The Background of Anapana Practice

This section of the website seeks to understand the background to Anapana practice. This involves several strands of enquiry, and pages in this section may address the following issues:

• Translations of Nikaya texts
• The historical impetus that gave rise to the Buddhist movement, i.e. the life, experience and teaching of Gotama, the historical "Buddha", as far as this can be recovered.
• What the experience of nirvana or liberation was in earliest Buddhism, the purpose of Gotama's teaching.
• The literature of early Buddhism, including texts relevant to how we understand and practise Anapana. For example, the "Four Stages of Jhāna" text and the "Four Illustrations of Jhāna" text
• The historical setting of the Sixteen Steps of Anapana practice, and their relationship to other meditation practices in early Buddhism.
• In particular, the relationship between Anapana and Jhāna practice.
• That includes early Brahamanic meditation, both as something Gotama turned away from, and as something that later influenced the developing Buddhist movement.
• How Jhāna practice has changed and developed within Buddhism, especially how it has become the practice of states of absorption.
• How Anapana practice was misunderstood, and so also changed, within Buddhism
• The meaning of key Pāli words in the Sixteen Steps text, in order to understand what that text is asking readers to practise, and why. For example: saṅkhāra.
• (possibly) What neuroscience has discovered about different meditation practices. How these practices enable an inner transformation.

Abbreviations used on this website, especially in the Pāli texts with English translations, are given on the Abbreviations used page.

All of this can encourage us and help us in our meditation practice. We too can attain the kind of liberation which the first Buddhists sought, and which the Anapana text was composed to pass on.

However, this part of the website will not be fully developed until other sections, particularly the section on Learning Anapana practice, have been completed. Until then, it may include occasional pages to support other sections.