Thanks Mike, much appreciated.
Let us see the Suttas as a whole, a holistic approach. A Sutta can explain & as well be explain another Sutta. Take it as being just another knot in the whole webbing. Take it as one individual knot, one can be a strong knot but he cannot understand the whole.
The cluster approach is recommended by the Buddha in MN 95. The argument that ‘body’ in the first tetrad refers to the physical body is supported by the fact that the first foundation of mindfulness (MN 10, DN 22) refers to the physical body. The Anapanasati sutta is a precursor to the Satipatthana sutta.
Bhikku Analayo has explained on this in his article " The Ancient Roots of the U Ba Khin Vipassanā Meditation" based on Chinese version of Dhyānasamādhi Sūtra translated by Kumarajiva.
One of the works translated by Kumārajīva is the Dhyānasamādhi Sūtra, a miscellany of various texts related to meditation. Among others, the Dhyānasamādhi Sūtra has preserved a treatment of the sixteen steps of mindfulness of breathing, and it is among the instructions given in this treatment that the evidence we are looking for can be found. In relation to the third step of mindfulness of breathing, which is to “experience the whole body” while breathing in and breathing out,the Dhyānasamādhi Sūtra instructs that awareness should be developed in the following way:
“Mindfulness [during] all breaths pervades the body, [while] being as well mindful of the out- and in-breaths. Completely contemplating the inside of the body [during] all out-breaths and in-breaths, awareness pervades and reaches inside the body up to the toes and the fingers and pervades every pore [on the surface of the body], just like water entering sand, aware from the feet to the hair [while] breathing out [and in], pervading every pore as well, just like water entering sand.”
According to the Visuddhimagga, however, the instruction to experience the whole body while breathing in and breathing out should be understood to refer to the “whole body of the breath”, in the sense of being fully aware of the beginning, middle, and end stages of each breath. The word kāya, used in the Ānāpānasati Sutta’s instruction for the third step of mindfulness of breathing, can have a considerable range of meaning in other Pāli discourses, where it does not invariably refer to the physical body. Such instances can be found, for example, in the expression sakkāya, literally “own body”, an expression which in the discourses stands for all f ive aggregates and not only for the physical body. Another example is the expression “to touch with the body”, kāyena phusati, used to describe the experience of the immaterial attainments. Since to enter any of the immaterial attainments requires leaving behind all types of form or experiences related to form, in such contexts kāya stands for an experience made with one’s “whole being”, not with the “physical body”. More closely related to the present issue is a passage in the Ānāpānasati Sutta itself, which reckons the breath as a “body” among bodies, thereby providing an antecedent for the explanation given in the Visuddhimagga.The next step of mindfulness of breathing, which is the fourth step in the overall scheme of sixteen steps, instructs to calm the “bodily formations”, kāyasankhārā. According to an explanation given by the nun Dhammadinnā in the Cullavedalla Sutta, the breath is such a “bodily formation”, so that the Visuddhimagga’s understanding of kāya as representative of the breath would also work for the fourth step.Yet, the instruction to contemplate the whole “body”, kāya, is part of one way of developing kāyānupassanā, “contemplation of the body”, a contemplation of which the other instances listed in the Satipatthāna Sutta are clearly concerned with aspects of the physical body, not with the body of the breath. In view of this, it would be more natural to assume that the expression kāya used in the third step of mindfulness of breathing should also refer to the physical body. Besides, when one considers the instructions on mindfulness of breathing from a practical perspective, Buddhaghosa’s explanation becomes less convincing. The task required during the first two steps of mindfulness of breathing is to know if the breath is short or long.Thus the cultivation of full awareness of the whole length of the breath, and thereby implicitly of its beginning, middle, and end stages, is already undertaken during the previous two steps. Unless one is aware of the breath from beginning to end, one would not be able to know if the breath is long or short. On following the Visuddhimagga’s explanation, then, the third step of mindfulness of breathing would simply repeat what has been practiced earlier. As the scheme of altogether sixteen steps of mindfulness of breathing depicts a clear progression of practice, one would expect the third step in this scheme to introduce a distinctly new feature for contemplation and not merely repeat what has already been covered in the two preceding steps.
ancientrootsUbakhin medtn Analayo.pdf (173.1 KB)
I think it should be a whole body. Without a body there is no breath at all.