From “sati” to “mindfulness”: the old roots of a modern practice

Today the word "mindfulness" is used everywhere: in apps, in business books, in school programmes. But few people know that it comes from a very old tradition, and that the English word itself is a nineteenth-century translation.

The word "sati"

In Pali, the language of the oldest Buddhist texts, the word sati is related to memory and to keeping something in mind. In the context of practice it means being aware of and attentive to what is happening, without forgetting it. In 1881 the British scholar Thomas William Rhys Davids translated sati into English as "mindfulness", and the translation stuck.

The four foundations of mindfulness

One of the best-known texts on mindfulness is the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, "The Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness", part of the collection called the Majjhima Nikāya. It describes four areas to which the practitioner directs attention:

1. The body: breathing, posture, movements.
2. Feelings: whether an experience is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
3. The mind: states of mind, such as anger, calm or distraction.
4. Phenomena: the way experiences arise and pass away, according to Buddhist teaching.

In the Buddhist tradition, mindfulness was not a separate technique for reducing stress. It was part of a broader ethical and spiritual path that included conduct, concentration and wisdom.

Mindfulness was not invented in a laboratory. It was preserved for centuries by people who wanted to understand the mind from within.

The journey west

In 1979 the American molecular biologist Jon Kabat-Zinn, who had practised meditation in Buddhist traditions, created at the University of Massachusetts the "Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction" (MBSR) programme. He presented the practice without religious terminology, so that it could be used in hospitals for patients with chronic pain and stress. The programme spread around the world and became the basis of most scientific research on mindfulness.

The word chosen by Rhys Davids

The British scholar Thomas William Rhys Davids, who had worked as a colonial official in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and had learned the Pali language, was among the first to use the English word "mindfulness" to translate "sati". In his translations of Buddhist texts, published in 1881 in the well-known series Sacred Books of the East, he chose this old English word meaning roughly "being careful of or attentive to something". This translation became standard, and today the word is used all over the world.

Breathing in the ancient texts

One of the best-known texts on the practice of mindfulness is the Ānāpānasati Sutta, the discourse on mindfulness of breathing, found in the collection of middle-length discourses of the Pali canon. It describes sixteen practical steps, which begin with noticing long and short breaths, move on to sensations and states of mind, and end with observing the constant change of things. Many modern breathing exercises in mindfulness programmes resemble the first steps of this text.

Meditation for ordinary people

For many centuries, meditation in Buddhist countries was mainly the practice of monks. This changed at the end of the nineteenth century and during the twentieth century in Burma, now Myanmar. According to the historian Erik Braun, the monk Ledi Sayadaw was among the first to encourage ordinary lay people to meditate, partly in response to the changes brought by British colonial rule. Later, teachers such as Mahasi Sayadaw created centres where foreigners too could learn. Some Americans who studied in Asia founded the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts in 1975.

The first hospital study

In 1982 Jon Kabat-Zinn published the first study of his programme in the journal General Hospital Psychiatry. He followed 51 patients with chronic pain who had not found relief from the usual treatments. After the ten-week programme, many of them reported reduced pain and emotional distress. The study had no control group, so it could not prove that the programme caused the improvement. Even so, it opened the way for hundreds of later, more rigorous studies in hospitals and universities.

The "McMindfulness" critique

Not everyone views the spread of mindfulness in the West positively. In his 2019 book, the management professor Ronald Purser argued that mindfulness has often been cut off from its ethical roots and turned into a tool for making people more productive and calmer in the face of problems that have social causes, such as overwork. He called this phenomenon "McMindfulness". Supporters of the programmes reply that individual help does not exclude social change. The debate continues today, both among scholars and among teachers of meditation.

Why this history matters

Some scholars have criticised the way modern mindfulness is often sold as a productivity tool, cut off from the ethical values that accompanied it originally. Others think its secular adaptation has helped millions of people. Both views have merit. For us as practitioners, knowing the roots reminds us that mindfulness is not only about calm, but also about how we treat ourselves and others.