What Is Mahasati Meditation

In one line: you build awareness (sati) by simply knowing the movements of the body. You do not recite words and you do not label. As awareness grows, you see thoughts and the mind more clearly.

Mahasati and awareness

Mahasati is Pali. Maha means "great" and sati means mindfulness or self-awareness, so it is rendered "great mindfulness", "complete awareness" or "perfected awareness" (p. 2).

What is awareness? The book keeps it ordinary: make a fist, open it, know your hand is moving. That quality of knowing is awareness (p. 2). Everyone has it, but untrained it is unstable and of little use (pp. 2 to 3). Different words (awareness, mindfulness, sati) point to the same thing, like water poured into different containers (p. 4).

Feeding the cat

The most quoted image in the book: awareness is a cat and thoughts are mice (p. 24).

• At first the mice are big and the cat is a kitten, so you get dragged around by thoughts.
• Our only duty is to look after the cat. Its food is steady knowing of the body's movements (p. 24).
• When the cat grows, nobody has to teach it; catching mice comes naturally. Feed it diligently and do not stop once you feel it is enough (p. 27).
• Do not feed it with a wish to catch mice. The book says the less you want to arrive, the easier it is; wanting to arrive gets in the way (p. 29).

This is why the method does not fight thoughts, yet thoughts gradually lessen.

Knowing a thought versus seeing it

The book says these are "completely different" (p. 32).

• Knowing a thought: awareness is weaker. You know it, but you still follow it.
• Seeing a thought: awareness is strong, and the thought can stop on the spot (pp. 33, 36).

The book's test: if you can cut it off, you are seeing; if you only know it, you cannot cut it (p. 33). While thoughts are still many, you are usually just "knowing". That is normal. Keep feeding the cat (p. 32).

Not all thinking is a problem. Work, planning and reasoning need ordinary thought; just think with awareness (pp. 33 to 34).

Why a fixed sequence of hand movements

Regular, repeating movements let awareness continue like links in a chain, and having both movement and stop makes awareness easier to arise (pp. 17 to 18). The book calls the regular movements a technique for building awareness; once awareness is fuller, everything becomes natural (p. 19). It also says this hand-movement method is not found in the classical texts and was discovered by Luangpor Teean himself (p. 21). See the 15 hand movements.

What it is not

• Not hypnosis. The point is knowing; if you fall asleep or wave your hands without knowing, you are not knowing (pp. 19 to 20).
• No mental noting or labelling: "just simply knowing" (p. 55).
• No suppressing thoughts and no following them; return to the movement (pp. 59 to 60).
• Eyes open, and no pairing with the breath (pp. 49, 51).
• Not "the more concentrated the better". A light fist is awareness; a tight fist is concentration (p. 52).

For comparisons, see Mahasati vs vipassana and breath.

Aim

The book says the destination in life is the absence of suffering (p. 44). That is the teacher's view in the book. This site promises no result and gives no medical advice. Results differ from person to person; practise and check for yourself.

Source: Luangpor Thong, The Principles and Method of Mahasati (Chinese title 正念動中禪的原理與方法; the English title is my translation), Q&A compiled by the Taiwan Mahasati association, Religious Culture Press, 2013. "p." means a page of that book; page numbers are to be verified against the book. Paraphrased, not quoted at length.