A process with four phases
Other pages will explore the four groups of steps in the Sixteen Steps, focussing on how to practise each of them. At this point here is an overview of the whole meditative process as envisaged by this text. It is actually a complete meditation practice which uses several different styles of meditation and leads us to a healing of heart and mind.
Steps 1 to 4, stilling the body
The first four steps are all focussed on our experience of the body. When we first sit down the body may be stressed and tense. We may almost have forgotten we have a body if we’re living predominantly in our thoughts, or by communicating in words. That’s an occupational hazard for all students and teachers, writers and communicators, and all who do office work. It also happens when we spend time engaging with our screens, from phones and computers to TVs and big cinema screens.
These four steps bring us back to the body. First they ask us to become aware of our breathing, just by knowing when we’re breathing in or out, and by noticing whether the breath is deep or shallow. Our breathing is a constant throughout life, yet we may have forgotten all about it. Becoming aware of it once more can be a first step in reconnecting with the body.
Then we’re asked not just to know but to experience the whole body. That’s more difficult, and it’s less obvious how to do this. It may involve different approaches. We may have to train ourselves, but in time we’ll get the hang of it, and then we’ll be able to drop into a whole-body experience more quickly.
We can work through these four steps by means of mindfulness practice, focussing on our breath and on the body. This will help us relax and develop a state of calmness. For many people, meditation is no more than a way of relaxing into a state of calm, but the Anapana practice will take us much further than that.
As we relax into this mindful awareness, our awareness of the body may develop into an awareness of the body’s stillness. When we’re able to sit, without tension, without an urge to move, not because we’ve told ourselves to sit still but because an inner stillness arises, then we’ve come to Step 4 of the process.
Steps 5 to 8, stilling our reactivity
In the second phase we develop our body awareness much further. Once we’re able to create a state of complete bodily well-being, we’ll be in a position to start recognising, embracing and experiencing manifestations of our habitual emotional reactivity. Working through Step 5 creates the well-being of Step 6. Without that we probably wouldn’t be able to face our reactivity honestly.
Step 7, experiencing the reactive movements of heart-and-mind, seems to introduce a jarring and discordant note into the relaxed process that has led to the contentment, happiness and well-being of Step 6. We experience reactive movements when our emotions or our minds suddenly distract us with something. Something we’re anxious about comes to mind, or some form of desire will lie behind a thought that seems to come out of nowhere. In fact, all the way through the first six steps of the practice we may have been troubled by distractions and found ourselves lost in trains of thoughts that had nothing to do with what we were trying to practise. We have to learn to set them aside and return to our practice without fuss.
When we get to Step 7 we can start to take a different approach to whatever thoughts or feelings arise. The enhanced sensitivity and well-being of the previous two steps continue, and with their aid we are able to look fearlessly at whatever within us is trying to draw our attention. Whatever it is will be a manifestation of our current reactivity. By bringing into consciousness at the same time both our sense of well-being and our reactivity, we can calm that reactivity. When that happens, we’re moving into Step 8.
In this phase of the practice our mindfulness of the body leads us into a distinctive type of meditation which was characteristic of the earliest days of the Buddhist movement. It was called Jhāna practice, from a word which means "burning" or "consuming". It's a practice which "consumes" our reactivity, though it's a practice that has been much misunderstood in Buddhism.
Steps 9 to 12, healing our reactivity
These four steps are all focussed on our experience of heart and mind. This is not only the thinking mind, but the emotions, and something deeper too. It's in the deeper parts of the mind, sometimes known as the heart, that our reactions to life and our thoughts are formed. These deeper parts are normally inaccessible to us, but in this third phase of the practice we become able to heal some of the damage all of us have experienced through life.
After Step 8, our experience can only be of a heart-and-mind in which reactivity has been stilled. How do we experience this heart-and-mind? In this phase we simply sit in the non-reactive stillness of Step 8. Thoughts and feelings may continue to arise, but now we can just watch them come and go, in the same way we may hear external noises coming and going. Whatever arises in heart-and-mind no longer troubles us or disturbs us. It no longer sparks off our reactivity, and we can just let it go.
Some issues may come up which in the past have deeply troubled us. With this lack of reactivity we may now be able to take a new look at them. Now we can be fearlessly honest in doing so, and our thoughts will different now.
Our practice takes the style of an almost Zen-like meditation, perhaps best described as Just Sitting. As we work with this phase we begin to heal patterns of reactivity long held and deeply embedded in the heart. This is a very deep meditation, which we couldn't have done at first. But with our earlier training, these steps lead us to contentment or gladness of heart (Step 10), clarity or composure of mind (Step 11), and to a liberation from whatever psychological "bonds" have shackled heart and mind (Step 12).
Steps 13 to 16, life without reactivity
A number of features suggest something odd about the final group of four steps. One is the change from ‘experiencing’ to ‘observing’. Why not “experiencing change” and so on? Another is the fact that liberation, which one might expect to be a fitting conclusion to the Anapana practice has already occurred at Step 12.
It seems that formal meditation practice comes to a close after practising the first three phases, and when our training reaches a liberation from reactive habits and tendencies. What happens when we then get up and return to everything else our lives hold? Life will still contain the kind of events that at one time would have sparked off our reactivity. But now we will no longer react as before.
Two things in particular can set off our reactivity, though there are others. When we experience some kind of change, whether in our own lives, or when we observe change elsewhere, usually we either welcome it, or we don’t welcome it. Change is likely to spark off our reactivity, one way or the other. But when we are liberated from our reactivity, we will notice that when change happens, our response is different. Further, some of the changes in our lives involve the ending of something, and if we don’t welcome that ending we may try to hold on in some way to whatever has been lost.
The four steps of this fourth phase seem to fall into two groups of two. When we observe change, we observe dispassion (Steps 13 and 14). When we observe endings, we observe a letting-go of what has ended (Steps 15 and 16). How do we train to observe change and endings, with dispassion and an ability to let go? We do so by practising Steps 1 to 12.
It’s unlikely that we’ll observe much in the way of change or of endings while sitting in Anapana practice. It’s more likely that these things will arise in life outside of our formal practice sessions. But this is when we realise how our practice has transformed us. What once would have provoked an intense reaction, now does so no longer. Now we can take whatever actions may be appropriate in the situation without minds clouded by past conditioning or inappropriate emotional reactions.