It takes me almost my entire life to find sati or consciousness in English. Indeed, I have heard this word together with concentration since I was young. Still, I could not really grasp the meaning and understanding of what sati was until I had meditated for so many years. I now know what sati is and how we can perceive it. First of all, sati or consciousness can be found only in your body. Sati can be felt only through body consciousness. In other words, you must be able to feel your muscles and bones, physical movement and the contact with the external world through the five sensations. More specifically, you must be conscious of what you are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. If you cannot master sati at this level, you cannot proceed to the next level, Second, knowing the present state of your emotion whether you are happy, unhappy or neutral is the manifestation of sati. Only those who have sati can detect their emotion moment by moment continuously. This ability requires a lot of practice in terms of looking at inner emotions all the time without any judgment. Third, the ability to see the overall state of your mind whether you are peaceful or quite disturbed by greed, hatred or delusion is the more subtle working of sati. In this aspect, sati can work at a more abstract and sophisticated level, like a radar to detect whether everything is all right in the sky or not. Last, the ability to know what dharma can help put down your discursive thoughts or mental suffering is the final and most essential role of sati. In a nutshell, if you can choose whatever dharma to fight against turbulent thoughts until you feel peaceful, thats the manifestation of sati in its highest form. I hope my explanation of the so-called sati is clear enough to help you understand and practice it. I am more than willing and happy to welcome whatever questions or comments you may have on this discussion of sati.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:28:52 +0000