Response to Ven. Anālayo’s “Once Again on Mindfulness and Memory in Early Buddhism”

Excerpt

In my paper, Putting smṛti back into sati (Levman 2017), I argued that the notion of sati—usually translated as “mindfulness”—cannot be understood divorced from its memory component, which is integral to the meaning and etymology of the word. Since sati is such an important subject today, both for Buddhist meditation practice and its secular applications, the discourse on what it actually means takes on a pressing relevance. I trust interested readers will read the whole article before or after studying Ven. Anālayo’s (2018) response in this journal and rather than repeating all the arguments I have already made, I restrict this piece to a short comment on Ven. Anālayo’s commentary, on points not covered in my first article. …