Anapanasati

What Anapanasati Means

The word ānāpānassati is a compound: ānāpāna joins āna (in-breath) and apāna (out-breath), while sati means mindfulness — sustained, lucid awareness. Together: mindfulness of breathing in and out. English renderings include 'mindfulness of breathing' and 'breath meditation'.

Its root text is the Ānāpānassatisutta, the 118th discourse of the Majjhima Nikāya. The setting is a full-moon night at the Eastern Park near Sāvatthī, where the Buddha, surrounded by the Sangha, notes that some monks in the assembly dwell devoted to the development of mindfulness of breathing, and then teaches the method in full.

The Buddha does not present anapanasati as a mere relaxation exercise or a beginner's warm-up. At the outset he lays out an entire path: mindfulness of breathing, developed and cultivated, fulfills the four foundations of mindfulness; these fulfill the seven awakening factors; and these fulfill true knowledge and liberation. A single practice centered on the breath is thus framed as a complete road to awakening.

Preparation: Place, Posture, Setting Up Mindfulness

Before listing the sixteen steps, the sutta describes the conditions for practice. Externally, a quiet place: the practitioner goes to a forest, to the root of a tree, or to an empty hut. Bodily and internally: sitting down cross-legged, holding the body erect, and 'establishing mindfulness in front' (parimukhaṁ satiṁ upaṭṭhapetvā) — placing awareness at the fore, ready to attend.

Then follows a single, spare summary line: 'Just mindful he breathes in, mindful he breathes out.' The breath is not forced or engineered; the practitioner's task is to let mindfulness ride the natural breath. All sixteen steps unfold from this foundation.

The Sixteen Steps, Part One: Body and Feelings

The Buddha unfolds the practice as sixteen steps, traditionally grouped into four tetrads corresponding to body, feelings, mind, and dhammas. Every step spans both the in-breath and the out-breath.

The first tetrad centers on the body: (1) breathing in long, one knows 'I breathe in long'; breathing out long, one knows 'I breathe out long'; (2) the same for short breaths; (3) one trains, 'I shall breathe in and out experiencing the whole body'; (4) one trains, 'I shall breathe in and out calming the bodily activity (kāyasaṅkhāra).' The first two steps are simple knowing (pajānāti) — long or short, one simply knows. From the third step the verb shifts to 'trains' (sikkhati): awareness is deliberately widened, then bodily activity is allowed to settle.

The second tetrad turns to feelings: (5) experiencing rapture (pīti); (6) experiencing pleasure (sukha); (7) experiencing the mental activity (cittasaṅkhāra); (8) calming the mental activity — each while breathing in and out. As the body settles, rapture and pleasure arise; the practitioner neither avoids nor indulges them, but knows them and lets what stirs the mind grow calm.

The Sixteen Steps, Part Two: Mind and Dhammas

The third tetrad takes the mind itself as its object: (9) experiencing the mind; (10) gladdening the mind; (11) concentrating the mind (samādahaṁ cittaṁ); (12) liberating the mind — each while breathing in and out. This tetrad shows that anapanasati is not purely passive observation: while aware of the mind, the practitioner actively gladdens it, steadies it in samādhi, and releases it from what binds it.

The fourth tetrad is the work of insight: (13) contemplating impermanence (aniccānupassī); (14) contemplating dispassion (virāgānupassī); (15) contemplating cessation (nirodhānupassī); (16) contemplating relinquishment (paṭinissaggānupassī) — each while breathing in and out. With a mind now settled and clear, the practitioner looks directly into the impermanence of breath and experience, inclining toward dispassion, cessation, and letting go.

Taken together, the sixteen steps trace a graduated path from coarse to subtle, from calm to insight: first settling body and breath, then working with feelings and steadying the mind, finally seeing into the nature of phenomena. The Buddha concludes: developed and cultivated in this way, mindfulness of breathing is of great fruit and great benefit.

How Anapanasati Fulfills the Four Foundations of Mindfulness

What makes MN 118 distinctive is that it does not merely list the sixteen steps — it explains how they map onto the four satipaṭṭhānas. While practicing the first tetrad, the monk 'dwells contemplating the body in the body'; the second tetrad corresponds to feelings, the third to mind, the fourth to dhammas. Each passage closes with the same refrain: 'ardent, clearly comprehending, mindful, having subdued covetousness and displeasure with regard to the world.'

For the first tetrad the Buddha states explicitly why watching the breath is contemplation of the body: 'Among bodies, I say, this is a certain body — namely, in-breathing and out-breathing.' The breath is itself a bodily phenomenon; mindfulness of breathing is mindfulness of the body.

In the passage on mind, the sutta adds a pointed reminder: 'I do not speak of mindfulness of breathing for one who is forgetful, who lacks clear comprehension' (mn118:26.6). Mindfulness and clear comprehension are prerequisites throughout — without them the practice is no longer anapanasati.

Anapanasati and the four foundations of mindfulness are therefore not two parallel systems but one path described in two ways: sustained practice on the breath is precisely how the four satipaṭṭhānas come to fulfillment.

From the Four Foundations to the Awakening Factors and Liberation

The latter half of the sutta shows how the four foundations of mindfulness fulfill the seven awakening factors. When mindfulness is established and unmuddled, the awakening factor of mindfulness arises; investigating phenomena with wisdom, the factor of investigation arises; this rouses unflagging energy; energy gives rise to unworldly rapture; the rapturous mind grows tranquil in body and mind; one tranquil and happy becomes concentrated; and one who looks on with equanimity at the mind thus concentrated develops the factor of equanimity. The seven factors unfold link by link within the practice itself.

Finally, the Buddha explains how the seven awakening factors fulfill true knowledge and liberation: each factor is developed 'dependent on seclusion, dispassion, and cessation, maturing in release.' Developed and cultivated in this way, the awakening factors fulfill true knowledge and liberation. The whole discourse resolves into a single causal chain: mindfulness of breathing → the four foundations of mindfulness → the seven awakening factors → true knowledge and liberation.

Relation to Mahāyāna interpretation

Anapanasati reached China very early: An Shigao's Han-dynasty translation of the Anban Shouyi Jing ('Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing') was among the first meditation texts to circulate there, and 'anban' — a transliteration of ānāpāna — became the standard East Asian name for the practice. Well-known East Asian systems are historically connected with it: breath-counting (shuxi guan, one of the 'five contemplations for stilling the mind') and the 'Six Gates to the Sublime' (counting, following, stabilizing, contemplating, returning, purifying) systematized by the Tiantai master Zhiyi. Counting the breath, notably, is not among the sixteen steps of MN 118 itself; it developed in later treatises and East Asian practice as a supporting technique. These systems differ from MN 118 in structure and emphasis — some foreground concentration, others lay out a full path of calm and insight. This site presents MN 118 as it stands in the Pali; the interpretations of later traditions are noted here for comparison, without ranking one above another.