Touching the Infinite ─ A New Perspective on the Buddha's Four Foundations of Mindfulness

A prominent Insight Meditation teacher explores the profound implications of the traditional Buddhist teaching on the four areas to which mindfulness is applied as a means to liberation.

Awakening manifests through the application of mindfulness to four areas: body, feelings, mind, and dharmas. Buddhists of all the traditions share this principle found in the Satipatthana Sutta, which has been expounded upon since the time of the Buddha himself. Rodney Smith challenges us to hold this teaching up against our own experience, and in doing so to discover the inherent interconnection of all Four Foundations. They are revealed to be a sequential path leading the practitioner from the world of form to the joyous perception of the formless. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness thus serve as a road map for any genuine spiritual path.

Rodney Smith has recently retired as a guiding teacher for the Insight Meditation Society and from the Seattle Insight Meditation Society, which he founded in 1993. He is the author of Lessons from the Dying, Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha’s Liberating Teaching of No-Self, and Awakening: A Paradigm Shift of the Heart.