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In Theravada abhidharma, consciousness and the object of consciousness emerge codependently and are hence phenomenologically inextricable. That is to say, the objects of experience appear not upon a preexistent tabula rasa, but rather within a cognitive matrix that includes affective and discursive dispositions occasioned by one’s past activity (karma). The elimination of these attendant dispositions does not yield “non-conceptual awareness” so much as the cessation of consciousness itself.

Superficially, [the] notion of mindfulness as bare attention would seem tied to a view of the mind as a sort of tabula rasa or clear mirror that passively registers raw sensations prior to any recognition, judgment, or response. The notion of a conscious state devoid of conceptualization or discrimination is not unknown to Buddhist exegetes; indeed, later Buddhist philosophers associated with pramana (logic) and yogacara  (mental construction) systems posit a “nonconceptual cognition” (nirvikalpajnana) that operates by means of “direct perception” (pratyaksajnana), and these authors use the imagery of the mirror to illustrate the relationship between pure mind and defiled object. This state is sometimes understood as preceding (or undergirding) the arising of conceptualization, or as an advanced stage of attainment tantamount to awakening. But while the notion of non-conceptual cognition became important in some yogacara systems (not to mention Tibetan Dzogchen), it remained at odds with the Theravada analysis of mind and perception.

There are, in addition, philosophical objections to construing sati as bare attention. The popular understanding of bare attention presumes that it is possible to disaggregate pre-reflective sensations (what contemporary philosophers sometimes refer to as “raw feels” or qualia) from perceptual experience writ large. In other words, there is an assumption that our recognition of and response to an object is logically and/or temporally preceded by an unconstructed or “pure” impression of said object that can be rendered, at least with mental training, available to conscious experience. Mindfulness practice is then a means to quiet the ongoing chatter of the mind and to keep to the “bare registering of the facts observed.”

Rupert Gethin...notes that sati cannot refer to “remembering” in any simple sense, since memories are, as Buddhists are quick to acknowledge, subject to distortion. Rather, sati "should be understood as what allows awareness of the full range and extent of dhammas; sati is an awareness of things in relation to things, and hence an awareness of their relative value. Applied to the satipatthanas  , presumably what this means is that sati is what causes the practitioner of yoga to “remember” that any feeling he may experience exists in relation to a whole variety or world of feelings that may be skillful or unskillful, with faults or faultless, relatively inferior or refined, dark or pure". In short, there is little “bare” about the faculty of sati, since it entails, among other things, the proper discrimination of the moral valence of phenomena as they arise.

Even in the Satipatthana-sutta  , the term sati retains a sense of “recollecting” or “bearing in mind.” Specifically, sati involves bearing in mind the virtuous dharmas so as to properly apprehend, from moment to moment, the true nature of phenomena. At least this is the explanation found in early Pali exegetical works such as the Milindapanha and the commentaries of Buddhaghosa.

The meaning of the term “mindfulness” is presumed by many to be self-evident, and thus modern exponents of mindfulness meditation may see little need to explore the intellectual history of the concept in Buddhism. "Mindfulness” is a translation of the Sanskrit smrti (Pali: sati), a term that originally meant “to remember,” “to recollect,” “to bear in mind.” Its religious significance is sometimes traced to the Vedic emphasis on setting to memory the authoritative teachings of the tradition. The Pali term sati retains this sense of “remembering” in the Nikayas (the scriptures attributed to the Buddha in the Theravada school): “And what, bhikkhus, is the faculty of sati? Here, bhikkhus, the noble disciple has sati, he is endowed with perfect sati and intellect, he is one who remembers, who recollects what was done and said long before.” Moreover, the faculties of recollection and reflection were unarguably central to a variety of classical practices associated with smrti, including buddhanusmrti or “recollection of the Buddha,” which typically involves some combination of recalling the characteristics of the Buddha, visualizing him, and chanting his name.

Western Buddhist enthusiasts may have a hard time appreciating just how radical Mahasi’s [meditation] method was in its day. Designed to be accessible to laypersons, it did not require familiarity with Buddhist philosophy or literature, most notably with the scholastic literature known as abhidhamma. (Traditional forms of Theravada meditation required proficiency in the categories and methods of abhidhamma analysis.) It also did not require renunciation of lay life, and it could be taught in a relatively short period of time in a retreat format. All this made it easy to export, and it has been influential not only in the Southeast Asian Theravada world, but also among modern Tibetan, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese religious reformers. By the end of the 20th century, Mahasi’s approach to mindfulness, understood as “bare attention” and “living in the here and now,” had emerged as one of the foundations of Buddhist modernism—an approach to Buddhism that cut across geographical, cultural, sectarian, and social boundaries.

Scholars have argued that the widespread understanding of mindfulness as bare attention has its roots in the Theravada meditation revival of the 20th century, a movement that drew its authority, if not its content, from the two recensions of the Scripture on Establishing Mindfulness (Satipatthana-sutta  ), as well as Buddhaghosa’s Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), and a few other Pali sources. The specific techniques that came to dominate the Satipatthana  or Vipassana (“insight”) movement, as it came to be known, were developed by a handful of Burmese teachers in the lineages of Ledi Sayadaw (1846/7–1923) and Mingun Sayadaw (1870–1955). Mingun’s disciple, Mahasi Sayadaw (1904–1982), developed the technique that is best known today, in which the practitioner is trained to focus on whatever sensory object arises in the moment-to-moment flow of consciousness. Mahasi designed this method with laypersons in mind, including those with little or no prior exposure to Buddhist doctrine or liturgical practice. Perhaps most radical was Mahasi’s claim that the cultivation of liberating insight did not require advanced skill in concentration (samatha) or the experience of absorption (jhana  ). Instead, Mahasi placed emphasis on the notion of sati, understood as the moment-to-moment, lucid, non-reactive, non-judgmental awareness of whatever appears to consciousness. One of Mahasi’s most influential students, the German born monk Nyanaponika Thera (Siegmund Feniger, 1901–1994), coined the term “bare attention” for this mental faculty, and this rubric took hold through his popular 1954 book The Heart of Buddhist Meditation.

The notion that Buddhism is a rational, empirical, and therapeutically oriented tradition compatible with modern science is one of the characteristic features of “Buddhist modernism” (sometimes known as “Protestant Buddhism”), an approach to Buddhism that evolved out of a complex intellectual exchange between Asia and the West that took place over the last 150 years or so.

Chan (Zen/Seon/Thien) Isn’t a Monolith: why every claim you’ve read about “Zen” is misleading

Buddhist Without Superstition/Supernatural Beliefs: but what constitutes a Buddhist?

[Today] Buddhist insight is touted as the very antithesis of depression. Rather than cultivating a desire to abandon the world, Buddhism is seen as a science of happiness—a way of easing the pain of existence. Buddhist practice is reduced to meditation, and meditation, in turn, is reduced to mindfulness, which is touted as a therapeutic practice that leads to an emotionally fulfilling and rewarding life. Mindfulness is promoted as a cure-all for anxiety and affective disorders including post-traumatic stress, for alcoholism and drug dependency, for attention-deficit disorder, for anti-social and criminal behavior, and for the commonplace debilitating stresses of modern urban life.

A woman’s three sons had offended against the king, it seems. The king ordered their heads to be cut off. She went with her sons to the place of their execution. When they had cut off the eldest one’s head, they set about cutting off the middle one’s head. Seeing the eldest one’s head already cut off and the middle one’s head being cut off, she gave up hope for the youngest, thinking, “He too will fare like them.” Now, the meditator’s seeing the cessation of past formations is like the woman’s seeing the eldest son’s head cut off. His seeing the cessation of those present is like her seeing the middle one’s head being cut off. His seeing the cessation of those in the future, thinking, “Formations to be generated in the future will cease too,” is like her giving up hope for the youngest son, thinking, “He too will fare like them.” When he sees in this way, knowledge of appearance as terror arises in him at that stage.

One might want to quibble with Obeyesekere; one might demand more evidence—both psychological and ethnographic—for the similarities he sees between good Sri Lankan Buddhists and American depressives. Do Sri Lankan Buddhists really aspire to a state that we would associate with depression? Or is the very idea of depression so culturally and historically constructed as to mitigate its cross-cultural utility? However one parses these issues, on purely doctrinal grounds Obeyesekere has a point: early Buddhist sutras in general, and Theravada teachings in particular, hold that (1) to live is to suffer, (2) the only genuine remedy to suffering is escape from samsara (the phenomenal world) altogether, and (3) escape requires, among other things, abandoning hope that happiness in this world is possible.

In a chapter in an edited volume on the role of culture in depression, Gananath Obeyesekere begins by quoting from Brown and Harris’s influential 1978 study on the social origins of depression in women: 'The immediate response to loss of an important source of positive value is likely to be a sense of hopelessness, accompanied by a gamut of feelings, ranging from distress, depression, and shame to anger. Feelings of hopelessness will not always be restricted to the provoking incident—large or small. It may lead to thoughts about the hopelessness of one’s life in general. It is such generalization of hopelessness that we believe forms the central core of depressive disorder.' To this Obeyesekere responds: 'This statement sounds strange to me, a Buddhist, for if it was placed in the context of Sri Lanka, I would say that we are not dealing with a depressive but a good Buddhist. The Buddhist would take one further step in generalization: it is not simply the general hopelessness of one’s own lot; that hopelessness lies in the nature of the world, and salvation lies in understanding and overcoming that hopelessness.