“Recognition” is a translation of sañña, usually translated “perception.” Sañña refers to the way in which we make sense of the world. For example, as I read these words there is a great deal of mental processing going on which translates visual marks seen on a screen into concepts that make meaning in a mind. We are not normally aware of all this — we feel like we are simply reading. Yet we get a sense of how much training and work is involved in the simple act of reading when we learn a second language. Much of this underground work in our basic, everyday activities is done by sañña. When sañña does its work effectively, we don’t notice it. We simply assume we know what’s going on.

Sañña, in other words, is closely associated with what we take to be normal, “real,” because it is largely responsible for creating what we take to be real. Consequently it is bound up, for the Buddha, with delusion. We mentioned in our last post “the perception of impermanence” (anicca-sañña). Our sense of normality, of what we assume we can rely upon as real, is the product of what the Buddha calls the “perception of permanence” (nicca-sañña). We assume this screen we are looking at is the same screen we saw yesterday. We assume the person reading these words is the same person who opened up this web page. Both of these assumptions are products of the perception of permanence; like all perceptions, both have been learned over a period of time; and both are wrong.

So for the Buddha, sañña presents us with a world that has meaning, which feels familiar, and which is false. It does so on the basis of our habits of perception that we have built up over time. Sati, mindfulness, is closely linked to sañña, for both are aspects of memory. The word “sati,” we have seen, is derived from smara, a word for memory. Like sañña, memory allows us to make sense of the world by recognising it from the past. This bed I woke up in is the same bed I fell asleep in last night. This person I woke up beside is the same person who came to bed last night. These thoughts I begin the day with are a continuation of the thoughts I was having yesterday. In this way, my world makes sense to me.

But sati as memory operates differently from sañña. It is built upon sañña, for according to the Abhidhamma one of its immediate causes is “strong perception” (thira-sañña). This is the direct, face-to-face encounter with experience which generates mindfulness — as we saw in the entry Establishing mindfulness. Mindfulness begins with our normal, everyday encounters with the world, but made clear, sharp, by a direct and energetic encounter with this present experience. This encounter cuts through the baggage of habitual associations that are a normal aspect of perception. In Satipatthana Sutta the Buddha suggests this with the formula describing the meditator as “contemplating body as body … mind as mind.” This sight is just this sight; these thoughts and judgements are just these thoughts and judgements. That’s all. Normally, perception takes the package of experience — sights, sounds, thoughts, emotions — and recognises them through their habitual associations as inherited from the past, containing little or nothing that is new, and so conditions us to react to the experience habitually, without sensing the possibilities within it. Mindfulness implies an encounter that is so direct and clear that these habitual associations don’t have the opportunity to take over. They arise, of course, but can be recognised, remembered, as just associations, nothing else.

Mindfulness then continues to “remember” this encounter, by returning again and again to its directness, not forgetting what is so easy to forget — that which we assume we already know. So we don’t just know the world; in mindfulness, we know that we know. When our habitual perceptions take over, they do so through forgetfulness. We forget, slip into habit. In this state we know, but don’t know that we know, and in losing touch with this reflexivity we find our ready-made perceptions again defining reality for us. Then, we remember. Mindfulness returns, and we remember that body is just body, mind is just mind, and we find ourselves in a world that is new, no longer the product of habit.

This activity of mindfulness provides the foundation for judgement, for the gatekeeper’s job. The gatekeeper learns to recognise who to admit, and who to refuse. This recognition is sañña, perception, but a perception reshaped, educated, by mindfulness. Both mindfulness and perception are based on memory, and it is memory which allows a judgement. And of course, we are always making judgements. Even the notion that we should not be making judgements is a judgement. Mindfulness allows the emergence of judgement partnered with wisdom, understanding, discernment. This is a judgement that is more in tune with reality than our habitual judgements, the long-standing products of our delusion.

Which, of course, gives us an entry to another posting. If our normal, habitual perception is of permanence, what perception can we expect emerging from mindfulness? This will take us to the area of wisdom. And if mindfulness as gatekeeper must make judgements of who to admit and who to refuse — in other words, of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable — this takes us to the area of ethics. Mindfulness, it seems, plays a key role in a number of important relationships. Which is good, because it gives us plenty of material for future posts.