About this text

This is a practice-oriented rather than strictly literal rendering of the core training in MN 118, the Ānāpānassati Sutta. It focuses on the part of the discourse that can be directly trained and practiced. The surrounding narrative and later explanatory passages are therefore not translated in full, although important context is summarized where relevant.

MN 118 presents this training in a remarkable setting. The Buddha is surrounded by a large and accomplished Saṅgha, in this case a community of bhikkhus — practitioners who had left household life to devote themselves to the training — with senior practitioners actively training newer ones. He expresses his satisfaction with their progress before urging them onward. Against this background, mindfulness with breathing is introduced as a training of great fruit and great benefit, giving the instructions that form the core of this text.

In the practical approach followed here, mindfulness with breathing is not merely a technique for attending to the breath. The sixteen steps form a practical training through which the Noble Eightfold Path — understood here functionally as the Eightfold Noble Method of the Fourth Noble Truth — can be cultivated in lived experience.

Although the sixteen steps are presented as an ordered training, in the practical approach followed here they can also function as a repertoire of skills to draw on responsively rather than as a rigid step-by-step sequence. Different skills become relevant depending on what is happening in the body and mind. The training applies both during periods deliberately set aside for practice and throughout ordinary life, where these skills can be used as situations arise.

The rendering therefore favors clear, trainable language over overly technical or spiritually idealized terminology. Explanatory notes make important interpretive choices explicit and clarify how the instructions can be applied in practice.

Sources and approach

The Pāli text and several English translations of MN 118 and related suttas, especially those available through SuttaCentral, were used as the textual basis. References use the standard abbreviations MN for the Majjhima Nikāya (Middle Discourses) and SN for the Saṃyutta Nikāya (Connected Discourses).

MN and SN are among the early Buddhist discourse collections, preserved after a period of oral transmission. They should therefore not be treated as verbatim records. At the same time, comparison with parallel discourses preserved in other early Buddhist traditions makes them among the closest textual witnesses available to the early teachings. Where later systematic and commentarial traditions are consulted, priority is given to the early discourses when interpretations diverge.

Interpretive and practice-oriented choices were informed especially by the writings and teachings of Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu, including English translations of his work by Dhammavidū, Santikaro, and others, and by the Suan Mokkh tradition he founded. Dhammarato’s recorded talks, with transcripts on dhammarato.com used as a working aid, provided an important contemporary and practice-oriented expression of this same lineage. Dhammarato trained at Suan Mokkh, and its practical orientation continues to inform his teaching.

Where the Pāli allows more than one plausible reading, this rendering favors an interpretation that supports a coherent and directly trainable practice, while important alternatives are noted where relevant. MN 44 is used where it provides explicit definitions of technical terms appearing in the training, such as kāya-saṅkhāra, citta-saṅkhāra, and samādhi.

Conventional renderings are retained where they remain clear and useful. Where conventional English obscures an ordinary, active, or functional sense in the Pāli, this rendering favors that sense, while noting the conventional translation and the reason for departing from it.

Where such choices turn on etymology or early usage, standard Pāli dictionaries and modern philological studies were consulted alongside the suttas.

October 2026

The wider path

Before turning to the core training itself, it is useful to place MN 118 within the wider path and the practice structure it explicitly connects to. The sutta presents a progression in which mindfulness with breathing brings the Four Establishments of Mindfulness to fulfillment, these bring the Seven Factors of Waking Up to fulfillment, and these in turn culminate in knowledge and release.

The Four Noble Truths

At the broadest level, the training is oriented toward dukkha and its cessation (dukkha-nirodha). The Four Noble Truths (cattāri ariyasaccāni) can be read as a practical diagnostic framework, like diagnosis, cause, cure, and treatment:

1. dukkha — diagnosis: dissatisfaction, stress, or the mind being burdened; this is to be seen clearly and understood.
2. dukkhasamudaya — cause: taṇhā — craving or ignorant wanting: pulling toward what is wanted, pushing away what is unwanted, and the clinging (upādāna) that develops around this as “I,” “me,” or “mine.” This is to be abandoned.
3. dukkhanirodha — cure: cessation — stopping the wanting and clinging that keep dukkha going; the mind no longer has to take experience personally or hold on to it as “me” or “mine.” This is to be realized.
4. dukkhanirodhagāminī paṭipadā — treatment: the method leading to cessation; this is to be developed.

Here, cessation is practical and immediate: not making something special happen, but stopping the process rather than continuing to feed it.

Not-seeing (avijjā) allows that process to continue: craving or ignorant wanting (taṇhā) → clinging (upādāna) → “I/me/mine” → dukkha. This same process can be seen through the five aggregates (pañcakkhandhā), a traditional analysis of experience into five broad categories: body, feeling tone, perception, mental fabrications (saṅkhāra) — here understood as accumulated conditioning from past experience, including memory, and the tendencies it produces — and consciousness. When clinging takes hold of these aggregates — treating them as “I,” “me,” or “mine” — the suttas speak of the five clinging aggregates (pañcupādānakkhandhā). Seeing them as anattā — with no enduring soul or essence to be found among them — undermines that appropriation. In practical terms, cessation means no longer taking experience up or holding on to it as “I,” “me,” or “mine.”

In SN 56.11, the fourth Noble Truth is the Noble Eightfold Path (ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga), also identified as the Middle Way (majjhimā paṭipadā). It is introduced as avoiding two specific extremes: indulgence in sense pleasures and self-tormenting asceticism. In the broader practical reading followed here, “middle” is not a compromise between extremes, but a way of practice that does not get caught in them. In the practical approach followed here, the Path is understood functionally as the Eightfold Noble Method: not merely a road to somewhere else, but a set of interdependent skills to be brought into operation here and now.

The Eightfold Noble Method

For practice, the eight factors are grouped here as paññā → samādhi → sīla, reversing the more common pedagogical order sīla → samādhi → paññā. This is a functional ordering, not a rigid chronology: wisdom provides direction through seeing and orientation, mental training puts that understanding to work, and wholesome conduct expresses and reinforces it.

Paññā — wisdom: seeing and orientation

• sammā-diṭṭhi — Right Viewing (conventionally Right View): not merely a fixed viewpoint, but an activity of looking and investigating. What is happening? Is dukkha present? What is feeding it? What leads out of it?
• sammā-saṅkappa — Right Attitude (conventionally Right Intention or Resolve): orienting the mind toward renunciation or letting go, non-ill-will, and harmlessness.

Samādhi — mental training

• sammā-sati — Right Mindfulness: remembering to wake up, become present, and look. In lived practice, sati is the entry point: without remembering, the rest of the method does not get started.
• sammā-vāyāma — Right Effort: preventing or abandoning what is unwholesome and arousing or maintaining what is wholesome.Here, “wholesome” and “unwholesome” are functional terms: wholesome qualities tend away from dukkha and toward non-greed, non-ill-will, and clear seeing; unwholesome qualities tend toward dukkha through grasping, aversion, and confusion.
• sammā-samādhi — Right Unification of mind (conventionally Right Concentration): gathering the mind so it is clear, coherent, stable, and fit for work.

Sīla — expression in conduct

• sammā-vācā — Right Speech: classically, avoiding false, divisive, harsh, and idle or harmful speech; more broadly, speaking in ways that do not create unnecessary harm or confusion.
• sammā-kammanta — Right Action: classically, abstaining from killing, taking what is not given, and sexual misconduct; more broadly, bodily conduct guided by non-harming, honesty, and respect for others.
• sammā-ājīva — Right Livelihood: making a living in ways that do not depend on harming, exploiting, or deceiving others.

When the mind sees clearly, is not being driven by immediate dissatisfaction, and is unified and at ease, there is less basis for harmful speech or action. Sīla therefore increasingly becomes the natural expression of a well-functioning mind rather than merely a set of rules imposed from outside. Wholesome conduct, in turn, leaves the mind less agitated and easier to unify.

How the method operates in practice

MN 117 explicitly describes sammā-diṭṭhi (Right Viewing), sammā-vāyāma (Right Effort), and sammā-sati (Right Mindfulness) as running and circling together. In the practical reading followed here, sammā-saṅkappa (Right Attitude) and sammā-samādhi (Right Unification of mind) complete this recurring operating cycle. Paññā comes first as orientation: it provides the understanding of what to look for and which direction leads away from dukkha. In lived practice, however, sati is the entry point: the method becomes operative when mindfulness returns and remembers to look.

sammā-sati → sammā-diṭṭhi → sammā-vāyāma →
sammā-saṅkappa → sammā-samādhi ↺

1. sammā-sati — remember / wake up: become present and remember to look.

2. sammā-diṭṭhi — look / investigate: see what is happening and whether it is leading toward dukkha or away from it.

3. sammā-vāyāma — change: make the needed change — prevent or abandon the unwholesome; arouse or maintain the wholesome.

4. sammā-saṅkappa — shift the attitude: recognize and enjoy the success — “this can be done.” A useful practice cue, echoing the suttas’ recurring recognition of Māra, is “Aha, I see you, Māra.” Here, Māra can be understood as the traditional personification of the forces that keep dukkha going. Recognizing them clearly is itself already a wholesome change. That positive feedback strengthens confidence, non-ill-will, harmlessness, and letting go.

5. sammā-samādhi — unify: the mind gathers, settles, and becomes fit for work.

The loop can begin again whenever sati returns. With repetition, these functions become more reliable and less intermittent. Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood increasingly express the same well-functioning mind and, in turn, support it.

Successful change is recognized and enjoyed. Repeated successful practice strengthens saddhā — confidence grounded in experience: “I can do this.” This strengthens Right Attitude, making Right Effort increasingly natural and the mind easier to gather into samādhi.

“Right” renders sammā: functioning correctly or fittingly in the direction of dukkha-nirodha. In the practical approach followed here, ānāpānassati provides the training in which this method can be repeatedly exercised in lived experience.

The practice structure of MN 118

The Four Establishments of Mindfulness

MN 118 explicitly connects mindfulness with breathing to the Four Establishments of Mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna), organized around four domains:

1. body (kāya);
2. feeling tone or hedonic valence (vedanā);
3. mind and its present state (citta);
4. phenomena as objects of mind (dhammas).

The sixteen steps that follow are arranged in four groups of four — often called tetrads — corresponding to these same four domains.

Satipaṭṭhāna is conventionally translated as “foundation of mindfulness.” Here, “establishment of mindfulness” follows the more likely derivation from sati and upaṭṭhāna. Sati carries the sense of remembering or keeping in mind, while upaṭṭhāna literally has the sense of standing near, being present, or attending. The emphasis is therefore not on four static foundations or fixed meditation objects, but on establishing and keeping mindfulness present in relation to four domains of experience: body, feeling tone, mind, and dhammas.

The Seven Factors of Waking Up

MN 118 further connects the development of these Four Establishments to the Seven Factors of Waking Up (bojjhaṅga):

1. mindfulness (sati): remembering to look;

the three activating factors:

2. investigation (dhamma-vicaya): look;
3. energy (viriya): change;
4. delight (pīti): congratulate yourself, celebrate, enjoy the success;

the three calming and balancing factors:

5. settling (passaddhi): calming and relaxing without losing alertness;
6. unification of mind (samādhi);
7. balance (upekkhā), commonly translated as equanimity.

SN 46.53 gives this grouping a practical function: investigation, energy, and delight help arouse a sluggish mind; settling, unification of mind, and balance help settle a restless mind; mindfulness is said to be always useful.

Bojjhaṅga is conventionally translated as “factor of awakening” or “factor of enlightenment.” Here, “factor of waking up” is used to retain the ordinary, active verbal range of the root budh, from which bodhi derives: waking up, noticing, realizing, and coming to understand. “Waking up” is not confined here to a distant attainment to be reached later. These are qualities that can be recognized, developed, and balanced in present experience as the mind becomes increasingly awake to what is happening. The wording also keeps the emphasis on an ongoing function of practice rather than suggesting a separate, exalted state beyond it.

Mindfulness is the conventional rendering of sati. Here the emphasis is on its recollective function: remembering to look again at what is happening.

Upekkhā is commonly translated as equanimity and is rendered here more practically as balance. It is not indifference or emotional flatness, but a dynamic balance, like developing sea legs on a moving ship.

As MN 118 makes explicit, these factors are not presented as a separate practice added on afterward; they emerge through the development of the same ānāpānassati training. In the broader early-discourse framework, each can be recognized when present, developed as needed, and balanced according to the condition of the mind: mindfulness remembers, investigation looks, energy makes the needed change, delight takes joy in having made the needed change, settling calms, samādhi gathers the mind, and balance keeps the mind steady while remaining responsive to what is needed. With practice, this functioning becomes increasingly established and less intermittent: the qualities return again and again, whenever they are needed.

Knowledge and release

MN 118 presents knowledge and release (vijjā-vimutti) as the culmination of this progression. It further says that the Seven Factors of Waking Up fulfill knowledge and release when developed dependent on seclusion, fading away, and cessation, ripening in relinquishment — closely echoing the final movement through fading, cessation, and relinquishment in the fourth tetrad. MN 117 presents a closely related completion of the path by adding right knowledge (sammā-ñāṇa) and right release (sammā-vimutti) to the eight factors of the Noble Eightfold Path discussed above. In this practice-oriented reading, knowledge includes seeing what leads to dissatisfaction and what leads out of it, here and now. Release is the freedom that comes from letting go of what causes dissatisfaction. In practical terms: when you can see what weighs the mind down, you can put it down.

With this wider context in view, the text now turns to the core training of MN 118 itself.

The Training

Setting up the practice

Pallaṅkaṃ ābhujitvā is commonly rendered as “sitting cross-legged.” This practice‑oriented rendering does not prescribe a particular position of the legs. What matters is a stable, comfortable posture that supports alertness. Pain is not a goal of the training, and there is no need to force the body to remain in a particular position. Adjust the posture, stand up, or move when needed, while maintaining mindfulness.

“An empty dwelling” need not be understood narrowly as a literally empty building. In modern practice, it can be any place where one can temporarily withdraw from activity and social interaction to train: an unused room, a quiet corner, or even a few minutes alone in a busy setting. With practice, the same training can increasingly be carried into less secluded situations as well: the mind can remain relatively undisturbed even when the surroundings are not.

In the later explanatory section of MN 118, the Buddha explicitly ties the development of ānāpānassati to mindfulness and clear knowing: he says there is no development of ānāpānassati for someone whose mindfulness has slipped and who lacks clear knowing. In this practice-oriented reading, the breath therefore serves as a recurring occasion to remember, look, and carry out the training.

The sixteen-step training

First tetrad: kāya (body)

In steps 1–2, the practitioner “knows” the breath as long or short (pajānāti). From step 3 onward, the wording shifts to “he trains” (sikkhati). The first two steps therefore begin with recognizing the breath as it is, rather than with an instruction to make it long or short.

In this practice-oriented reading, that knowing is not merely passive observation. It opens a practical exploration of breathing and its effects on body and mind. The practitioner can recognize the present breath, notice what it does, and, when useful, deliberately change the way of breathing and learn from what follows. A fuller breath can help energize and re-establish mindfulness, while a relaxed out-breath can help the body settle. Other ways of breathing can likewise be explored and used according to the situation. This applies both during periods deliberately set aside for practice and throughout ordinary life, where the breath repeatedly provides an opportunity to remember, look, and train.

Sabba-kāya is rendered here as “the whole body.” It is also traditionally interpreted as experiencing the breath as a whole: the entire breathing process. Buddhadāsa reads the step as experiencing “all bodies”: both the breath-body and the physical body, especially the way they condition one another. MN 44 identifies in-and-out breathing as the bodily formation (kāya-saṅkhāra); step 4 is therefore rendered as calming the breath, with “and relaxing the body” added as a practice-oriented clarification.

Second tetrad: vedanā (feeling tone / hedonic valence)

Pīti is commonly translated as rapture, and sukha as pleasure or bliss. Here, pīti is rendered as the more energized delight of success; sukha as a quieter quality of ease and satisfaction, with a felt sense of being safe, secure, comfortable, and settled.

In MN 44, citta-saṅkhāra is identified as vedanā and saññā. Vedanā is commonly translated as feeling; here it refers more specifically to feeling tone or hedonic valence: pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant (adukkhamasukhā vedanā, often translated as neutral). This third category can be subtle. MN 44 says that neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant feeling is pleasant when accompanied by knowledge and unpleasant when not accompanied by knowledge. In practice, when the feeling tone is not clearly recognized, uncertainty or confusion can arise about whether the experience is pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. Confusion here therefore refers to not clearly knowing the feeling tone, rather than to a fourth kind of feeling.

Saññā is perception or recognition: how experience is identified. Together, feeling tone and perception condition the state of mind. With mindfulness, they can be known clearly without automatically determining the response: pleasant feeling need not be grasped at, unpleasant feeling need not be pushed away, and neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant feeling need not remain obscure. The aim is to calm their effect on the mind so it is not simply carried along by them.

Third tetrad: citta (mind)

“What is the mind like right now? What is its attitude toward what is happening?” This can include noticing whether the mind is affected by greed or free from greed, by aversion or free from aversion, by fear, delight, satisfaction, or other present qualities.

Gladdening the mind does not mean forcing yourself to feel cheerful. It means actively bringing the mind into a wholesome, satisfying state. The change is made in a friendly, nurturing way rather than by criticizing or fighting with the mind. When an unwholesome state is noticed, there is no need to blame yourself for having it; noticing it is already the beginning of the change. Wholesome qualities or thoughts can be deliberately brought to mind, while unwholesome ones are recognized and let go. This can be as simple as recognizing when nothing needs to be fixed in this moment; enjoying the breath and a relaxed body; appreciating the absence of an immediate problem; or congratulating yourself for noticing and letting go of an unwholesome state. Rather than waiting for circumstances to make the mind happy, you learn that the mind can be gladdened here and now.

Samādhi is commonly translated as concentration, and is rendered here more specifically as collecting and unifying the mind. MN 44 identifies cittass'ekaggatā (often translated as one-pointedness or unification of mind) as samādhi. Concentration here need not mean narrowing the mind or holding attention under tension. The emphasis is on a mind that is gathered and unified: clear, sharp, stable, harmonious, coherent, and fit for work. Samādhi is not about compressing the mind or forcing it into a fixed state, but about bringing it together so that it functions well.

In the systematic progression, the first three tetrads develop the conditions for a mind increasingly fit for work; the fourth puts that capacity to work in observing change and release.

Fourth tetrad: dhammas (phenomena as objects of mind)

Here, dhammas are phenomena as objects of mind: what the mind takes up for investigation, not merely thoughts or mental contents. In this practice-oriented reading, these objects can include the breath and body, feeling tone, and mind as they are seen in terms of change and release. These four steps move from change to release:

• anicca: noticing that phenomena change (anicca is commonly translated as impermanence);
• virāga: noticing fading away, including the fading of attachment to what is changing;
• nirodha: noticing cessation — when the attachment or reaction is no longer being fed and has stopped;
• paṭinissagga: relinquishing: no longer taking up or holding on to what has faded or ceased, especially as “I,” “me,” or “mine.”

Virāga is often translated as dispassion, but here the emphasis is on fading away. This is not coldness or indifference, but the cooling of attachment and reactivity. Observation here is not passive: the sequence moves toward loosening, cessation, and relinquishment.

Practice Guide: The Sixteen Steps at a Glance