The Ten Recollections

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Each of ten recollections, developed and cultivated, goes the whole way — not part of the way, and not only in combination with the others.

The ten

Recollection of the Buddha, of the teaching, and of the Saṅgha — the three refuges as objects of sustained attention. Recollection of one’s own ethical conduct and of one’s own generosity: reviewing what one has actually done. Recollection of the deities, which in practice means recollecting the qualities that brought them there, and so is a third form of the same self-review.

Then four that are more familiar to modern practitioners: mindfulness of breathing, recollection of death, mindfulness of the body, and recollection of peace — upasamānussati, bringing to mind the quality of extinguishment itself.

The list is worth reading for its range. Three items are devotional, three are a review of one’s own conduct, three are attentional, and one takes the goal as its object. Any presentation of Buddhist practice as consisting of one technique has to reckon with the fact that the canon’s own first list of what to develop contains all four kinds.

The word that makes the claim strong

Ekantanibbidāya — Sujato’s “leads solely to” — means one-sidedly, without exception, wholly in that direction. It is not “among other things contributes to.” And what it leads to is the full sequence: disillusionment, dispassion, cessation, peace, insight, awakening, extinguishment.

That sequence is a technical one and it is worth reading slowly. Nibbidā, translated “disillusionment,” is the turning away that comes from seeing clearly rather than from being disappointed — a distinction worth making explicitly, since the English word suggests a sour mood. From there: fading of desire, cessation, peace, direct knowledge, awakening, and extinguishment. The whole path, attached to each of ten items.

Why the devotional entries are the interesting ones

Modern presentations of Buddhism tend to be comfortable with breathing and the body and uncomfortable with recollection of the Buddha or of the deities, which look like piety rather than practice. This chapter gives all ten the same predicate, which makes the discomfort worth examining rather than indulging.

The practical content of buddhānussati is not adoration; it is sustained attention to a specific list of qualities — that the Blessed One is perfected, fully awakened, accomplished in knowledge and conduct, and so on through a fixed formula. What it does is give a mind that cannot settle something both concrete and elevating to settle on. Recollection of generosity works the same way from the other end: it takes something the practitioner has actually done and lets the mind rest in it.

It is also worth naming where this leads historically. Recollection of the Buddha is the seed from which the entire East Asian Pure Land practice of 念佛 grows — the word translates buddhānussati before it means anything about recitation. A tradition that eventually put nearly everything on one of these ten items is doing something the chapter authorizes, whatever else one makes of it.

Using the list

Practically, the most useful thing about this chapter is that it is a menu rather than a sequence. Nothing in it says to do them in order, or to master one before beginning another. Each is stated as complete on its own.

For a class, the productive exercise is to read all ten and ask which one a person would actually reach for at three in the morning. The answers vary enormously between people, which is the point of there being ten. A teacher who offers only the one they personally practice is narrowing the canon on their students’ behalf.

Key terms