A guy I meditate with, he keeps bringing this up at dhamma talks, “What really is mindfulness?” I know it sounds like a very basic question, but he’s not an idiot, says plenty of intelligent things about the dhamma. He wouldn’t be the sort of person who knows technical meditation vocabulary or has read a lot of suttas, but he could if I pointed him to the right ones. (He is a lawyer, so must be used to reading a lot of texts.)
One thing I tried to tell him is that mindfulness is when you hold to the pure knowing quality of consciousness. When you perceive something (say a bodily feeling) before thoughts and reflection arise, the mind simply knows it. The sensation and [knowing the sensation] arise together. Keep knowing in that sense, split-second by split-second, and you are being mindful. (“Breathing in long, he understands: ‘I breathe in long’; or breathing out long, he understands: ‘I breathe out long.’ Breathing in short, he understands: ‘I breathe in short’; or breathing out short, he understands: ‘I breathe out short.’” – this to me points to mindfulness-as-knowing.)
Is that a good way to describe it to a student? Or does it risk being misunderstood somehow?
Is there a particular sutta that will clarify this for him?
It could be misunderstood actually. Sometimes sati is translated as mindfulness and sometimes awareness. We might think that when we know an object that this is sati.
I once heard a monk say that when crossing the road we need mindfulness. Then he gave an example of someone forgetting where they put their keys down and that this showed they had no sati.
However, knowing an object, crossing the road and remembering items can be done perfectly well without sati, as sanna and citta have these functions.
Sati only arises with kusala citta - so it is not merely a matter of being ‘aware’ in the common meaning of the word.
An example: right now we can focus on the area of our foot say or mouth or hand- and experience various sensations there - but that is merely concentration (and of course with sanna and citta) but no sati ..
Best thing is for you to understand what mindfulness is to know it yourself from the descriptions in the visuddhimagga which gives each cetasika a definition with characteristic, manifestion, function and proximate cause. i.e. Mindfulness.
141. (x) By its means they remember (saranti), or it itself remembers, or it is just mere remembering (sarana), thus it is mindfulness (sati). It has the characteristic of not wobbling. Its function is not to forget. It is manifested as guarding, or it is manifested as the state of confronting an objective field. Its proximate cause is strong perception, or its proximate cause is the foundations of mindfulness concerned with the body, and so on (see MN 10). It should be regarded, however, as like a pillar because it is firmly founded, or as like a door-keeper because it guards the eye-door, and so on.
Understand that and rattle that off and all will be impressed.
There is sati when we give, and with all types of kusala.
The type of sati of satipatthana arises in conjunction with wisdom, Thus: it is sati-sampajanna, mindfulness and clear comprehension.
It is a momentary arising of insight that understands to some degree the anattaness of a reality.
This profound type of mindfulness is only possible during a Buddhasasana, and only if there is enough accumulated understanding based on wise consideration of correct Dhamma.
The commentary to the satipatthana sutta The Section on the Modes of Deportment
The Buddha, after dealing in the aforesaid manner with body-contemplation in the form of respiration-meditation, in detail, said: “And further,” in order to deal exhaustively with body-contemplation, here, according to the meditation on the modes of deportment [iriyapatha].
Gacchanto va gacchamiti pajanati When he is going (a bhikkhu) understands: ‘I am going.’
In this matter of going, readily do dogs, jackals and the like, know when they move on that they are moving. But this instruction on the modes of deportment was not given concerning similar awareness, because awareness of that sort belonging to animals does not shed the belief in a living being, does not knock out the percept of a soul, and neither becomes a subject of meditation nor the development of the Arousing of Mindfulness.
Going. The term is applicable both to the awareness of the fact of moving on and to the knowledge of the (true) characteristic qualities of moving on. The terms sitting, standing and lying down, too, are applicable in the general sense of awareness and in the particular sense of knowledge of the (true) characteristic qualities. Here (in this discourse) the particular and not the general sense of awareness is to be taken. [b
From the sort of mere awareness denoted by reference to canines and the like, proceeds the idea of a soul, the perverted perception, with the belief that there is a doer and an experiencer. One who does not uproot or remove that wrong perception owing to non-opposition to that perception and to absence of contemplative practice cannot be called one who develops anything like a subject of meditation.