Step 5 and the second phase of Anapana practice

Arriving at Step 5

We arrive at Step 5 of Anapana practice, and at its second phase, when we've developed Steps 1 to 4. At that point we have a mindful awareness of the whole body, including its posture, a sense that the whole of it is alive, as well as knowing each breath and hearing whatever sounds are present (or the silence). The whole body, its sensory experiences, its breathing and its aliveness, as well as its stillness, are now all part of our ongoing mindfulness.

Meeting pīti and sukha

Step 5 continues to develop this mindfulness of the whole body. I'm sorry to introduce some Pāli words here, but what we experience in this step has no name for it in English. So before we try to describe the experience, here is Step 5 with the key word left untranslated for now.

5. One trains oneself, "Experiencing pīti I'll breathe in,"
one trains oneself, "Experiencing pīti I'll breathe out."

And, while we're at it, here is Step 6. Its format is exactly the same, but it uses a different word to name what we experience at that point.

6. One trains oneself, "Experiencing sukha I'll breathe in,"
one trains oneself, "Experiencing sukha I'll breathe out."

The next two steps of our meditation practice involve experiencing these two aspects of a mindful experience of the body, pī-ti and su-kha. If we're to practise Steps 5 and 6 we need to understand these two words, and then I'll suggest an English expression for each of them. Then we need to learn how to develop our practice so that it includes both of these experiences.

Learning to experience pīti and sukha

My own discovery of how to practise pīti came by accident, as I was working with a mindfulness exercise involving a body-scan. Although this body-scan isn't essential, it is a helpful way of training ourselves in the way Step 5 asks of us, so I'll describe what I was doing on the page"Getting more than I bargained for".

The most common use of these two words in the Pāli texts is in the description of two of the stages of what is called "Jhāna meditation". This suggests that what we're doing in Steps 5 and  6 is closely related to that type of meditation.

It seems to me that Anapana practice is in fact a user-friendly version of Jhāna practice. The standard descriptions of the four stages of Jhāna practice are so complex and wordy that they are very difficult to understand. I wonder whether Anapana practice was set out in sixteen steps to make it easier for meditators to actually follow the practice, one of the most important and characteristic discoveries of the Buddha.

"The Buddha" is a later title given to a young man who is named in some of the texts as Gotama, who lived in North India in the 5th Century BC.

An unusual and much misunderstood path

The importance of Jhāna (and of Anapana) can be seen when we recall that spiritual seekers of many traditions have often tried to discipline their emotions and their minds by punishing the body through harsh and painful ascetic practices, in order to gain an inner stillness. An ancient story of the Buddha claims that he tried that path too. The story claims he tormented his body to the utmost degree, until he realised he never would arrive at the peace he sought by starving himself or through other ascetic torments.

An unusual path

Then, in a flash of inspiration, he remembered a rather pleasant experience he had once had in childhood when sitting alone under a tree. Having tried every other path he knew of to no avail, he wondered whether the path to inner peace might involve the cultivation of that kind of pleasure. ^{Footnote 1}

An unusual pleasure

It was a pleasure that didn't lead to wants and desires like most pleasures do. It was a pleasure that led to dispassion, along with such ease and well-being, that he was able to look at himself with complete honesty, able to understand his motivations, his responses to life, and his reactions, with impartiality. That dispassion, that mindful way of experiencing heart-and-mind, proved to be transformative. It changed his life. It led him to the inner peace he had sought, which he called "nirvana", ^{Footnote 2} and it can lead us to the same place too.

A misunderstood path

Yet the path to inner peace that Gotama discovered, a path he called "jhāna", has largely been abandoned within the Buddhist movement in favour of other approaches, approaches either more compatible with an increasing emphasis on knowledge or insight within the movement, or approaches leading to more religious ends. Even people who have continued to practise jhāna have followed a version which has been significantly modified.

The Second Phase of Anapana practice, Steps 5 to 8

This means that the territory we must navigate if we are to practise the second phase of Anapana, is a greatly misunderstood territory. Later modifications of jhāna, as well as later neglect of the practice, leave us to re-discover just what it was that led the Buddha to his awakening. The practice set out in the Sixteen Steps is actually one of the few witnesses to what it was that marked the turning point in Gotama's own quest.

It can become a similar turning point for us. Jhāna means "consumption" and it burns up or consumes our reactivity. In this way it leads us directly to non-reactivity in the face of all that our lives may hold. Experiencing pīti and sukha in Steps 5 and 6, combined with experiencing our reactivity in Step 7, is what leads us to the stilling of our reactivity in Step 8.

A changing style of meditation

At this point in the practice our style of meditation begins to change. Although we continue to develop simple awareness, it now becomes simple awareness of pīti and of sukha, and this is what turns it into a form of Jhāna meditation. I say "a form of" because in the Theravada tradition of Buddhism, Jhāna practice is a series of deep absorptions rather than the more developed but still broadly-focussed mindfulness practice which we'll meet in the coming pages.

Elsewhere on this website we'll discover that Gotama was known as a Jhāna meditator, and that the practice he taught was Mindfulness of body. We'll also discover that the early understanding of jhāna changed as Buddhism developed. Here we try to return to its original understanding.

Footnotes

1. This story is told by three of the so-called "Bodhisatta suttas", accounts of the Buddha's life before his awakening, in the three suttas MN 36, MN 85, and MN 100.

2. You can read more about how nirvana was understood in the earliest period of the Buddhist movement here.