Once Again on External Mindfulness
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Once Again on External Mindfulness Bhikkhu Anālayo 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The proposal to understand an external application of mindfulness to refer to being objective rather than subjective is not well supported by the relevant sources and fails to be directly applicable to actual meditation practice. The most commonly accepted understanding in Buddhist sources and contemporary research, which considers external mindfulness to refer to being aware of other persons, remains the most meaningful and applicable explanation. Adopting this understanding can open the door to new avenues in mindfulness research, proceeding from the widely recognized internal dimensions of mindfulness, concerned with what happens within a practitioner, to giving more explicit room to the potential of the same mental quality in understanding and relating to others. Keywords External mindfulness . Prosocial dimensions of mindfulness . satipaṭṭhāna . smṛtyupasthāna . subjective and objective
According to Buddhist sources, mindfulness can be cultivated internally and externally. The implications of an external application are of considerable interest, which has stimulated two recent publications that came out nearly simultaneously: Anālayo 2020b (published online 15 May 2020) and Lin (2019) which, in spite of its official date, was actually published in 2020 (the online publication was first announced on H-Buddhism on 20 May 2020). Following up some of the suggestions that have emerged in this way can help to ascertain the probable significance of cultivating mindfulness externally in early Buddhist meditation theory.
A New Perspective? Acknowledging the fact that contemporary scholarship tends to be in general agreement that externally practiced mindfulness refers to other persons, Lin (2019, p. 350) argued in support of a different interpretation on the grounds that the grammar involved had so far not been understood correctly by traditional exegesis and modern scholars:
* Bhikkhu Anālayo
1
Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, 149 Lockwood Road, Barre, MA 01005, USA
previous scholarship has not taken sufficient account of the fact that “internally” (adhyātmikaṃ/ajjhattaṃ) and “externally” (bahirdhā/bahiddhā) in the Satipaṭṭhānasutta are adverbs. Because they deal with these two terms as if they are adjectives qualifying the nouns for the four objects of contemplation, most of the commentaries and most modern studies alike focus on distinguishing what objects are internal and what are external. This in itself interesting suggestion could be explored by surveying how the relevant Pāli instruction has been translated by previous scholarship. This would show if the prevalent understanding is indeed based on confusing an adverb with an adjective. As an example, the phrase that in Pāli discourses describes contemplation of the body can be taken up (the phrase in Pāli takes two forms; one is iti ajjhattaṃ vā kāye kāyānupassī viharati, bahiddhā vā kāye kāyānupassī viharat
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