RECOVERING PRESENCE FROM THE HISTORY OF TRANSLATION
The Original Teaching: Sati in Traditional Buddhism
In the earliest Buddhist texts, the Pali word sati is used to describe a quality of awareness that is different from what most people mean today when they say “mindfulness.” Contemporary mindfulness often positions us as observers watching our experience from a slight distance. Sati described total immersion in the moment resulting in an awareness that participates fully in the immediacy of experience.
Consider the difference between watching your breath and breathing with complete presence. In the first, there is a sense of “me” observing “my breath.” In the second, there is breathing with no separation between awareness and the breath itself. This quality of non-separate knowing is what sati pointed toward.
Derived from a root meaning “to remember” or “to keep in mind,” sati, rather than meaning passive observation could better be termed, “participatory awareness.” This refers to a consciousness that maintains unwavering attention while simultaneously understanding the deeper nature of experience. Sati does not refer to a remembering of facts about the past but instead means remembering our true nature in each moment.
The most important text on this practice, the Foundations of Mindfulness Discourse (Satipatthana Sutta), uses a distinctive phrasing that reveals the participatory nature of awareness (Bodhi, 2000). Practitioners are instructed to contemplate the body "in the body," feelings "in the feelings," and so on. This signals an awareness that is not looking at the body from the outside, but knowing the body directly, from within. Awareness is an embodied presence (Analayo, 2003).
Another key text, Mindfulness of Breathing Discourse (Anapanasati Sutta), outlines sixteen stages that begin with awareness of the breath and lead to deep insight into the nature of experience (Thanissaro, 2001). The practitioner is not told to observe the breath from a detached distance. Instead, the practice involves a growing intimacy with the breathing process, culminating in the realization of the awareness in which even the breath appears and disappears (Wallace, 2006).
Translation Shaped The Meaning of Sati
To appreciate how this participatory dimension of sati was lost, it is helpful to consider the historical context of the English translations of Buddhist texts. This context explains why the distinction between the current concept of “mindfulness” and “presence” is important.
The first English translations of Buddhist texts began in mid-19th century Britain with Rhys Davids’ Pali Text Society work representing the first systematic and widely influential effort. The worldview of Victorian Britain influenced the process of translation. British scholars were a product of their culture and thus brought to bear their specific views which were deeply influenced by scientific materialism and colonial attitudes toward “Oriental” religions. Cultural biases shaped how Buddhist ideas were translated and understood because translators used concepts that were embedded in their intellectual world.
Translators approached Buddhism as a religion and approached its concepts through the lens of their own Protestant values. These were values rooted in the ideas of individual salvation and a Western rational system of beliefs. In 19th century Britain, the scientific revolution had established a division between observer and observed, between subject and object. This dualism may have seemed self-evident to Victorian minds, but it was alien to traditional Buddhist thought. It departed from the interdependent and non-substantialist views found in traditional Buddhist psychology.
The Pali translator, T.W. Rhys Davids, was a leading figure in early Buddhist scholarship. He translated sati as “memory.” This reflected not only the word’s linguistic roots but also the Victorian perspective that equated spiritual and intellectual activities. To a mind shaped by scientific dualism, awareness was directed at objects. Awareness was understood as something separate. This was altogether different from the unified, participatory awareness expressed in Buddhist texts. Subsequently, the word “mindfulness” was used in a number of translations. Warren (1896) used the term in his book Buddhism in Translations. He chose the Middle English word “mindful,” meaning “aware” or “attentive.”
This use of the term, “mindfulness” conveyed the separation of observer from observed. The term requires a mind that stands back and watches thoughts and sensations from a distance. This is different from the integrated, non-dual awareness that sati originally signified.
Mindfulness Today
The early translations established three concepts that influence how contemporary mindfulness is understood and practiced.
Loss of Participatory Awareness: Modern “mindfulness” establishes the observer-observed division that Buddhist practice seeks to eliminate. The process of mindfulness involves observing thoughts and emotions.
Therapeutic Reductionism: Although therapeutic uses of mindfulness have helped many, it has separated sati from its original meaning. Buddhist sati was predicated on ethical conduct, compassion, and wisdom, directed toward understanding impermanence, suffering, and non-self. It was not occupied with stress management.
Individual Focus: The modern clinical focus on mindfulness stresses personal well-being. However, sati was understood as relational. The Pali texts describe sati as enabling an understanding of awakening rather than individual self-improvement.
These particular cultural biases are important because they influence how we understand presence. When we approach awareness through the lens of scientific materialism, we miss the intimacy that presence reveals.
What Sati Described
Later Buddhist psychology (in the Higher Teaching Collection, the third section of the Pali Canon devoted to systematic psychological analysis, particularly the Classification of Mental Factors and Book of Analysis) described sati with features that align with what this book means by presence (Bodhi, 2000; Rhys Davids, 1900):
Non-scattered awareness: Establishes consciousness in immediate experience.
Retentive quality: Holds experience steadily without losing contact.
Intimate engagement: Meets phenomena directly rather than observing from a distance.
Protective function: Guards against distraction and delusion.
Investigative clarity: Sees the true nature of what arises.
This interpretation suggests that sati was understood as active mental engagement and not passive witnessing. The descriptions reveal awareness that participates fully in experience while maintaining perfect clarity. This is what this book refers to in its use of the word, presence.
The Difference in Everyday Life
This distinction is important when applied to inter-personal conflicts. Consider how these different approaches might handle anger:
Contemporary mindfulness approach: Notice the anger arising and observe it with detached awareness. Label it “anger” and observe it with detached awareness. Watch the anger pass without being swamped by reactive emotion. This creates helpful space between you and the emotion.
Sati approach (presence): Meet the anger completely without resistance or separation. There is no “you” standing apart watching anger. There is only the immediate knowing of anger as it arises and dissolves within open awareness. The response is spontaneous, neither suppressed nor indulged.
In everyday conflicts, mindfulness requires stepping back to observe one's reactions, creating space to think clearly. Presence goes further. It involves being open to your own experience and to the other person; responding from a deeper awareness rather than reacting from habit or defense. The difference is important: mindfulness can help manage difficult experiences while presence reveals the aware space in which all experience arises, including conflict itself.
Growing Recognition of the Translation Problem
Some 21st century scholars of Buddhism have suggested that the popular understanding of mindfulness diverges from what the original texts intended. Bhikkhu Analayo (2003) maintains that sati should be understood as “clearly knowing” and not as passive, detached awareness. John H. Davis (2020), in his discussion of sati, refers to care and engagement and not detachment. He contends that an understanding of mindfulness that focuses on the individual neglects the relational aspects of sati.
The cognitive philosopher, Evan Thompson (2014, 2020), criticizes the reductionist character of clinical mindfulness programs. In his view, the application of mindfulness loses the insights of the original Buddhist texts. Robert Sharf, a professor of Buddhist Studies, similarly argues (2015) that the manner in which mindfulness is used in therapy and meditation diverges from its meaning in traditional Buddhism.
B. Alan Wallace (2006) also distinguishes between a process of superficial mindfulness and a sustained presence developed through meditation training. Thanissaro Bhikkhu (2012) emphasizes mindfulness not as passive observation but an active, ethically informed engagement with the present moment. Finally, Ronald Purser (2019) in his critique of what he terms “McMindfulness,” argues that modern mindfulness, by being adopted by corporate culture, has been divested of its foundational meaning, rendering it a tool for self-optimization.
Recovering Presence
The use of the word, “presence,” in this book attempts to point back toward the original meaning of sati. Not as rejection of contemporary mindfulness but as recovery of something essential that was lost in translation and cultural adaptation.
Mindfulness often creates a sense of distance, with the practitioner watching thoughts, breath, or feelings from the outside. Presence removes that distance. It does not observe the breath. It breathes. It does not watch emotions from afar. It meets them fully, without holding back.
Honoring Both Paths
Distinguishing presence from contemporary mindfulness does not diminish the latter's value. Mindfulness-based interventions have brought valuable therapy to many people and made contemplative practice accessible to those who would otherwise never have encountered it.
Moreover, for many practitioners, what begins as therapeutic mindfulness develops toward the deeper engagement this book calls presence. The techniques and insights of clinical mindfulness can serve as preparation for a deeper transformation that traditional Buddhist practice aims toward.
We now have the historical perspective to understand how cultural filters shaped early translations. We can use this understanding to recover more accurate interpretations of the term, sati. The original texts describe a way of knowing that transcends the subject/object dualism that Victorian thought took for granted.
The Timeless Teaching
The use of “presence” in this book may be a return to older insights that were obscured in the journey from ancient texts to English, from monastery to clinic, from liberation practice to stress management. This book’s use of the concept of “presence” may be closer to the original meaning of sati than contemporary “mindfulness” practice.
When heated moments arise in our daily lives, when conflicts threaten to separate us from those we love, we can remember this deeper teaching. We can return not only to mindful observation but to the intimate presence that the original Buddhist texts suggest. This is an awareness in which there is no separation between self and other, between knowing and what appears within knowing.
This is what this book means by “presence.” Not a modern invention, but rather the recovery of a quality described in early texts: a discerning, participatory awareness that sees through the illusion of separateness and meets each moment with undivided attention and depth of being.
References
Analayo, Bhikkhu. (2003). Satipatthana: The direct path to realization. Windhorse Publications.
Bodhi, B. (Trans.). (2000). The connected discourses of the Buddha: A translation of the Samyutta Nikaya. Wisdom Publications.
Bodhi, B. (Trans.). (2000). The comprehensive manual of Abhidhamma: The Abhidhammattha sangaha of Acariya Anuruddha. Buddhist Publication Society.
Davis, John H. (2019). “What is Mindfulness? History, Meaning, and Practices.” In Handbook of Mindfulness: Culture, Context, and Social Engagement, edited by R.A. Scott, S.M. Kosslyn, and N. Pinkham. Springer.
Davis, John H. (2020). “The relational heart of mindfulness: Recovering connection in our fractured world.” In Ronald E. Purser, D. Forbes, & A. Burke (Eds.), Handbook of mindfulness: Culture, context, and social engagement (pp. 301-315). Springer.
Purser, Ronald E. (2019). McMindfulness: How mindfulness became the new capitalist spirituality. Repeater Books.
Rhys Davids, C. A. F. (1900). A Buddhist manual of psychological ethics of the fourth century B.C.: Being a translation, now made for the first time, from the original Pali, of the first book in the Abhidhamma pitaka, entitled Dhamma-sangani (Compendium of states or phenomena). Royal Asiatic Society.
Sharf, Robert H. “Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (And Why It Matters).” Transcultural Studies, no. 1 (2015): 1–41.
Thanissaro, Bhikkhu. Mindfulness of Breathing: A Manual for Meditators. Valley Center, CA: Metta Forest Monastery, 2012.
Thompson, E. (2014). Waking, dreaming, being: Self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy. Columbia University Press.
Thompson, Evan. (2020). Why I am not a Buddhist. Yale University Press.
Wallace, B. A. (2006). The attention revolution: Unlocking the power of the focused mind. Wisdom Publications.
Warren, H. C. (1896). Buddhism in translations. Harvard University Press.
