How healing reactivity is central to Anapana meditation

The Sixteen Steps of Anapana

Anapana practice works with both body and mind in order to heal the habits of reactivity we have learned. The practice is set out in a series of sixteen steps in a number of texts which were composed in the early Buddhist period.

Six of those steps involve experiences of the body. Another six involve experiences of the mind, including our emotions. The remaining four involve features of life we can observe, including life's many changes and endings. They also include possible responses to those changes once our reactivity has been healed. When that happens we're able to display equanimity (or dispassion) in the face of life's many changes, and can let go of any losses we experience.

A psychological practice

These steps all make it clear that Anapana practice is concerned only with the psychological issues we face in this life, here and now. None of its steps anticipate any kind of after-life, or a transcendent state of any sort.

Its ability to transform the way our minds work becomes clear when we consider the goal of the practice, the centrality of its method for calming our reactivity, and from how it holds our attention on both body and mind.

Liberating heart-and-mind (Step 12)

The ultimate goal of Anapana meditation is called a liberation in Step 12. This is a liberation of heart-and-mind, and it's the culmination of practices focussed on both body and mind.

What we are liberated from

This is a psychological liberation from habits of mind, often subconscious, which keep our particular forms of reactivity alive. This may be confirmed from various lists of "fetters" which early Buddhism developed. These spell out the nature of the bondage from which we need to be liberated.

All of them are psychological factors we may find in the workings of our minds. These include desire and aversion, ill-will, restlessness and illusion, a desire to make a name for ourselves, and a need to measure ourselves against other people, among others.

Stilling mental reactivity (Steps 7 and 8)

Central to Anapana practice is the call, after suitable preparation, first to experience our reactivity, and then to bring it to stillness. The word used in those two steps is perhaps best translated as our "conditioning factors". The idea is that we have been shaped or conditioned by the many life-experiences we have passed through, and that our minds work the way they do as a result of this conditioning.

"Reactive movements"

I've actually translated the word as "reactive movements", which is the other side of our conditioning. We react with desire or aversion, with ill-will or restlessness (indicating boredom), with illusion, or with any of the other psychological fetters, because of the way our minds have been conditioned. But while that conditioning may remain unseen by us, we can learn to see our habits of reactivity.

And when our reactivity is activated, the mind "jumps" or "moves" from one state to another, perhaps from a calm state into a state of anger, greed, or whatever.

For a more in-depth study of the word used for our conditioning or reactivity, please see the article on saṅkhāra (conditioning factors) on this website.

Experiencing the body (Steps 1 to 6)

If Anapana practice is intended to transform the way our minds work, it might seem surprising that it begins with six steps which all focus on the body.

How the body may affect the mind

Part of the reason for this may be that focussing on our breathing and the whole body is one way of calming the mind, ready for the later practice of experiencing the mind and its reactivity. But there may be a deeper reason for it.

How the mind may affect the body

I think the real significance of this comes when we remember that body and mind are not two different "things", but the two sides of the same coin. There is no mind without body, and there is no (living) body without mind.

Notice too that when we react in an emotional manner to anything, we feel that emotion in the body. When you feel a surge of anger, for example, take a moment to check where you're feeling it. If you feel loss or grief, notice how that involves the body as well as the mind.

Physical reactivity

So perhaps it isn't so surprising that Step 4 involves stilling the conditioning or the reactivity of the body. When our mental reactivity is triggered it often leads to symptoms of stress or tension in the body. These may include biting fingernails, clenching the jaw, pinching the finger ends, holding the shoulders up near the ears, as well as a general restlessness when we can't sit still.

Conclusion

Our conditioning, shaped by all of life's experiences, and the mental reactivity they lead to, is at the heart of Anapana meditation, and of the Sixteen Steps in which it's set out. Anapana is a method for healing our conditioned and habitual responses to life. It enables us to achieve a deep psychological transformation, a liberation, from our reactive responses.

This practice, from twenty five hundred years ago, remains a valuable tool for our modern lives, offering a path to freedom, non-reactivity and well-being to us all.