Dharma Talk: Buddhas 16 Steps Of Mindfulness Of Breathing

This recording provides a very brief overview of the Buddha’s discourse on mindfulness of breathing or the Anapanasati sutta. This sutta describes 16 steps (four tetrads each with four steps) that lead to the knowledge and insight of awakening. The instructions in the four tetrads of mindfulness of breathing use both the tranquillity as well as the insight aspects of meditation. This means that there is the cultivation of tranquillity (relaxed body and calm mind), along with the nourishment of joy,

Transcript

So welcome,

Everyone.

Tonight's talk is about the Buddha's anapanasati sutta,

Otherwise known as the mindfulness of breathing discourse,

Discourse on mindfulness of breathing.

And I first learned about mindfulness of breathing about 46 years ago,

I think,

Way back when I was first introduced to Theravada Buddhism.

And I practiced for many years on and off,

Different ways.

But only very recently have I realized the depth of this sutta and the depth of the and the profanity of this sutta,

How comprehensive it is.

So what I'd like to do tonight is just give you a very brief overview of the sutta.

And,

And thus being an overview of the practice as well.

So this sutta,

This discourse was given at the end of a four month retreat,

When the Buddha was staying at Sawati in the middle in the Eastern monastery,

The palace of Migara's mother,

Together with many well known disciples,

Elder disciples.

In other words,

It was that the Buddha had gone to this retreat place.

He spent three months there and he liked it.

So he said he'd do an extra month.

So a lot of monastics came along and did the extra month as well.

And there was a large,

Large group of monastics and practitioners.

And these practitioners were very advanced practitioners,

Some were Arahants,

Some were,

You know,

On the stages of awakening.

And many different practitioners and the Buddha expressed his contentment with the practice and it was given at the end of the,

That,

That retreat.

So it wasn't like he was giving instructions for the retreat,

He was just talking about perhaps his favourite meditation,

It's the meditation that he tended to do.

And it's also the meditation that he did,

As far as I understand,

On the night of his awakening,

Part of this meditation.

So he presented the practice in 16 steps.

And what's really interesting is these 16 steps correlate with four tetrads,

Each tetrad has in having four steps.

And what I found is interesting with these four tetrads,

They correlate with the four satipatthana,

The four establishments of mindfulness.

So the first four steps is related to body.

The next four steps is related to feelings or Vedana.

The next four steps is related to mind,

Or chitta.

And the next four steps isn't quite related,

It is related to phenomena,

As we know it in the satipatthana sutta,

Or the four establishments of mindfulness sutta.

But it focuses on the factors of awakening more than anything else.

It focuses on awakening.

So this sutta is in many ways an advance on the satipatthana sutta.

And having practiced satipatthana for many years,

And familiar with the sutta and familiar with the practices,

The satipatthana,

You know,

Body,

Mindfulness of body,

Feelings,

Mind and phenomena.

It's definitely an inside practice.

Definitely.

It's all about waking up and it's very,

Very grounding.

It's very basic.

And it's somewhat so I'm talking about the satipatthana sutta and the satipatthana practice.

It's somewhat confronting as well,

Challenging,

We,

We get to look directly at the mortality and look at difficult experiences and be aware of our body,

Our mind and feelings and phenomena.

And also we become very familiar with the hindrances,

You know,

The hindrances being central desire,

Ill will,

Or sometimes it's described as anger,

Sloth and torpor,

Restlessness and worry and paralyzing doubt.

There the 500s have become very familiar with that in the satipatthana sutta.

So the anapanasati sutta is considered an advance on that.

When the Buddha talks about feelings in the anapanasati sutta,

There's just mostly mention of pleasant feelings,

Not really any mention of unpleasant feelings.

And also,

The hindrances are not mentioned.

They're not mentioned because it's an assumption that people already know how to deal with the hindrances.

So we've learned that in satipatthana.

So the 16 steps that lead to insight and knowledge are a mix of tranquility and insight,

You know,

The tranquility aspect of meditation and the insight aspect of meditation.

And I always understood it as mostly tranquility to be honest.

And I think most people,

Most people I'm who most people practice it as a form of tranquility practice,

Like emphasizing concentration and so on,

Or samadhi.

But it is quite profound in the way it blends in and mixes the insight components with the tranquility components.

Now these 16 steps and four tetrad's also overlap with the seven factors of awakening.

And they kind of go in that progression,

The seven factors awakening are sometimes presented as individual factors like you cultivate them individually.

Seven factors awakening being mindfulness,

Investigation of dhammas,

Energy,

Joy,

Tranquility,

Samadhi or concentration,

And equipoise or equanimity,

As often described as they are the seven factors awakening,

Sometimes we cultivate them individually,

But often we cultivate them kind of in a sequence.

So as we go through the Anapanasati practice,

The 16 steps,

These seven factors of awakening are also cultivated in that sequence in the sequence of the set of the 16 steps.

So here are the 16 steps.

It begins with asking the practitioner or inviting the practitioner to bring mindfulness to the full,

To bring mindfulness to be present with mindfulness.

So one is invited to savour and taste mindfulness,

How is it experienced to inquire into this?

Then one is invited to bring attention to breathing.

And the first step on the 16 steps in the first tetra is breathing in,

One is mindful,

Breathing out.

And the second step is breathing in,

Out,

Long,

One is mindful.

The second step is breathing in and out,

Short,

One is mindful.

The third step is experiencing the whole body,

Breathing in and breathing out.

The fourth step is calming bodily activities or relaxing the body,

Relaxing tension,

Breathing in and out.

So I'm just going to go into this a little bit more.

So when we establish mindfulness,

When we bring mindfulness to the full,

That's actually the first preliminary step,

We're actually cultivating mindfulness,

We're actually engendering or nourishing that factor of awakening called mindfulness,

Which is the first step on the seven factors.

And breathing in and out long,

Breathing in and out short,

What we're nourishing is investigation.

We're bringing curiosity and discernment to whether we're breathing short or long.

I mean,

It's hard to say what's a long breath and what's a short breath,

But the effort or the process of tuning into the breathing,

Whatever way you tune into it,

Whatever way you're mindful of it,

And you're discerning what's happening,

Whether it's a long breath or short breath.

So you're staying with the experience in a discerning way.

So they're the first two steps.

And in fact,

They're the only steps that fully focus on the breath from there on in.

From there on in,

What happens is you let the breathing and mindfulness of the breathing be in the background and to the foreground you bring other objects.

So the third step is bringing the whole body into the foreground.

So the mindfulness of breath is in the background.

You're just bringing your body,

Like awareness of your body here,

Now,

Present.

And that's fine.

You could be aware of the movement of it.

It's like with the first two steps is a very focused attention.

With the next step,

Being mindfulness of body,

It's more of an open monitoring of your body.

And then the next step,

The fourth step being calming bodily activities,

Breathing in and out.

You let your body relax.

And with me,

What I do is I focus on my body,

But in the background is my breathing and I tend to relax,

Emphasise the outbreath to relax.

And so it's just breathing in,

Breathing out,

Relaxing.

And then you can eventually breathe in,

Relax,

Breathe out,

Relax.

And you put your focus of attention onto the relaxation of the body and you use the breath to help you.

So the breath is in the background,

Helping you relax.

Okay.

So this is these first four steps.

In fact,

There's five steps here,

But they're called four steps.

These first four are related to body.

When you do that,

When you breathe in,

Breathe out,

Relax,

Breathe in,

Breathe out,

If you note the feeling component of that,

It's pleasant.

It's a pleasant feeling.

So you use that pleasant feeling to help arise,

To help bring forth joy or rapture,

Which is the fourth factor.

But I didn't mention the third factor.

Third factor is energy.

That process of bringing the body to the fore and the breath in the background requires a lot of energy.

So you're nourishing the energy component of the seven steps.

So then with joy,

What we're tapping into here is a quality that we find,

A new awakening factor of joy,

But it's also something that happens in the cultivation of serenity.

The five Jhana factors,

For example,

They include initial application,

Sustained application,

You're bringing your attention to something,

You're sustaining your attention to something,

Then you're having pīrti,

Which is joy.

Then the next step,

The next one is sukha or happiness.

And the fifth Jhana factor is unity of mind,

Mind unity,

Or unification of mind.

So these are all tranquility factors.

So what's happening in the fifth step,

You're experiencing joy.

You're finding it in your body,

And you're nourishing it,

And it arises in your heart.

It's just a bubbly experience.

That leads to the next factor,

Which is sukha or happiness.

You start to look for happiness,

Which is a much more subtle experience than joy.

Joy is quite bubbly.

Happiness is sort of centered,

I find it centered around my heart,

And it's a much more subtle feeling than joy.

So that's what happens in the second step.

So fifth step,

Experiencing joy,

Breathing in,

Breathing out,

I experience joy.

So the breath in the background,

You're focusing on joy.

The sixth step is experiencing happiness.

Breath is in the background,

You're breathing in,

Breathing out,

You're experiencing happiness.

And sometimes I find that by kind of coupling them,

One enhances the other,

Like the more I breathe,

The more happiness arises in my heart.

Then the seventh step,

It's really interesting.

The seventh step,

Coming from that basis of joy and happiness,

You're using pleasant feelings and you're coming from that space of joy and happiness.

You're getting a good foundation to step back and experience mental activities,

Like thinking,

Thoughts,

You know,

Perceptions,

All sorts of things that arise in your mind.

So the seventh step is experiencing mental activity,

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

So in this case,

Joy and happiness go into the background,

Along with the breath.

And in the foreground comes mental activity.

So you're just watching your mind.

You just watch it.

And the challenge here is not to get enticed by it and seduced by it and get caught up in it,

As well as not rejecting it,

Just letting it do its own little thing.

That's the seventh step.

The eighth step is calming mental activity,

Breathing in and out.

When you don't do anything with thoughts,

When you're not feeding into thoughts,

There's a natural settling of them.

And in this case,

What it's experienced is like this,

Just dropping of thoughts,

Like the thoughts just drop to the ground,

Basically.

And that's really quite lovely.

You have something called paucity,

Which is the fifth factor of awakening,

Tranquility,

Paucity,

Which is relaxed body,

Calm mind.

So this is engendering that fifth factor of awakening,

Tranquility.

The ninth step,

When you have a lot of tranquility in your settling your mental activity,

What comes to the fore is an experience of knowing,

Like one's mind,

The mind.

Then that becomes what one is aware of.

No longer is one caught up with experiences out there.

But we do this U-turn.

And I remember I talked about this last time actually,

With the ringing of the bell being aware of consciousness,

One is conscious of consciousness,

One is aware of mind.

And that's very calming and peaceful.

So we turn into our,

We turn out,

Do a U-turn on our attention,

And we're becoming conscious of consciousness.

That's a really lovely space to experience.

So this is the fifth step,

Experiencing,

Sorry,

Ninth step,

Experiencing mind and breathing in and out,

Which leads on to the tenth step,

Which is gladdening mind,

That experience of just being peaceful and still and quiet in your mind with knowing,

With just mind has an uplifting experience.

It's more subtle and rich and textured than happiness.

It is this really rich and deep experience of gladdening,

We call it gladdening.

The next step,

So breathing in,

Breathing out,

Gladdening the mind,

I experienced gladdening.

The next step is about samadhi.

So concentrating the mind,

Breathing in and out.

Gladdening gives rise to being able to unify,

Unification of attention,

So that we can just sort of slip into a state of samadhi,

Where our mental energies are collected and in one spot.

And this is a kind of like a letting go,

There's no force about this.

So we go into samadhi.

And then the twelfth step is liberating the mind,

Breathing in and out.

So we might spend however long we like in samadhi.

And then we come back and we liberate the mind.

And a couple of talks ago,

I talked about letting go of the ego,

Just dropping that obsession we have with me,

I,

Mine and myself.

This is a taste of awakening.

So we just drop it.

So we have a taste of liberating the mind.

Then it goes on to,

So the ninth,

10th,

11th and 12th step relate to samadhi and equipose in terms of the seven factors.

Then the final tetrad.

The final tetrad is all about awakening and it's fully focused on the insight component of meditation.

So the first thing that happens in the first step is we contemplate impermanence.

And you can do that with the breathing,

For example,

Or you can just do it with whatever.

I tend to do it with not with my breathing,

But with my thoughts about,

Oh not thoughts about,

The experience of the five khanda which are forms,

Feelings,

Perceptions,

Mental formations and consciousness,

These groups of aggregates that I call myself.

I tend to look at that and the impermanence of that.

The next step is contemplating dispassion.

When you see impermanence,

You let go of grasping,

Because you see the futility of grasping and that is called dispassion,

Letting go.

It's not completely letting go,

But it's not,

It's having this sense of no longer wanting to reach out and grab onto things.

Contemplating,

And then the 15th step is contemplating cessation,

Breathing in and out.

So when we see that with the first step of impermanence,

We're seeing the rising movement and passing of things.

With cessation,

What we're focusing on is just the passing of things,

Just the things that are disappearing,

Things that are fading away.

And we're letting them fade away,

But we're no longer grasping after them to bring up anything anymore.

And this culminates in the final step being the 16th step,

Contemplating letting go,

Letting go,

Which letting go is the summary of the Eightfold Path,

Basically.

It's a process of letting go.

And it's one way we could describe Nibbana.

Well,

Nibbana is the result of letting go,

Completely letting go.

So there are the 16 steps.

I find it a profound practice.

And when one actually does it,

Analayo recommends to go through the 16 steps as one in one session,

But then go back to various tetrads and contemplate them individually.

You can go in and out and spend as much time as you like on whatever you want to do then.

So what I'll invite you to do in a moment is practice just the fourth tetrad.

Sorry,

The first tetrad,

Sorry,

The mindfulness of body.

And we might see if we got time,

We might see if we can touch on the second tetrad as well,

Which is focusing on joy.

Okay,

So thank you very much.