The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2157 page)

Sat
.

The wife of
iva
who committed suicide when her father insulted
iva.
The term (anglicized as ‘suttee’) was used for the self-immolation of Hindu widows, either by joining the dead husband on his funeral pyre, or by committing suicide later on a pyre lit by embers from that pyre. Not even pregnancy could save a woman from this fate; the ceremony was merely postponed until two months after her child's birth. The custom continues, but infrequently and illegally.
Hindu law books of the 1st and 2nd cents. CE see the act as gaining spiritual merit; 400 years later it was considered that for a woman to survive her husband was sinful.
It is unlikely that many widows went voluntarily to the flames, though it is certain that some did. Many were forcibly burnt; even sons would be deaf to their mothers' pleas, in order to protect family honour.
Not until 1829, under Lord Bentinck's Regulation, did sat
become legally homicide, after pressure was brought to bear on the British authorities by Christian missionaries and Hindu reformers, notably R
m Mohan
Roy
.

 
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(P
li)
or sm
ti
(Skt., ‘mindfulness’). A form of mental application which lies at the very heart of Buddhist meditational practice, whose object is awareness, lucidity, true recognition. It is concerned with the bare registering of the objects of our senses and minds as they are presented to us in our experience, without reacting to them in terms of the behaviour of the ego—i.e. in terms of our likes and dislikes, passions and prejudices. Only then can the true nature of things become illumined.

 
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