สัมมาสติคือการระลึกรู้ที่ต้องตั้งขึ้นก่อนธรรมอื่นใดจึงจะรู้ได้ เปรียบเหมือนการมาร์คตำแหน่งก่อนเจาะ ส่วนสัมมาสมาธิคือการเจาะลึกเข้าไปในแต่ละมิติเพื่อขจัดมลทิน ซึ่งต้องอาศัยสัมมาสติตั้งขึ้นก่อนเสมอRight mindfulness is the recollective awareness that must be established before any other quality can be known — like marking a spot before drilling. Right concentration is the deep boring into each successive level to clear away defilement, and it can only develop once right mindfulness is already established.
Someone asked for an explanation of the difference between and .
Mindfulness is recollective awareness — the capacity to recall, beginning with simple self-awareness: wherever we direct our attention, that is what we know. Mindfulness itself is a wholesome . We must first know ourselves clearly before we can know anything else — must be established first for anything to be known at all; otherwise, nothing can be known. This is why mindfulness is called "the of great support" — every other quality depends on mindfulness in order to be known, and mindfulness must always come first. Whenever a wholesome state enters and takes hold of our heart, it arrives together with recollective mindfulness, and only then can we go on to know other qualities. Without mindfulness, everything simply fades away.
Once mindfulness has been firmly established, it can be compared to marking a spot before drilling into steel. Marking the spot is the act of deciding exactly where mindfulness should be set. Once the spot is marked, balance must be achieved before pressing the drill bit into the steel — and this balance depends on the mental factor of equanimity (tatramajjhattatā). Without that balance, the drill cannot penetrate at all. Once it does penetrate into the wood or steel, that is precisely where right concentration becomes firmly established. Mindfulness must always arise first; right mindfulness must come before right concentration can develop — first focusing, then balancing, and only then pressing into the material. That pressing-in is the function of right concentration.
Right concentration is the deep boring into that material — boring deeper level by level, layer by layer, dimension by dimension, in order to clear away the defilement within each dimension, going deeper and deeper: from the coarse human body to the refined human body, through each layer of the celestial body and refined celestial body, the brahma body and refined brahma body, all the way to the formless-brahma body and refined formless-brahma body. This requires firmly established concentration to bore deeply into each of these levels, one after another — this is precisely what right concentration means: boring deep to clear away the defilement present in each successive level.