I have just completed what turned out to be a major revision of the materials on Mindfulness on the Ancient Buddhist Texts website.
I started the work in May when there was a prospect of getting some of the work published in hardcopy, although I have not decided whether to go ahead with that yet.
I was greatly helped by Bhikkhu Bodhi while revising the Satipaṭṭhānavibhaṅga, as, despite his health problems, he took time to answer many questions I had in regard to the text and its translation.
And also by Ayya Sudhammā Bhikkhunī who went through all the mindfulness material with her eagle eye, and made many corrections and suggestions for improvement.
The main differences in summary are,
in the Mahāsatipaṭṭhānasuttaṁ, The Long Discourse about the Ways of Attending to Mindfulness (DN 22):
- separating the variant readings into a Pāli Text edition.
- completing revising and expanding the annotation in the Text and Translation edition.
- updating the English Only edition from MN 10 to DN 22, and including simplified annotation.
- updating the mp3 recordings of the material available on the English Only edition webpages, and also at the Internet Archive.
in the Satipaṭṭhānavibhaṅgo, The Analysis of the Ways of Attending to Mindfulness (Vibh. 7):
- separating the variant readings into a Pāli Text edition.
- completing revising the annotation in the Text and Translation edition.
- updating the English Only edition, and including simplified annotation.
- making completely new recordings of the Pāli Text and of the English Only editions (Internet Archive: Text, Translation).
The Analysis materials in particular are well worth anyone’s time studying as they throw a lot of light on certain aspects of the mindfulness practice and clear up many things that have been in doubt in the modern teaching on the subject.
This revision has required updating the Abhidhammamātikā material, which I still hope to expand on at some point, with the explanations from the Dhammasaṅgaṇī. At present I only have the tabulation itself:
I hope these new expanded editions will be of help for those who are studying and indeed practicing the meditation. If I do go ahead with hardcopy publication I will make another announcement later.
