What are the categories of the four foundations of mindfulness?

Jeffrey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satipatthana

mindfulness of the body;[2][3]
mindfulness of feelings or sensations (vedanā);[4]
mindfulness of mind or consciousness (citta);[5] and
mindfulness of mental phenomena or mental objects (dhammā).[6]

I understand 'body'. What about vedana? Is it the feeling skhanda (good bad neutral)? Is it the perception skhanda (hot cold bright dark)? Or something else entirely?

So citta is the mind. Is that the fourth skhanda? What is the relationship between citta and bodhicitta?

Ok so now mental objects... So if I imagine an eagle and in my mind I am thinking of an eagle... Is that a mental object?

Kundo

I've just been reading this Sutra and Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary on it. He refers to mental objects as perceptions. I think it's the mindfulness of what you perceive in your mind. Like if you SEE the eagle and acknowledge that in your mind you are seeing an eagle.

But I could be wrong

DairyLama

Reading the Satipatthana Sutta, the 4th frame is more like a framework for analysing experience based on Dharmic principles: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.010.than.html

Buddhadragon

@dhammachick: there used to be Thay's analysis in a downloadable PDF version but I can't find the link.
I also thought it could be helpful for @Jeffrey.

For the time being, Bodhipaksa's comment could be a good substitute.
Remember, @Jeffrey, that Citta, mind, also includes emotions in Buddhist psychology.
This is how Bodhipaksa explains the Feelings and Citta part of the Satipatthana Sutta:
http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/on-practice/the-four-foundations-of-mindfulness-as-a-dynamic-process

"Feelings (vedana) include painful, neutral, and pleasant feelings that may be “of the flesh” or “not of the flesh.” But this brings up the question of what feelings (vedanā-s) are.
The two things vedanā-s need to be distinguished from are sensations and emotions. The coolness and firmness experiences in touching a cool surface on a hot day are sensations. These are direct sense impressions. However, such a contact will tend to be experienced as pleasant, and the pleasant quality of such a contact is a vedanā. And so on with the other physical senses. (Nocioception — the perception of pain — as when one pricks one’s finger would be a painful vedanā “of the flesh,” but is also a sensation. However, sensations more generally are not themselves vedanā, although they may be accompanied by them).
Vedanā-s “not of the flesh” are represented by what we would call “gut feelings.” Vedanā-s are our way of telling ourselves what value we see in particular experiences. Daniel Goleman explains, in his recent The Brain and Emotional Intelligence, how the part of the brain that encodes our internalized “rules” about what is right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable — a primitive piece of circuitry called the basal ganglia — has no direct connection with the verbal centers in the cortex. How the basal ganglia communicate with the higher centers in the brain is via nerve centers in the gastrointestinal tract. Vedanā-s “not of the flesh” seem quite literally to be “gut feelings.”

This is how he explains Cittā.

"Citta means “mind” but not in an exclusively intellectual sense, since it includes emotions as well as mental qualities such as expansiveness, concentration, etc.
In mindfulness of cittā we are told that the monk knows when the mind has has passion or is without passion, has aversion or is without aversion, has delusion or is without delusion, is constricted, scattered, enlarged/unenlarged, surpassed/unsurpassed, concentrated/unconcentrated, released/not released. Cittā might best be described as “the mind and mental states” or just as “mental states” since it doesn’t seem to be possible to experience the mind independently of its constituent mental states."

Chögyam Trungpa also has an analysis of the Satipatthana Sutta:
http://www.shambhala.com/images/illus/MindfulnessSampler/9780834829817.pdf

DairyLama

@Jeffrey said:

What about vedana? Is it the feeling skhanda (good bad neutral)?

One way of describing vedana is our initial "instinctual" response to the experiences we have. These responses are closely related to craving and aversion.

pegembara

@Jeffrey said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satipatthana

mindfulness of the body;[2][3]
mindfulness of feelings or sensations (vedanā);[4]
mindfulness of mind or consciousness (citta);[5] and
mindfulness of mental phenomena or mental objects (dhammā).[6]

I understand 'body'. What about vedana? Is it the feeling skhanda (good bad neutral)? Is it the perception skhanda (hot cold bright dark)? Or something else entirely?

So citta is the mind. Is that the fourth skhanda? What is the relationship between citta and bodhicitta?

Ok so now mental objects... So if I imagine an eagle and in my mind I am thinking of an eagle... Is that a mental object?

1. Body
2. Vedana - refers to what I call the "push, pull or neutral" affect an experience has on the mind. Or like, dislike or indifferent.
3. Citta - the overall mental tone eg. anger, distracted, drowsy, confused, etc.

Here (in this teaching), bhikkhus, when a mind with greed (raga) arises, a bhikkhu knows, "This is a mind with greed"; or when a mind without greed arises, he knows, "This is a mind without greed"; when a mind with anger (dosa)" arises, he knows, "This is a mind with anger"; or when a mind without anger arises, he knows, "This is a mind without anger"; when a mind with delusion (moha)

4. Dhamma - all phenomenon that is perceived by the mind that includes 1, 2, 3 above, concepts as 4NT/N8FP, hindrances, skandhas and everything else including nibbana itself.