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Mindfulness of Breathing (70) Four Foundations of Mindfulness

As a way of continuing the discussion of the Buddha's teachings on Anapanasati^[1] (mindfulness of breathing), the Buddha presents these sixteen steps for mindfulness of breathing and then clearly shows their connection to two other important meditation teachings he has. One is the teachings on what is usually called the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, and the other is what is usually called the Seven Factors of Awakening.

It is really wonderful the way they come together. Many people feel that practicing the Four Foundations of Mindfulness is a very different practice than practicing mindfulness of breathing. Certainly, the way they are taught, this is often the case. But they also come together. Especially in mindfulness of breathing, it really becomes, at some point, or enters into the same domain, the same area of life, as the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.

The way the Buddha does this is that there are four tetrads in the sixteen steps of Anapanasati, and each tetrad, he says, corresponds to one of the foundations of mindfulness. As it is usually said, the foundation of mindfulness that is based on the body corresponds to the first four steps of breathing: being aware of the long breath, being aware of the short breath, being aware of the whole body as you breathe, and then being aware of the body calming and relaxing as you breathe. It is all about the body.

When all four of these steps become really well established, and awareness has become strong, then the awareness is based on the body. The first foundation of mindfulness is really about establishing awareness on the basis of the body. Classically, there is a series of exercises or different ways of practicing mindfulness, all for the purpose of establishing a strong mindfulness and awareness in the body.

The second tetrad, steps five to eight, corresponds to the second foundation of mindfulness: the foundation of mindfulness on feelings. So, the second tetrad of Anapanasati is experiencing, as we breathe, feeling joy; as we breathe, feeling happiness; as we breathe, experiencing the mental activity; and then relaxing the mental activity. This "experiencing" could also be translated as "feeling." It is the same word that we translate as feeling, embodied in the word experiencing, the way the Pali grammar is or the words are used. So, feeling joy, feeling happiness, feeling the mental activity, and then relaxing the mental activity corresponds to the foundation of mindfulness on feeling.

The third tetrad has to do all about the mind, and the third foundation is all about the mind. So in the breathing exercises, it is experiencing the mind—not just the activity, the whole mind—gladdening the mind, settling and stabilizing the mind, concentrating the mind, and then liberating the mind. In the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, it is, in part, understanding really high-quality states of mind. Maybe first the mind itself in certain particular ways, and then these high qualities of mind that roughly correspond to gladdening, concentrating, and liberating the mind.

And then the last tetrad is all about observing: observing impermanence, observing fading away, cessation, and relinquishment. These are deep insights. The fourth foundation of mindfulness is also about insights. It is really insight into seeing the arising and passing, how hindrances arise and go, and seeing how our suffering comes and goes. That is the first of the observations of the fourth tetrad: observing inconstancy (anicca^[2]) or change, and the others follow in the wake of that.

So the Buddha corresponds these two; the four foundations are equal to the four tetrads. But not just automatically. It is when awareness is well established in each of these areas, when we are really grounded, centered, and present in a full way, without being distracted or thinking a lot about the past and the future. This is a precious thing that we have: being aware, being able to really experience the present moment, sense the present moment, feel the present moment, know the present moment in all its dimensions of knowing. Not just to know it fleetingly, but to feel that now we are centered, we are rooted, we are grounded here.

This feeling of being really here, being grounded and resting here, is kind of like the difference between being in a rowboat tossed around the sea, and then coming up on dry land. Now you feel like it is stable and strong; here we are. There is a qualitative shift, a quantum shift that can happen inside when, boom, we're here. We do not have to work at being here, and come back, and come back, and remember to be here and present. We are not liable to wander off, and the awareness then becomes strong and established.

The translation I like for the Four Foundations of Mindfulness (Satipaṭṭhāna^[3]) is the four ways, the four bases for establishing awareness.

And then, when the Buddha correlates these four foundations and the four tetrads, in the fourth one he says then mindfulness of the dharmas is well established. So there is a strong level of equanimity. This is one of the directions the practice goes when there is stability. We're here in such a strong way that we are not easily tossed around by the changing circumstances of our life. We do not easily lose our equanimity, our balance, our peacefulness. When difficult thoughts arise, they just rise and they go. When difficult, painful sensations in the body arise, we can just feel them and know them, but the mind does not get agitated or disturbed. This is called equanimity: a lack of agitation and a lack of being disturbed.

Both of these practices—the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, whatever way you have been taught to do them (and there are many possible ways mindfulness is taught), or mindfulness of breathing as one of the ways of doing this—whatever those practices are, they are all for the purpose, ultimately in Buddhist practice, of coming to a kind of dwelling, resting, abiding, aware in the present moment without any tendency to leave that and wander off from it.

Some people will use the expression "lucid awareness." When awareness is not ruffled, when our sense of mindfulness is not ruffled by what we know, that knowing becomes free and independent of what is known. We cannot separate what we know from knowing completely, but the knowing is not ruffled, it is not agitated, it is not entangled, it is not clinging to what is known. This idea of knowing something and that kind of freedom, that equanimity, is really the place where all the different practices of mindfulness come together and set the stage for awakening.

Tomorrow, I will talk about how this is connected to the Seven Factors of Awakening. I love this because it creates a harmony or unity in the Buddhist teachings; we start seeing how they all come together as a whole. This is mirrored in the way that this discourse on Anapanasati begins. It begins with the senior disciples of the Buddha coming together with all their disciples and living together for a period of months in unity and in harmony, receiving the Buddha's teaching. To have that sense of unity and harmony with all the different sides of who we are, we could all come together and live under the full moon of our lucid awareness.

Thank you. We will continue along this path of Anapanasati. Tomorrow is the Seven Factors of Awakening, and then we will see by Thursday how the practice of the Seven Factors of Awakening changes when a person has not just learned how to be stably aware here, but has experienced a degree of real liberation and freedom from clinging. We will explore how the practice changes at that point. So, we continue, and we are almost at the end of this Anapanasati series. Thank you.