Dà niànchù jīng 大念處經
Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta — The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness Pali source-text translated by 鄧殿臣 (譯) and 趙桐 (譯)
About the work
A modern Chinese translation of the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta, the 22nd discourse of the Pali Dīgha-nikāya (Cháng-bù níjiā-yē 長部尼伽耶); also titled Sì niànchù jīng 四念處經 (“Four Foundations of Mindfulness Sūtra”). The discourse expounds the central Theravāda meditation method: the cattāro satipaṭṭhānā — fourfold mindfulness contemplation of kāya (body), vedanā (feeling), citta (mind), and dhamma (mental objects). Through this practice the practitioner penetrates the tilakkhaṇa (three marks) of anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering), and anattā (non-self), counters the four vipallāsa (perversions of suci, sukha, nicca, attā), and reaches nibbāna.
Abstract
The Pali Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta is among the most influential meditation discourses of the canon and is the foundational text of modern South-East Asian vipassanā meditation movements (Mahasi, U Ba Khin, S. N. Goenka, Pa Auk). A close cognate exists in Chinese as Niànchù jīng 念處經 (T01n0026 §98, in the Madhyamāgama), translated in 397 by Saṃghadeva 僧伽提婆; comparison shows the Pali and Chinese versions to differ markedly in length and detail, the Pali being the more elaborated. Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna differs from Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta (Pali Majjhima-nikāya 10) chiefly in that the Mahā version expands the section on dhamma-anupassanā (contemplation of mental objects) with a detailed exposition of the cattāri ariya-saccāni (Four Noble Truths). The composition window is conservatively given here as 4th–3rd c. BCE.
The translation is from the Sri Lankan Ministry of Buddhist Affairs Sinhala-printed Pali edition. Dèng Diànchén and Zhào Tóng note explicitly in the preface that the text is not in the Chinese Cháng-āhán jīng 長阿含 (T01n0001) — which lacks the Dīgha 22 — but appears in the Chinese Zhōng-āhán jīng 中阿含 j. 24 (i.e., the older Saṃghadeva translation, Niànchù jīng); Chinese readers are invited to consult both for comparative study.
Translations and research
- Anālayo, Bhikkhu, Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization (Birmingham: Windhorse, 2003) — standard contemporary English study; comparative use of the Chinese parallels.
- Anālayo, Bhikkhu, Perspectives on Satipaṭṭhāna (Cambridge: Windhorse, 2013) — sequel including manuscript-comparative material.
- Walshe, Maurice, The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya (Boston: Wisdom, 1995) — standard English of DN 22, pp. 335–350.
- Kuan Tse-fu, Mindfulness in Early Buddhism: New Approaches through Psychology and Textual Analysis of Pali, Chinese, and Sanskrit Sources (London: Routledge, 2008).
Other points of interest
The Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta is the canonical anchor for almost the entire modern global “mindfulness” movement — both in its Buddhist and its secular biomedical forms (Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, etc.). Dèng and Zhào’s Chinese translation is the first complete rendering directly from Pali available to Sinophone meditators (earlier Chinese practitioners worked from the older Niànchù jīng in the Zhōng-āhán).