Once Again on Mindfulness and Memory in Early Buddhism

In a paper published in the present journal, revised parts of which were subsequently republished in a book on various aspects of early Buddhist meditation, I discussed aspects of the early Buddhist understanding of mindfulness. One of these aspects is the relationship between mindfulness and memory (Anālayo 2016a, p. 1273–1275, 2017a, p. 26–34). Based on the standard canonical definition of mindfulness as a quality related to recollecting and remembering what has been done or said long ago, I argued for the need to make sense of this relationship without going so far as to equate mindfulness with memory. …