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kāyānupassanā

fem nom sg of kāyānupassanā (noun); fem nom pl of kāyānupassanā (noun); fem acc pl of kāyānupassanā (noun); fem instr sg of kāyānupassanā (noun); …

1. following the body; body contemplation

Built from

• kāya — root · body
  From PIE *keu- (to swell, extend). The body as a swollen or extended form. Cognate: Latin caula (hollow space, enclosure), English cow (swollen living form).
• anu — prefix · along, following
  Trailing behind, tracking the course of something. Carries the sense of mindful attendance to a process as it unfolds in sequence.
• pass — root · see, observe
  From PIE *pekʷ- (to see, observe). Cognates: Latin specere (to look), English spy, inspect. The root denotes direct perception.
• anā — ending · feminine nominative singular (abstract noun)
  The feminine -anā suffix nominalized the verb passati (observes), creating anupassanā (the act of observing-along), and kāyānupassanā (the practice of body-observing) as a doctrinal term.

Analysis. Compound: kāya- (body) + anupassanā (contemplation, observation). In the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the first of four mindfulness practices (kāyānupassanā, vedanānupassanā, cittānupassanā, dhammānupassanā), in which the practitioner observes bodily processes with steady, non-reactive awareness.

Etymology. kāya from PIE *keu- (to swell, extend), akin to Sanskrit kāya and also to English cow (the swollen body); anupassanā from anu- (along, tracking) + passanā (seeing, observing), ultimately from PIE *pekʷ- (to see), which also gives Latin specere and English spy. The prefix anu- carries the sense of following along a path—here, the steady, moment-to-moment tracking of bodily phenomena.

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

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