Breath Mindfulness 6

Basic overview of the practice

At a secluded space, sit down and cross your legs, keep body erect, establish sati.

First Tetrad: Contemplation of the Body

1 – Know in and out breathing

Breathe naturally, don’t control, pay full attention to the process of the breath coming in and going out and the pauses in between. Don’t fixate on any one spot, just notice the breath as a whole and all sensations associated with breathing.

2 – Know long breaths or short breaths

Pay attention to the length of the breaths, notice the path that it takes to fully complete a cycle. Notice if it gets calmer over time. Also evaluate the speed too, the softness or harshness.

3 – Experiencing the whole body

Scan your body, attentive to each area, just watch, breathe with each spot. Then spread awareness to the entire body, feel all of it breathing like if all your pores are taking in and out breaths or feel it filling like a vase when breathing in, starting with the belly, then diaphram, then chest. Notice there is no separation between your body, breath and awareness.

4 – Calming bodily sankharas – As you watch the body, remain still and notice any formations of tightness and discomfort, relax those areas, think “relax”, “calm”, “release”, “soften”. Continue being mindful of the breath and think about calming and relaxing the whole somatic field tied to the breathing process as well, wherever the breath is felt.

Second Tetrad: Contemplation of sensations (vedana)

5 – Experience pīti

Notice the vedanas or hedonic tones in the field of awareness. Pay special attention to good qualities that are arising from this practice, such as any calm, pleasant and joyful feelings and rejoice. Also notice the gladness in releasing negative qualities. Also one can be proactive and try to cultivate joy. Smile. Move breath energy in the body. Experiment. Be aware of joy and happiness in the mind.

6 – Experience sukha

Pay attention to the body sensations of pleasure and peaceful happy feelings. Notice the whole body breathing and how it is comfortable, sastisfying and blissful. Let the pleasure come by itself and spread by itself. Or try playing with the breath energies and sending it down your body, use your imagination.

7 – Experience mental sankharas

Shift your focus slightly to mental processes and formations. Thoughts, verbalizations, images, emotions and intentions or volitions. Watch, alertly and calmly, let them come and go like a river. Notice their impermanence.

8 – Calm and let go of mental sankharas

Relax the mental processes, let them go, release them, notice their passing away. Imagine breathing them out or turning down the volume on the mind. This includes piti-sukha, even if they are pleasant, they are impermanent and need to be let go.

Third Tetrad: Contemplation of the Mind (citta)

9 – Experience the mind

Turn your attention to the citta, the heart-mind. Watch all emotions, perceptions, thoughts and intentions without judgment. Let them come and go. Now watch ‘that which knows’, awareness itself, consciousness. Now watch both, awareness and its objects, together as a single system, like the sky and the weather phenomena. Like the stage and actors which come and go on it. Notice that both change and that both coexist.

10 – Gladden the mind

A subtle and peaceful gladness arises in that awareness. Try to notice a refined sense of peaceful happiness in the mind itself.

11 – Unify the mind

Due to the gladness, citta becomes more and more unified or collected in samadhi. Lightly train yourself to sharpen and expand this samadhi.

12 – Free the mind

Notice that hindrances and mental obstructions are being left behind. If you still notice some subtle elements left, let them go, release them. Let the mind rest is absolute calm and stillness.

Fourth Tetrad: Contemplation of dhammās

13 – Attend to anicca

Pay attention to the fact that everything is moving, shifting, changing, and flowing. The entire phenomenal field is a bubbling churning ocean of processes coming and going. This includes ‘that which knows’, awareness itself, which is constantly shifting its attention or field of focus. Phenomena also have the feature of being empty, lacking any solidity, center or core like the sky, froth or mist.

14 – Attend to fading away/dispassion

Notice that awareness of anicca leads to a sense of dispassion and disenchantment to phenomena, your clinging to them loosens because they are duhkha.

15 – Attend to cessation

Be aware specifically of the moment when phenomena disappear, pass away and vanish. Pleasant phenomena vanish and cause dukkha because we cling, but dukkha can also cease if we let go.

16 – Attend to letting go or cutting off

Let go of all sense of craving, holding on, clinging, attaching, grasping, let all phenomena pass by without reaching out to grab them with the hand of thought. This is also described as a stopping, a severance or eradication of the sense of clinging and craving. Tell yourself that enough is enough.

The tetrads as an integral & holistic system

Someone looking at the sixteen steps for the first time might see a fairly simple progressive, step by step practice. You practice the first tetrad, then you move on to the next one, and so on. This is the way most presentations teach it and it is a fine way to understand and practice anapanasati.

If you’ve read so far however, you’ll already know its not that simple and that there is a more complex relationship between all the sixteen aspects. Indeed, after spending some time practicing and studying the sixteen aspects of anapanasati, perhaps you will begin to these elements are more like this:

Or perhaps this:

The main idea here is that their relationship is less linear than it seems.

In describing how anapanasati works, the Buddha used this simile:

Suppose, Ananda, there were a great pile of dirt at the junction of four highways. A cart or chariot coming from the eastern direction would destroy that pile of dirt; a cart or chariot coming from the western direction . . . the northern direction .. . the southern direction would destroy that pile of dirt. Just so, Ananda, when a bhikkhu with regard to the body dwells watching body he too destroys bad unskilful dhammas .. . with regard to feelings . . . the mind … dhammas …

This passage shows that the four satipatthanas work together to destroy the corruptions from different directions. In this illustration, it doesn’t really matter, for the destroying of the dirt pile, which cart comes first because they all do the same job from a different angle. Indeed, the passage does not seem to depict a linear relationship between the satipatthanas.

Because they can be shown to be mutually supportive and interrelated, these steps also seem to have a synchronic dimension. For example, without weakening some of the hindrances and cultivating some of the awakening factors, which are technically “dhammas” assigned to the fourth satipatthana, one might never be able to properly practice the first tetrad. Likewise, there is a strong connection and overlap between aspects 5, 6 and 11 since the jhanas are one of the main definitions of samadhi.

In this way, it is clear that the various anapanasati elements all support each other and in many cases it doesn’t make sense that you start at a certain step without already having other elements present which are listed “later”.

A metaphor for the Buddha’s exposition of anapanasati could be how a prism can divide white light into various colored lights (diffraction), but they are all contained within white light. Likewise, a deltahedron (a polyhedron whose faces are all equilateral triangles) with sixteen sides is another good way to illustrate what I am getting at here.

One can apply “freeing the mind” for example, in combination with any tetrad, because letting go of hindrances is always supportive. While ‘freeing the mind’ could be interpreted narrowly as “attain first jhana”, I think that it makes sense to interpret it as a broad sense of letting go of hindrances which would include lesser levels of samadhi and all the jhanas, in a sliding scale of skill.

Likewise, just because one has passed through a step does not mean it is left behind and no longer present. It seems rather, that factors which are cultivated at different steps (such as relaxation, piti, etc) aggregate together creating a more complete and unified meditation practice with more and more momentum.

Thanissaro Bhikku notes this feature of the sixteen steps as well, noting that the ability to successfully focus on the breath requires developing some sensitivity to feelings and mind states involved in the process. Seen in this way, the four tetrads are just different aspects of one practice. While maintaining one’s awareness on breathing, one can also extend one’s attention to the whole body, or to feelings or to the mind to calm, gladden and relax them as the need arises.

Likewise, one also remains attentive to impermanence and to letting go of any greed and distress with regards to the world, which are standard prescriptions when practicing all four satipatthanas. One also remains attentive to the development of the seven enlightenment factors. This means in practice that one can do two tetrads simultaneously, or that all four could be unified if one is experienced enough.

For example, one could work on noticing how the sensations of the whole body breathing (1st tetrad) give rise to feelings of pleasure (2nd tetrad), or how insight into impermanence and dispassion (4th tetrad) can help calm the mind (3rd tetrad) and keep it from wandering off. Of course, the breath always remains the foundation or anchor during this process, one is just shifting attention to different aspects of the breathing process, such as how it feels or how it is impermanent.

In fact it is hard to see how one could not bring in aspects of the other tetrads when practicing the first one, as in, when one is distracted and needs to develop dispassion to abandon that distraction (4th tetrad) or when a painful feeling arises and one must observe it with equanimity. (2nd tetrad). Even if one is dead set on just doing one tetrad without thinking about the others, one will have to use elements related to the others and this shows that they interpenetrate.

The first three tetrads all have to do with different aspects of maintaining the mind on the breath, the first dealing with the object of meditation – the breathing body, the second dealing with the feelings that are conditioned by the process of attending to the breathing body, and the third dealing with aspects of the mind like mindfulness and investigation that allow our attention to remain on the breath and also features of the mind like samadhi that arise from this practice. The fourth tetrad is also an important aspect here because these insights help us keep distractions at bay by seeing them as inconstant and keeping us dispassionate from them, and once we reach higher levels of meditation – jhanas – this fourth tetrad also maintains our dispassion for them as well, leading to letting go of even these subtle heightened states, and to total release.

Drawing more connections

Let’s explore the deep inter-connectedness of the sixteen aspects further. When we investigate the relationships between these aspects, we will begin to see that they are not so linear and that they are really a web of connections and feedback loops. In this section, I will use the following diagram to make some connections between :

• Observing the breath qualities (step 1 and 2) can lead to insight into impermanence (step 13).
• Calming the body processes can lead to calming the heart-mind processes and vice versa.
• Calming the body processes can lead to increasing samadhi (step 11) and observation of impermanence (change in the body).
• Experiencing piti and sukha (5 and 6) can lead to more samadhi (11).
• Experiencing the heart-mind processes (7) can lead to observing impermanence (13).
• Experiencing citta (9) can lead to observing impermanence (11).
• Making the citta joyful (10) can lead to piti and sukha (5 and 6) and also to calming the citta processes (8).
• Calming both the body processes (4) and the heart-mind processes (8) is a way to train in letting go (step 16)

Do not make the mistake of thinking that the connections in this diagram is the final say on the matter. There likely to be many more subtler connections which I have not outlined above, and which are less obvious but will become more visible with further practice. Anapanasati is a practice which just keeps getting deeper and deeper the more one does it.

How to practice

Looking at all these interconnections, the best conclusion to draw is that are dealing with a practice that has both syncronic and diachronic aspects, with vipassana and samatha qualities. In practice, it seems like there are two possible ways to do this:

1. One can initially proceed from the first tetrad, to the second in a linear way, for a sense of structure. As the meditation continues more and more unification of the steps happens as you progressively move through the tetrads and keep adding them to the practice. You don’t leave each tetrad behind as you move to the next, you simply add qualities to the meditation which help maintain and stabilize it. One can also go through the tetrads several times, depending on how long one is sitting for.

2. You begin with focusing on your breath, then you pay attention to your feelings, thoughts, and mind and see which elements are functioning well to keep your mind on the breath and which elements need to be worked on. Then you draw on the relevant tetrad to help you with it – if the mind is distracted, try gladdening the mind, if the body is tight, try calming the bodily formations, etc. The meditation begins to develop and we begin to draw on the other tetrads, aggregating them to our practice. Mindfulness of body, relaxing the body and being mindful of hindrances and awakening factors all come in eventually and are integrated in one continuous cultivation system leading to jhana.

One ultimately has to experiment and learn through practicing the steps over and over and see what works for oneself. This develops the skill of self sufficiency which allows one to continue to progress. This is why the Buddha did not teach each and every detail to be followed by everyone, because each person is different and they have to learn by themselves how to best apply the factors of the path. What he taught was a basic system of meditation with key elements to be applied. How one applies them depends on the individual. Eventually though all these qualities will become more unified and integrated with each other as practice matures.

Bhikkhu Analayo states that as one enters samadhi there is a fusion of body and mind. In Zen one is also told be mindful and let go of body-mind. In Yogacara Buddhism there is a sense of unity between subject and object. This all points to the same meditative experience of ekagacitta, a unified mind. Unification of mind and singleness of mind brings together the practice of all four satipatthanas, and the observation all five skandhas. One begins to experience everything as one system, this is what happens in the practice of the anapanasati steps.

The tetrads can be seen as a field of qualities that grow together, like a garden. Yes you start with certain steps, but you never really leave these foundational elements behind, like watering for example, until the goal is achieved – harvest. At the same time, other elements grow on their own and the whole endeavor grows in complexity but it is not harder to do because the plants are growing by themselves and you have developed strong habits of doing things automatically.

As the plants begin to bear fruit you have a system of cultivation in place which you continue to perfect, with different tools to prune weeds, seeds, manure to help it grow, shading and daily tending tasks. The more you practice the more this becomes automatic and the more you see how it works as a seamless whole, each element being more connected to the other in some way. Finally, when the plants mature, you can just harvest the fruits of your labor and let go of all the elements of cultivation, because the goal is complete. This is final release.

Viewed in this way, progress is then about greater unification and integration of the various satipatthanas and anapanasati elements not just a strict linear progression from step one to step 16. The practice of anapanasati can then be seen as cyclical or as aggregate, not just linear.

When one realizes that the four tetrads all interpenetrate and support each other, one may wonder: “is it possible to combine the practice of one or more tetrads together?”

It is! Each tetrad can serve as a theme of meditation simultaneously with any of the others. How does this work? As you focus on the quality of the breath (1st tetrad), one can also remain peripherally aware of any of the other tetrads. Sometimes it is useful to meditate on the quality of the breath or on the whole body breathing, and also on how the breath leads to sensations of bliss and happiness (2nd tetrad). Sometimes it is useful to focus on the breath and at the same time witness the state of the mind and how calming the breath increases samadhi (3rd tetrad). Finally, sometimes it can be helpful to notice the unstable nature of the breath, which leads to letting go (4th tetrad).

A skeptical person may wonder: “Isn’t this shifting around from one practice to another back and forth going to weaken one’s practice, since you keep changing the theme of meditation?” But this misses the point. What we are seeing here is a shift in focus from one aspect of the same practice to another aspect of the very same process. All four tetrads are really elements of one unified whole.

In a sense, it is like mastering any complex skill, such as a musical instrument. First you begin with the simplest elements, and once you’ve got that down, you add more complex elements on top of what you’ve already learned. Depending on the complexity of what you are seeking to master, one could end up performing various complex tasks at the same time. But since one has practiced all of them countless times, it is a natural process of aggregation.

Possible Variations

This is all well and good, but how exactly do we practice in this “integral” way? Well, the point is that there is no “one way” to do it. Whichever road you take first with your cart will lead to the dirt pile being flattened as long as you’re consistent. One can do the four tetrads linearly, or you can do them “out of sequence” so to speak.

The “linear” way to do it has mostly already been outlined in most of this text though it is not meant to be a strictly linear exposition. Now let’s look at some other possible ways of tackling the tetrads. There are at least three possible ways to go here on the first “forking” of the method:

1. Starting with the breath,
2. Starting with some other theme,
3. A formless method.

Starting with the breath

Since this is “anapanasati” it makes sense that this would be a major starting point. One alternative way of doing this would be to begin with focusing on the breath until we have some preliminary calm developed and then “jump” to another element, such as “calming the mental formations”, “gladdening the mind” or even a more abstract element such as “impermanence” (in this case, easily discernible through the breathing process).

This might be a helpful variation (for example), when we are already relaxed physically, but are anxious or restless mentally and want to focus on the mind during this sit. Or if the perception of impermanence has already been aroused due to some life event. Or it could just be because we want to experiment with variations.

Another variation here could be to start with the breath, and once one has some calm, to expand our sense of awareness to body the whole body, as well as vedanas, and the mind, all at the same time. Basically, this would entail a broadening of attention to our entire phenomenal field.

This is probably not a method for beginners and can easily lead to distractions. A good preliminary technique here is to do this expansion by first applying the Mahasi technique of noting. After doing this for some time the mental labels can dropped. We can also extend this variation to notice the impermanence of every phenomena, and then maybe even to the rest of the fourth tetrad.

Starting with a different theme

The other possible form of variation would be to begin the exercise with a different theme other than the breath. At first, this sounds weird, since this is anapanasati after all so why start with something that is not the breath? However, interestingly enough, there is a sutta in which the Buddha recommends just that, the Girimananda sutta (AN 10.60):

“Ananda, if you go to the monk Girimananda and tell him ten perceptions, it’s possible that when he hears the ten perceptions his disease may be allayed. Which ten? The perception of inconstancy, the perception of not-self, the perception of unattractiveness, the perception of drawbacks, the perception of abandoning, the perception of dispassion, the perception of cessation, the perception of distaste for every world, the perception of the undesirability of all fabrications, mindfulness of in-&-out breathing.

Notice how in and out breathing is at the end. Now this sutta could probably be interpreted in different ways and need not be strict practice instructions, however what I think this sutta illustrates is that one can indeed first meditate on certain themes to “prime” the mind, and then practice mindfulness of breathing after the mind has been prepared with non-breath related perceptions.

Priming, in psychology, is when exposure to a particular stimulus influences one’s reaction and experience of a later stimulus. So in these variations of anapanasati, we would be reflecting and perceiving certain ideas or meditations which are meant to prime our experience the mindfulness of the breath practiced afterwards.

In this way, one could for example, begin with reflections on impermanence, not-self, or the sufferings of samsara, and then begin to focus on the breath.

Another helpful way to do this would be to begin by reviewing our mind for the five hindrances and seeing what we can do to weaken them before beginning anapanasati. This is actually supported by some texts which mention that one should put the hindrances aside before practicing anapanasati. If some hindrances are particularly strong on a given day, it can be helpful to do some preliminary ‘weeding’.

Formless or Freeform method

In this variation, we start with whatever theme we want – which might be nothing, just sitting there trying to be as awake and aware as possible or simple breathing mindfulness. We don’t pick a particular set of themes beforehand either, we just see what demands our attention and what arises in the field of awareness and watch it with discriminating attention.

The breath might remain in the background or to be used as an anchor if we get lost in wandering thoughts or distractions. If a particular theme becomes interesting or helpful, we might make it the main theme of our meditation in this sit. If nothing does this, we might just notice different satipatthanas throughout the sit without having a particular preference to them.

This is similar to what is called “Shikantaza” in Zen and “choiceless awareness” in some modern insight circles. However, since we are doing this with the context of the four tetrads in mind and since the breath is a sort of “home base” which we will allow ourselves to return to, it could still be said to be a loose form of anapanasati.

This practice is probably not for beginners as one can easily fool oneself that one is practicing when actually one is just mind wandering. Just like free jazz or abstract expressionism, one must first master some fundamentals before being able to practice in a freeform way without making a complete mess.

Sources:

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