Mindfulness of Breathing with the Body: The First Tetrad of the Ānāpānasati-sutta
Second of a series of articles exploring Bikkhu Analayo’s book Mindfulness of Breathing, in which we deepen meditation by attending to the body
Breathing in long, one understands: ‘I breathe in long’; breathing out long, one understands: ‘I breathe out long.’
Breathing in short, one understands: ‘I breathe in short’; breathing out short, one understands: ‘I breathe out short.’
One trains: ‘experiencing the whole body I shall breathe in’; one trains: ‘experiencing the whole body I shall breathe out.’
One trains: ‘calming bodily activity I shall breathe in’; one trains: ‘calming bodily activity I shall breathe out.’
Introduction
Ānāpānasati, or mindfulness of breathing, was the Buddha’s favored meditation technique. In the Ānāpānasati-sutta (MN118) the Buddha teaches this technique to a gathering of some of his most advanced students. The progression described in this discourse contains sixteen steps broken into four groups, or tetrads, of four steps each. In his 2019 volume, Mindfulness of Breathing, Buddhist monk, scholar, and translator, Bhikkhu Analayo presents a detailed analysis of these steps informed and cross referenced to other discourses and commentary within the Buddhist canon.
We will be looking at his work from the perspective of a lay practitioner who is interested in following these instructions in order to deepen their own practice. We will use Analayo’s work for primary instruction and bring in previous knowledge, personal experience, and other resources as applicable.
The focus here will be on the first tetrad of these instructions, which are intended to build on a solid foundation of sustained mindfulness. A previous article discussed the preliminary instructions the Buddha gave for achieving this state, which involved finding a suitable location, assuming an upright sitting posture, and establishing strong mindfulness to the forefront of the mind. That article described how following those instructions works to move the practitioner into incrementally deeper levels of seclusion, first from the physical environment, then from the gross cares of the body, and finally from the ordinary concerns of the mind. Here we’ll see how the steps on the first tetrad build upon and extend that progression.
The steps start out by developing a state of concentration and then begin introducing the training that will ultimately allow us to see through, and ultimately release, the reactivity embedded in our way of relating to the world around us. Each step will both exercise particular mental skills and deepen the meditative state. These skills can carry over into daily life to be further developed while bringing a greater level of care and enjoyment to ordinary tasks.
Progress with these skills, like any skills, require perseverance through hardships and setbacks. It can be useful to have the larger end goal in mind in order to inspire the will to move past these difficulties. The efforts that become necessary during the course of this training: the course corrections, repetitions, committing steps to rote, starting over, exertions of will — are all in service to the purpose of overcoming the meditative hindrances (desire, ill-will, sloth-and-torpor, restlessness-and-worry, and doubt). In turn, the process of overcoming these hindrances exposes their ultimate roots: the defilements of greed, ill-will, and delusion, and by seeing them for what they truly are we dispel our enchantment with them little by little until the mind is finally liberated. As Analayo explains, “those who have forever eradicated the hindrances no longer require any training when proceeding through the sixteen steps of mindfulness of breathing” (Analayo p 43). While progress through these steps may be slow, and perhaps somewhat haphazard at times, continued practice will allow them to be traversed with greater continuity and ease.
When we do encounter set-backs it’s important to adjust to the new conditions they introduce so that we are always working with things just as they presently are. If the mind becomes caught up in one of the hindrances at any point, that engagement must be brought to a close before proceeding, and the next step of meditation should proceed from whatever state the mind finds itself in when mindfulness is fully re-established. We must always meet the mind with the practice that serves it best and avoid choosing our next step based on what state we imagine the mind “should” be in. If a step seems more difficult than it should consider whether there might be benefit to shoring up support by returning to a previous step. Or, if the mind is feeling particularly contrary, try jumping ahead a bit. It might settle more eagerly back into an earlier step — or possibly be invigorated by the new challenge.
Each tetrad in the Ānāpānasati-sutta corresponds to one of the satipaṭṭhānas, or foundations of mindfulness, described in the Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta (MN10). This first one corresponds to mindfulness of the body. While prior contemplation of the satipaṭṭhānas is helpful preparation for this mindfulness of breath practice, it’s not a prerequisite. If present, this experience will make parts of the practice more familiar and lend more depth of meaning to others. We will discuss these points as we come to them. In general the satipaṭṭhānas are more contemplative and ānāpānasati is more experiential, making the two practices distinct but complementary.
Long and Short Breaths
Analayo examines the first two steps together, saying that their purpose is “to arouse a keen sense of interest in order to sustain attention on the length of the breaths” (Analayo p35) . He then dedicates some time to examining some ambiguity in the original language as to whether the order of longer and shorter breaths is important, and how much intention should be brought to those initial breaths. In practice, though, it doesn’t seem to matter much. Usually the breath will to be longer and deeper to start and, as concentration grows, will naturally become more shallow. Occasionally some deep wave of emotion may well up with a sigh breaking the pattern.
Measuring the length of the breath and making a judgement about its duration requires a bit more mental effort than maintaining a steady state of mindfulness. Instead of keeping the mind relatively blank and receptive, we’re thinking about the distinction between long and short breaths and making a judgement about the length of each half-cycle as it appears. This kind of task is both simple enough to discourage embellishment, and demanding enough to be engaging. Even a small distraction will cause enough disruption for the mind to notice and recommit to the effort.
Measuring the length of the breath is similar in effect to the common practice of counting as a mechanism for remaining focused while also subtly inducing the breath to ease. Because observing anything intently will tend to make the breath more shallow, tracking the breath’s length makes it a little more subtle, which gently nudges the mind to be still more intent. The result is that both the mind and breath become more and more still, each in response to the other.
It’s notable that these two steps bring the mental activities of conceptualizing and judgement into meditation when so much practice seems geared toward ending thought. Our goal is not so much to end thinking as to conscript the thinking mind into the service of our well-being. Left untrained the thinking mind will dominate our sense of reality with it’s reactivity to all the various impulses, sensations, and cravings it gets exposed to. Putting a stop to all of that activity is necessary to create conditions suitable for training the mind. These steps take advantage of the seclusion we’ve created in order to do this training in a controlled environment. If we want to teach a puppy to “stay” it will be much easier to do in the quiet of home than a stimulating environment such as a neighborhood dog park.
With practice this exercise of intent observation will result in a mind that is clear, alert, and very focused. The breath will tend toward being shallow, perhaps very shallow, and the body will become quite still. At this point we move on to the next step of opening our awareness to encompass the whole body. The embodied nature of the breath may already have led the mind in this direction. For example, we may have begun to notice some somatic cues about the state of the posture, that it’s easier to take long breaths when the posture is straight, for instance, and it’s easier to take gentler shallow breaths when the body is flexible and not rigid.
Awareness of the Whole Body
Analayo parts ways with some traditional interpretations of this text by directing the attention to the whole physical body, rather than the “body of the breath”. This isn’t such a large practical distinction given the connection between full awareness of the breath and awareness of the body. Once awareness starts to open it becomes clear that the presence of the breath permeates the body as a tidal force, and bodily awareness will be established by the end of this tetrad in any case in order to enable the calming the body. The exact nuances of this traversal will no doubt vary from meditator to meditator, and often even from session to session.
We begin this step with some subtle changes to the way we use our attention. The body moves into the foreground, while the breath moves, not all the way to the background exactly, but to the periphery, so that now we have two objects of attention rather than one. The concentration built in the previous two steps provides vital support for this effort.
The quality of attention also changes, moving from intent focus on the single detail of the breath’s duration, to the full array of bodily perceptions and a more passive and open awareness. The bubble of time that comprises the notion of “the present moment” also becomes more flexible, rather than being pinned to a half-cycle of breath. Both of these changes can help to ease any sense of striving or fixation that may have arisen from measuring breaths.
This is the first time we’ve attended directly to the body since we were arranging our posture for the sit. Now that the focus on the breath has muted our awareness of the body for some time we may find that we are able to observe it with greater detachment, but also deeper sensitivity. Though our attention is more passive, our level of interest still remains very high, as if the body were about to whisper some long held secret to us. The stillness created by this intent awareness allows our perception of the body to become more refined, which serves to deepen our concentration.
From this step forward the preface for each instruction shifts from: “one understands”, to: “one trains”. As noted earlier, this training is oriented toward overcoming the hindrances. Prior to this point we’ve wrestled with them primarily by force of will. During the preliminaries we made a point to set aside distracting thoughts stemming from our darker impulses and daily cares, and resolved to be vigilant against allowing them to return. Then, in the first two steps of this tetrad, we defused them as they started to arise by setting ourselves to a task that was incompatible with entertaining them. Now our defenses can be more subtle. The broader more refined sense of awareness we have adopted makes it easier to spot these thoughts as they begin to take form and and then to disregard them before their engaging qualities have a chance to develop. As we do this we get a deeper sense of how their mechanism of engagement with our mind disrupts our well-being and get to experience the relief of becoming free of them. Every step in the training provides a more subtle, and more intimate, way of engaging with the hindrances until their very roots can be untangled and dissipated.
This step introduces a pattern of training that persists throughout the rest of the practice: With every step we refresh our orienting and stabilizing awareness of the breath and actively engage with the current task while holding that awareness of breath in the periphery. Thus we re-establish our intention in a steady rhythm using first one half-cycle of breath to carry the task forward, and then the next half-cycle, as if we were rowing a boat to the steady beat of a drum.
The contemplations on the body described by the Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta (MN10) provide a useful guide for exploring deepening refinements of bodily awareness. Analayo suggests comparing this process of refinement to the satipaṭṭhāna of body where the subject of contemplation moves from the repulsive aspects of the body’s anatomy to the more refined bodily manifestations of the four classical elements of earth, wind, fire, and water. He suggests that a similar contemplative exploration can unfold while progressing through this tetrad starting the expression of the wind element in the breath. From there we might sense in to the feeling of the fire of our metabolism warming us, the pulsing, liquid flows and pressures of our circulation and digestion, and the solid weight of our mass connecting us to the earth. These and similar conceptualizations can be useful, if held lightly, for inclining the awareness to tune into subtle sensations that might otherwise escape notice.
Simply attending to the body, riding the ebb and flow of the breath, and nurturing the attention to become ever more refined and sensitive — will have a calming influence on the body. As that influence becomes prominent in awareness it’s appropriate to shift into the next step and intentionally support it.
Calming the Body
It only takes a small adjustment to attention to create a calming influence on the body, detached observation becomes a benevolent inclination towards calmness and ease. Any remaining striving associated with intent observation is released while mind and body are allowed to become ever more still. Stillness of body and mind support each other in a virtuous cycle that can lead into deep concentration and early stages of absorption.
While the absorptions (jhanas) are a possible result of this practice they aren’t the direct purpose. Analayo: “At the same time, however, the overall purpose of mindfulness of breathing is not just to facilitate entry into absorption. Instead, as indicated explicitly in the Ānāpānasati-sutta, the chief purpose of the instructions is to lead via a cultivation of the four satipaṭṭhānas and the seven awakening factors to the gaining of knowledge and liberation” (Analayo p46). Sometimes practitioners get attached to the jhanas and lose sight of the goal of this practice. They get stuck, either through frustrated efforts at attainment or dalliance in pleasant states. It’s possible to make progress either with or without absorption at this juncture by working in harmony with whatever state the mind finds itself in to continually increase the stillness of the body.
Staying in harmony with the mind allows it to reach deeper levels of concentration where thoughts become more infrequent and subtle, with no story-line and fewer if any words or images. They become less interesting and may seem too burdensome and coarse to bother with. Increasingly, the tasks of meditation may be performed with impressions of concepts and subtle inclinations toward action. Knowing the steps by rote is helpful with this. Performing them out of habit even more so.
The task of calming the body may be as simple as allowing bodily tension to soak and dissolve within a broad field of awareness. If more intervention seems appropriate the mind might scan benevolently through the body noting and letting go of any traces of local tension there may be. Perhaps, as Analayo suggests, the inhale can be used for scanning and the exhale for relaxing. Any perception of bodily function or energy can be greeted with an inclination toward calming during this step.
Conclusion
In this first tetrad we deepen an initial state of relaxed mindfulness to one of profoundly still concentration (Samādhi). Analayo ties this experience all the way back to the preliminary preparation for meditation. He writes: “bodily calmness and tranquillity express the fruition of morality and the meditative training undertaken up to this point” and assures us that it will “continue to inform the ensuing steps and eventually our overall behaviour in any situation”. He goes on to invite us to bring mindfulness of the body into walking meditation and other activities, cautioning us to ensure that “mindfulness is established in such a way that it does not get lost but equally that it does not have too strong an attentional focus” (Analayo p48–49). He further suggests that we continue to experiment with maintaining a combination of focused attention and peripheral awareness in our daily activities. With that we come full circle: our conduct creates the initial conditions in which we begin our meditation, and our meditation conditions the way the mind conducts our daily life.
By exercising our ability to manipulate various dimensions of our attention including its intensity, breadth, and temporal scope, we increase our general detachment and tranquility. Strengthening these abilities furthers the classical three Buddhist trainings in ethics, concentration, and wisdom. The effect on concentration is the most direct, and it leads directly to wisdom by way of the experiential discernment between what does and does not serve as an aid to deepening concentration and quelling of the hindrances.
This experiential journey also leads directly to a greater ethical inclination in daily life. Analayo points to a story (SN54.7) of a monk who becomes so absorbed while in meditation that their body iscompletely immobile, illustrating that a deep inner sense of calm can become an externally visible trait. He goes on to say that this trait can persist beyond the cushion and into daily life. We find that, upon arising from the cushion after a deeply settled meditation, we naturally enter into our next activities with increased care and wish to avoid anything that would be a disturbance to the minds tranquil state. Living with simplicity, honesty, respect and care become directly desirable out of their association with well-being rather than an attachment to thinking well of ourselves. This morality born of self-love rather than fear may come as a refreshing change to some. Because it is built on experiential feedback it flexes in the face of new circumstances and can be a source of continuous growth and adaptability over the course of a lifetime.
Modern psychology can help to inform the path from meditative experiences to long lasting personal change. The well-known psychologist and author Rick Hanson, PhD writes about the factors that contribute to psychological states transforming into longer lived behavioral traits, in his book, Hardwiring Happiness. Rick presents a process he calls “HEAL” (Have, Enrich, Absorb, and Link) that describes a way to intentionally internalize positive experiences so that they have an enduring impact on our personalities.
The central elements of this process, Enrich and Absorb, are perfectly suited for the (or at least, my) meditative experience. To Enrich an experience Rick suggests that we “[o]pen to the feelings in it and try to sense it in your body; let it fill your mind. Enjoy it. Gently encourage the experience to be more intense.” (Hanson p61) Rick suggests we get our “neurons really firing together, so they’ll really wire together” which, for us, means experiencing the connection between our meditative activities and their effects as deeply as possible.
In this framework Absorbing an experience means to “[feel it] sinking into you as you sink into it” in an intentional way. This means coming to the meditation cushion with the intention to be changed by the experience. Meditating with the intention to be changed works the same way as listening to another person with the intention of being changed, both can create profound connection, harmony, and understanding. And in both cases letting go of the internal story-line is a prerequisite to creating space for greater alignment.
For some practitioners the end state of this tetrad — a deeply settled mind and body, detached from worldly cares — fulfills the promise of meditation. It will dispel our ordinary psychic bumps and bruises, and improve our behavior in ways our loved ones will be grateful for. Analayo says that the “first tetrad of mindfulness of breathing appears to have been extracted from its setting in the sixteen-step scheme and turned into a practice in its own right” (Analayo p59), where it appears in the Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta (MN10), the Kāyagatāsatisutta(MN119), and the Ekottarikāgama (EA3). There’s more to be done, however, if we are to get more than a temporary abatement to our mundane human suffering. The remainder of the steps promise to take us deeper into, and even beyond, the ordinary functioning of the mind. We will look into them in later installments of this series.
