular features of the
object are to be given prominence, such as its impermanence, or its
selfless nature.”18 This points to a kind of experience where some aspect
of the whole is emphasised; a kind of judgement that makes something,
such as the impermanent aspect of an object, prominent. Anālayo then
notes that this is not the meaning that the phrase carries in the Sutta,
where “… the feature to be contemplated appears to be the same as
the object of contemplation.”19 In other words, the purpose here is not
to emphasise some aspect of the body, but the body itself. Here one
contemplates the body as body, or the object as object.
34 Mindfulness in the Pāli Nikāyas
According to this view, the two occurrences of “body” in “the body as
body” do not carry the same meaning. The first occurrence stands for
either one’s own body or someone else’s body, which relates to the re-
frain “he contemplates the body internally or he contemplates the body
externally.” The second occurrence of “body” “… stands for a particular
aspect from the general area of contemplation….”20 Here “aspect”
stands for one of the six bodily regions or aspects, namely: breathing,
postures, activities, anatomical constitution, the four primary elements,
and the decomposition of the body after death. Here it seems to be a
question of a kind of experience that, first focuses upon and isolates the
body as a whole (whether one’s own or someone else’s) from which a
particular aspect is then emphasised. If this is right, then even according
to this interpretation, in the expression “contemplate the body as body,”
“contemplating” retains the sense it has elsewhere in the discourses, the
sense of being a kind of discriminative judgement that emphasises an
aspect of a whole. The difference is that “aspect” no longer means, as it
does elsewhere in the discourses, the three natures (i.e., impermanence,
not-self, suffering) but rather stands for the different aspects, regions, or
life phases of the body that can be emphasised within it. Is this a sa-
tisfactory answer to the question of how does the body appear in the
contemplative standpoint?
There are different phases in the practice of satipaṭṭhāna. The first
phase involves the practice of cultivating the contemplative standpoint.
In the second phase, one has become established in this standpoint. In the
third phase one can develop this initial state of contemplation by prac-
ticing insight and undertaking the different exercises set out in the
Sutta.21 The question that I am concerned with here primarily has to do
with the first two phases: how does the body appear at these initial stages
of the practice? I do not deny that there is an experience that emphasises
a particular aspect of the body, as per the above interpretation of “body
as body.” But I think that this experience presupposes that one has al-
ready established oneself in the contemplative standpoint. It is necessary
to first enter the state that allows the phenomena to show themselves as
they are before one focuses on a particular phenomenon as the subject of
investigation (e.g., one’s own or another’s body). In other words, before
one engages in the practice of insight (vipassanā), it is necessary to first
enter the contemplative relationship with the body. And therefore, the
question must be asked afresh: what does the phrase “body as body”-
designate in this initial stage of practice?
Towards the end of his discussion of this issue, Anālayo mentions the
commentarial interpretation of the expression which point the way to-
wards an answer to this question:

According to the commentaries, the repetition of the object of

contemplation also indicates emphasis, implying that the object of
 Mindfulness in the Pāli Nikāyas 35
contemplation should be considered simply as perceived by the
senses, and in particular without taking it to be “I” or “mine”. In
this way the repetition—body in body—underlies the importance of
direct experience, as opposed to mere intellectual reflection. One
should let the body speak for itself, so to say, disclosing its true
nature to the scrutiny of the meditator.22

Bodhi also mentions this commentarial interpretation:

The repetition in the phrase “contemplating the body as body” …

has the purpose of precisely determining the object of contemplation
and of isolating that object from others with which it may be
confused.23

The key terms here are “direct experience,” “emphasis,” “letting the
body speak for itself,” “precisely determining it,” and “isolating the
object,” which contrast with “mere intellectual reflection” and taking
the body to be “I” or “mine.” This will now serve as a clue for devel-
oping an interpretation of what it means to contemplate the body as/in
body or, more generally, object as/in object.
There is an important notion that is central to the teachings of the
Nikāyas and which can assist us in this task. This is the notion of
“āsava,” a term that can be translated in several ways including out-
flows and intoxicants.24 When the āsava dominate it, the mind flows out
towards objects, and in out-flowing towards objects it is metaphorically
described as being intoxicated or tainted (hence, the āsava are sometimes
spoken of as the “taints”). The ultimate goal of the Buddhist path is the
complete destruction of the āsava. The establishment of the con-
templative standpoint is an important step in that direction, and it has
the effect of temporarily neutralising their influence thereby opening
up the space for lucid awareness and clear understanding of their nature.
The meaning of “in” (as in “the body in body”) can be contrasted with
the out-flows; to experience an object in the object is the opposite of
experiencing it as out of itself, and the converse is true too. What does
it mean for the object to be out of itself?
In seeing the world through your glasses, there is a sense in which you
do not experience the glasses in themselves. Rather, the glasses are ex-
periences as “out there,” in the effects they have on the visual scene, in
the way that the objects appear as sharper and more detailed, say.
Analogously, I suggest, to experience the body out of itself, is to be
aware of the way that embodiment contributes to the appearance of the
“outside” world. In this sense, the body flows outwards. This manner of
being—as flowing outwards—is how the body exists in our everyday
understanding of and engagement with reality—the kind of under-
standing at work before the perspectival shift and the establishment of
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Suomen
Kansan Vanhoja Runoja ynnä myös
Nykyisempiä Lauluja 2
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Suomen Kansan Vanhoja Runoja ynnä myös Nykyisempiä

Lauluja 2

Compiler: Zacharias Topelius

Release date: January 30, 2024 [eBook #72833]

Language: Finnish

Original publication: Turku: J. C. Frenckell ja Poika, 1823

Credits: Jari Koivisto

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUOMEN KANSAN

VANHOJA RUNOJA YNNÄ MYÖS NYKYISEMPIÄ LAULUJA 2 ***
SUOMEN KANSAN VANHOJA RUNOJA YNNÄ MYÖS NYKYISEMPIÄ LAULUJA II

Koonnut ja pränttiin antanut,

Z. TOPELIUS

Läänin Lääkäri ja Ritari

Turussa, Präntätty J. C Frenckellin ja Pojan tykönä, 1823.

SISÄLLÄPITO:

Vanhoja Runoja.

Pistoksen Synty.
Ilmarisen kosiominen.
Maon eli kärmeen Synty.
Sikaliskon Synty.
Mehiläisen Synty.
Väinämöisen kaikenlaisia toimituksia.
Rauan Synty.
Talvikon Sanat.
Ähkyn Sanat.
Pakkaselle.
Merimiesten Rukous Ilmariselle.
Rukous, jolla Ahto kutsuttiin.
Päivän koittaissa.

Nykyisempiä Lauluja.

Lystilline Runolaulu Kala-Kukosta.

Sinä 24 päivänä Kesäkuuta 1791.
Kirkkoherra Joh. Laguksen ja Neitsyn Benedicta
Lovisa Kraftmannin hääpidoissa.
Ajan käyttämisestä.
Merimiehet.
Neion valitus.
Koira joka kuljetti lihamurua suusansa joen poikki. Satu.
Loru.

Lukioille.

Muutamalta maan-mieheltä kehotettu ilmottamaan näistä

vanhoista runoista, misä maan-paikasa kuki on veisattu taikka löytty,
josta tiedosta kaikenmoisia valistuksia mahtais noudatettaa sekä
Suomen kielen selitykseksi että entisten tapojen ja elokeinoin
tuntemiseksi kusakin maasa, saan minä nyt tiedoksi jättää että:
Ensimmäisen Osan runoista ovat Laulajan alku ja loppu virret,
Kanteleen synty, Väinämöisen kosiominen ja Kalevan poika Pohjan
maalta, Kemin tienoilta kotosin, Oluen teko, Väinämöinen ja
Joukamoinen, Mailman alku munasta ja Venehen teko Arkkangelin
läänistä ja Vuokkiniemen pitäjästä, Kärmehen synty Kajanin puolesta
ja Jauho-Runo Savon maalta. Täsä toisesa osasa ovat Pistoksen
synty, Ilmarisen kosiominen, Väinämöisen kaikenlaiset toimitukset ja
Rauan synty Arkkangelin läänistä ja kaikki muut Pohjan maalta.

Kuitenkin löytyy monisa, vaikka toisistaan kaukoisisa maan-

paikoisa jäänöksiä ja sekoituksia samoista lauluista, jotka osottavat
yhteisen vanhan aikasen alun. Niin olen löynny Rauan Synnyt sekä
Karjalasta että synkiältä Pohjan perältä, melkeen yhtä pitävät, vaikka
ei yhdenkään niin täydellisen kuin se joka täsa on kerrottu.
Muutamista keksitään myös etelämpi sekä runoin että kansan
syntymämaja, koska esimerkiksi Lapin maan rajoilla Runo mainittee
tammipuusta, joka ei luonnan kasva koko Pohjan maalla.

Nykyisinä aikoina ovat ne vanhat runolaulut Pohjan lahden

rantamailta kokonansa kadonneet. Niitä veisataan nyt ainoastansa
Suomen itäisillä äärillä, vaan erinomattain muutamisa pitäjisä
vanhasa luoteisesa Venäjän maasa, josa lavialta asuu selvä Suomen
kansa alku puhtaudesa ja arvosa.

Vanhoja Runoja.

Pistoksen Synty.

Nelj' on neittä, kolm' uroista,

Yhen niityn niittäjiä
Min' on niitty, sen haravoitti,
Senpä karhilla veteli.
Tuli kokko Turjan maalta,
Laskien Lapista lintu
Syömähän kylän kiroja,
Lainehia lappamahan:
Se poltti porolla heinät,
Kypenillä kyyvätteli.
Tuuli tuli Pohjolasta,
Tuonne tuuli tuhat vei,
Vaaran vankan liepiöhön.
Meren mustihin mutihin,
Pimeihin pyörteihin,
Tarkkahan Tapiolahan.
Siellä miehet mettä juopi,
Simoa sirettölööpi.
Siihen kasvo kaunis tammi,
Vesa verratoin yleni;
Olovahk'on oksiltahan,
Leviähk' on lehviltähän.
Pietti pilvet juoksemasta,
Hattarat hasertamasta.
Ikävä imehnosille,
Kavelo vein kaloille
Ilman päivän paistamata,
Kuun kuumottamata:
Katsellen kanervo juuret,
Jakoallen hienot heinät
Etsitään tammen kaatajata.
Pikku mies merestä nousi,
Uro aallosta yleni,
Kolmen sormen korkeuinen,
Pystön peukalon pituunen.
Sill' on kassa kantapäässä,
Nännit polvessa eessä,
Pikku kirvehet käessä,
Vaski varsi kirveessä,
Pääs' on paasinen kypärä,
Jalois' on kiviset kengät,
Hyiset kintaat käessä;
Hyistä kelkoa vetäävi,
Hyistä tammia taluuvi.
Hyys' on ilmat, jääs' on järvet,
Hallas' on hamehen helmat.
Himelöövi kirvestähän
Viiellä virosimella,
Kuuella kovasimella,
Seitsämällä sieran päällä,
Kaheksalla kannikolla.
Astua tuhutteloo
Juurella ryti-morain,
Äkähillä puun punasen.
Iski puuta kirvehellä,
Tammia tasa terällä:
Eipä ollut aikoakaan,
Taitto tammen, maahan kaato,
Latvan suurehen suvehen
Tyvin työnti Pohjolahan.
Hän tuon sanoiksi virtti:
Tuosta noita nuolet saisi,
Ampuja pahat piilet,
Oksista tulisen tammen,
Äkähistä puun punasen.
Paha pääty kuulomassa,
Jumala tähystämässä.
Kolm' on poikoa pahalla
Yks on rujo, toinen rampa,
Kolmas on peri-sokia;
Rujo jousten jännitsiä,
Rampa nuolien vanuja,
Ampuja peri-sokia.
Varret tammesta vanuuvi,
Päät teköö tervaksista.
Millä nuita sulatahan,
Sulatahan, karretahan?
Maon mustilla verillä,
Hiuksilla Hiien neien,
Varpusen vivuttimilla.
Ampu yhen nuoliahan,
Valitsi parahan varren,
Maa emää jalkoihin:
Tahto maa Manalle mennä,
Hieta harju halkiella.
Ampu toisen nuoliahan,
Valitsi parahan varren,
Päällä päähän taivoseen:
Tahto taivonen haleta,
Ilman kaaret katkeilla.
Ampu nuolen kolmannenkin
Ylitse meren yheksän,
Meri puolen kymmenettä,
Hiitolan kivi mäkehen,
Kalvatellen kalliosta
Ihoon alastomahan,
Varsin vaatteettomahan.
Itse virkki, nuin saneli:
Tuo nuoli perittänee,
Kutsu Hiien Hiitolasta,
Jumaloista Jukko-selän
Syömähän tätä pahoa,
Luonnotarta loppamahan:
Juokse korvet konteina,
Oravina kuusen oksat,
Kärppänä kiven koloot,
Veit on saukkona samoon — —
Ota Piru pistoksesi
Keitolainen keihääsi,
Äkähäsi Älön poika
Verisistä vaattehista,
Hurmehisista sovista,
Urohosta uhkaavasta,
Miehestä möksevästä,
Ihosta ihmenos raukan,
Emon tuoman ruumihista
Ennen päivän nousemista.
Koi jumalan koittamista,
Isäntäsi itkemässä,
Muorisi murehtimassa
Verisellä mättähällä,
Verisillä kyynelillä:
Otas — urohosta uhkaavasta,
Miehestä mökisevästä.

Ilmarisen Kosiominen.

Annikk' oli saaren neiti,

Se oli poukkujen pesiä,
Vaattehitten valkasia,
Sinisen meren selällä,
Laavun laiturin nenässä,
Niemessä nenättömässä,
Saaressa sanattomassa;
Loipa silmäns luotehelle,
Käänti päätä päivän alle,
Keksi mustasen merellä,
Sinervöisen lainehilla.
Hän tuon sanoiksi virtti:
"Kuin ollet Isäni pursi,
Veikon vestämä venonen,
Käännätes kohin kotia,
Perin muille valkamoille.
Kuin ollet vesi hakonen
Vesi päälläsi vetele.
Kuin ollet vesi kivinen
Vesi päällesi vetele.
Kuin sie ollet lintuparvi,
Niin sie lentohon leviä.
Kuin ollet vanha Väinämöinen
Niin pakinoille painehile".
Tuopa vanha Väinämöinen
Se pakinoille paineli.
Lasutteli matkamiestä,
Kysytteli tien käviää:
"Kunne läksit Väinämöinen"?
"Läksin lohta pyytämähän".
"Tuosta tunnen Väinämöisen,
Tuon vanhan valehtelian.
Toisin ennen miun isäni,
Toisin valta vanhempani,
Verkkoja venehen täysi,
Lasuksia laiva kaikki".
"Jo vainen valehtelinki".
"Kunne läksit Väinämöinen"?
"Läksin hanhien ajohon
Puna suisen korjelohon".
"Tuosta tunnen Väinämöisen
Tuon vanhan valehtelian
Toisin ennen miun isäni.
Toisin valta vanhempani.
Suur' oli koira kahlehissa
Suuri jousi jäntehissä".
"Jo vainen valehtelinkin".
"Kuin et tosin sanone,
Käännän purtesi kumohon".
Täytyypä tosin sanoa.
"Läksin neittä kosiomahan
Pimiästä pohjolasta,
Miesten syömästä kylästä,
Urohon upottajasta".
Annikk' oli saaren neiti,
Se oli poukkujen pesiä,
Vaattehitten valkasia,
Käsin käänti vaattehia.
Koprin helmahan kokosi,
Meni juossua pajahan,
Hän tuon sanoiksi virtti:
"Oi on Seppä veikkoseni!
Takoja ijän ikuinen!
Otettihin ostettusi,
Satoin markoin maksettusi,
Tuhansin lunastettusi,
Kolmin vuosin kosiottusi".
Lankesit pihet pivoisin,
Vaipusi vasara käestä,
Meni savuna pihallen.
"Oi emoni kantajani,
Lämmitä saloa sauna,
Pian pirtti riunuttele
Pikkusilla pilkehilla,
Lai tiimaista poroa,
Tuo sie paita palttinainen,
Tuo sie kauhtana kaponen
Päälle paian palttinaisen,
Tuo sie ussakka utunen
Päälle kauhtanan kapoisen"
Teki olkisen hevoisen,
Pani varsan valjahisin,
Ruskian reen etehen,
Laski virkkoa vitalla,
Helähytti helmispäällä.
Virkku juoksi, matka joutu,
Reki vieri, tie lyheni.
Tuli Hiitolan kotihin.
Hiitolan koirat haukkumahan,
Ilman lukku luksuttamaan.
Itse virkki, noin saneli:
"Jok' on valmis valvattini
Valmis valvateltavasi"?
"Ei ole valmis valvattisi
Valmis valvateltavasi.
Kuin sä kyntänet kyisen pellon
- Kärmehisen käännättelet
Miesten, miekkojen terillä,
Naisten neulojen nenillä".
Sata sarvi Hiien härkä
Pajan teki polvillahan,
Sitten kynti kyisen pellon,
Kärmehisen käännytteli
Miehen miekkojen terillä,
Naisten neulojen nenillä.
"Jok' on valmis valvattini
Valmis valvateltavani"?
"Ei ole valmis valvattisi
Valmis valvateltavasi.
Kuin kylpenet kyisen kylvön
Rauta-kylvön rapsuttanet".
"Oi Ukko, yli-Jumala
Tahi taata taivahainen!
Nossas pilvi luotehelta,
Toinen suurelta suvelta,
Kolmas kohta koillisesta;
Nepä yhteen yhytä,
Lommakkohon loukahuta
Sa-a lunta sauan varsi
Kiehittele keihäs varsi
Nuille kuumille kiville
Palavoille Paateroille".
 Sitte kylpi kyisen kylvön,
Rauta-kylvön rapsutteli.
"Jok' on valmis valvattini,
Valmis valvateltavani"?
"Ei ole valmis valvattisi,
Valmis valvateltavasi.
Kuin saanet Hiitolan joesta
Hauin hirmu-hampahisen
Kalan suuren miesten syöjän"
Sitte tuli tuskaksi,
Pahon loiksi paineli.
Tuo oli seppo Ilmarinen
Teki rautasen kokon,
Kuin on hauki sukelteleksi
Niin on kokko liiteleksi,
Liiteleksi, laateleksi.
Tuonpa kokko koprin kavahti
Saipa kokko kynsihinsä.
"Jok' on valmis valvattini,
Valmis valvateltavani"?
"Jo on valmis valvattisi,
Valmis valvateltavasi".

Kotia tultuansa kohtaisi Ilmarinen Äitinsä, joka paljon moitti tätä

miniätä sanoten: "Luulin minä paremmaksi". Jonka jälken Ilmarinen
meni pajaansa ja muutti tytön Lokaksi. Lokana lentää siis nyt
vanhempi Hiitolan tyttäristä. Väinämöinen otti sitte eronsa,
odottaaksensa nuorempata sisarta.
Maon eli Kärmeen Synty.

Souti Syöjätär vesiä,

Tuli kurkku turjutteli.
Lapa lieto lainehia,
Punasella purjehella.
Laski kuolan laitumelle
Putken rautasen sisähän,
Paksun heinän palteheseen.
Tuuli tuli, tuon kokosi,
Aalto rannalle ajeli
Varalle teräsperälle,
Vankan vasken karvaselle;
Vesi sen pitkäksi venytti,
Paisti päivä pehmiäksi.
Siihen Herra hengen antoi,
Piru silmät siunaeli,
Lempo leukaluut sukesi.
Mistä hampaat häjyllä?
Orahasta Tuonen otran.
Mistä kieli kelvottoman?
Hiitolaisen heinä hanko.
Mistä pää pahalle pantu?
Välisestä Väinättären.

Sikaliskon Synty.
 Sikalisko Hiien silmä,
Se on vaskesta valettu,
Kasarista kannettuna.
Vingas vankaan makasi,
Kanto kohtua kovoa,
Kiikutteli, röyhytteli
Rannalla rekeä vasten,
Pinon pitkän reunan alla.
Tullus tulla taivahasta,
Kekäleenä keikuttele,
Tule työsi tuntemahan,
Pahasi parantamahan!
Voi on suusi, voi on kieles.
Sima suustasi suloa,
Mesi heitä kielestäsi,
Kipehille voitehiksi!
Haavoille parantehiksi!
Juos viinana vihasi,
Olunna omat pahansi,
Mennä mieli karvahaksi,
Läpi luisen pää-lakesi,
Läpi haisu-hammastasi,
Vahtaasi vaskisehen,
Kupeheesi kultaihiseen!
Suluon sun vihasi!
Suli voi sulattaisa,
Rasva räyvyteltäisä,
Sulemmat sinun vihasi,
Sulempi sinä itekkin.
Mehiläisen Synty.

Mehiläinen ilman lintu,

Lähe mettä noutamahan,
Simoa tavottamahan
Meren yheksän ylihte,
Meri puolen kymmenettä;
Ota vastat siiviksesi,
Lapioinen purstoksesi.
Vielä on aikoa vähänen
Pikkuruinen piramata.
Jo tulla tuhutteloo,
Saaha hypelöittelöö;
Kuusi on kuppia käessä,
Seihtemän selän takana,
Sata muuta muskulata.
Missä on mettä, kussa vettä,
Missä voietta hyvää.
Koita Jesus kielelläsi
Suullasi sula Jumala,
Mikä on paras voitehista,
Kaikista kahteista,
Joka kaikkein pätöö,
Eineän kelpoaa;
Sillä voian voipunutta,
Pahoin tullutta parannan,
Läpi luun, läpi jäsenen,
Keskeä kivuttomaksi,
Päältä kivuttomaksi,
Alta aivan terveheksi.
Vieriltä viattomaksi,
Sanan voimalla Jumalan,
Aina Jesuksen avulla.

Väinämöisen kaikenlaisia Toimituksia.

Pohjan akka harva hammas,

Kuuli miehen itkevänsä,
Urohon urisevansa.
"Ei oo itku lasten itku,
Eikä itku naisten itku,
Itku on partasuun urohon,
Urina Uvantolaisten,
Jouhi leuvan jorjottama."
Syötti miehen, juotti miehen
Pani varsan valjasehen
Ruskian reen etehen,
Läksi siitä katsomahan,
Laski virkkoa vitsalla
Helähytti helmi vyöllä;
Ei virkku vitsatta juokse.
Helmin lyömättä hevonen.
Seppä vastaan tuloovi.
Sano Seppä Veiollensa:
"Voi sie vanha Väinämöinen,
Mit' olet paholla mielin.
Kuta kallella kypärinä"?
Sano vanha Väinämöinen;
"Ompa syytä ollakseni,
Lainasin Enosi lapsen
Pohjon pitkään perään,
Miesten syömähän kylään,
Urosten upottajain".
Siitä Seppo Ilmarinen
Viitiseksi, vaatiseksi,
Rauta paitoin paneksi.
Luostuhus on meis lujempi,
Rauta paiasa parempi.
Käsi on oron ohjaksessa,
Toinen neitosen nisissä.
Päivät sampua takuoo,
Yöt neittä lepyttelöö,
Saapi sampon valmihiksi,
Neitysen lepytetyksi.
Pohjon akka, harva hammas
Saatto sitte sammon tuonne
Pohjolan kivi-mäkeen,
Yheksän lukun taaksi,
Vaaran vaskeen takana.
Sano vanha Väinämöinen
Sepälle Ilmariselle:
"Tavo kuokka kolmi tjorpa,
Jolla saisin sammon tuolta
Pohjolan kivi-mäestä
Yheksän lukun takoa,
Lukut sormin loukuttelen".
Siit on vanha Väinämöinen
Sormin soitti kanteletta,
Kielin kanteleen pakasi,
Nukuttihin pohjon kanssa.
Siitä vanha Väinämöinen
Saapi sitte sammon tuolta
Pohjolan kivi mäestä,
Yheksän lukun takoa.
Siitä vanha Väinämöinen
Laski pitkin Pohjon merta.
Muurahainen murha poika
Se kusi kuren jalalle,
Kurki laski kumman äänen,
Parkasi pahan säveleen.
Havaitsi pohjan akka,
Meni sampoo katsomaan:
"Jok' on täältä sampo saatu
Yheksän lukun takoa
Pohjolan kivi mäestä"?
"Jo on täältä sampo saatu
Yheksän lukun takoa
Pohjolan kivi mäestä"?
Pohjon akka harva hammas
Läksi sampoo tapoamaan
Vyöltä vanhan Väinämöisen.
Renki vanhan Väinämöisen,
Iki Liera Tieran poika,
Sill' on purje puun nenässä,
Katso iän, katso lännen,
Katso pitkin Pohjan merta:
"Nyt tuloo Pohjan pursi,
Sota hanka hailattaapi".
Näki sen vanha Väinämöinen,
Löysi piitä pikkarainen,
Tosin tauloa vähänen,
Senkin mestäsi merehen,
Kaotti kamalon vasemman
Oikiasta olka päästä,
Juoksi puhki pohjan pursi
Sota hanka halki lenti.
Pohjan akka harva hammas
Vastat siiveksi sitoo,
Sat' on miestä siiven alla.
Tuhat on kynän tutkamessa.
Siitä vanha Väinämöinen
Nosti miekkansa merestä,
Lappionsa alta laian
Siitä hän siipiä sivalti.

Rauan Synty.

Palosell' on paljon maita,

Paljo maita, paljo soita,
Pahana palo-kesänä,
Tuli-vuonna voimatonna
Jäi vähän palamatonta
Tuiman tunturin loalla,
Suuremman suun selällä:
Jäi yksi imehno raukka
Paikalle palanehelle,
Jo sitäkin palo vähäsen
Vasempia varpahia;
Kaiempia kantapäitä;
Luoputteli ruppiansa,
Kaaputteli karstojansa,
Heräsehen hettiöhön,
Läikkyvähän lähteheseen.
Siitä synty rauan synty.
Missä sillon rauta säily
Pahana palo-kesänä,
Tuli-vuonna voimatonna?
Tuolla sillon rauta säily
Tuolla säily, tuolla piili
Kahen kantosen välissä,
Koivun kolmen juuren alla.
Vaan ei viellä sielläkänä
Ei perän pereäkänä.
Tuolla sillon rauta säily,
Tuolla säily, tuolla piili
Sisällä sinisen uuhen
Vaski lampahan vatsassa.
Eipä vielä sielläkänä.
Tuolla sillon rauta säily,
Vyöllä vanhan Väinämöisen,
Kolmi-jatkossa tupessa.
Eipä vielä siellälläkänä.
Ei perän pereäkänä.
Tuolla sillon rauta säily,
Tuolla säily, tuola piili
Nuoren neitosen nisissä,
Kasvavaisen kainalossa.

***

Oli ennen neljä neittä,

Koko kolme morsianta,
Lypsit maahan maitoansa,
Uhkutit utariansa.
Yksi lypsi mustan maion.
Toinen valkian valutti
Kolmas on veri punasen.
Joka lypsi mustan maion,
Siitä synty melto-rauta;
Joka valkian valutti,
Siitä on teräs sekanen;
Joka on veri punasen,
Siit' on tehtynä teräkset,
Rakettuna rauan syöntö.
Ei rauta kova olisi
Ilman kärmehen kävettä,
Maon mustan muujuhita.
Herheläinen Hiien lintu
Se katto katon rajasta,
Alta tuohen tuiotteli,
Rautoja rakentaissa,
Teräksiä tehtäissä
Kanto vettä kielellänsä
Tuohon Ilmarin pajahan.
Siitä seppo Ilmarinen
Itse koitti kielellänsä,
Hyvin maisto mielellänsä.
"Ei nämät hyvät minulle
Teräksen teko vesiksi,
Rautojen rakennus maiksi".
Mehiläinen ilman lintu
Lenti tuonne liipotteli,
Lenti soita, lenti maita
Ylitse meren yheksän,
Meri puolen kymmenettä.
Otti mettä kielellänsä
Seittämästä heinän päästä
Kuuen ruohosen nenästä,
Kanto Seppälän pajaan.
Seppä koitti kielellänsä,
Hyvin maisto mielellänsä.
"Kas näm' on hyvät minulle
Teräksen teko-vesiksi,
Rautojen rakennus-maiksi.
Voi sinua rauta raukka
Rauta raukka, koito kuona,
Teräs tenho päivällinen!
Kuin sä vannot veljeksyttä
Tulen tuomarin eessä,
Alla ahjon Ilmarisen;
Et sanonut koskevasi,
Söit sä vaivanen valasi
Kuin sä vestit veliäsi,
Lastusit emonsi lasta
Veren päästit juoksemahan
Punasen putoamahan.
Ei se maahan maito joua,
Kumpuhun Ulosten kulta,
Miesten hempo heinikköhön;
Niin on kaunis kun on kallis
Miesten hinnasta palava,
Urohosta kelpoava.
Veri seiso niin kuin seinä,
Asu hurme niin kuin aita,
Lihan lämpösen sisällä!
Mitä tuohon tuotanee,
Ja kuta veettänee
Salvaksi samu-ojalle,
Veren tiellen telkimeksi?
Salvaksi sana Jumalan,
Tuke Herran tukkioksi.
Ukko kultanen kuningas
Vaari vanha taivahainen,
Taivahallinen Jumala,
Pane paksu peukolosi,
Liitä sormesi lihalle
Paikaksi pahan veräjän,
Tämän kulman tukkimeksi!
Josk' et siitä kyllä tulle,
Viel' on muitakin sanoja:
Neitsy Maria emonen,
Rakas äiti armollinen,
Tuo turves tuan takoa,
Sammal saunan seinän alta
Tulialle tukkioksi!
Neiti Maria emonen,
Rakas äiti armollinen,
Tavu päästäsi tavota,
Kulta lumme luiahuta,
Simo silkki rihmallasi,
Pane palmikoisellasi!
Ettei maito maahan juokse,
Kumpuhun Ulosten kulta,
Miesten hempo heinikköhön
Veri seiso niin kuin seinä,
Asu hurme niin kuin aita
Lihan lämpösen sisällä!"

Talvikon Sanat.

Lumi-selkä Luppanainen,
Kaunis karva Röyhytyinen,
Uppo valkia valimo,
Nunnoseni, lintuseni,
Orren päällinen omena,
Parren päällinen parahin,
Naisten lukkohin lukia,
Avainten arvelia,
Kiulun korvan kierteliä
Nouse puulle putkullesi,
Lepän lengolle ylene,
Nouse koivun konkelolle!
Ähkyn Sanat.

Ähky poika on Ähmeröinen,

Toinen poika on Tohveroinen,
Kolmasi Korentolainen,
Tehty suosta, tehty maasta,
Pantu äimän kärkösistä
Veen vahesta valettu,
Mitäs konna kuohaelet,
Veen vahti vaivaelet,
Lähe konna kohustani,
Mato maksani raosta,
Puremasta, nietämastää,
Syömästä, kaluamasta.
Tuonne ma sinun manoan,
Meren Rutian partahalle,
Siellä itkeepi isäsi,
Valittaapi vanhempasi,
Keittävät kuhurin kattilata,
Hormusimmilla nutuilla,
Verisillä vaattehilla.
Ellös tulko ennen sieltä,
Ennen kuin tulen noutamahan
Yheksällä oinahalla,
Yhen uuhen kantamalla.
Ellös tullo ennen sieltä,
Ennen kuin tulen noutamahan
Yheksällä härkäsellä,
Yhen lehmän kantamalla.
Ellös tullo ennen sieltä,