I wouldn’t make this thread unless I had put effort into something useful I could offer to go along with it. Attached is the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta aka The Great Discourse on the Establishing of Mindfulness. I choose this one particular sutta because of its importance, perhaps the most important sutta in the whole Pali Canon. The knowledge in the suttas pertain to insight. Insight is where everything begins really, as far as Buddhism goes and naturally achieving insight should be the primary concern, it’s not far-fetched so say it should be your only concern, once you decide to take on this path.
The Great Discourse on the Establishing of Mindfulness is a detailed narration on the progression of insight. It shows every step to guide your practice. That’s why it’s considered so important. It’s a map of the successive chains of insight. I’ve put this together after seeing there’s no freely available version of this text that is well edited and cleaned up. So I made a composite of two translations, Nyanasatta Thera’s translation of Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta and Bhikkhu Sujato’s translation of the missing parts to complete the sutta, with slight alterations following Maurice Walshe’s translation of the work, which is very well regarded. The result is a clear and straightforward rendering of the text, edited and organized to be easy to use. I brought back some of the formulaic repetitions that appears in the original which is usually omitted for the sake of expediency when dealing with texts that are suppose to be printed, but here that is not a concern; regardless, this sutta is not a long one, it shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes to go through it, though it might take a lifetime to master it.
I’ve included a diagram of the four noble truths and the eightfold noble path for easy memorization, so you can look at it periodically and eventually commit to memory. I hope this will be useful. I’ve never tried my hand at editing text files before and it was challenging at first to get everything together, but between Sigil and Calibre somehow it came out a decent epub file, so I hope.This is legal to share, copy and alter btw, so if you want to do any of those feel free to do it, in fact it would be nice if this text could see more readers.
The reason I ended up working on this text file for distribution is because I promised on the reading thread
>>63883 >>63884 to make a review on the Dīgha Nikāya once I finished reading it, but once I did finish it, it occurred to me it would be pointless to go on about writing my ignorant impressions of such important piece of work for human culture. Instead, I decided to make something useful that people could have and use for their own benefit. And why should you read it? Remember this, at the core of Buddhism, you’ll find a practice, not a promise. Buddhism cannot be a lie, no more than a hammer can be a lie. It’s a tool and tools we judge by use: It’s either useful or not useful. It’s pointless to try to criticize a hammer before you have put it to use. The Great Discourse is a manual of practice and in it you’ll find everything you need to get into the path. It’s even short enough for you to mostly memorize the entire thing. In fact I do advise you to memorize it. Then you’ll have in your heart the path on which no effort is a waste, all effort is progress, every step you take on it gets you closer to liberation, to nibbāna.
Be as it may, I hope you can appreciate it at any level, even if it’s just as a curious piece of literature. There are many beautiful passages in there. If nothing else, read The Nine Charnel-Ground Contemplations located on the Contemplation of the Body session. It takes like 4 minutes to go through it.
I would like to hear your impressions of the work and, if you decided to take on the path, your experience thus far. Also, for anyone downloading and reading the book, please let me know of any typos or errors you find. I did run it through spelling and grammar correctors many times and read it more than a dozen times looking for any mistakes, but you never know. Your help is appreciated.
I've made 3 files. A PDF I'll upload here, an epub book you can download at (wizchan don't allow epubs to be uploaded):
https://anonfiles.com/x6u8hfTcy4/Mahasatipatthana_Sutta_-_The_Great_Discourse_on_the_Establishing_of_Mindfulness_-_Anonymous_epub And finally, I've made an html file of it, it's hosted at:
https://mahasatipatthana.neocities.org/