sati
Pali · सति · sɐtɪ
sati (सति)
Sati is keeping-in-mind. The English “mindfulness” is a translation with a career of its own.
- smṛ / sarati
- to remember (Sanskrit smṛti, Pali sati)
Morphology
Pali sati, Sanskrit smṛti: memory, recollection, that which is borne in mind. In the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta it is a factor of the path: presence of mind with body, feeling, mind, and phenomena.
Semantic range
Memory, presence of mind, a path-factor, modern mindfulness.
History of the word
Twentieth-century “mindfulness” (especially via T. W. Rhys Davids and later clinical MBSR) is a modern English project. It has helped people. It is not identical with sati in the Pali canon.
A key source
Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta
MN 10 / DN 22.
Associated traditions
Parallels, not equivalents. Different attempts to notice something about knowing.
Sanskrit
smṛti
Recollection; also the name of remembered tradition.
English
mindfulness
A rendering; now a clinical and commercial word.
A distant linguistic echo
smṛti
Sanskrit · The older sibling; also “that which is remembered” as scripture.
How the word shifts
When sati becomes a stress-reduction technique, the path-context has been lifted away. Say so.
mindfulness
The memory in the root; the ethical and soteriological frame.
A story where the word matters
Nearby words
Neighbors, not translations of one concept.
From this word
If sati is a remembering, what, exactly, is not being forgotten?
One question remains
What does this word let us notice that English “consciousness” does not?
It lets us notice that some “mindfulness” is first a memory: not forgetting where you are.