Meditation practices that focus on (a) the body, (b) feelings of levels of happiness, (c) mind, and (d) phenomena, with the subsidiary awarenesses (mental factors) of mindfulness ("mental glue") and attention to them with a certain understanding. Fully developed with a building-up pathway mind (path of accumulation), they are one of the sets included in the thirty-seven factors for attaining a purified state. (1) In Theravada, one is attentive to (a) the breath as affecting the body, (b) feelings of levels of happiness and unhappiness as affecting the mind, (c) disturbing emotions as affecting the thoughts, and (d) the nature of the previous three as being nonstatic and lacking an impossible "soul." (2) In Mahayana, one is attentive to (a) the body as unclean and true suffering, (b) feelings of levels of happiness as in the nature of suffering, and clinging to them as a true cause of suffering, (c) the six kinds of primary consciousness as naturally free of all stains, so as to understand true stoppings, and (d) all mental factors in terms of which to get rid of and which to cultivate, so as to understand true pathway minds.
Tibetan: དྲན་པ་ཉེར་བཞག་བཞི། dran-pa nyer-bzhag bzhi
Sanskrit: smṛtyupasthāna
Synonyms: Four establishments of mindfulness
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