The paper explores the role of body in Epictetus’sDiscourseand BuddhistSatipaṭṭhāna Suttaand underscores the importance of embodied practice in Epictetanaskēsis(‘training or exercise’). It argues that the important but unrecognized role of the body in Epictetanaskēsiscan be better understood if we introduce in some perspectives of early Buddhism. From the angle of spiritual exercise, early Buddhism maintains that the meditator ought to experience the body directly and contemplate the body as an impermanent physical object, and not identify oneself with it. And based on the insight into the reality of the body and the cultivation of bodily awareness, the meditator can detach himself from the transient phenomenon and remove the unwholesome states of mind. Similarly, for Epictetus, by training our impression on the body and regarding the body as an indifferent thing but not the true self, one may successfully attain the truth of the body conditioned in various social contexts and then realize detachment and freedom. Therefore, in both early Buddhist meditation and Epictetanaskēsis, the embodied practice of contemplating the body as it actually is, is also a spiritual exercise to understand the phenomenal world and detach from external things and to examine and tranquilize the internal world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]