Breath Mindfulness Intro

The Buddhist method of Anapanasati is one of the oldest and most widely used methods for teaching Buddhist self-cultivation. It is a practice for the growth of spiritual qualities which leads to a stable and transcendental happiness.

Anapanasati literally means “in-out breath mindfulness”. It uses breathing as a foundation to bring mindfulness (sati) to bear on the four satipatthanas (applications of mindfulness). This in turn leads to mental unification (samadhi) and to the "seven aids to awakening" (bojjhangas), culminating in total letting go (nirvana). The Buddha said:

Unification due to mindfulness of breathing (anapanasati-samadhi) is one thing that, when developed and cultivated, fulfills the four satipatthanas. And the four satipatthanas, when developed and cultivated, fulfill the seven aids to awakening. And the seven aids, when developed and cultivated, fulfill knowledge and freedom. – SN 54.13

Anapanasati is also an excellent practice for letting go of unwholesome mental states, especially the "five obstacles" (nivarana). The Buddha gives the following simile for anapanasati:

“Just as, bhikkhus, in the last month of the hot season, when a mass of dust and dirt has swirled up, a great rain cloud out of season disperses it and quells it on the spot, so too concentration by mindfulness of breathing, when developed and cultivated, is peaceful and sublime, an ambrosial pleasant dwelling, and it disperses and quells on the spot evil unwholesome states whenever they arise…” – SN 54.9

This practice is based on a gradual and subtle broadening of awareness, from breathing, to the body, to sensations, to the mind and finally to the basic principles of experience (dhammas). It includes both calming and insight elements. If done well, anapanasati is a complete practice that leads all the way to awakening. It is not just a preparatory practice. It is deceptively simple and yet gets profoundly deeper the further one progresses.

The locus classicus of this meditation form is the famed Anapanasati Sutta. This format of breath meditation in sixteen modes or aspects is also found in many other Early Buddhist Texts (henceforth EBTs). It is found in multiple texts in both the Chinese Agama and in the Pali Nikaya collections, as well as in different Vinayas (such as the Mahasamghika Vinaya) and Abhidharma texts. This speaks to its pedigree and importance as a basic meditation instruction that was widely taught by the historical Buddha.

Other suttas also mention how this was the practice that the Buddha used before his awakening. He called anapanasati a “noble” and “divine” dwelling. He also continued to practice it after his awakening, during meditation retreats which sometimes lasted three months (SN 54.11). If one wants to meditate like the Buddha himself did and taught others to do, the basic sixteen mode formula is the guide to follow.

I have created these instructions for myself by using many different sources as a way to better understand the various elements of anapanasati practice. The sixteen aspects are quite terse and the details of this practice seem to require some further explanation and analysis. The terminology and words used are often complex terms with broad semantic fields.

The terseness of these instructions could have been meant as a condensation of meditation teachings to aid in instruction. Indeed, the very idea of a “sutra” in ancient Indian literature refers to short pithy texts, which are like threads and which require further exposition (vibhanga) and explanation (vyakarana).

It could also be that one was meant to explore these elements for oneself and draw out their inner meaning in personal and individual ways, hence their broad and minimalist presentation.

In creating this meditation guide I have drawn from varied sources such as various classical and modern Buddhist traditions and modern scholarly sources. However, my focus remains the EBTs, particularly the Anapanasati Sutta, the Satipatthana Sutta, the Kayagatasati Sutta, the Anapana and Satipatthana Samyuttas and others. I have attempted to be non-sectarian while sticking to the original structure of the early teachings.

This is a practice focused manual. I didn’t attempt to make this particularly beginner friendly. I assume the reader is already committed to Buddhist practice and has some knowledge of Buddhism. It also assumes that meditation is being done in the context of the noble eight-fold path and this includes the five precepts and right view.

From a Buddhist and also classical Indian perspective, meditation cannot be decoupled from ethical training and from a study of the Dharma (Teaching, Universal Principle / Law). To be fully successful, Buddhist meditation must be done in the context of other forms of self-development such as generosity, non-harming, contentedness and simplicity.

It goes without saying that one must practice daily and continuously, not in starts and fits, if one wants real results. The Chinese masters said that one should practice like a stone dropping into a pool thousands of feet deep, continuously and persistently. The Buddha said that one should practice as if one’s hair was on fire. Time and death wait for no one, practice now, for one day you will be a corpse.

I also do not shy away from using Pali terms once they have been defined. Pali is the closest canonical language to what the Buddha used. Buddhist meditation, like any skill, has its own vocabulary used to outline the details of practice, so it is important to understand these technical terms.

The focus of this text is on technical instructions and strategies I have found useful in fleshing out the sixteen steps. It is not meant as totally comprehensive or as a fixed linear set of techniques which must be followed in order, rather it is a collection of ways of thinking about and practicing the sixteen anapanasati elements and it is assumed that the reader will craft and adapt his own practice through personal experience and discussion with spiritual friends.

Whatever knowledge I have of this practice I owe to the Buddha and to the writings of Buddhist practitioners and scholars, dead and living, that I have consulted.

Breath Mindfulness

The Pali term ‘pana’ means breath, and it has the connotations of vitality and life. Indeed in Pali the word for living being is just pana (breather). In the Vedas and the Aryuvedic literature, the Sanskrit ‘prana‘ has connotations of “life-force” and “vital energy”, i.e. that which animates the body (similar to the Greek psyche and Latin anima) and hence it’s a kind of organic energy.

This broad view of pana doesn’t just include the breath but could also refer to the circulatory and nervous system as well as other "airs" and energies in the body. What this means from a practice standpoint is that anapanasati may not restricted to just respiration itself, though it begins that way.

As we shall see, anapana is connected with vital processes of the living body and our sensations and perceptions of these and hence also connotes the sense of “aliveness” or “energy” (in a subjective and experiential sense) present in the field of experience, the central aspect of which is respiration. Anapanasati begins with the sensing of respiration but then broadens to experiencing the whole body and the various sensations, activities and energies at work in the body.

Since the breath is happening now in the present moment and it is obviously present, it is an ideal object for developing mindfulness. And since the breath can have energizing and calming effects on the body and mind, is also useful for developing the qualities of intensity (tapas) and energy (viriya).

The more you experiment and learn to breathe comfortably and pleasurably, the more energized and peaceful you become. This provides your mind with an inner nutriment, so that it stays with the meditation process instead of searching for ideas or thoughts elsewhere. Since the breath is such as important part of the living body, paying attention to it helps us connect with the rest of the body processes which are also part of Buddhist meditation.

The breath and the mind is like a horse and its rider, slow one down and the other also slows. Ajahn Lee said the breath is like a mirror for your mind. The more you watch the breath the more you will notice how the breath affects the mind and vice versa, and how you can work with this process to calm and relax the body-mind. This includes clearly seeing how we shape and construct our phenomenal experience in unskillful ways.

This shaping is done bodily (such as with breathing), verbally (through inner talk and labeling of phenomena), and mentally (which includes perception, feelings and intentions). Understanding this process will help you develop a sense of well-being and focus in the mind, and with this foundation, you can then turn the mind to the observation of how suffering arises and how it can be brought to an end.

The Buddha taught that this is done through letting go of increasingly subtler states. At first you let go of unhealthy mental nutriment and feed on jhana (the meditative immersions) and spiritual states, which are still constructed states but are subtler than other mental constructs. These meditations become more and more refined until you are ready to let go of all constructed processes and attain the unconstructed reality (asankhata dhamma), called nirvana. This, in a nutshell, is the core of anapanasati practice.

The Anapanasati Sutta shows how the practice of breath meditation can be used to access all four satipatthanas by calming the mind and using the sensations of the breath as a basis. It shows that breath meditation can cover both the samatha (calming) and vipassana (insight) aspects of meditation.

Here is a diagram of the four tetrad scheme from the Anapanasati Sutta (and the parallel Anapanasmrti Sutra which survives in Chinese translation) that shows how anapanasati is consciously expanded to the whole of the four satipatthanas, by relying on four central qualities: mindfulness (sati), clear awareness (sampajañña), energy (viriya) and samadhi (focused calm).

Note: the last elements are not numbered in this diagram because there is some disagreement among the source texts on their order.

The progression can be seen as a training in letting go. From the coarsest elements of experience (such as our body) and its bodily processes (sankharas), we move to sensations (vedanas) such as bliss (piti) and happiness (sukha), to the more subtle heart-mind processes (citta-sankharas) and the heart-mind itself (citta). Finally we come to the most subtle phenomena, which are the regular principles of experience or reality, such as impermanence (anicca).

However I will argue that one does not have to start with the body and one can also ‘enter’ the meditation from other anapanasati elements depending on one’s practical needs. Therefore the sixteen elements of anapanasati should not necessarily be seen as rigid linear steps but as aspects or different facets of breath meditation one can explore. Though beginning with the body is usually easier since it is the most obvious. We will go through each element in detail.

The Foundation

According to the Buddha, training in ethics is an absolutely essential foundation to meditation practice. Without a proper ethical foundation, meditation will be weak. Without a well tilled ground, crops do not grow. In the Satipatthana Samyutta, the Buddha says:

What is the starting point of skillful qualities? Well purified ethics and correct view. When your ethics are well purified and your view is correct, you should develop the four kinds of mindfulness meditation in three ways, depending on and grounded on ethics. – SN 47.3, 47.16

What is the beginning of skillful qualities? Give up bad conduct by way of body, speech, and mind and develop good conduct by way of body, speech, and mind. When you’ve done this, you should develop the four kinds of mindfulness meditation, depending on and grounded on ethics. – SN 47.47

So mindfulness meditation is said to depend on and be grounded in ethics (sila). Sila is one of the major divisions of the eight-fold path. In the early Buddhist texts, this often refers to the five trainings of not killing, not lying, not stealing, not harming others through sexuality and not ingesting substances which lead to carelessness (including alcohol). Needless to say, it is not easy to keep these perfectly. But the meditator must strive to do so. The more one takes these trainings to heart and makes them a part of one’s life, the better one’s meditation will go.

It must be remembered that the five trainings are not only negative. For example, not killing has also been defined by the Buddha as: It’s when a certain person gives up killing living creatures. They renounce the rod and the sword. They’re scrupulous and kind, living full of compassion for all living beings. – Majjhima Nikaya – “MN” 41

Here we can see that there is a positive element to the first training: being compassionate and kind to others. The same could be said for the other four trainings, they all have their positive elements, such as generosity, telling the truth, treating those of the opposite sex with respect and so on.

However, these five trainings are not the final say on ethics. The Buddha also outlined another list of ethical virtues, called the ten wholesome paths (in suttas such as MN 41). The first part of this is identical to the five trainings, though it expands speech to not just avoiding lying, but also includes:

• Giving up divisive speech. Instead, they reconcile those who are divided with harmonious speech.
• Giving up harsh speech. Instead, they speak in pleasing and polite ways.
• Giving up nonsense or pointless talk. Instead they say what is helpful, useful, valuable and reasonable.

Furthermore, three more virtues of the mind are:

• Non-greed. Not coveting what others have. Being content with what you have and with few things.
• Being kind-hearted and loving.
• Having right view, an undistorted perspective. Particularly this refers to an understanding that our actions have real and important consequences (i.e. karma). Bad deeds have bad results and vice versa. This applies in this life and in the next (this presupposes a view of rebirth).

Other important supporting factors for these include listening to and studying the Dharma as well as associating with spiritual friends and those who are virtuous and knowledgeable in the Dharma and not associating with harmful and unskillful persons. All of these can be said to support right view and proper ethics.

It cannot be emphasized enough how important it is to practice sila and to have right view for Buddhist meditation. It is like the foundation to your house, without it, it will collapse. If your meditation is not going well, it is very likely that your sila or view is not good enough.

Practicing this is not as easy as it sounds. It often entails giving up a lot of habits we have ingrained in us. Constantly reviewing these elements and knowing that they lead to wholesome states of mind is a good way to slowly improve in sila. Memorize these 10 skillful trainings and check yourself all the time on how you can improve in these. This training can take a lifetime. But a peaceful and happy mind is what is at stake here, so do not ignore these trainings. A meditator does so at their own peril.

It is common nowadays for people to take time our of their busy schedules to do long meditation retreats, for a week, several weeks and so on. But unless these very people do not live their lives with strong sila and correct view, this will not produce the fruit of awakening, no matter how long and hard they meditate. This is what the Buddha taught.

But, if on the other hand, sila is strong, then the Buddha said meditation comes effortlessly and naturally. This is because, as it says in Anguttara Nikaya – “AN” 11.2, “a virtuous and moral person need not wish: ‘May I have no regrets.’ It’s only natural for a virtuous person to have no regrets.” This naturally and effortlessly leads to a series of qualities (joy, bliss, calm, happiness…) leading to samadhi, meditative stillness and unity. This can then be used to “see things as they really are” and this leads to liberation.

So if your meditation is not going well, instead of obsessing about meditation techniques, how long you sit for or planning retreats, ask yourself, “how can I improve my ethics and view?” “How can I improve my daily life so as to support meditation?” It will be much more fruitful in the long run.

Practicing throughout daily activities

In the scheme of the eightfold path, the practice of mindfulness meditation comes just after the “right effort” (samma vayamo) aspect. So clearly this is also an important supporting element, to be practiced as a way of providing a strong foundation for meditation. What is right effort? It is a vigorous and determined attempt to develop wholesome qualities and abandon the unwholesome:

Right effort is when a seeker generates desire, eagerness and makes an effort to prevent bad unwholesome qualities from arising. They make an effort to give up bad unwholesome qualities. They also work hard to attain the wholesome qualities they do not have. And they try to make sure wholesome qualities they do have are not lost, but grow, mature and become perfected. – SN 45.8

Thus, right effort is closely connected to ethical trainings as well, since these are things which often require effort. Indeed, right effort seems to act as a link between sila, sati and samadhi. This effort is something which is much broader than formal sitting practice and is applicable in our daily routine, when most of the negative mental qualities and harmful actions sneak up on us and grow without our attention.

We must be always on guard for the arising of desires to break the precepts, harmful and greedy thoughts and so on. Just simply noticing them and stopping to observe them is often enough to dissolve them or at least to keep us from doing an unwholesome action.

Another important element associated with right effort and sila is “sense restraint”. It is defined by the Buddha thus:

And how does a mendicant guard the sense doors? When a noble disciple sees a sight with their eyes, they don’t get caught up in the features and details. If the faculty of sight were left unrestrained, bad unskillful qualities of desire and aversion would become overwhelming. For this reason, they practice restraint, protecting the faculty of sight, and achieving its restraint...[The same is applied to the other four senses and to the mind/thoughts as a “sixth” sense]

When they have this noble sense restraint, they experience an unsullied bliss inside themselves. That’s how a mendicant guards the sense doors. – Digha Nikaya – “DN” 2

Sense restraint is important because it through not being mindful of where our senses are, which field they are wandering in and how our mind is responding to them, that we generate unwholesome qualities. This can be observed throughout our life often, such as when we end up overeating due to not paying attention, and then end up drowsy or unhealthy or when we purchase something on an impulse and get into debt.

To practice this, one needs to remind oneself, throughout the day, to pay attention to our sense fields and not be carried away by them. This is especially powerful during moments when we know that we get carried away, such as when eating, when going to a place that is designed to entice our senses, such as a shopping center or any situation that causes our senses to be carried away, such as consuming some form of media.

Sense restraint training is closely tied to mindfulness, because being obsessed with and driven by our initial sense impressions kills our mindfulness and self-reflection. Because of this, the practice of mindfulness of postures and situational awareness (sampajañña) of everyday activities is also another important support to sense restraint and to formal mindfulness meditation itself. This was taught by the Buddha in the SPS, where it says that one is to act with mindful clear knowing in all postures and when moving about in the world, as well as when putting on clothing, eating or drinking, going to the bathroom and speaking or being silent.

What this means is that we develop a mindful presence of where our body is and how it is doing in all situations, as well as clear awareness of what it is doing and why. Our natural tendency is to do things on autopilot without an embodied sense of attentive presence. This practice trains us not to live like this and instead to develop a firm grounding in our body’s way of being in the world. To do it, we take moments out of our day to feel and sense the body, know its posture and what it is doing. We connect with your breathing and the quality of it.

This practice is perhaps the most difficult of all even though it is the most simple. Since it means we should always be aware of what we are doing and why we are doing it. But, life being what it is, it is much more likely we will forget this simple practice. But this is a very basic form of ignorance. We need to keep trying to stay awake in all situations, not sleepwalk through our life. However, one must remember that this is a relaxed and calm practice, not one of obsessive and excessive effort.

One way that a beginner practice this is to train oneself at certain intervals by setting reminders throughout the day, whether visuals such as sticky notes or electronic ones. One can also pick certain times of the day, such as one’s lunch time, when you wake up, when arriving home from work and so on, and tell oneself one will attempt to heighten one’s awareness of the situation at those particular moments. Ideally, one begins to broaden one’s practice of mindfulness of the body and situational awareness to include moments throughout one’s entire day.

This is a very useful and flexible mindfulness practice, and some of the best moments to do it are when one would otherwise look for distractions, such as using your smartphone. Waiting in a line at a lunch counter or grocery store? Practice mindfulness of the body. Stuck in traffic? Practice mindfulness of the body. Walking through the parking lot? Going to the bathroom? Making breakfast? Going to sleep? Practice mindfulness of the body.

Talking and dealing with others can be the most stressful moments of our day, so it is also important to apply mindfulness during these situations.

This practice allows us to develop a continuity of mindfulness and thus supports our formal sitting meditation practice by enhancing the power of our mindfulness.

The Buddha used certain similes to illustrate sense restraint and mindfulness of daily activities. One says:

Suppose a person was to enter a thicket full of thorns. They’d have thorns in front and behind, to the left and right, below and above. So they’d go forward mindfully and come back mindfully, thinking, ‘May I not get any thorns!’ In the same way, whatever in the world seems nice and pleasant is called a thorn in the training of the noble one. When they understand what a thorn is, they should understand restraint and lack of restraint. – SN 35.244

Another applicable simile used by the Buddha for sati was of a gatekeeper who carefully scrutinizes people before letting them inside the city or turning them away.

This defensive and guarding feature of sati closely ties it with sila, sense restraint and with a sense of carefulness, prudence or diligence (appamada). The Buddha said:

Mendicants, you should be careful (appamada) in four situations. What four? Give up bad conduct by way of body, speech, and mind; and develop good conduct by way of body, speech, and mind. Don’t neglect these things. Give up wrong view; and develop right view. Don’t neglect this. – AN 4.116

Mendicants, in your own way you should practice diligence, mindfulness, and guarding of the mind in four situations. What four? “May my mind not be aroused by things that arouse greed…May my mind not be angered by things that provoke hate…May my mind not be deluded by things that promote delusion…May my mind not be intoxicated by things that intoxicate.” – AN 4.117

This training then requires a constant state of careful responsibility or watchful vigilance that does not allow oneself to do wrong or fail to do the right thing. It is constantly on guard for unwholesome influences, such as our obsession with the senses. Appamada is also always on the look out for ways to cultivate goodness.

The Buddha also compared mindfulness of the body to a strong post that one uses for the practice of restraining the senses, which are like different kinds of wild animals all tied together (SN 35.247). If they are set loose like this, chaos ensues. But when tied to a post, they tire themselves out and then lay down to rest. In the same way, our six senses (Buddhism lists the mind as a kind of sense organ which ‘senses’ thoughts) are like this, each running after pleasant experiences and running away from unpleasant ones. The practice of mindfulness frees us from this compulsive reactions that we are habituated to.

This practice shows how the Buddha’s teaching is at odds with a lot of what we consider to be our everyday normal way of living. Most people go around with this basic program: relish the pleasurable sensations, run away from the painful. But the Buddha taught that we need to break through this to truly free the mind from suffering. Because of this, he called himself one who “goes against the stream” or more colloquially we could say he is “against the grain”.

We could say his teaching rebels against the way of life and ways of thinking of normal people. What this means for the average practitioner is that they should not be discouraged if it takes some time to change your habits. You have been practicing un-mindfulness and sense gratification your whole life, so it will take time to turn towards the Dharmic way of living.

Whenever we notice that we have been distracted and inattentive, we just return to mindfulness of the body and clear awareness without blaming ourselves. Understanding that this process is a gradual training and that we not in full control of our minds, we keep gently returning to sati, again and again. In this way, we see sati as a lovely place to hang out, a refuge away from the troubles of life, not as a chore we “need” to perform. It helps us anchor our mind in a safe place, so that it does not get carried away by those wild animals, the senses.

In discussing the various preparations for mindfulness, we have gone through many different elements which help support and ground our meditation. A common mistake regarding these elements is that they are just “preparatory” and thus secondary in importance to the formal meditation. Also, some think that you practice this for a bit and then stop focusing on them, instead you focus on meditation. But these are grave mistakes. Indeed, if they are the foundation for meditation, then they are always necessary for successful practice.

There has recently been increased interest in “mindfulness meditation” in the West, particularly in Western Psychology. This rise has seen an operationalization and secularization of mindfulness meditation, and so a separation of it from the Buddhist path. This emphasis on formal sitting meditation or on psychological techniques is also seen in Buddhism, with the rise of the insight movement.

However, this “meditation first” approach is not how the Buddha taught meditation. Instead he taught it as one part of a whole path, which was really a whole way of life, with sati at the center. This centrality of sati was explained by the Buddha in the following simile:

Seekers, anyone who contemplates the great ocean also sees all the streams that flow into it. Just like this, anyone who has developed and cultivated mindfulness of the body has all the wholesome qualities connected with true knowledge. – MN 119

Seen in this way, these foundational practices are really just as important as formal meditation. Being a Buddhist meditator then, is really nothing more than structuring your life according to the Buddhist path. It’s not just sitting in meditation once or twice a day, it’s living meditatively. If these structural supports are neglected, then the beautiful temple of meditation will not be able to be built at all.

Preparing for formal meditation

The Anapanasati Sutta (APSS) just says that a monk goes to a secluded place like a forest or empty hut and sits straight with legs crossed with mindfulness established, it doesn’t elaborate much on what to do in preparation for meditation. Another sutra in the Chinese Samyukta Agama though gives us more to work with. It states that as preparation, one adjusts one’s body and sits correctly, brings forth mindfulness and cuts off craving and desires, severs ill-will, drowsiness, restlessness and doubt.

Posture is very important, I will not outline this in detail here, and it is easy to find instructions online or in person. A straight back and crossed legs make for a solid posture. Lotus posture is said to be best, if not half lotus posture, Burmese (uncrossed legs) or even the Bodhisattva posture (a relaxed posture with one leg raised). Also there are laying down postures like corpse (face up) and lion (sideways) posture. Find one which is comfortable and does not make you feel pain or make you sleepy. Also you can use a chair, couch, different cushions under the legs, lean against the wall and so on. Do whatever makes you sit comfortably.

Stretching a bit before sitting can also help.

Regarding the list of mental qualities to be given up, these are the ‘five obstacles’ which will be outlined later. Reviewing these and making some effort to release their most coarse influences seems to be solid advice before undertaking meditation.

The Samyukta Agama sutra “SA” 801 enumerates five beneficial conditions for the cultivation of breath meditation, it points to a minimalist lifestyle:

1. Abide in purity following the five ethical trainings. 2. Have few desires, few things, and few affairs to attend to. 3. Moderation in food and drink. 4. Don’t sleep too late or too early. 5. Spend time in the forest, a quiet place away from troubles and conflicts. Other discourses also say “an empty hut”.

Physical and mental seclusion is a quality widely praised throughout these texts as a preliminary to anapanasati. It is definitely easier to focus the mind when there are less people around to distract us. Noise and sounds are particularly disruptive to meditation (in one sutta, noise is called a “thorn” to meditative states). Even if others are being quiet, their mere presence affects our minds. Throughout the early texts, meditators will almost always go off on their own into the forest after receiving meditation instructions, and then return to report on how it went and receive feedback from the Buddha or senior monastics.

The Pali commentary to the APSS says that seclusion is important because our mind spends a lot of time pursuing sense objects and so it is a like a wild animal. Because of this, a place that is secluded from these influences helps one tame this animal. Since there is no way it could gain the objects it is accustomed to in a secluded space, it does not attempt to break the rope of mindfulness. In other words, the less distractions we have available, the less our mind will be distracted.

Moderation in diet and in sleep is a pretty obvious requirement. The body should be balanced and energized for the practice.

You might also want to prime the mind with certain Buddhist contemplations, such as the “five recollections” or taking refuge in the three jewels. You can also can read Dharma passages or suttas. This will help set the mood and steer the mind away from worldly things and towards spiritually joyful themes.