HOME ◼︎ DHAMMA ◼︎ WRITING ◼︎ TOPICS ◼︎ STUDY GUIDES ◼︎ SUTTAS ◼︎ PALI STUDY ◼︎RESOURCES
The Mirage of Mindfulness
Rebecca Fox Stoddard
July 2025
Is mindfulness really Buddhist? This essay explores sammāsati—Right Mindfulness—as taught in early Buddhism. Far from a stress-reduction technique, sati is ethical, recollective, and liberating. Drawing from key suttas, this piece contrasts secular mindfulness with the Buddha’s intention: not just calm or awareness, but insight and freedom. It offers clear direction for deepening everyday practice and reclaiming mindfulness as a vital part of the Noble Eightfold Path—not a product, but a path.
Mindfulness is everywhere. In just a few decades, it’s gone from monastic halls to high school classrooms, from forest meditation huts to corporate HR seminars. You’ll find it in therapy sessions, wellness retreats, parenting books, military trainings, and smartphone apps. It’s spoken of as a remedy for burnout, a tool for emotional regulation, a way to increase productivity and lower blood pressure. In most places where the word appears, it seems to mean “paying attention to the present moment, nonjudgmentally.”
And yet, something in the early teachings resists this flattening.
The Buddha did not teach a neutral awareness of whatever arises. He taught a path. And mindfulness—sammāsati—was not its centerpiece. It was one part of an eightfold system aimed at liberation from suffering. To lift it out of context and recast it as a self-help method or workplace skill is not just a shift in tone. It’s a shift in purpose.
This is not to say secular mindfulness has no value. For many, it’s a first thread. It reduces stress, sharpens focus, interrupts compulsive habits. It opens a small space in the noise. But it is not the same as sammāsati. When mindfulness is lifted out of its ethical and liberative container, it becomes something else: present, perhaps—but untethered. So the question is not just whether mindfulness “works.” The question is: works toward what?
What are we training our minds to remember?
What the Early Texts Actually Say
Sati doesn’t mean “being present.” In the Pāli Canon, the word sati means to remember, to keep in mind, to hold something steadily in awareness. It’s a mental factor, a function of recollection—not just a state of alertness. When the Buddha speaks of mindfulness, he’s not talking about a general awareness of whatever arises. He’s talking about remembering what leads to liberation and what leads to suffering. It is a kind of remembering that protects.
[See SN 48.10; Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Connected Discourses, 2000]
Right Mindfulness is not standalone. The term sammāsati—Right Mindfulness—appears in the context of the Noble Eightfold Path. It is the seventh factor, and it depends on the six that come before it. In the early texts, mindfulness is never separated from sīla (ethical conduct), sammādiṭṭhi (right view), and sammāvāyāma (right effort). It’s not a technique you can lift out and teach independently. To do so is to miss its very nature.
[See MN 117; Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path, 1994]
The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta offers the clearest instructions. In MN 10, the Buddha lays out the four establishments of mindfulness: body, feelings, mind, and dhammas. But these are not instructions for general awareness. The refrain in each section includes:
“…ardent, clearly knowing, and mindful, having put away covetousness and grief for the world.”This is not neutral observation. It is disciplined recollection, supported by effort and insight, infused with the intention to abandon grasping and clinging.
[See MN 10; Bhikkhu Sujato, SuttaCentral Translation]
Mindfulness of dhammas means remembering the Dhamma. The fourth foundation is often misunderstood as “mental objects.” But dhammas here means teachings: the hindrances, aggregates, sense bases, and Four Noble Truths. These are not categories to watch passively. They are trainings in discernment. To practice mindfulness of the Four Noble Truths is to bear them in mind, to see your present experience through their lens. Mindfulness, in this sense, is deeply intentional.
[See MN 10; Anālayo, Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization, 2003]
Bhikkhu Anālayo and others emphasize this functional view. In his comparative work on the Satipaṭṭhāna texts, Anālayo points out that sati is better understood as a faculty that “keeps the mind anchored in the object of investigation.” It’s less about being aware of what arises, and more about keeping the mind trained on the path. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu likewise describes mindfulness as a “function of memory”—specifically, memory of what is skillful, and what is not.
Recollection as an Act of Wisdom
Sati is rooted in memory. Unlike the modern framing of mindfulness as “present moment awareness,” the early texts define sati as a quality of memory. It’s not memory of random facts or of the past, but memory of what matters: the Dhamma, the training, the purpose of practice. Sati remembers the teachings and holds them in view—it is the act of keeping the path in mind.
This memory has a direction. In the suttas, the Buddha constantly exhorts disciples to “remember the Dhamma,” “remember the goal,” or “be mindful of death.” These aren’t sentimental reminders. They are cognitive acts that protect the heart from delusion. Right Mindfulness knows what to remember—and what to forget. It remembers restraint, impermanence, cause and effect. It forgets blame, craving, self-righteousness. In this way, mindfulness becomes a guardian of the path.
[See AN 6.20; SN 20.7]
Mindfulness arises together with wisdom. In the context of the Seven Factors of Awakening (bojjhaṅga), sati comes first—but it quickly leads to dhamma-vicaya, investigation of phenomena. In other words, mindfulness does not simply notice—it questions. What is this? What are its causes? Is this leading toward suffering or away from it? Without this dimension, mindfulness becomes inert. It observes, but does not liberate.
[See SN 46.3]
Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu calls this protective mindfulness. He describes sati as “the ability to keep something in mind”—especially the instructions of the path. He writes that it is more like “strategic remembering” than open awareness. “If your mindfulness is weak,” he says, “you forget what you’re doing, and you get lost in your reactions.” Strong mindfulness, by contrast, acts like a thread tying intention to attention.
[See Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, Right Mindfulness, 2010]
This is why mindfulness alone is not enough. Without wisdom and ethical view, mindfulness can be used to sharpen unwholesome habits. A sharp memory is not liberating if it remembers the wrong things. A still mind is not liberating if it remains stuck in delusion. But when sati is joined with paññā (wisdom), it becomes a powerful tool for freedom. It sees clearly, and it remembers what that clarity is for.
Ethics as the Foundation of Mindfulness
Mindfulness without ethics loses its direction—and its power.
Mindfulness in early Buddhism is inseparable from ethics. It never appears on its own. In every formulation of the Noble Eightfold Path, sammāsati follows right intention, right speech, right action, and right livelihood. It is built on a life of restraint and relational integrity. If that ground is missing, mindfulness becomes detached—present, perhaps, but not purifying.
[See MN 117; SN 45.8]
The precepts are not rules to obey, but trainings to remember. When you commit to refrain from lying, killing, stealing, sexual harm, and intoxicants, you are planting seeds of mindfulness. You are building a life where presence can thrive without defense or regret. In this sense, sīla is the condition for authentic mindfulness. When the heart is weighed down by unexamined harm, even silent meditation becomes unstable.
[See AN 10.2; AN 8.39]
Mindfulness is how we stay awake inside our choices. It’s what notices the tightening in the jaw before the sharp word escapes. It’s what feels the rising urge to click, to consume, to retaliate—and pauses long enough to choose differently. Right Mindfulness is not just about being aware of what happens. It’s about becoming intimate with intention. It’s where the path becomes visible in real time.
Without this moral framework, mindfulness becomes passive. It becomes a way of observing discomfort rather than transforming it. You can be “mindful” of almost anything—including unwholesome or harmful actions—if mindfulness is stripped of its ethical compass. A thief can be fully present while picking a pocket. A person can be acutely aware of their breath while speaking with sarcasm or subtle cruelty. But this is not Right Mindfulness. Presence alone is not the goal—liberation is.
[See Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path, 1994]
Right Mindfulness remembers right action. It remembers compassion in the moment of conflict. It remembers humility when pride begins to speak. It remembers patience when restlessness demands control. And this kind of remembering is not heavy-handed. It is light, responsive, alive. It doesn’t suppress what arises—it meets it with wisdom. In this way, mindfulness becomes an active form of love.
Modern Misuses and Fragmentation
What happens when mindfulness is pulled out of context.
Mindfulness today is often stripped of its roots. In many settings, it’s taught without reference to ethics, wisdom, or liberation. It becomes a technique—a way to reduce anxiety, manage emotions, or sharpen attention. In these forms, mindfulness has helped many people. But it has also become a tool of adaptation. Instead of transforming suffering at the root, it helps people tolerate the systems that cause it.
[See Purser, McMindfulness, 2019]
In corporate and military settings, mindfulness is used to improve performance. Tech companies train employees in mindfulness to boost productivity. Military programs teach mindfulness to soldiers to enhance focus and resilience in combat. These uses are not neutral. They raise a deeper question: What kind of attention are we cultivating? And in service of what?
[See Van Dam et al., Mind the Hype, 2018]
Bhikkhu Bodhi warns of this split. He writes that when mindfulness is extracted from its ethical and philosophical context, it becomes hollow. “We might be helping people become more mindful of their suffering,” he says, “but not of the causes of that suffering.” This is not a failure of technique—it is a failure of view.
[See Bodhi, The Other America, 2015]
The risk is subtle: presence without purpose. A person may learn to observe their anxiety but never question the values or environments that sustain it. A worker may become calm while operating within an exploitative system. A parent may practice mindful breathing while perpetuating unexamined control. Mindfulness, without view, adapts us to conditions rather than helping us see through them.
This is not what the Buddha offered. Mindfulness in the early teachings was never a method for resilience within samsāra. It was a doorway out. Its purpose was to direct attention toward the unconditioned. If we lose that aim, we risk training ourselves to be at peace with what is—when what is might be unwholesome, unjust, or harmful.
Restoring Directionality and View
Right Mindfulness follows Right View. Without it, we drift.
Mindfulness is not neutral. In the early teachings, every action of mind is shaped by intention, by view, by underlying tendencies. There is no awareness that exists outside of this web. Sammāsati is called “right” because it is aligned with sammādiṭṭhi—Right View. Without that view, mindfulness is not grounded. It can float. It can even reinforce delusion.
[See MN 117; SN 45.8]
Right View is the compass of the entire path. It reminds us that actions have consequences. That suffering has causes. That craving leads to bondage, and release is possible. Right Mindfulness, then, is not just present—it is present with discernment. It knows what to hold, and what to let go. It knows which thoughts to abandon, which qualities to cultivate, and which intentions to watch carefully.
[See MN 9 (Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta)]
When mindfulness lacks view, it easily becomes co-opted. Mindfulness on its own might notice hunger but not question addiction. It might notice anger but not seek its roots. It might notice joy but cling to it as relief. Without Right View, mindfulness becomes reactive, circling around comfort and discomfort. With Right View, it becomes a means of seeing clearly, acting wisely, and letting go.
The early teachings don’t just want us to observe—they want us to understand. The Buddha didn’t teach mindfulness as an end in itself. He taught it as a condition for insight (vipassanā). When recollection is paired with investigation, mindfulness becomes sharp. It doesn’t just notice—it inquires. It begins to pierce through appearances to conditionality, to cause and effect, to the three marks: impermanence, dukkha, and non-self.
Sammāsati turns awareness into wisdom. It is this directional quality—this alignment with liberation—that makes mindfulness “right.” Not because it’s morally superior, but because it knows where it’s going. Presence alone is not enough. But presence shaped by view becomes practice.
Mindfulness in Relationship
Right Mindfulness is not just internal—it is relational.
Mindfulness is often portrayed as a solitary activity. Eyes closed. Body still. Attention turned inward. But in the Buddha’s teaching, mindfulness shows up just as clearly in how we speak, how we listen, and how we move through the world with others. Presence is not confined to the cushion. It ripens in relationship.
[See SN 55.7; AN 4.252]
The Pāli term sati often appears alongside sampajañña—clear comprehension. This pairing points to a mindfulness that is context-sensitive. We are not just aware—we are discerning: Is this the right time to speak? Is this the right tone? Does this action support freedom or fuel clinging? Right Mindfulness remembers the teaching in the moment of contact—when the email lands, when the child cries, when the harsh word wants to rise.
[See MN 10; AN 3.88]
Mindfulness in speech is part of the path. In AN 10.92, the Buddha lists mindfulness and clear comprehension as supports for right speech. Mindfulness helps us hear our own motivations before they surface. It helps us pause before sarcasm, soften in conflict, clarify our truth without weaponizing it. In this way, mindfulness becomes a form of non-harming. It becomes ethical presence.
Mindfulness is a safeguard in moments of power. In parenting, teaching, caregiving, leadership—there are moments when your action has disproportionate impact. Mindfulness in these moments is not just about awareness. It’s about remembering humility, remembering tenderness, remembering not to rush to control. Presence without relationship is not the Dhamma. The Buddha’s teaching ripens in compassion, in mutual care, in shared restraint.
[See SN 45.2; DN 16]
Appamāda—heedfulness—is the broader container. The Buddha called appamāda the “path to the deathless” (Dhp 21). It means watchfulness, moral alertness, care. In a way, it’s what mindfulness is trying to become. It is mindfulness stretched out into life—not just in meditation, but in how we eat, touch, parent, argue, and grieve. In this broader light, mindfulness is not just attention. It is participation—with wisdom.
Deepening Everyday Practice
Turning ordinary mindfulness into Right Mindfulness.
You don’t need to abandon your practice to align with the path. You don’t need a monastery, a robe, or a new technique. What transforms mindfulness into sammāsati is not the activity, but the view behind it, the intention within it, and the wisdom it remembers as it unfolds.
If you practice mindfulness of the breath, begin with intention. Before the breath becomes an object of attention, it is a bridge into the present. Ask: What am I doing this for? To calm down? To escape? To train the mind? To see impermanence? Right Mindfulness doesn’t reject calm—but it points it somewhere. It uses calm to steady the mind, not as a goal in itself, but as a foundation for insight.
[See SN 36.11; MN 118]
If you practice mindful walking, walk with precepts in mind. Feel your feet meeting the ground—but also notice how you move through the world. Are you rushing? Grasping? Avoiding? What if mindfulness of the body included how your presence affects others? What if walking were a form of non-harming?
If you observe your thoughts, observe their direction. What intention is behind this stream? Is it generosity or self-protection? Craving or compassion? Without this lens, mindfulness of thought becomes passive. But with the lens of Dhamma, thoughts are no longer personal—they become fields of training.
[See MN 19; SN 47.6]
Mindful parenting, teaching, caregiving—they all shift with Right View. Are you noticing your child’s tantrum just to survive it—or to see where clinging arises in you? Are you present with their anger just to appear calm—or to train in patience, relinquishment, and love? The shift isn’t in method. It’s in remembrance. You are remembering the path in real time.
Even mindfulness of eating can become liberative. Notice not just the taste, but the craving. Not just the texture, but the compulsion. Not just the food, but the story behind it. And then: gratitude. Gratitude is a natural antidote to greed. When we remember interdependence, even eating becomes a field for freedom.
[See AN 4.41; SN 12.63]
The question is not whether you’re being mindful—but what you're being mindful of. What are you remembering? What are you forgetting? What direction is your attention pointed? These are the questions that turn awareness into path.
A Path, Not a Product
Mindfulness is not a brand. It is a doorway out of suffering.
In the early teachings, mindfulness was a means to liberation—not a lifestyle upgrade. It was never marketed. It was never reduced to a wellness tool. It was taught by a renunciant to those seeking freedom. To reframe mindfulness as a product—something to be sold, optimized, or measured—is to reverse its purpose. Mindfulness was meant to loosen the grip of craving, not redirect it toward self-improvement.
[See SN 35.245; AN 6.63]
Commodified mindfulness often reinforces the very patterns the Dhamma helps dismantle. It turns inward presence into personal branding. It replaces letting go with optimizing. It confuses momentary calm with insight. In these forms, mindfulness becomes another thing to achieve, another identity to polish, another way to feel better within systems that never ask why we suffer.
This doesn’t mean mindfulness must be hidden away. The Buddha offered teachings freely, openly, and with deep compassion. But he never divorced method from aim. He didn’t teach breath awareness to reduce workplace stress—he taught it to develop samādhi, to see through illusion, to stop suffering at its root.
[See MN 149; SN 45.8]
Mindfulness is not about being more efficient. It’s about becoming more free. This is the deeper turn. When we remember this, even simple practices open. Breath becomes not just breath, but the ground of steadiness. Pain becomes not just pain, but a field of letting go. Work becomes not just productivity, but service, ethics, and humility. Life itself becomes a training in remembering what matters.
The goal is not to be present. The goal is to be liberated. Sammāsati is not the endpoint—it is the thread that leads through the forest. It’s not a slogan. It’s a compass. And if we follow it carefully, it leads not just to this moment, but beyond it.
Closing Reflections
What are we remembering when we practice mindfulness?
Mindfulness is everywhere. That’s how we began. It’s in studios, schools, and smartphone apps. It’s taught in hospitals, marketed on packaging, and praised by CEOs. But the question was never whether mindfulness is useful. The question is whether it is whole.
What we call mindfulness today is often a fragment—sometimes a helpful fragment, sometimes a distorted one. It soothes, but does not liberate. It observes, but does not remember. It adapts us to what is, but forgets to ask whether what is is worth adapting to.
Right Mindfulness—sammāsati—is different. It remembers the path. It remembers the causes of suffering and the possibility of release. It is grounded in ethics, guided by view, and directed by wisdom. It is not a practice of staying where we are, but of seeing clearly and stepping out.
If mindfulness has brought you here, let it bring you deeper. Let it return to its roots—not as a rejection of what you’ve done, but as a reclaiming of what it always was. Mindfulness doesn’t belong to any tradition, but its full power is revealed when practiced in context. That context is the path. And the path begins again and again, wherever you are, with the quiet, courageous act of remembering.
Final Reference List
Canonical Texts (English Translations):
- Majjhima Nikāya (MN 9, 10, 19, 117, 118, 121, 149)
- Saṁyutta Nikāya (SN 20.7, 35.245, 36.11, 45.2, 45.8, 46.3, 47.6, 55.7)
- Aṅguttara Nikāya (AN 3.88, 4.41, 6.20, 6.63, 8.39, 10.2, 10.92)
- Dīgha Nikāya (DN 16)
- Dhammapada 21
Modern Sources:
- Anālayo, Bhikkhu. Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization. Windhorse Publications, 2003.
- Bodhi, Bhikkhu. The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering. Buddhist Publication Society, 1994.
- Bodhi, Bhikkhu. The Other America: Buddhist Reflections on Social Justice. Insight Journal, 2015.
- Purser, Ronald. McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. Repeater Books, 2019.
- Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu. Right Mindfulness: Memory & Ardency on the Buddhist Path. Metta Forest Monastery, 2010.
- Sujato, Bhikkhu. Translations. SuttaCentral
- Van Dam, Nicholas T., et al. “Mind the Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2018.
Related Articles
A beginner-friendly introduction to Buddhism. This essay offers a clear, exploration of what Buddhism is—and what it isn’t—through the life of the Buddha, the Four Noble Truths, and the path of practice. No jargon, no mysticism—just a human invitation to clarity, freedom, and direct experience.
The Four Noble Truths move from recognizing life’s unease, to seeing its cause, to the possibility of release, and the Noble Eightfold Path that leads there.
A reflection on Maylie Scott’s teaching that “nothing is out of place,” exploring how loneliness can be met with mindful presence and compassion.
A poetic and provocative invitation into the sacred realm of human presence, I and Thou offers a relational metaphysics that challenges modern habits of detachment and objectification.
A deeper look at sammāsati, the Buddha’s Right Mindfulness—rooted in ethics, memory, and wisdom, not just presence. A critique of secular mindfulness and a return to path.
The Noble Eightfold Path begins with the recognition of dukkha—the universal tension at the heart of conditioned life. This chapter explores that recognition as the spark for spiritual practice.
A contemplative exploration of mindfulness (sati) as taught in the early Buddhist tradition, through the lens of Bhante Gunaratana’s plain and radical invitation to see things as they are.
Related Resources
Topics
Related Writing