Mahabodhi's Website

Mindfulness of 'objects present in the mind'
- Dhammas satipatthana

The fourth satipatthana or foundation of mindfulness consists of dhammas or what I call 'objects present in the mind.' These are often translated by Buddhist commentators as ‘mental objects,' or ‘mental concomitants,’ but are often left untranslated. And they can also be termed ‘phenomena.’ Mindfulness of dhammas relates to mindfulness of our views, opinions, in fact our perspective, which is constructed of dhammas, which simply means ‘what can be remembered or borne in mind.’

Concepts, ideas and images
One dhamma that can be ‘borne in mind’ is a concept. Concepts can correspond to ‘concrete’ objects in the world: as when a person experiences several tangible objects that exist in the world, objects of similar shape and function used for sitting on, and they collectively designate them 'chairs’ But they can equally correspond to more abstract ‘intangible objects’, like the concepts of ‘justice’ and 'fairness,’ which represent ‘abstract’ patterns in the universe. Another dhamma that can be ‘borne in mind’ is the mental image. Images too can correspond to ‘concrete’ objects in the world, as when a person holds an image of an ice-cream in their mind, when that can tangibly exist in the world. But, like concepts, images can equally correspond to more abstract ‘intangible objects’ when they are symbols and archetypes. Justice for instance is represented by the symbol of the ‘scales.’

Presence and representation
Buddhism talks of the mind as being a sense as well as the five physical senses, and this mind-sense is called manas. If dhammas are borne in mind then it is manas that bears them in mind. Manas perceives dhammas in the same way that the visual sense perceives visible objects, or the sense of touch 'perceives' tangible objects. According to the Pali-English Dictionary, manas is ‘that aspect of mind which grasps dhammas.’

Visual data is simply ‘present’ to the visual sense. When something is ‘present’ it is simply ‘put before’ or made available to the senses (present: pre--, before + sense.) So when in mindfulness we are present to our experience, we are allowing it to be before us in awareness.

But we can also present ideas, as when we do a ‘presentation’ to a class of people. Then we are putting a number of ideas before them, to their auditory and visual senses, that we would like them to think about. But in the ideas there isn’t a direct experience of reality present before us, there is instead an interpretation or mental representation of it. The sensory data is re-presented (re-, again + present, present) to the mind sense as dhammas. And dhammas as ‘objects present in the mind’ are ‘present’ in the mind in the sense of being ‘put before’ the mind sense.

Manas creates a perspective
Drawing an analogy with the visual sense and perspective, manas creates a perspective among dhammas. Where the eye 'looks through' (“perspective” per-, through + spect, to look.) a field of visible objects and gains a visual perspective on them, manas does the same with 'mental objects.' It looks through a field of dhammas and sees a mental perspective, what we call a view. In that view some dhammas will be prominent in the foreground and some will be more in the background. And the different dhammas will have different associations with each other. For instance, a materially minded person might have the dhamma 'happiness' in the forefront of their mind closely associated with the image of a new car. Or, a person who suffers a lot from anxiety might have images of danger in the forefront of their perspective. Generally, what a person thinks of as most important will be in the foreground; what they think of as less important will be in the background, or may even be excluded from their view altogether: they may never think of some things.

All these dhammas and their associations make up our perspective or ‘belief system’ at any particular time: they tell me what I really believe is important and the case, no matter what I might think I believe is important and the case. Dhammas may involve food, political ideology, or images of spiritual goals being achieved. They will also involve views about ‘the self’ and ‘mind.’ In an untrained person the idea of ‘self’ will be associated with ideas of fixity and that of ‘mind’ with being ‘uninfluencable,’ but in an attained Buddhist practitioner the idea of ‘self’ will be closely associated with the laksana of impermanence and that of ‘mind’ with a sense being ‘influenceable,’ able to be worked on. These different associations of ‘self’ represent the respective views of ‘atta/atman’ and ‘anatta/anatman.’

Phenomena and noumena
The Buddha doesn’t really deal in ‘what is’ in the sense of theorizing about it. He just says what he has experienced and how dealing with that experience in different ways leads to different results (i.e to Nirvana or otherwise.) The approach he has to ‘mind’ and dhammas is the same. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant differentiates the noumenal, the ideal realm, from the phenomenal or lived world. Phenomena are what ‘is shown or revealed or manifest in experience:’ [1] what appears, an appearance. So in the Buddha’s view ‘mind’ and dhammas are phenomena.

A noumenon is ‘the thing in itself,’ that exists behind appearances.[2] I may for instance see my appearance in the mirror, but that is the phenomenal ‘me’ which I access through experience and not the noumenal ‘me’ which I posit theoretically. A noumenon then is a view constructed of dhammas with which the dhamma ‘experience’ is not associated because if it were the changing phenomenal nature of ‘me’ would not sustain the notion of a numinal ‘me,’ which must be unchanging. For this reason Buddhism does not, like Theistic religions, posit the existence of numinous beings. [3]

It is important to realize that Buddhism isn’t saying there is an ‘objectively existing world out there’ that the dhammas are re-presenting. That is a noumenal idea, a speculation impossible to confirm in experience. The world is phenomenal. And dhammas too are phenomena not noumena.[4] The Buddha doesn’t deal in metaphysical speculation about what dhammas are but is interested in them because a) they are present as conditions in our experience, and b) they have an effect. Like everything else they are to be judged experientially by whether they function as conditions for Nirvana or not, by whether they bring suffering or happiness. If we take a common translation of the opening two lines of the Dhammapada:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought:
it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.
Manopubbangama dhamma manosettha manomaya [5]

But apply the above understanding of manas, we might instead translate the verses:

All that we are is the result of our perspective:
it is founded on our perspective, it is made up of our perspective.
Speaking or acting with a corrupted (padutthena) [6] perspective,
suffering follows that person, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.
Similarly, speaking or acting with an pure (pasannena) [7] perspective,
happiness follows that person, like a shadow that never leaves them.

A ‘corrupted perspective’ is simply a perspective that doesn’t lead to Nirvana, and therefore suffering continues, and a ‘pure perspective’ is one that does, and suffering ceases. These ‘dhamma-patterns’ that constitute our perspective or ‘map’ of the world, as with any map, dictate the route we take. In terms of mindfulness, our perspective is significant because it dictates what we direct our awareness to, and where we invest our energy. A dharmic perspective leads us to practice the dharma.

[1] Blackburn, S. (2008) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. OUP. 274.
[2] "noumenon". Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford University Press. http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0566700 (accessed June 15, 2010).
[3] Deities in Buddhism though cannot be noumenal beings.
[4] In technical terms this idea is expressed in dhammas being designated nisatta-nijivata. Nisatta means ‘no-living-being-ness’ or ‘no being,’ and nijivata ‘soullessness’ or ‘no-life-force.’ See Sangharakshita A Survey of Buddhism.
[5] 'All that we are' is this translators rendering of dhamma. 'The result of what we have thought' is their rendering of manopubbangama, which means 'directed by mind.' It is 'founded on our thoughts' is their rendering of manosettha. (Settha – from seti, sayati – in an applied sense means 'to be in a condition, to dwell or behave,' therefore manosettha means 'behaves according to mind, is conditioned by mind') And is 'made up of our thoughts' is their rendering of manomaya, which literally means 'made of mind.'
[6] padutthena c.f. paduttha: done wrong; offended against; was corrupted.
[7] pasannena c.f. pasanna (adj) [pp. of pasidati] 1. clear, bright 2. happy, gladdened, reconciled, pleased 3. pleased in one's conscience, reconciled, believing, trusting in, pious, good, virtuous.