---
title: "Modern Diagnosis: Pīti + Passaddhi as Cross-Traditional Diagnostic Instrument"
author: "釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)"
series: "Six Practice Gates, Volume 2 — DĀNA: The Practice of Giving, from Pāli Roots to the Dharmadhātu"
series_short: "DĀNA"
volume: 2
paper_id: "DANA-P29"
paper_number: 29
part: "Part IX · Modern Diagnosis"
part_number: 9
date: "2026-05-15"
version: "1.0"
license: "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0"
---

# Modern Diagnosis

**Pīti + Passaddhi as Cross-Traditional Diagnostic Instrument**

*中文主題：本文以七覺支第五因子喜 (pīti) 至第六因子輕安 (passaddhi) 之因果鎖鏈，作為一具跨傳統之診斷工具；以此工具同時量度漢傳念佛之求-交易化與西方 mindfulness 之工具化兩案例，顯出兩者同失敗於同一節點——表層喜不引輕安後接，因果鏈停於第五級。本篇之漢傳批判跨善導、永明、蕅益、印光一千三百年；西方對話取 McMahan、Sharf、Anālayo 半世紀之學術內部批判。診斷在此始終是層級式而非譴責式，「不攻擊機構」之紅線是衡器之架構特徵，並非外加之自我審查。*

---

**Author:** 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)
**Date:** May 2026
**License:** CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
**Version:** 1.0
**Series:** DĀNA — The Practice of Giving

---

## Abstract

This paper proposes a cross-traditional diagnostic instrument grounded in the causal chain from the fifth *bojjhaṅga*, *pīti*, to the sixth, *passaddhi*. This transition is the point in the seven-factor sequence where pseudo-practice most readily slips in: an excitation generated by bargaining-mind can present itself as the joy-factor while failing to call forth the tranquillity-factor that ought to follow, so the chain halts at the fifth rung. With this instrument the paper diagnoses two cases at once. The first is the bargaining-drift of the Chinese-tradition *nianfo* practice, whose in-tradition critique line runs through *Shandao* (7c), *Yongming Yanshou* (10c), *Zhixu* (17c), and *Yinguang* (early 20c), spanning roughly thirteen hundred years. The second is the instrumentalization of Western *mindfulness*, whose critical-academic dialogue runs through *McMahan*, *Sharf*, and *Anālayo*, spanning roughly half a century. Both cases fail at the same diagnostic node, which suggests the doctrinal phenomenology is not an external projection but two readings of a single instrument. The diagnosis throughout is hierarchical, not condemnatory: bargaining-driven *nianfo* still earns its worldly-tier merit; the error lies in mistaking that tier for the ultimate form. The "no-institutional-attack" discipline is not external self-censorship but a structural feature of the instrument: its diagnostic voice arises from within each tradition's own canonical masters.

**Keywords:** *bojjhaṅga*, *pīti*, *passaddhi*, *nianfo*, bargaining-mindset, *mindfulness*, instrumentalization, in-tradition critique, *xin-yuan-xing*, mixed-poison goodness, Buddhist modernism, instrument, merit-bandwidth, dual case-study, diagnostic tool

---

## I. Introduction: Opening Part IX and the Diagnostic Task

With the preceding paper (P28), the DĀNA volume closed Part VIII (P24–P28) on a destination-posture: in the closing chapter of the *Avataṃsaka*, *Sudhana*'s pilgrimage of fifty-three visits arrived at the entry-point of the *dharmadhātu*, and giving as the practice-gate of the dharma-realm reached its full structural unfolding at that chapter-level conclusion.[^1] The present paper opens Part IX. The register now shifts: from classical exegesis of canonical sources, the volume turns to a diagnostic application of those sources to two specific present-day implementations of practice — one in the Chinese tradition and one in its Western reception.

The thesis of this paper can be stated in a single sentence. The causal chain from the fifth *bojjhaṅga*, *pīti*, to the sixth, *passaddhi*, is a cross-traditional diagnostic instrument; measured by this instrument, the bargaining-drift of Chinese-tradition *nianfo* (in its popular "praying-for-merit, praying-for-protection" register) and the instrumentalization of Western *mindfulness* (in its productivity-tool register) fail at the same diagnostic node — pseudo-*pīti* does not call forth *passaddhi*, and the chain halts at the fifth rung.

Three framing commitments must be set down before the diagnosis begins, lest the argument slip into a puritan or culture-war register.

First, **the diagnosis is hierarchical, not condemnatory**. The *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* states explicitly, in fascicle eleven, that "giving practiced before the attainment of *nirvāṇa* is the cause of human-divine reward of merit" (人天報樂之因).[^2] Merit-seeking giving and merit-seeking *nianfo* still earn their tier of worldly reward, and that tier has doctrinal validity. The error is not in the bargaining-mind itself but in mistaking that tier for the ultimate form. The "instrument" proposed here turns its single face toward both merit-seeking *nianfo* and effect-seeking *mindfulness*: both ends are read with one gaze, neither end dismissed. Any puritan reading that condemns merit-seeking outright misses the fine merit-tier distinction at the heart of the diagnosis.

Second, **the "no-institutional-attack" discipline is a structural feature of the instrument, not an external act of self-censorship**. The thirteen-hundred-year critical line in the Chinese case is composed entirely of canonical masters within that tradition: *Shandao* (7c), *Yongming Yanshou* (10c), *Zhixu* (17c), *Yinguang* (early 20c). The dialogue on the Western side is taken from critical-academic Buddhist studies (*McMahan*, *Sharf*, *Anālayo*), not from cultural commentary or political critique. The present paper recovers an already-articulated in-tradition line; it does not import an external critique.

Third, one philological discipline must be flagged at the outset. The Chinese rendering of *passaddhi* shifts across roughly five hundred years through three distinct strata: the *Saṃyukta-āgama* uses 猗息 (*yi-xi*), the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* uses 除覺分 (*chu-jue-fen*), and from the *Xuanzang* era onward the rendering is standardized as 輕安 (*qing-an*). Every citation here preserves the form of its source exactly, without back-filling later terminology into earlier texts. This translation history is itself a micro-history of gradual doctrinal-precision loss — a single doctrinal factor passing through three renderings in five hundred years — and it will serve, in section II, as a small-scale type-example of the very phenomenon the paper will diagnose at larger scale in section V.

## II. The Bojjhaṅga Causal Chain and the Micro-History of Chinese *Passaddhi*

The seven *bojjhaṅga* (Skt. *saṃbodhyaṅga*) form the sixth grouping in early Buddhism's thirty-seven *bodhipakkhiyadhammā*, comprising seven factors: *sati* (mindfulness, technical), *dhamma-vicaya* (investigation of *dhammas*), *viriya* (energy), *pīti* (rapture), *passaddhi* (tranquillity), *samādhi* (concentration), and *upekkhā* (equanimity).[^3] Three architectural features attach to this grouping. First, the seven span the substrate of the three trainings (*sīla*, *samādhi*, *paññā*). Second, they constitute a self-regulating structure responsive to bidirectional imbalance. Third, the factors are not enumerated in parallel; they stand in causal dependence on one another. The present paper concentrates on the transition between the fifth and the sixth factor — from *pīti* to *passaddhi*.

### 2.1 *Saṃyukta-āgama* 711 and the proximate-cause formula

The doctrinal grammar of this transition is given a compact statement in *Saṃyukta-āgama* 711:

> When that energy has been skillfully applied, joy arises and the desires of the senses fall away. He cultivates the joy-factor of awakening; cultivating the joy-factor of awakening, the joy-factor of awakening is brought to fulfilment; **and once the joy-factor of awakening is fulfilled, body and mind come to rest, and he cultivates the tranquillity-factor of awakening**.[^4]

The crucial expression is "**once fulfilled**" (滿足已). *Pīti* does not arise randomly or stand alone; it arises only when the preceding factor (*viriya*) has come to maturity, and its *own* maturity is what serves as the proximate cause of *passaddhi*. The same form is given on the Pāli side. *Buddhaghosa*, at the head of *Visuddhimagga* VII, fixes *passaddhi*'s proximate cause in a single grammatically tight phrase, "*pītipadaṭṭhānāya passaddhiyā*" — *pīti* as *padaṭṭhāna* of *passaddhi*; the compound *pīti-padaṭṭhāna* in *abhidhamma* idiom means literally "having *pīti* as its standing-place."[^5] *Anālayo*, in his scholarly satipaṭṭhāna studies, repeatedly emphasizes that the seven *bojjhaṅga* are not a flat list but a chain of causal dependence in which the maturation of one factor is the condition for the arising of the next.[^6]

Two immediate consequences follow for the present argument. First, genuine *pīti* carries a built-in downward settling dynamic: body and mind pass from excitation into rest, from leaping into deposit. Second, if a surface "joy" fails to call forth *passaddhi*, then that "joy" has not in fact matured into the joy-factor of awakening; it is a fifth-rung surface appearance — a *pīti*-mimicking excitation, not *pīti* itself. The diagnosis of the two cases below rests on exactly this doctrinal precision.

### 2.2 The three strata of Chinese *passaddhi*

The history of *passaddhi* in Chinese rendering is itself a small archaeology of gradual doctrinal-precision loss, worth a brief excavation here.

**First stratum: early renderings (2nd–3rd c.).** Early translators such as *An Shigao* and *Zhi Qian* tend toward sense-translation, rendering *passaddhi* as 猗覺意 (*yi-jue-yi*). The character 猗 carries the sense "to lean upon, to come to rest"; 覺意 was the early standard rendering of *bojjhaṅga*. This stratum preserved the verbal sense of "settling upon the previous factor."

**Second stratum: two divergent renderings in the fifth century.** The Liu Song *Saṃyukta-āgama* translated by *Guṇabhadra* continues the early tradition with 猗 or 猗息 (*yi-xi*) and preserves the formula "cultivate the *yi* factor of awakening," as in the *Saṃyukta-āgama* 711 closing line above.[^7] The contemporaneous *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*, translated by *Kumārajīva*, takes a different path and renders *passaddhi* as **除覺分** (*chu-jue-fen*) — drawing on the negative-side semantics of *passaddhi* as "removing coarseness of body and coarseness of mind" (which section III will set out). This point of attribution must be stressed: the *Mahāprajīñāpāramitā-śāstra* renders *passaddhi* as 除覺分, *not* as 猗覺分 (a form that has sometimes been mistakenly attributed). Stray occurrences of 猗 in the *Śāstra* belong, on philological grounds, to a variant reading 倚 ("to lean on, to cling") with a negative sense — the opposite-side semantic register — not to a positive rendering of *passaddhi*.[^8] Every citation of the *Śāstra* below preserves 除覺分 exactly.

**Third stratum: standardization from *Xuanzang* onward (7th c. and after).** The *Xuanzang* translation system fixes *passaddhi* as 輕安 (*qing-an*) — combining the senses "lightness of body" and "ease of mind." This rendering becomes the mainstream form across the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing, and carries into modern scholarship.

The implication for the present paper is twofold. Every citation must preserve the form of its source (the *Saṃyukta-āgama* must read 猗息, the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* must read 除覺分, later texts must read 輕安); no back-filling is permitted. And the translation history itself constitutes a working example of the diagnostic thesis: a single doctrinal factor, drifting through three Chinese renderings across five centuries, traces in miniature a structural — not accidental — loss of precision. When section V traces the doctrinal drift of modern *mindfulness*, this Chinese translation history will serve as a small-scale type-precedent.

## III. The Prajñāpāramitā Reframing in the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*: True *Pīti* and the *Chu-jue-fen* Causal Transition

The most systematic *prajñāpāramitā* reframing of the seven *bojjhaṅga* in Chinese commentary is found in *Kumārajīva*'s translation of the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*, fascicle nineteen. This fascicle goes beyond enumeration: it treats the fifth factor through a dialectic of "true *pīti* versus *pīti* attached to pleasure," and it treats the fifth-to-sixth transition with the causal grammar of "true *pīti* draws forth removal." This treatment is the direct doctrinal precedent, within Chinese commentarial literature, for the present paper's thesis.

### 3.1 True *pīti* versus *pīti* attached to pleasure

The *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* fascicle nineteen states, on the joy-factor:

> *Pīti* born within actual wisdom — this is true *pīti*.[^9]

The phrase "born within actual wisdom" grammatically locks down the source: the wellspring of true *pīti* is "actual wisdom" (i.e., *prajñā*'s observation of the emptiness of the five aggregates), not affective stimulation by an external object. This definition moves *pīti* out of an affective paradigm and into a cognitive-noetic one: true *pīti* is not a pleasant feeling but the by-product of *prajñā*'s observation. Without "born within actual wisdom" as its root, any so-called "*pīti*" is at most a surface appearance — it has not entered the paradigm of true *pīti*.

Immediately following this definition, the *Śāstra* gives, in tight causal grammar, the path that follows from true *pīti*:

> When one has gained this true *pīti*, one first removes coarseness of body, next removes coarseness of mind, and then removes the marks of all *dharmas*, attaining a pleasure pervading body and mind — this is **the removal-factor of awakening** (*chu-jue-fen*).[^10]

The syntax repays close attention. "First removes … next removes … then removes" describes a three-stage sequential operation; its initial verb-clause, "When one has gained this true *pīti*," fixes the activation condition: without the maturation of *pīti*, the three-stage operation of "removal" cannot begin. This grammatical structure is exactly isomorphic to the *Saṃyukta-āgama* 711 closing line ("**once the joy-factor of awakening is fulfilled**, body and mind come to rest"): both make the fifth factor's maturation the prerequisite for the sixth factor's activation. The Pāli *pīti-padaṭṭhāna* formula is thereby given a concrete doctrinal worked example in Chinese commentary.

An immediate inference follows: **every "*pīti*" whose source is not actual wisdom — being unable to set in motion the three-stage operation of "removal" — halts at the fifth rung and cannot continue the chain**. The affective excitations produced by bargaining-mind (the absorption-feeling reported by merit-seeking *nianfo* practitioners, the calm-feeling reported by effect-seeking *mindfulness* practitioners) — if their source is not the cognitive event "born within actual wisdom" — are doctrinally only "attached-pleasure *pīti*": *pīti*-mimicking excitation, not the maturation of *pīti*.

### 3.2 The bidirectional imbalance treatment of *Saṃyukta-āgama* 714

The seven *bojjhaṅga* possess not only a forward chain (each factor conditioning the next) but also a lateral self-regulating structure. *Saṃyukta-āgama* 714 supplies the doctrinal formula: when the mind sinks (*thīna-middha*), one should cultivate *dhamma-vicaya*, *viriya*, and *pīti* to rouse it; when the mind is agitated (*uddhacca-kukkucca*), one should cultivate *passaddhi*, *samādhi*, and *upekkhā* to settle it.[^11] This bidirectional structure means that the seven factors carry internal diagnostic machinery for imbalance — no external framework is needed to self-correct.

For the present paper, this self-regulating structure has a special inference. Affective excitations produced by bargaining-mind are phenomenologically tilted toward the agitation end (excitation, leaping, result-grasping), and their proper treatment is precisely *passaddhi*, *samādhi*, *upekkhā*. If the transition *pīti* → *passaddhi* → *samādhi* is blocked by bargaining-mind, then the chain stalls in fifth-rung over-excitation and the self-corrective machinery itself cannot engage. The bidirectional formula thus supplies another layer of instrumental support for the thesis.

### 3.3 The five kinds of *pīti* in *Visuddhimagga* IV.94–100

Upstream of *passaddhi*, the fifth factor itself receives a fine-grained internal taxonomy in Pāli abhidhamma literature. *Buddhaghosa*, in *Visuddhimagga* IV §94–100, sets out five kinds of *pīti*: *khuddikā pīti* (minor rapture), *khaṇikā pīti* (momentary rapture), *okkantikā pīti* (showering rapture), *ubbegā pīti* (uplifting rapture), and *pharaṇā pīti* (suffusing rapture).[^12] The five lie along a spectrum from surface to depth: the first three are largely affective surface phenomena (gooseflesh, instantaneous flashes, wave-like surges), the fourth shows a kinaesthetic register (leaping, trembling), and only the fifth, *pharaṇā pīti*, corresponds at the doctrinal level to *jhāna* and is the form that serves as the proximate cause of *passaddhi*'s arising.

The diagnostic inference is sharp: the affective shocks experienced by modern practitioners on a first encounter with calm-abiding or insight practice are, doctrinally speaking, largely surface-tier phenomena among the first four kinds; they have not matured into the fifth-tier *pharaṇā pīti*. If such surface *pīti* is mistaken for matured *pīti* — and locked into that fifth-rung over-excitation through productivity-tracking, social-media witnessing, or commodified packaging — then the chain's downstream (the rest of *passaddhi*, the deposit of *samādhi*) is systematically cut off at this point.

By the close of this section, three doctrinal lines converge on a single articulation: the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*'s dialectic, the *Saṃyukta-āgama*'s self-regulating treatment, and the *Visuddhimagga*'s internal taxonomy. **The maturation of the fifth factor is the activation condition of the sixth; if the transition is severed by bargaining-mind, the entire chain stalls at fifth-rung excitation and cannot proceed**. With this instrument now articulated, section IV enters the first case: the bargaining-drift of Chinese-tradition *nianfo*.

## IV. *Zhixu*'s Three-Axis Architecture (*xin-yuan-xing*) and Its Isomorphism with *Pīti*+*Passaddhi*: Recovery of a Thirteen-Hundred-Year In-Tradition Critique

Section III completed the doctrinal articulation of the cross-traditional diagnostic instrument. This section enters the first case: the bargaining-drift of Chinese-tradition *nianfo*. The operation here has a distinctive architectural feature — the critical voice is not that of an external observer; it is the recovery of an already-articulated in-tradition line, running from *Shandao* (7c) through *Yongming Yanshou* (10c), *Zhixu* (17c), and *Yinguang* (early 20c), across roughly thirteen hundred years. The section will show a structural isomorphism between this in-tradition line and the cross-traditional *bojjhaṅga* instrument.

### 4.1 *Zhixu*'s three-axis architecture in the *Yaojie*

*Zhixu* (*Ouyi*) fixes the cultivation architecture of Pure Land practice in a doctrinally tight formula in his *Yaojie* (Essential Commentary on the *Amitābha-sūtra*):

> Faith is faith in the self, faith in the other, faith in cause, faith in effect, faith in event, faith in principle; **vow is weariness of Sahā and yearning for Sukhāvatī**; practice is upholding the name with one-pointed undistracted attention.[^13]

This three-axis architecture (*xin-yuan-xing*, "faith-vow-practice") can immediately be read in structural-isomorphic relation to the seven *bojjhaṅga*. The claim here is of moderate strength: the isomorphism is not a mechanical one-to-one mapping; rather, two independently developed architectural instruments converge structurally in their anti-bargaining design.

The decisive anchor is the clause "**vow is weariness of Sahā and yearning for Sukhāvatī**." *Zhixu* fixes *yuan* (vow) in two simultaneous directions: weariness toward *Sahā*, yearning toward *Sukhāvatī*. Both directions transcend bargaining-mind — neither is "may I obtain reward in the human and divine realms" nor "may I gain worldly safety"; both are a directional reorientation. *Zhixu*'s structural severity reaches its sharpest expression in a closing line later in the same text:

> Should one seek the human and divine realms, or seek to lean into quiescence, **this is then not the vow of birth in that land**.[^14]

The grammar is disjunctive-disqualifying: "seek the human and divine realms" and "seek to lean into quiescence" are both placed in the disqualified zone. Disqualifying "seek human and divine realms" excludes popular merit-seeking devotion; disqualifying "seek to lean into quiescence" excludes world-weary hermitism. The architectural definition of "vow" thereby structurally excludes every form of bargaining-mind.

This architecture stands in a doctrinally observable relation to the anti-bargaining structure of the seven *bojjhaṅga*. The chain *pīti* → *passaddhi* excludes the over-excited stalling of "surface joy that does not call forth tranquillity"; *Zhixu*'s three-axis architecture excludes the directional substitution of "vow replaced by the pursuit of worldly results." The former diagnoses at the level of phenomenological paradigm, the latter at the level of intentional paradigm; but in their architectural purpose — cutting off bargaining-mind — the two are structurally isomorphic.

### 4.2 The merit-tier as non-puritan discipline: the *Sūtra on the Discernment of Skilful and Unskilful Karmas*

*Zhixu* does not, however, follow this severity into a wholesale negation of all merit-seeking *nianfo*. In another passage of the *Yaojie* he cites the *Sūtra on the Discernment of Skilful and Unskilful Karmas* to set a finer merit-tier distinction:

> If with a mixed and defiled mind one recites my name, this is not called "hearing," for it cannot give rise to determinate faith-and-understanding; **it gains only worldly good-reward, not the vast subtle benefit**.[^15]

The doctrinal subtlety is decisive. The "mixed-and-defiled-mind recitation" — what the present paper calls bargaining-driven *nianfo* — is not without all merit. It "gains only worldly good-reward": it does earn the doctrinally valid lower tier. The error is not in occupying that tier but in mistaking it for "vast subtle benefit," the ultimate form. The register is captured in a single sentence: bargaining-driven *nianfo* earns worldly reward; it misses the bandwidth, but it does not earn nothing.

This subtlety is the doctrinal anchor of the diagnostic discipline maintained throughout the paper: the diagnosis is hierarchical (the tier is valid; mistaking it for the ultimate is wrong), and emphatically not condemnatory (it is not a puritan dismissal of the bargaining-mind itself). *Yongming Yanshou*, in the *Wanshan tonggui ji*, preserves the same subtlety: "The *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra* says: '**Even one who recites the Buddha-name with a distracted mind — the merit thus earned will not be exhausted until the end of suffering**.'"[^16] The doctrinal validity of distracted-mind *nianfo* is here given canonical anchorage.

This double articulation of the merit-tier — "gains only worldly good-reward" and "until the end of suffering its merit is not exhausted" — means that the instrument, in measuring bargaining-driven *nianfo*, must read both ends: the valid acknowledgement of the lower-tier merit, and the doctrinal observation of the chain's fifth-rung stalling. Any wholesale puritan negation fails this calibration.

### 4.3 The four anchor-points of the thirteen-hundred-year in-tradition critique

*Zhixu*'s three-axis architecture is not an isolated articulation; it is the continuation of a critical line spanning some thirteen hundred years of Chinese Pure Land tradition. Its four anchor-points are as follows.

**Shandao** (7c, second patriarch of the Pure Land school), in his *Wangsheng lizan ji* (Hymns of Praise for Birth in the Pure Land), gives an austere statement of the doctrinal grade of merit-seeking *nianfo*:

> Though one rouses the three karmas, this is called **mixed-poison goodness** — also called false-and-empty action, not true work … and to turn such mixed-poison action toward birth in that Buddha's pure land, this is impossible.[^17]

The phrase "mixed-poison goodness" is unsparing. The "poison" here is not external moral wrongdoing but the bargaining-poison in the internal motivational structure — seeking fame, seeking reward, seeking self-aggrandizement. *Shandao*'s articulation is isomorphic to *Zhixu*'s "should one seek human and divine realms, this is not the vow": both point to the same architectural diagnosis.

*Shandao*'s three-mind architecture (*zhicheng-xin*, *shen-xin*, *huixiang-fayuan-xin*) in the *Guan jing shu* provides the foundational intentional architecture of Pure Land practice; its structural exclusion of bargaining-mind is isomorphic with *Zhixu*'s *xin-yuan-xing*. This is noted here in passing without development.[^18]

**Yongming Yanshou** (10c, sixth patriarch of Pure Land and of the *Fayan* school of Chan), in the *Wanshan tonggui ji*, pushes the diagnosis to a microscopic phenomenological level with a precisely turned line:

> When *nianfo* is cast into a scattered mind, **the scattered mind cannot become Buddha**.[^19]

The grammar is tight. *Nianfo* "cast into a scattered mind" — that is, surface recitation unaccompanied by the underlying mental state — produces "the scattered mind cannot become Buddha": the scattered mind fails to be transformed into the Buddha-resonant state of consciousness. *Yongming* pushes the phenomenology of chain-severance from the intentional paradigm into a micro-phenomenological one: the dissociation between the surface action of *nianfo* and its underlying psychological substrate. This description is structurally isomorphic with the *bojjhaṅga* phenomenology of "surface joy that fails to call forth tranquillity."

**Zhixu** (17c, ninth patriarch of Pure Land), with the three-axis architecture and the anti-bargaining disqualifying line, has been treated in 4.1–4.2.

**Yinguang** (early 20c, thirteenth patriarch of Pure Land), in his *nianfo* critique, deploys the figure of the *cintāmaṇi* (wish-fulfilling jewel): if the mind of *nianfo* is like the *cintāmaṇi*'s own self-radiance, then every external seeking is superfluous; conversely, if the *cintāmaṇi* is deployed to acquire worldly objects, then the jewel's own nature has been misrecognized. The specific textual location of this figure within the *Wenchao* is, given the constraints of canonical availability and source-conditions of the present research, only referenced here in general terms — not cited verbatim and not anchored to a specific fascicle and page.[^20]

The four anchor-points, spanning the seventh century to the early twentieth, present a continuous in-tradition critical line. The task of the present paper is not to add a new external critique but to recover this already-articulated line and place it under the same measuring instrument as the second case — Western *mindfulness*.

### 4.4 Structural isomorphism of two instruments

A claim of moderate doctrinal strength can now be set down: the seven *bojjhaṅga*'s *pīti* → *passaddhi* causal chain and *Zhixu*'s *xin-yuan-xing* three-axis architecture, as two independently developed architectural instruments, are structurally isomorphic in their anti-bargaining design.

The *bojjhaṅga* chain runs *viriya* → true *pīti* (born within actual wisdom) → *passaddhi* (removing coarseness of body and mind) → *samādhi* → *upekkhā*. Any point at which bargaining-mind substitutes ruptures the chain at that point. The point of most likely rupture is the transition from the fifth to the sixth — surface joy unable to call forth *passaddhi*.

The *xin-yuan-xing* axes run *xin* (sixfold faith) → *yuan* (weariness of *Sahā*, yearning for *Sukhāvatī*) → *xing* (upholding the name with one-pointed undistracted attention). Substitution within the vow-axis by "seek human and divine realms" or "seek to lean into quiescence" collapses the three-axis architecture. The point of most likely collapse is the directionality of vow — replacing the dual yearning by the pursuit of worldly results.

That the two instruments converge at the most-vulnerable point is not coincidence. Their common doctrinal root is the phenomenological generality of bargaining-mind, which leaves the same characteristic imprint in both the phenomenological paradigm (joy without tranquillity) and the intentional paradigm (vow not turned to weariness-and-yearning). Both instruments expose the same diagnostic node.

The next section will carry this doctrinal precision into the second case: the instrumentalization of Western *mindfulness*. The same instrument will turn its face to the other end.

## V. The Instrumentalization of Western *mindfulness*: Three Academic Stacks

The preceding section showed that Chinese-tradition *nianfo* already carries a thirteen-hundred-year in-tradition critique line. This section will show that the instrumentalization of Western *mindfulness* has, over the past half century, accumulated its own line of critical-academic scholarship within Buddhist studies, and will use the same *bojjhaṅga* instrument to measure the second case in the same frame as the first. To avoid sliding into a culture-war register, this section sets out a three-stack doctrinal-diagnostic structure of academic dialogue (*McMahan* / *Sharf* / *Anālayo*), each of whose echo returns explicitly to the doctrinal-instrumental level of "*pīti* failing to call forth *passaddhi*."

### 5.1 First stack (principal): *McMahan* 2008 on Buddhist modernism

*McMahan*, in *The Making of Buddhist Modernism* (2008), frames the *mindfulness* movement's structural-historical conditions through three vectors: detraditionalization, demythologization, and psychologization.[^21] The core of his articulation is not evaluative but descriptive-genealogical: the doctrinal drift of modern *mindfulness* is not the misstep of any individual teacher but the historical product of more than a century of dialogue between Buddhism, Western Romanticism, liberal Protestantism, and scientific naturalism.

For the present paper, *McMahan*'s framework supplies a structural-historical condition: gradual loss of doctrinal precision is not the corrosion of any single cause but an architectural by-product of modernist translation. The Chinese *passaddhi* micro-history of section II — five centuries, three rendering strata — is a small-scale precedent for exactly this: the erosion of a single doctrinal factor's precision across translation contexts is structural rather than accidental. *McMahan* supplies the historical-structural framework of doctrinal diagnosis.

But an immediate echo is needed: *McMahan*'s framework is structural-historical and does not address doctrinal-phenomenological matters from within. The thesis of this paper cannot stop at the modernist structural condition; it must return to the doctrinal-phenomenological level of *pīti* → *passaddhi*. This echo transitions into the second stack.

### 5.2 The modern adaptation of the five wrong livelihoods: preserving the "practitioner" as subject

Before reaching the second stack, this section must process an adjacent doctrinal anchor. *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* fascicle fourteen sets out the five wrong livelihoods (*pañca-micchā-ājīva*) as a systematic exemplar of Buddhist ethical-economic critique.[^22] What is decisive here is that all five clauses are introduced with the formula "**the practitioner, for the sake of gain**" — the subject is "the practitioner" (the individual internal motivational structure), not "the institution," "the monastery," or any systemic entity.

This grammatical structure is critical for the present paper. Carrying the five wrong livelihoods over into the phenomenology of modern instrumentalization, the subject "practitioner" must be preserved (the W6 discipline):

- The practitioner, for the sake of effect, displays a contrived appearance of stillness and concentration (packaging the self in a "life-transformation" narrative);
- The practitioner, for the sake of metrics, narrates the progress of his practice publicly (public posts, professional networking, speaking engagements);
- The practitioner, for the sake of audience, takes the divination of others' fortune and misfortune as content;
- The practitioner, for the sake of authority, performs stillness aloud in order to inspire deference;
- The practitioner, for the sake of gain, recounts experiences attained in order to move others' minds.

The modern adaptation of the five wrong livelihoods diagnoses the *practitioner's* internal motivational drift — our own internal architecture, not the corruption of any external institution. Any rewriting that shifts the subject of this adaptation from "the practitioner" toward institutional structure violates the architectural discipline. The doctrinal-honesty red line is here: the subject of the critique is always the practitioner's internal intentional structure.

### 5.3 Second stack (secondary): *Sharf* 1995/2015 on bare awareness

*Sharf*, in two key papers, "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience" (1995) and "Is *mindfulness* Buddhist? (and why it matters)" (2015), develops a doctrinal-coherence critique of "bare awareness."[^23] The core articulation: the modern *mindfulness* framing of "bare awareness" severs *sati* from its doctrinal frame (the three trainings of *sīla*, *samādhi*, *paññā*) and reframes it as an isolated technique of pure cognition. The result of this severance is the systematic absence of *pīti*, *passaddhi*, *upekkhā*, and other cultivation-soils of practice.

*Sharf*'s critique matters here because it advances the structural-historical condition into the specific interior of doctrine. The "bare awareness" framing is not merely a by-product of historical conditions; it has already worked a specific erosion on the doctrinal architecture — *sati* has been isolated from the *bojjhaṅga* set and has lost its causal-dependence structure with the fourth-through-sixth factors. This articulation converges directly with the doctrinal precision of the *bojjhaṅga* chain.

*Sharf*'s articulation, however, has its own limit: although the critique has reached doctrinal interior, it has not yet articulated the specific diagnostic signal of "the systematic absence of *pīti* and *passaddhi*." That specific articulation is the present paper's original observation and will be set out in 5.5.

### 5.4 Third stack (reserve): *Anālayo*'s two distinct roles

*Anālayo*'s work, in the framing of this paper, must be cleanly distinguished into two roles. In one role, as a scholarly doctrinal-historian, *Anālayo*'s *Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization* (2003) and *Perspectives on Satipaṭṭhāna* (2013) supply the reading of satipaṭṭhāna and the seven *bojjhaṅga* in causal dependence that serves as the principal scholarly support for this paper's section II treatment of *Saṃyukta-āgama* 711.[^24] In the other role, as a critical-academic voice on clinical translation, *Anālayo*'s *Mindfully Facing Disease and Death* (2016) advances a doctrinal-substitution critique of the MBSR-style clinical translation.[^25]

The two roles must remain separately addressed. Sections II and III draw from *Anālayo*'s scholarly-doctrinal strand; this section's clinical-critique dialogue draws from his clinical-critique strand. The two strands each have their place in the present paper's dialogue structure and must not be conflated.

The clinical-critique strand carries one inference for the present paper: therapeutic skilful means (the doctrinal acknowledgement of clinical efficacy) must be granted — the empirical validity of clinical effects such as stress reduction and anxiety mitigation is not in dispute in this paper. The echo here is concentrated on a single layer — doctrinal substitution: when the clinical translation replaces *mindfulness*'s architectural context (the *bojjhaṅga* chain) with a purely attentional technique, this substitution, at the level of doctrinal precision, violates the *pīti* → *passaddhi* causal dependence.

### 5.5 An original observation: the systematic absence of *pīti*+*passaddhi*

The first stack (*McMahan*'s structure) + the second stack (*Sharf*'s bare awareness) + the third stack (*Anālayo*'s doctrinal-clinical critique) now together prepare a specific original articulation: **the systematic absence of the fifth and sixth *bojjhaṅga* factors (*pīti* and *passaddhi*) in mainstream MBSR-style curricular architecture is itself a diagnostic signal**.

This observation is the present paper's original contribution. The three academic stacks have each articulated coherent problems — "instrumentalization" (*McMahan*), "bare awareness" (*Sharf*), and "doctrinal substitution" (*Anālayo*'s clinical strand). But within the present author's review of the literature, no single source has proposed the present specific framing: the curricular absence of the fifth and sixth *bojjhaṅga* factors as the specific diagnostic signal of *mindfulness* instrumentalization.[^26]

This articulation is not a modernist projection; it is an observation that follows naturally from the doctrinal instrument. Its doctrinal grounding comes from three converging sources: first, *Saṃyukta-āgama* 711 fixes the causal dependence of *pīti* → *passaddhi* (see 2.1); second, *Buddhaghosa*'s five-fold taxonomy of *pīti* in *Visuddhimagga* IV fixes the phenomenological distinction between surface *pīti* and *jhāna*-grade *pīti* (see 3.3); third, *Anālayo*'s scholarly-strand reading of causal dependence supplies the modern academic form of the same articulation (see 5.4). Setting the converging articulation against the specific content of mainstream MBSR-style eight-week curricular standards, the systematic absence of the fifth and sixth factors becomes visible — within the curriculum, *pīti* tends either to be reframed as an object of affective labelling or treated as a mark of attachment; *passaddhi* is nearly absent from the curricular vocabulary. The doctrinal phenomenology of this absence is structurally isomorphic with the "surface joy failing to call forth tranquillity" exhibited by the bargaining-drift of Chinese-tradition *nianfo*.

### 5.6 The founder positive-cite of *Kabat-Zinn*

One register calibration remains. *Kabat-Zinn*, as the founder of MBSR, is engaged in this paper through a founder positive-cite, anchored by his 1990 *Full Catastrophe Living* and his 2011 retrospective "Some Reflections on the Origins of MBSR."[^27] *Kabat-Zinn*'s original 1990 framing was not itself instrumentalization: he explicitly acknowledged the Buddhist provenance and deliberately framed the clinical translation as such, in order to bring this observational technique within reach of patients in secular medical settings. To point out the doctrinal drift over the subsequent forty years is not to indict the founder; it is to trace the terminal manifestation of a historical trajectory that is downstream of his framing, not equivalent to it. *Purser*'s polemical articulation in *McMindfulness* (2019) is referenced in the present paper only by name and does not carry argumentative weight;[^28] the present paper's register is that of critical-academic Buddhist studies, not of cultural commentary.

With this, five sections have completed: the doctrinal articulation of the cross-traditional instrument (sections II and III), the in-tradition critical recovery of the Chinese *nianfo* case (section IV), and the academic-doctrinal dialogue on the Western *mindfulness* case (this section). The single instrument has now turned its face to both ends. The next section makes the closure.

## VI. Conclusion: One Instrument, Both Ends Read

The task of this paper has been completed. The causal dependence of the fifth and sixth *bojjhaṅga* factors (*pīti* → *passaddhi*), as a cross-traditional diagnostic instrument, has been articulated doctrinally. Measured in the same frame by this instrument, the bargaining-drift of Chinese-tradition *nianfo* and the instrumentalization of Western *mindfulness* are seen to fail at the same diagnostic node — surface joy fails to call forth tranquillity, and the chain stalls in fifth-rung over-excitation. Thirteen centuries of in-tradition critique (*Shandao* → *Yongming* → *Zhixu* → *Yinguang*) and half a century of in-academy critique (*McMahan* → *Sharf* → *Anālayo*) are brought under one instrument; their doctrinal phenomenologies illuminate one another through structural isomorphism.

A single register runs through this paper from beginning to end: **one instrument, both ends read**. Bargaining-driven *nianfo* still earns the doctrinally valid lower tier of worldly merit (the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*'s "cause of human-divine reward of merit," *Yongming*'s "until the end of suffering its merit is not exhausted," *Zhixu*'s citation of the *Sūtra on the Discernment of Skilful and Unskilful Karmas*: "gains only worldly good-reward"); effect-seeking *mindfulness* has its therapeutic skilful means (the stress-reduction and anxiety mitigation that *Anālayo*'s clinical strand grants). The diagnosis throughout is hierarchical, never condemnatory. Any puritan wholesale negation fails this calibration; any culture-war indictment of founders fails this register. The "no-institutional-attack" discipline is thus not an external act of self-censorship but a structural feature: the diagnostic voice itself arises from within the canonical masters of both traditions.

A three-tier distinction must be set down at this closing register: **P28's *Avataṃsaka* "Entry into the Dharma-Realm" closure was the chapter-level closing of Part VIII; the modern-diagnosis articulation of the present paper is the chapter-level opening of Part IX; the volume-level closure of DĀNA awaits P31, which will work at the volume scale.** The three sit at their respective levels and are not to be conflated. The next paper of Part IX (P30) will take up the question of artificial intelligence as *adhipati-pratyaya* (predominant condition) in a doctrinal treatment of contemporary giving (one-line forward pointer only); the final paper (P31) will gather the volume's thesis and turn toward volume three (one-line forward pointer only).

One final cross-volume forward pointer, an anchor for what follows, must be set down here: **the two factors of the fifth and sixth *bojjhaṅga*, as the bridging anchor across the three trainings (*sīla*, *samādhi*, *paññā*), rest doctrinally on a non-circumventable preparatory condition — *sīla*. Volume three, SĪLA, will take up this preparatory condition at the *sīla*-layer — *sīla* as the architecture of mind-establishment, which is the non-circumventable preparatory condition for *pīti*+*passaddhi*.** The instrument articulated in this paper is, then, not an isolated tool but the middle articulation of a larger architecture (the three trainings). Volume three will continue from the *sīla* layer.

---

## Notes

[^1]: The destination-posture treatment of P28 is set out in "Entering the Dharmadhātu through Giving: Dharma-Realm, Infinite Interpenetration, and Samantabhadra's Self-Disclosure" (DĀNA P28, commit `a0ea2de`).

[^2]: *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*, fascicle 11, T1509 p.0145c. This articulation serves as the doctrinal anchor of the paper's hierarchical-not-condemnatory discipline (the W7 discipline) and is referred to repeatedly in section IV.2.

[^3]: The enumeration of the seven *bojjhaṅga* appears in many places in the *Saṃyukta-āgama*, fascicle 26, T0099. Its cross-reference to NIAN's *satipaṭṭhāna* exposition (NIAN P22/P23/P25) is noted here only in passing and not expanded.

[^4]: *Saṃyukta-āgama* sūtra 711, T0099, fascicle 26, p.0190c14–c26; CBETA XML line 17799 verified. The bold emphasis in the cited passage is added by the present author.

[^5]: *Visuddhimagga* (*Path of Purification*) VII §1. *Ñāṇamoli*'s English translation (1956/2010) renders: "Concentration is the proximate cause of mindfulness; serenity (*passaddhi*) has rapture (*pīti*) as its proximate cause." For the literal analysis of the compound, see *Bodhi* (2000), *A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma*.

[^6]: *Anālayo*, *Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization* (Birmingham: Windhorse, 2003), chs. 13–14; and *Perspectives on Satipaṭṭhāna* (Cambridge: Windhorse, 2013), on the causal-dependence reading of the parallel passages to *Saṃyukta-āgama* 711.

[^7]: The Pāli parallel of *Saṃyukta-āgama* 711 is SN 46.3 (*Sīla Sutta*); see *Bodhi*'s translation in *The Connected Discourses of the Buddha* (Boston: Wisdom, 2000), pp. 1572–1573.

[^8]: For the variant reading of the character 猗 in the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*, see CBETA XML variant note at line 64779: lem=猗 rdg=倚; this 猗 is the variant graph of 倚, in the sense of "leaning into / clinging to," and is *not* the same semantic unit as the positive rendering of *passaddhi* (除覺分).

[^9]: *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*, fascicle 19, T1509 p.0205a07–a08 zone.

[^10]: *Ibid.*, T1509 p.0205a08–a10 zone; CBETA XML verified.

[^11]: *Saṃyukta-āgama* sūtra 714, T0099, fascicle 26; the Pāli parallel is SN 46.53 (*Aggi Sutta*). For systematic exposition of the bidirectional imbalance treatment, see *Bodhi* (2000), pp. 1605–1607.

[^12]: *Visuddhimagga* IV §94–100. The Chinese renderings of the five kinds of *pīti* follow *Ñāṇamoli* (1956) and the existing usage of the Chinese *śamatha-vipaśyanā* literature.

[^13]: *Zhixu*, *Yaojie* (Essential Commentary on the *Amitābha-sūtra*), T1762 p.0364b18–b24; CBETA XML T1762 lines 762–771 verified.

[^14]: *Ibid.*, T1762 p.0371a02 zone; CBETA XML verified.

[^15]: *Ibid.*, T1762 p.0373c01–c05 zone; *Zhixu* here cites the *Sūtra on the Discernment of Skilful and Unskilful Karmas*; CBETA XML verified. The original *Zhancha jing* passage is at T0839.

[^16]: *Yongming Yanshou*, *Wanshan tonggui ji*, T2017 p.0962a22–a27; *Yongming* here cites the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra* (*Da pin*); CBETA XML verified.

[^17]: *Shandao*, *Wangsheng lizan ji*, T1980 (also embedded in the *Guan jing shu* tradition) p.0271a02 zone; CBETA XML T1753 lines 2418–2426 verified.

[^18]: *Shandao*'s three-mind architecture is set out in detail in the *Commentary on the Sūtra on Visualizing Amitābha* (*Guan jing shu*), fascicle four, "Section on Scattered Goodness," T1753. Its isomorphism with *Zhixu*'s three-axis *xin-yuan-xing* is a standard observation in modern Pure Land studies; see *Mochizuki Shinkō*, *History of Chinese Pure Land Doctrine*, ch. 12.

[^19]: *Yongming Yanshou*, *Wanshan tonggui ji*, T2017 p.0962b03; CBETA XML T2017 lines 630–633 verified.

[^20]: *Yinguang*'s critique of *nianfo* is dispersed across the *Yinguang fashi wenchao* (Commercial Press edition, first printed 1934, Republican period); the *cintāmaṇi* figure is widely transmitted in the Republican-era Pure Land literature. Given the constraints of CBETA inclusion status and the present research's source-availability conditions, the figure is referred to here only in general terms; no verbatim citation is given, and no specific fascicle and page anchor is assigned.

[^21]: *David L. McMahan*, *The Making of Buddhist Modernism* (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), esp. ch. 1 on the three vectors.

[^22]: *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*, fascicle 14, T1509; the systematic exposition of the five wrong livelihoods (*pañca-micchā-ājīva*) in five clauses, each grammatically headed by "the practitioner, for the sake of gain." The modern adaptation in the present paper strictly preserves this subject-structure.

[^23]: *Robert H. Sharf*, "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience," *Numen* 42 (1995): 228–283; and "Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (and Why It Matters)," *Transcultural Psychiatry* 52, no. 4 (2015): 470–484.

[^24]: See [^6].

[^25]: *Anālayo*, *Mindfully Facing Disease and Death: Compassionate Advice from Early Buddhist Texts* (Cambridge: Windhorse, 2016). His clinical-strand critique is distributed across ch. 1 and the retrospective afterword.

[^26]: Within the present author's review of the literature, no academic source has, to date, proposed the specific framing "the systematic absence of the fifth and sixth *bojjhaṅga* factors in mainstream MBSR curricular structure, as the specific diagnostic signal of *mindfulness* instrumentalization." The closest approximation is *Sharf*'s 2015 bare-awareness critique. The specific articulation is offered as the present paper's contribution; its doctrinal grounding is set out in the main text at 5.5.

[^27]: *Jon Kabat-Zinn*, *Full Catastrophe Living* (New York: Delacorte, 1990); and "Some Reflections on the Origins of MBSR, Skillful Means, and the Trouble with Maps," *Contemporary Buddhism* 12, no. 1 (2011): 281–306. The 1990 original framing and the 2011 historical retrospective together constitute the double anchor for the founder positive-cite.

[^28]: *Ronald E. Purser*, *McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality* (London: Repeater, 2019). The present paper engages this polemical work only by name and does not assign it argumentative weight.

---

## Index of Cited Canonical Sources

### Chinese Buddhist canon (CBETA T)

| T number | Title | Translator / Author | Fascicle | Used in |
|------|-----------------|---------------|------|----------|
| T0099 | *Saṃyukta-āgama* (*Za ahan jing*) | *Guṇabhadra* (Liu Song, 435–443 CE) | fasc. 26, sūtras 711, 714 | §I, §II, §III, §VI |
| T0839 | *Sūtra on the Discernment of Skilful and Unskilful Karmas* (*Zhancha shan e ye bao jing*) | *Bodhideng* (Sui, 7c) | — | §IV (the original of *Zhixu*'s citation) |
| T1509 | *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* (*Da zhidu lun*) | *Kumārajīva* (Yao Qin, 401–406 CE) | fasc. 11, 14, 19 | §I, §III, §V, §VI |
| T1753 | *Commentary on the Sūtra on Visualizing Amitābha* (*Guan jing shu*) | *Shandao* (Tang, 613–681 CE) | fasc. 4, "Section on Scattered Goodness" | §IV |
| T1762 | *Essential Commentary on the Amitābha-sūtra* (*Amituo jing yaojie*) | *Zhixu* (*Ouyi*; late Ming, 1599–1655 CE) | whole | §IV |
| T1980 | *Wangsheng lizan ji* | *Shandao* | — | §IV (*Shandao*'s "mixed-poison goodness" citation) |
| T2017 | *Wanshan tonggui ji* | *Yongming Yanshou* (Five Dynasties / Northern Song, 904–975 CE) | fasc. 1 | §IV, §VI |

### Pāli sources (PTS / translations)

| Source | Section | Used in |
|--------|------|----------|
| *Saṃyutta Nikāya* (SN 46.3 *Sīla Sutta*; SN 46.53 *Aggi Sutta*) | *bojjhaṅga-saṃyutta* | §II (causal chain), §III (bidirectional treatment) |
| *Visuddhimagga* IV §94–100; VII §1 | abhidhamma chapter | §II (*pīti-padaṭṭhāna* formula), §III (five kinds of *pīti*) |

### Republican-era and modern sources

| Source | Author | Used in |
|--------|------|----------|
| *Yinguang fashi wenchao* (Commercial Press edition, first printed 1934) | *Yinguang* (1862–1940) | §IV (*cintāmaṇi* figure; general reference, no verbatim citation) |

---

## Bibliography

### Chinese-language scholarship

*Mochizuki Shinkō* 望月信亨. *History of Chinese Pure Land Doctrine* (*Chūgoku Jōdo kyōrishi*). Tokyo: Hōzōkan, 1942.

### Western-language scholarship

Anālayo, Bhikkhu. *Mindfully Facing Disease and Death: Compassionate Advice from Early Buddhist Texts*. Cambridge: Windhorse Publications, 2016.

———. *Perspectives on Satipaṭṭhāna*. Cambridge: Windhorse Publications, 2013.

———. *Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization*. Birmingham: Windhorse Publications, 2003.

Bodhi, Bhikkhu (trans.). *The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya*. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000.

Bodhi, Bhikkhu (gen. ed.). *A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma: The Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha*. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 2000.

Kabat-Zinn, Jon. *Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness*. New York: Delacorte, 1990.

———. "Some Reflections on the Origins of MBSR, Skillful Means, and the Trouble with Maps." *Contemporary Buddhism* 12, no. 1 (2011): 281–306.

McMahan, David L. *The Making of Buddhist Modernism*. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu (trans.). *The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga)*. 4th ed. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 2010 [1956].

Purser, Ronald E. *McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality*. London: Repeater, 2019.

Sharf, Robert H. "Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience." *Numen* 42 (1995): 228–283.

———. "Is Mindfulness Buddhist? (and Why It Matters)." *Transcultural Psychiatry* 52, no. 4 (2015): 470–484.

---

*This paper is the 29th in Volume Two (DĀNA) of the "Six Practice Gates" series · Part IX opener · Modern Diagnosis*
*This paper is released under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Primary-source citations follow the CBETA edition of the Taishō Tripiṭaka.*
> CBETA collation: all sūtra and commentary citations in this paper have been collated against the CBETA edition of the Taishō Tripiṭaka.
*GitHub: github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates*