Hello Dmitri,

You have honed in on an interesting facet of the Samuday Sutta.

> Thank you very much for the Chinese version.

If there is interest, i can contribute some other selections from
the Chinese. I have about half the satipatthana Samyutta in
translation, plus other stuff. There is another version of the
Samudaya Sutta embodied in the Prajnaparamita Sutra. I'll see if i
can hunt that up and send it in.

>
> I consider Samudaya sutta of Satipatthana Samyutta quite

illuminating,

> since in emphasizes the central role of attention as a

prerequisite of

> the mental qualities. The details of this relation are described in
> Ahara sutta
> http://www.accesstoinsight.org/canon/sutta/samyutta/sn46-051.html
> Aññatitthiyasutta (AN 1.199) and others.

Indeed - The Samudaya Sutta says that 'due to the arising of
attention there is the arising of dhammas, due to the cessation of
attention is the ending of dhammas.' This should be undertsood in
light of such suttas as you refer to above. The com also agrees,
saying that yoniso manasikara gives rise to the bojjhangas, ayoniso
manasikara gives rise to te nivarana. Interestingly, the Abhidhamma
Vibhanga in its exposition of Satipatthana, gives precisely the
nivarana and bojjhangas as the content of dhammanupassana.

The Pali Satipatthana Sutta, of course, gives several other sets of
dhammas in addition - the khandhas, ayatanas, saccas. These are
rather different kinds of things, and it is difficult to explain how
attention could give rise to the khandhas and ayatanas. Certainly
this is not the normal position of the suttas.

In the other expositions of satipatthana i have seen - Sarvastivada
Smrtyupasthana Sutra, Mahasanghika (?) Ekayana Sutra, sarvastivada
Abhidharma Dharmaskandha, Dharmaguptaka Sariputrabhidharma - the
nivarana and bojjhangas appear consistently, but the other sets are
rather less consistent.

This raises the question as to why there are discrepancies. It is
quite possible that the Buddha simply taught satipatthana in
different ways at different times. But i think that the overwhelming
similarities between all these texts most naturally suggests that
they all hark from a common ancestral 'Satipatthana Mula', and that
most of the differences are best explained as later accretions. If
this is true it would imply, surprisingly, that the Abhidhamma
exposition of satipatthana is in some respects more archaic than the
Suttas.

>
> Somehow this aspect of Satipatthana is rarely brought to the light.
> Attention acts as a kind of mental qualities amplifier.
>

Absolutely. Perhaps the reason that this aspect is so rarely talked
about is that the role of manasikara in relation to the exercises
mentioned in the existing Theravada Satipatthana Sutta is unclear.
Hence the vague and unsatisfactory attempts to define exactly
what 'dhammas' means here. (There's a long history to that one!) But
it is a crucially important part of meditation practice. In this
case we can see that the textual history of our scriptures has a
direct bearing on how we approach meditation.


Yours in Dhamma


Bhante Sujato