The Way Of Mindfulness

The Way Of Mindfulness by Soma Thera brings together the Discourse on the Arousing of Mindfulness (Satipatthana Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya No. 10 and Digha Nikaya No. 22) and the excerpts from its commentary given here deal with the method of training for insight (vipassana) according to the Buddha’s teaching. The text of the Satipatthana Sutta is central to the teaching of vipassana meditation. This book contains a fifteen-page abbreviated version of this sutta and a translation of Soma Thera’s commentary.

In The Way Of Mindfulness, the details and the spirit of the method are shown in the commentary-excerpts translated here. These were at first intended for the use of a few friends. Later when a group of sympathetic students of the Dhamma decided to get these printed, a translation of the Discourse had to be included to make the compilation coherent to the general reader. This book, The Way of Mindfulness, contains all the authorized instructions on Satipatthana meditation passed down in the Theravada tradition: the Satipatthana Sutta stemming from the Buddha himself (in the more concise version of the Majjhima Nikaya, which omits the detailed analysis of the Four Noble Truths found in the Digha Nikaya’s Maha-satipatthana Sutta); the commentary by Buddhaghosa; and selections from the tika by Dhammapala.

The book was originally compiled in the late 1930s by Ven. Soma Thera (1898-1960), a bhikkhu of Sri Lanka, and has been maintained in print since the early 1940s. The Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy has published the work since 1967 in several editions.