FAQ: What is the Difference between Yoniso Manasikāra and Sammā sati with Sampajaññā?

question

Difference between Yoniso Manasikāra and Sammā sati with Sampajaññā

I would like a clarification regarding the terms Yoniso Manasikāra and Sammā sati with Sampajaññā. Is the meaning of these two:

* the same,

* totally different,

* somewhat similar with certain differences, or,

* are they used in different situations with contextual differences in meaning?

Answer (from B. Thanissaro)

Ven. Thanissaro says,

My most complete answer is in Right Mindfulness, Chapter 3.

There’s also a discussion in the essay, “Food for Awakening,” in Head and Heart Together.

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/RightMindfulness/Section0008.html

The second lesson is that neither attention nor consciousness is identical with mindfulness. Consciousness is the act of receiving and registering phenomena; attention, the act of choosing which phenomena to focus on. However, even though these functions are not identical with mindfulness, they do play a role in the establishing of mindfulness, because they are both related to the activity of remaining focused, in that attention is the quality that has to stay focused on the most important events detected through consciousness in the present. In the case of consciousness, the discourses present this relationship only in an implicit way, for consciousness is not mentioned by name in the satipaṭṭhāna formula. However, the formula would obviously not work without the presence of consciousness. The relationship is more explicit in the case of attention, for MN 118—in showing how the sixteen steps of breath meditation fulfill the practice of satipaṭṭhāna—speaks of close attention to the breath in terms that connect it with the activity of remaining focused and alert (see Chapter Six).

The relationship between mindfulness and attention grows even closer when mindfulness becomes right mindfulness; and attention, appropriate attention. As these qualities are trained to act skillfully for the end of suffering, they both become forms of anupassanā, or remaining focused on something. In Chapter One, we have already noted how this happens in the case of mindfulness. In this chapter, we will see how appropriate attention is a form of dhammānupassanā—the act of remaining focused on mental qualities—directed by the framework of the four noble truths with the purpose of performing the duties appropriate to the four noble truths in relation to those qualities.

This means that, although mindfulness is not identical with bare attention, appropriate attention—as a purposeful process guided by the agenda of right view—serves as an aspect of right mindfulness.

At the same time, right mindfulness plays a role in training attention to be appropriate. By remembering that both consciousness and attention are shaped by fabrication, which in turn is shaped either by ignorance or knowledge, right mindfulness is able to supervise the task of using this knowledge to provide fabricated—and thus purposeful—consciousness and attention with a skillful purpose.

To understand how this is done, we have to look in more detail at the factors of dependent co-arising that provide consciousness and attention with their sense of purpose. And the most coherent way to do that is to review the above factors in forward order, starting with ignorance.

and more from "food for awakening":

https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/Head&HeartTogether/Section0014.html

(you should read that entire section, here's the first part):

The Buddha never used the word for “bare attention” in his meditation instructions. That’s because he realized that attention never occurs in a bare, pure, or unconditioned form. It’s always colored by views and perceptions—the labels you tend to give to events—and by intentions: your choice of what to attend to and your purpose in being attentive. If you don’t understand the conditioned nature of even simple acts of attention, you might assume that a moment of nonreactive attention is a moment of Awakening. And in that way you miss one of the most crucial insights in Buddhist meditation: how even the simplest events in the mind can form a condition for clinging and suffering. If you assume a conditioned event to be unconditioned, you close the door to the unconditioned. So it’s important to understand the conditioned nature of attention and the Buddha’s recommendations for how to train it—as appropriate attention—to be a factor in the path leading beyond attention to total Awakening.

The Pāli term for attention is manasikāra. You may have heard that the term for mindfulness—sati—means attention, but that’s not how the Buddha used the term. Mindfulness, in his usage, means keeping something in mind. It’s a function of memory. When you practice the establishings of mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna), you remain focused on observing the object you’ve chosen as your frame of reference: the body, feelings, mind, or mental qualities in and of themselves. This is called anupassanā. Mindfulness is one of three qualities you bring to anupassanā. Its function is to keep your frame of reference in mind, to keep remembering it. At the same time, you have to be alert (sampajāna), clearly aware of what you’re doing, to make sure that you’re actually doing what you’re trying to remember to do; and ardent (ātapin) to do it skillfully. The act of establishing mindfulness in this way—by being mindful, alert, and ardent—then forms the topic or theme (nimitta) of right concentration.

For instance, if you focus on the breath in and of itself as your frame of reference, anupassanā means keeping continual watch over the breath. Mindfulness means simply remembering to stick with it, keeping it in mind at all times, while alertness means knowing what the breath is doing and how well you’re staying with it. Ardency is the effort to do all of this skillfully. When all these activities stay fully coordinated, they form the theme of your concentration.

To understand how appropriate attention functions in the context of this training, though, you first have to understand how attention ordinarily functions in an untrained mind.

...

KN Pe mentions this

This is from the Petakopadesa by Bhikkhu Nanamoli :
Herein, what is reasoned attention in oneself? What is called
reasoned attention in oneself is any reasoned attention given to the
True Idea as taught, without adducing any external object ; this
is called reasoned attention. That mood, when reasoned, is a doorway,
a directive, a means (?).
Just as a man is capable of arriving at kindling when on dry
ground he rubs a dry sapless log with a dry upper fire-stick
[2] Why is that ? Because of his arriving at fire with reasoning-so
too when he gives attention to this teaching of the undistorted
True Idea of Suffering, Origin, Cessation, and Path, this is called
reasoned attention, [occurring spontaneously] as the three similes
[in the Maha-Saccaka Sutta] occurred [to the Bodhisatta] not
having been previously heard, previously unheard, [by him].
Now,the [first] two [of the three] similes [beginning] ''Whoever is not
without lust for sensual desires'' must be treated as [applying to]
unreasoned attention, but in the last it is well stated [for application
to reasoned attention].