Customer Reviews

Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are several good books on the Buddha's teachings known as The Four Foundations of Mindfulness but Analayo's recent work is among the most thoroughly rendered. Perhaps because it was written for his PhD thesis, his philological exegesis and his notes are meticulous. And because he is both a scholar of Buddhism and a practicing Buddhist monk in the long tradition of panditas, his translation and commentary are lively and applicable.

I highly recommend this book.

The venerable Analayo does an expert job in combining a scholarly exposition on this Sutta while keeping it from being dry. As a lay person I found this book to be hugely informative and helpful to my practice.

Possibly the best book on meditation and reflection that I have come across. I used it as my main book on a 4 week solitary- very impressed. Very thorough and very inspired and practical. I got the impression of a scholar who believes in the possibility of Complete Enlightenment.

I recommend this book for people with previous exposure to the suttas, and the Sattipatthana, who would like an in depth, scholarly read complete with extensive footnotes. I am part of a Buddhist study group and we are currently reading a chapter a month, highlighting passages, taking notes and then discussing each . As a meditator with ten years experience I have found it to be valuable and relevant to my practice as well as to my understanding of this important sutta.

Awarding X number of stars for this book is somewhat arbitrary. Anyone who is inclined to read reviews of a book on the Sattipatthana Sutta is most likely a practicing meditator, and there's the rub. The real issue is whether or not this book will assist you in your practice. It's more a matter of you than the book.

As you parse the reviews, and try and determine the book's merits, sometimes in spite of the reviewers' preferences, several things should become clear. This book is thorough, dense and scholarly. Does that suit you?

My characterization of this book is the same; it is indeed thorough, dense and scholarly. This judgment is relative; it stands as a comparison made against my own reading of about a dozen books on specifically on meditation practices, mostly in the Theravada tradition.

The best advice I can give is that if you're interested in the application of the Satipatthana Sutta, read Goenka's "The Discourse Summaries," whereas if you're interested in the analysis of the Satipatthana Sutta, this would be a better choice. The caveat, of course, is that analysis and application do not preclude on another.

One final word. We of the West have a proclivity towards Buddhism from the neck up. We're more likely to be found reading about meditating, than we are to be found meditating.

"May we completely realize the Tathagata's true meaning," is part of the gatha that encourages Buddhist trainees to understand what the Buddha said. This book helps by clarifying one of the Buddha's discourses on meditation.

I'd previously read the Satipatthana Sutra and thought, "That's nice but so what?" In this book the author explains why the sutra is important by subjecting it to an in-depth analysis and pulling out insights I didn't know were there. Much of the difficulty I've had understading Buddhist writing comes from technical terms. What do we mean by mindfulness, concentration, or the five skandas? I had a general idea but the definitions remained somewhat vague. The author cleared a lot of these terms up by giving the translations from Pali and by describing how they are used in the sutras. This will be a big help to me.

This is a wonderful book for the intermediate to advanced meditator. I heartily recommend it.

The form of meditation discussed in this work is generally known these days as 'mindfulness' meditation, or in other circles (e.g., the Goenka crowd) as 'vipassana' (often translated 'Insight' meditation). Analayo has written a wonderful treatise on this ancient form of Buddhist (or perhaps pre-Buddhist, as you'll see) form of practice. But to avoid disappointment, you must know what this book is and is not.

It is not really a practice manual in any strict sense, although of course many practical insights can be gleaned from its pages. It is not something most people will ever finish reading through, although it is very worth reading. It is not written for the casual reader of popular books on Buddhism, though I feel it is essential for anyone who wants a deep understanding of early Buddhist meditation and philosophy.

What this book is (in my estimation): a highly detailed, densely academic discussion of meditation as viewed by the earliest Buddhist practitioners (the sources cited are almost exclusively from the Pali cannon) and/or the Buddha himself, to the extent that you consider the Pali sutras an accurate rendition of his teachings. Certainly there are modern meditation teachers' thoughts thrown in as well, and even citations of relatively recent neuroscientific work on meditation, but by and large this seems to be Buddhist meditation from the orthodox perspective.

There is nothing wrong with that at all, and I found it a very eye-opening read, if a rather long haul. The discussions are quite dense and the distinctions made, subtle; what I ended up doing was reading 10-15 pages of this book each morning after meditating and with a cup of tea. There is a lot going on in this book and it's well worth reading it slowly and digesting each chapter or section before moving on. There is an immense amount worth highlighting, as well, and coming back to later.

I'm conducting research on meditation and the brain for my Masters at the moment, and it was invaluable to me to have a detailed, scholarly, rational discussion of meditation, along with very precise definitions of many Pali terms - and Analayo's book provided just that.

One final note: ignore the occasional negative review here that suggests that such 'academic' discussions of meditation and enlightenment are counterproductive if your goal is the actual experience itself. The history of Buddhism is rife with scholar-saints, and Buddhism itself has been an intensely academic, scholarly religion since its very inception (as witnessed, e.g., by the memorization of the entire Pali cannon by the sangha!). There is no (necessary) conflict here between scholarly study and contemplative practice, and in fact I have always found the two reinforce one another very strongly.

Analoyo's Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization probably is better for serious students who wish to supplement their meditative practices with a solid intellectual foundation than beginning students and those simply curious about Buddhist meditation. This is a heavily researched and footnoted book that recommends a studious uptake.

This is NOT a book that will give detailed instructions on how to meditate, rather it tries to throughly explain the extensive material in the Satipatthana Sutta. Alaloyo writes simply but with an academic flavor. I personally found his treatment of pleasant feelings and the importance of joy and his treatment of Nibbana especially meaningful and integrative.

Ven. Analayo has woven together a "perfect storm" of a book. (Yes, it is that powerful.) In it, one finds a beautifully constructed deconstruction (in the Buddhist sense)of the Satipatthana Sutta, which also serves as a practical guide to using that great discourse as the basis of one's practice.

This is a very rewarding book.

This is not an easy read. Analayo's well nigh unique combination

of academic brilliance and practical mastery of the Dhamma has

made this the new classic commentary to the satipatthana sutta.

Analyzing the text word by word and drawing on his extensive

knowledge of everything published on the subject from the pali

scriptures all the way to modern meditation teachers, as well as

on his own meditative experience, the author avoids the pitfalls

of dogma and spreads out all the possible ways of working with

satipatthana in front of the astonished reader. For those who

can digest it, this small book probably contains everything you

ever wanted to know about meditation!