Plato-Buddha: Mindfulness (sati) as the direct intuition of Forms

Erol Copelj (Monash University)

Title: Plato-Buddha: Mindfulness (sati) as the direct intuition of Forms

Abstract:

I will attempt to show that ‘mindfulness’, a key phenomenon in the context of the Theravada tradition, is in essence the same phenomenon as Plato’s direct intuition of Forms or Essences. This will help us, as philosophers in the Platonic tradition, get a better understanding of the Buddha’s teaching and practices. In Phaedo, Plato varies (as Husserl would do much later through eidetic variation) three more or less familiar forms of recollection, highlights the Form present in each and then shows that this same Form is present when the philosopher directly intuits a Form in a particular. On this basis, I try to demonstrate that when the Buddha spoke of mindfulness (which literally means recollection) he was speaking of the same thing: the recollection of Essences or the ‘intrinsic intelligibility of the phenomenon itself’ (sampajanna) within the particular. 

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