TALK PRESENTED TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BUDDHA CENTER ON SUNDAY, MARCH 22, 2015 AND AGAIN ON SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2024 (REVISED). 

The Great Discourse on Radical Presence

Digha Nikaya 22

Country: Kuru
Locale: Kammasadhamma
Speaker: the Buddha
Date of Composition: 400-200 BCE

THEORY

Scholars see this discourse as one of the most important discourses of the Pali Canon. The Majjhima Nikaya represents it again in nearly identical language as the Satipatthana Sutta.

The title includes the central concept of the discourse, satipatthana. This is commonly translated as ‘mindfulness,’ a not very satisfactory translation that fails to capture the quality of intense mental concentration that characterizes this practice. The Pali Term Sati (Sanskrit: smṛti) means recollection, awareness, presence, vigilance, mental tracking, sustained attention grounded in ethical purpose. In practice, it refers to the ongoing presence of mind that watches phenomena as they arise, without clinging or forgetting. Thus, my proposed title for the discourse is the Great Discourse on Radical Presence. Other viable translations include focused awareness, lucid presence, attentive awareness, introspective attention, and cognitive vigilance.

This discourse serves as an early comprehensive guide to meditation for practitioners, including theory and practice that works through a series of graded insights that cultivate the dual practice of meditation and wisdom to achieve final emancipation.

The Buddha is staying in a market town of the Kurus called Kammasasdhamma. This is the same place as in the Great Discourse on Origination (Mahanidana Sutta). It is significant that two major doctrines of the Buddha’s teaching, the doctrines of interconnectedness and radical presence, were taught here. Bhikku Nanamoli remarks that Kammasadhamma may have been near modern Delhi.

Unlike most other discourses, the Buddha does not converse with a visitor but rather delivers a sermon directly to the monastics. The discourse simply records his sermon. Only one other discourse in the Digha Nikaya is like this, the Lion’s Roar on the Universal Monarch (Cakkavati-Sihanada Sutta, DN 26), which presents the Buddha’s famous advice to the monastics to be islands and refuges unto themselves with no refuge other than the teaching, affirming that the path to emancipation, like emancipation itself, is individual. Interestingly, the Buddha says that the way to do this is by cultivating the Four Foundations of Radical Presence.

The Buddha declares that the ekayano maggo leads to the purification of beings from the woe of existence. This was the Buddha’s original purpose when he abandoned the life of the world at the age of 29. This phrase is a compound of:

• eka = one
• ayana = going, path, way
• → ekāyana = “one-going,” “one-way,” “unified path,” or “direct path”
• maggo = path, road

Scholars generally translate this phrase as “direct path,” “a path that goes in one direction only,” “a path going one way only,” “a path of practice that goes in one direction only,” “a single path,” “the unified path.”  The sectarian mistranslation as “the only path” is rejected by virtually all serious scholars. The translation as “This ‘direct path’ consists of ‘the Four Foundations of Radical Presence.’ These consist of directing attention to the body, the feelings, the mind, and mind-objects.

Body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects seem to be associated purposely, in a kind of sequence that leads from the most “outer” level of experience, including our intuition of “embodiment,” to feelings, sentient mind itself, and finally the mental corollary and polarity of “body”—mind-objects, which are definitively “real” but intrinsically non-physical. Although they may influence the physical, Jung calls these four qualities the four functions and the totality they embody, the psyche. Body is sensation; feelings are feelings of pleasure, pain, and moral and aesthetic judgments; mind is thinking; and mind-objects are intuitions, immediate mental apprehensions that, like sensation, are simply “given.”

There is also a somewhat forced correlation of the Four Attentions with the Five Aggregates of form, feeling, consciousness, perception, and mental formations, so-called.

The discourse serves as a meditation manual. It lists and describes no less than twenty-one specific meditations, organized according to the Four Attentions—body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects—in what seems to represent an intentional progression toward a goal. The core message of the discourse, however, appears in a recurring “insight,” as Walshe, Nanamoli, and Bodhi call it, which is repeated at the end of each meditation as a kind of refrain:

[1] So he abides contemplating body as body internally, contemplating body as body externally, contemplating body as body both internally and externally. [2] He abides contemplating arising phenomena, abides contemplating vanishing phenomena in the body, he abides contemplating both arising and vanishing phenomena in the body. [3] Or else, mindfulness that ‘there is body’ is present to him just to the extent necessary for knowledge and awareness. And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. And that, monks, is how a monk abides contemplating body as body.

This text repeats nine times in the discourse, thus dividing the practices up into the divisions that follow:

1. Breathing;
2. Four Postures, Radical Presence, Reflection on the Body, Four Elements, Nine Charnel Ground Contemplations;
3. Feelings;
4. Mind;
5. Five Hindrances;
6. Five Aggregates;
7. Six Sense Bases;
8. Seven Factors of Enlightenment; and
9. Four Noble Truths.

1 and 2 pertain to the body, 3 to feelings, 4 to mind, and 5 through 9 refer to mind-objects. As one can see from the description, the starting point is the grossest level—the body—of what is immediately apprehensible —the internal. Making this the basis of meditation is an innovation of the Buddha’s teaching, as pointed out by Buddhaghosa (5^th century CE). As one becomes established in one’s meditation at each level, one progresses from the internal to the external, thence to both internal and external, in a sort of dialectic by which one realizes the underlying unity in duality. In the second exercise one converts the intuition of embodiment to the processes that constitute its content, contemplating phenomena as processes in their appearance and disappearance, and finally in both as complementary poles of a single process. Finally, one realizes the same meditation as the direct apprehension of body without any additional thought or consideration, i.e., without content. In this state, one experiences dispassion.

The same methodology applies to the body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects through a series of twenty-one practices. This serves as an example of the gradual path, by which one cultivates the qualities of enlightenment in an elementary progression in the same way in which one might build a house, starting with the foundation.

The final exercise in this path is the Fourth Meditative Attainment, which is a state of mindful equanimity characterized by indifference toward feelings of pleasure/pain, gladness/sadness, and all similar emotional dichotomies. The discourse identifies this state as dispassion and associates it with emancipation itself.

Thus, this sequence of tasks lays bare the whole structure of the Buddhist path as understood by the anonymous redactors of the Discourse on Radical Presence.

PRACTICE

1. Awareness of the Breathing. The first group of practices is called contemplation of the body, and the first exercise in this group is called awareness of breathing. The Pali Canon frequently mentions this exercise, which has a big reputation. The Buddha referred to it as “the Tathagata’s dwelling,” and practised it himself, even after his enlightenment experience. The Buddha said that the practice of awareness of the breathing can carry the aspirant all the way to emancipation, which raises the question of why the Buddha taught “eighty-four thousand” meditative techniques, including the twenty-one highlighted in this discourse. The stock answer is that different techniques suit different people, based on their personal needs and where they are on the path, i.e., their karma. For example, not all techniques lead to the highest goal; the mainstream view is that loving-kindness meditation only leads to rebirth in the Brahma realm, though this is contested. However, the fact that one technique alone is sufficient for enlightenment qualifies our understanding of the gradual path, which includes the notion that a sequence of yogas must be mastered before advanced practice can even begin (e.g., the Tibetan approach).

While such a hierarchical structure may be valuable to some, it is excessive to claim that it is mandatory. At best, one could assert that progressive practices are beneficial and effective for some, while others may (and do) pursue a single essential practice with equal success. Both gradual and instantaneous enlightenment (gradualism and subitism respectively) are implicit in the Pali Canon.

1. The First Practice. The first step in this practice is to enter a state of seclusion, whether in a forest, beneath a tree, or in an empty space. Next, one assumes a cross-legged position, the archetypal yoga posture. The body is held erect, and “mindfulness is established before him.” In some visual representations, this appears as a small floating sphere just beyond the tip of the nose. Walshe suggests this represents focusing attention on the breath, which has long been associated with vital energy, life force, and creativity in many ancient traditions (e.g., Skt. prāṇa). Thus, “mindfully he breathes in, mindfully he breathes out.” Without restricting or manipulating the breath, one observes the length of each breath as it flows in and out, whether long or short. Alongside this awareness, one incorporates the awareness of the body, calming the entire bodily process. This is the practice of awareness of breathing.
2. The Four Postures. The second exercise extends the principle of bodily awareness to walking, standing, sitting, and lying down—possibly the origin of walking meditation.
3. Radical Presence. The third exercise, Radical Presence, builds on the previous practice by extending radical presence to the ordinary activities of daily life. Radical Presence seems to develop from the Four Postures in both the range of activities and intensity. Walshe uses the term “know” in the Four Postures, but regarding Radical Presence, he uses the phrase “clearly aware of what he is doing.”
4. Reflection on the Parts of the Body. The fourth exercise is the reflection on the body,  involving rigorous self-examination. In other discourses, the cultivation of revulsion towards the body is suggested. However, one might argue that revulsion is merely another form of attachment (a passionate aversion as opposed to dispassion), meaning that this practice may be considered compensatory and transitional rather than a final state.
5. The Four Elements. This exercise continues the previous one by analyzing the body in terms of the four elements: extension, cohesion, temperature, and motion (distension), corresponding to earth, water, fire, and air. An intuitive interpretation might consider the body as composed of solids, liquids, heat, and gas (breath).
6. The Nine Charnel Ground Contemplations. The Nine Charnel Ground Contemplations involve meditating on corpses in various stages of decay, from a few days old to completely decomposed bones reduced to powder. By reflecting on these decaying bodies, one realizes that there is no essential difference between one’s body and fate and those of the corpses observed. The aim of this practice is to cultivate revulsion towards the body, leading to indifference. While difficult to practise in the West, this powerful meditation suggests parallels with similar tantric practices. For instance, the great Tantric adept Padmasambhava (8^th century) meditated in charnel grounds for twelve years.
7. Contemplation of Feelings. The second contemplation focuses on feelings, understood in a Jungian sense as sensations of pleasure, pain, or neutrality. The Buddha directs practitioners to continually identify feelings as pleasurable, painful, or neutral and to observe them without attachment.
8. Contemplation of the Mind. This practice is akin to the previous contemplation of feelings but focuses on awareness of mental states—such as lust, hatred (including emotions), delusion, distraction, and concentration—progressing toward liberation. This progression of mental states seems to follow a developmental sequence.
9. Contemplation of Mind-Objects. In Buddhism, the mind is regarded as a sense, akin to the eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body. Each sense has its corresponding objects, which are equally real (in a conventional sense). Recognizing the mind as a sixth sense implies that it too must have its objects, which are just as real as material objects. These objects are the dhammas—phenomena as they are in themselves.

Each sense is understood as threefold: the internal subjective aspect (a mere thought, no more real than a mirage), the external objective aspect (the object itself), and the phenomenological moment that binds them together to constitute “actual” experience.

The Buddha prescribes five exercises for the contemplation of mind-objects: the Five Hindrances, the Five Aggregates, the six internal and six external Sense Bases, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, and the Four Noble Truths. These are the psychological facts or laws that constitute the metaphysical framework of experience, much like physical laws in science.

Practising awareness of the hindrances helps the meditator disregard sensual desire, anger, sloth, restlessness, and doubt, all of which impede emancipation. When ignored, these hindrances dissipate, as they are creations of the mind. The meditator cultivates awareness of each hindrance, noting its presence, its arising and vanishing, and how to abandon attachment to it, preventing its recurrence.

The practice of the Five Aggregates teaches awareness of the arising and cessation of craving, or desirous attachment. These aggregates include form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. Mental formations are the factors underlying moral causality, including volition or intention.

The practice of the six internal and external Sense Bases involves recognizing the structural dynamics of subjectivity and objectivity, especially the phenomenological moment where they converge. The text lists ten fetters that arise within this conjunction: sensuality, resentment, pride, wrong views, doubt, desire for becoming, attachment to rites and rituals, jealousy, avarice, and ignorance. Identifying these fetters in the present moment enables one to abandon them.

Abandoning the fetters of the senses, the aggregates, and the hindrances, the practitioner learns to cultivate the Seven Factors of Enlightenment through self-observation. This involves observing the presence or absence of awareness, investigation, energy, delight, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity. “Energy” refers to the mental effort behind Right Effort, the sixth limb of the Noble Eightfold Path.

Finally, the Discourse on Radical Presence concludes with applying the Four Noble Truths to experience: “This is suffering,” “This is the cause of suffering,” “This is the cessation of suffering,” and “This is the cause of the cessation of suffering.” The Buddha identifies various forms of suffering, such as birth, aging, death, sorrow, lamentation, and pain.

Given so much suffering, it is no surprise that one might not wish to be reborn. However, the text reminds us that “this cannot be attained by wishing.”

Craving can only be extinguished through dispassion, not through desire for either existence or non-existence. The text counters the common, though mistaken, belief that the Buddha advocates pursuing non-being—an idea the Buddha specifically rejects.

Escape from suffering is possible by realizing the transience of all things, a consciousness cultivated through the awareness of the arising and non-arising of phenomena. Since everything is transitory, worldly bondage must also be transient.

The Origin of Craving

The Buddha identifies the origin of craving that leads to rebirth as arising in relation to any agreeable and pleasurable experience, including sensory consciousness, contact, feeling, perception, volition, craving itself, and even thinking. By including craving in the list of its own causes, the Buddha demonstrates a profound understanding of what modern psychology might call a “feedback loop.” This intensification of craving occurs when craving takes itself as its object, fueling its own perpetuation.

The cessation of suffering is achieved by abandoning craving, leading to dispassion. The Buddha reviews the conditions where craving establishes itself and contrasts these with the cessation of craving.

The Noble Eightfold Path

The Noble Eightfold Path is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. In this discourse, Right View is equated with the Four Noble Truths, and Right Thought with renunciation. Right Speech correlates with the Fourth Precept, and Right Action summarizes the first three precepts. The Fifth Precept, prohibiting alcohol, is notably absent here, as it often is in the Pali Canon.

The inclusion of Right Livelihood is noteworthy since monks, who live off alms, are not involved in earning a livelihood in the conventional sense. This suggests the path is open to householders as well. Since emancipation exists wherever the Noble Eightfold Path is followed, this point is critical. Some might argue that certain stages of meditation are beyond householders, but the Pali Canon stories suggest householders are deeply involved with the order and can attain emancipation. Once they do, they may enter the monastic order.

Thus, the notion that monastics are superior to householders is debunked, as is the view that lay people are inferior. This distinction is important, and there are schools of Buddhism that do not marginalize lay practitioners, especially now that we have entered the post-monastic era.

Right Effort is the mental energy that drives striving and will. Right Mindfulness is associated with the Four Attentions (body, feeling, mind, and mind-objects). Finally, Right Concentration involves the Four Meditative Attainments, which represent the refinement of consciousness. These attainments progress through detachment, concentration, fading delight, and the abandonment of pleasure and pain. By transcending these dualistic feelings, one reaches Right Concentration and the cessation of suffering.

Here we see the incredible cohesion of early Buddhist thinking. The teaching is not merely a haphazard collection of lists. Rather, it is a profoundly coherent philosophy that implies an original philosopher, the Buddha, which was then carried forward through his successors, much as Plato and his successors carried forward the ideas of Socrates.

SEVEN DAYS TO EMANCIPATION

In conclusion, the Buddha explores the relationship between meditation, emancipation, and time, and declares that if one practises the exercises of the Discourse on Radical Presence for seven years, one will attain either the state of an arhant or the state of a non-returner. Here we see very clearly that the discourse serves as a kind of manual for monastics and meditators. The arhant attains final release from the process of rebirth, i.e., time itself, and the non-temporal, trans-dual, deathless state to which the Buddha frequently alludes. The Buddha himself is the highest type of arhant, thus introducing the concept of “types of arhant,” just as there are types of buddhas (e.g., solitary awakened ones, or pratyekabuddhas, which the historical Buddha almost became). The non-returner is never again reborn as a person but is born in the Five Pure Abodes, the five highest planes of the Form world, from which they will attain arhantship after they completely purify themselves in their current rebirth.

However, one would make a mistake by reading the reference to “seven years” as the time required to complete the twenty-one meditations of the Mahasatipatthana Sutta, which works out to four months per practice. Instead, it represents the maximum time, for “whoever practices these four foundations of mindfulness for just one week may expect one of two results: either Arahantship in this life or, if there is some substrate left, the state of a Non-returner.” This statement parallels other discourses where the Buddha says that one week (or even five days) of practice is sufficient to attain emancipation. What does this mean?

Note the threefold repetition of the sacred number 7: seven years, seven months, seven days. Interestingly, the sum of three sevens is twenty-one, the number of exercises described in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta. The number appears in the discourse as the number of the Factors of Enlightenment. Interestingly, in the Cabalistic tradition, 777 is the number of salvation. The significance of the number 7 is widespread in Buddhism. For example, 7 × 7 is 49, the number of days one remains in the intermediate state before being reborn in the Tibetan tradition.

The literal meaning of this passage, then, is that by practising the Four Foundations of Radical Presence, elaborated in the twenty-one practices of the discourse, one will achieve either the state of a non-returner or arhantship in seven days to seven years of practice, depending on the amount of “substrate left.”

The first thing we note about this passage is the minimum time in relation to the number of exercises. The nine charnel ground meditations alone cannot be completed in less than a year. Therefore, the twenty-one practices must serve as aids to the essential practice, the cultivation of the Four Attentions themselves. However, underlying the cultivation of the Four Attentions is the practice of radical presence itself. Presumably, this is the essential practice to which the Buddha refers when he says that practising the Four Foundations of Radical Presence can lead to arhantship or the state of a non-returner in as short a time as seven days, which is implicit in all the practices yet identical with none of them. In the beginning, the Buddha alludes to the “one path.” I propose then that this phrase has a double meaning: i.e., the singular or essential practice or technique that includes all other practices and techniques is, therefore, the key to the nature of practice itself, which is “oneness”—self-unification, self-integration, mental concentration, “one-pointedness,” “at-one-ment,” etc. The practices in this meditation manual combine the essential technique of radical presence with the cultivation of wisdom, especially the realization of the nature of the body, feelings, mind, the Hindrances, the Aggregates, the senses, enlightenment, the Four Noble Truths, and radical presence itself, in a progression that culminates in emancipation.

The period of one week also seems very short until we consider two facts: first, the qualification that one may achieve either the state of an arhant or the state of a non-returner, thus enlarging the field significantly, and second, the reference to a “substrate.” Nanamoli and Bodhi’s translation of the Majjhima Nikaya version of this discourse uses the phrase “trace of clinging.” The dictionary meaning of this word is ‘fuel of life.’ PED has ‘stuff of life,’ ‘substratum of being,’ ‘khandha’ (the khandhas are the five sensorial aggregates—forms, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness, which together constitute the basis of craving).

The implication is that the ‘fuel of life’ exhausts itself by meditation on awareness, in which renunciation and the absence of arising of any new craving causes the existing fire of moral causality to burn itself out. Padmasambhava uses the metaphor of the master being consumed in the ecstasy of their attainment, leaving only a residue of fine ash that the winds of prana blow away (not unlike the funereal practice of cremation).

Radical presence appears as a discrete attainment in itself. Otherwise, it makes no sense to refer to a period during which a substrate is “left.” Meditation “burns” karma, but how long it takes depends on how much karmic residue remains and how intense the meditation is (thus, in this analogy meditation itself is the va or ‘air’ that alternatively fans and blows out the fire of craving in nirvana). As Rhys Davids admits in the PED, this is the ancient Vedic meaning of nirvana. The attainment of radical presence might simply be awareness itself, so that the path and the fruit are the same. In this case, seven days is indeed a short time but would presumably only apply to “near-arhants.” A “near-arhant” is a person who is already well advanced in the practice of awareness. Sahampati refers to them when he implores the Buddha to teach for the sake of those whose eyes are covered with only a thin coating of “dust.”

Thus, the discourses refer to awakening and ultimate, complete, or final emancipation. In Gotama’s case, the substrate contains enough karmic “fuel” to sustain his life for another forty-five years.  However, no one can attain it in less than five or seven days, which is the period that the Buddha remains in nirvanic ecstasy continuously after his enlightenment.

The Buddha concludes, “There is, monks, this one way to the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and distress, for the disappearance of pain and sadness, for the gaining of the right path, for the realization of Nibbana—that is to say, the four foundations of awareness, and it is for this reason that it was said.”

Revised May 17, 2025 CE

Note

1. Cf. Nyanaponika and Hellmuth Hecker (1997), Great Disciples of the Buddha: Their Lives, Their Works, Their Legacy (Boston: Wisdom), p. 284.