Anapana Practice includes several different practices.

A guided mindfulness practice in 16 steps

The practice is set out in some very early Buddhist texts in a series of sixteen steps. When we progress from step to step we follow a guided mindfulness practice. What may be surprising is that this practice combines a series of meditation styles. Each has a different purpose and value. Together they lead us deeper into our meditation.

Fully aware and experiencing the body

It begins in Steps 1 to 4 as a simple mindfulness exercise as we learn to experience our own breathing, and then the whole body. This has a calming effect and enables us to sit in stillness, fully experiencing the body sitting, breathing and aware of our environment.

Jhāna meditation, "consuming" our reactivity

Mindfulness of the body then leads us on in Steps 5 and 6 into the first two stages of so-called "Jhāna" practice. Jhāna means "burning" or "consuming". It may feel a bit like a fire, enabling us to feel each part of the body is fully alive. What's important is that by means of it we develop a very pleasant sense of well-being.

Fire not only warms, it also burns things up. This well-being we develop "consumes" whatever mental or emotional pain or reactivity we may be experiencing. In this way Jhāna practice leads in Steps 7 and 8 to the stilling of whatever reactivity may be troubling heart or mind.

"Just Sitting", healing the heart

This double stillness of both body and mind then enables us to enter an almost Zen-like practice of "Just Sitting" as we experience the heart in Step 9. This is one of the deepest forms of meditation, inaccessible without the earlier preparative stages.

This can also be seen as the third stage of Jhāna meditation, a pleasant stage of equanimity and mindfulness. Slowly it enables a complete healing of the heart, leading to a contentment of heart, a composure of mind, and a liberation of both from whatever psychological "bonds" or "fetters" may once have shackled them in Steps 10 to 12.

The liberated life or "nirvana", mindfulness of what life brings

Yet liberation is not an end-point in Anapana practice, only a new beginning. A liberated life or "nirvana" is what lies beyond. What does this word mean? It means something has simply "gone out" like a flame which has run out of fuel.

The non-reactive life

Our reactivity, which once shackled our responses to life, is no longer there, and now we can live engaging with all life holds, neither refusing any of it, nor addicted to any of it. This is Steps 13 to 16. We're free at last, able to accept all that life holds, with its changes and endings, for the benefit of all who come our way.

Conclusion

The sixteen steps of Anapana meditation all involve mindfulness, but the practice leads through a number of styles of meditation. These involve mindfulness of the body, which leads us into the first two stages of Jhāna meditation. Then mindfulness of heart-and-mind leads us into the third stage of Jhāna, which is a Zen-like practice "Just Sitting". Once this has brought us fully into a state of non-reactivity (or "nirvana") we can then lead the liberated life in which changes or endings can be accepted with equanimity.

This blog post can only give a brief outline of how the Anapana process unfolds. Much more information can be found on the rest of this website.