Mindfulness has gotten a lot of deservedly top billing lately and hopefully you have some idea what mindfulness is about. I would translate mindfulness – sati – as remembering to be fully present with what's happening in the here and now. You're not lost in the past or the future; you're paying full attention to what's going on in the here and now.
Since there are over 900 suttas where mindfulness occurs,[1] clearly the practice of mindfulness is an important part of the Buddha's teachings. There are multiple mindfulness practices given in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. There are 13 in the Pāḷi sutta versions and there are multiple other versions. Maybe you're familiar with Bhikkhu Analyo's teachings from some of the Āgamas, the Chinese versions; there are two Āgama versions that he teaches from there. There are also a Sanskrit version and another Pāḷi version in the Abhidhamma.
Bhikkhu Analyo's PhD thesis is on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta and it has been turned into wonderful scholarly book on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. There's an excellent book by Bhikkhu Sujato called A History of Mindfulness that you can download from my website. It provides many details about the history of the mindfulness suttas and how they came to be in their present forms. Joseph Goldstein has a really brilliant book called Mindfulness, which is a collection of discourses he gave at the Forest Refuge on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta and how to do the practices taught in this sutta.
The “ever mindful” phrase in the answers to Snp 5.2 - Tissametteyya's and Snp 5.15 - Mogharāja's Questions packs considerably more power than is usually found in the twenty-first-century secular mindfulness teachings. Modern neuroscience has identified the Default Mode Network (DMN) that is activated in our brains when we are not focusing on an external task. It is a large-scale brain network that ties together several areas of the brain that seem to be active when we are generating a sense of self. The Wikipedia article on the DMN says:
It is best known for being active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering. ... Other times that the DMN is active include when the individual is thinking about others, thinking about themselves, remembering the past, and planning for the future.[2]
If the above description of the DMN sounds like the opposite of mindfulness and more like papañca, you begin to get a sense of what the Buddha is talking about when he says to be “ever mindful” – rather than our usual way of being lost in papañca. Basically, in addition to not being fooled by our conceptualizing, we need a new default, one superior to the DMN. And that would be being “ever mindful.” When there is no task at hand that needs your full attention (which of course also requires mindfulness), then just be fully mindful of your current sensory input – continuously mindful of the here and now – rather than wandering off into papañca. This combination of emptiness and being ever mindful is our method for not getting fooled by our conceptualizing and for engaging with the world as it is actually manifesting.
Perhaps a metaphor will be helpful:
Imagine there's a river flowing along. There's an island and the river splits into two channels, one on each side of the island. One channel is very narrow; some water flows down it. This is the mindfulness channel. But most water goes thru the other channel, which is very wide. This is the distraction channel, the default mode network channel. We have this ever-flowing river of mental activity. Our job is to actually get enough rocks tossed into the mouth of the wide channel, so we start damming up this default mode network channel and at the same time widen the narrow mindfulness channel until the river actually switches course. The widening of the mindfulness channel is done via mindfulness practice. The rocks we toss into the wide default mode network channel to begin damming it up are insights. The insights into the non-dual, interconnected nature of reality are the biggest rocks that do the most to alter the course. Once that happens, when we have nothing to do in the future, we're just mindful of the present as opposed to getting lost in thought.
I suspect that's what is happening when someone is fully awakened. Unfortunately, we don't have enough fully awakened people around to ask questions of to see if that's the case, but this is my best guess. In other words, we're trying to establish a new default – and the new default is mindfulness. This is what "ever mindful" means. If we're mindful, then we're not getting lost in distractions. Notice how you seem to be the center of almost all of your distractions. You're wanting something or wanting to get rid of something – craving and clinging. If we have a new default of just paying attention to the present moment, then there's no craving, no clinging, hence no dukkha.
__________
Leigh Brasington
/ 
/ Revised 20 May 25