Anussati · Pāli: anussati; Skt: anusmṛti

Anussati means recollection: deliberately calling something to mind. The Pali Text Society’s dictionary glosses it “remembrance, recollection, thinking of, mindfulness”, gives the Sanskrit as anusmṛti, and compares it with sati. In the Aṅguttara Nikāya’s Book of Ones (AN 1.296–305) the Buddha names ten such practices, each in a one-line discourse of its own: the Buddha, the teaching, the Saṅgha, ethical conduct, generosity, the deities, breathing, death, the body and peace. Not all ten carry the word. Breathing, death and the body are -sati compounds, “mindfulness of”, so the familiar name, the ten recollections, smooths over a distinction the Pali keeps.

The first six recur as a set. In AN 6.10 the Buddha tells Mahānāma the Sakyan that they are what a noble disciple who has reached the fruit frequently practises. Each has a fixed formula; the Buddha’s begins “That Blessed One is perfected, a fully awakened Buddha”. While the disciple recollects, “their mind is not full of greed, hate, and delusion”, and joy, rapture, tranquillity and bliss follow until the mind “becomes immersed in samādhi”.

Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga, a commentary rather than canon, lists the ten among its forty meditation subjects, with the last four in a different order: death, the body, breathing, peace (III.105). It explains the word itself: “Mindfulness (sati) itself is recollection (anussati) because it arises again and again”, and offers a second reading beside it, mindfulness that is proper for one gone forth out of faith (VII.1). It also grades them, which AN 6.10 does not: eight of the ten, all but the body and breathing, bring access concentration only, not full absorption (III.106).