Eightfold Path by Bhante Punaji

While listening to Norah Jones - One Fligh Down ...


I am transcripting this : - Teaching of Buddha : 8 Fold Path by Bhante Punaji.


I hope am able to give you all accuriate information. For any question you may visit Brickfield Buddhist Maha Vihara to enquire. :P ... just don't quote my name .. >:)



From Bro Sumitta : My Spiritual Journey about 4 Noble Truth . I continue with 8 fold path.


It is important for us to know the correct path and right effort to follow to lead to Nibbana.

This pick is from Bhante Punaji Meditation Retreat Booklet:

The aim of retreat is to purify the mind. The reason is simple - by purifying the mind one becomes GOOD, HAPPY AND WISE. The Individual creates society, and society creates the world. Therefore, we begin with the individual, and that is : - YOU. The impurities to be eradicated are the self-centred emotions.

Very often, in the West, we hear people raising doubts, when we speak of purifying the mind. This is partly due to certain concepts prevalent in the West. It is partly due to some Western religious beliefs and partly due to some concepts in Western psychology adn biology.

Some religious beliefs have maintained that human beings can never be pure. for only God is pure. There is a common saying in the West, " To err is human, but to forgive divine." In addition, there has been a historical reason for this Western attitude of mind. A religious community called Puritans, who were also supposed to purify the mind, had created some negative feelings in Western Society.

Some modern Western psychologists such as Sigmund Freud have thought that emotions are natural and instinctual, and that emotional arousal is built into our system, and therefore emotion cannot be eliminated. Even modern biological thinking supports this concept. They think that emotion is necessary for the preservation of life in animals, including humans.

It was Buddha, 25 centuries earlier in the East, who showed the way to attain a perfectly pure mind. Many of his disciples achieved this mental purity thought the natural human technique taught by the Buddha. There is this oft quoted saying of the Buddha : " The mind is essentially pure, it is polluted by adventitious impurities. Ignorance of this fact keeps people suffering, by preventing them from purifying their minds. " Here the mind is obviously compared to water. For water is a pure substance, which get polluted due to foreign matter falling into it. It is due to this reason that water can be purified thought a proper technique of meditation. It is this saving technique of the Buddha that you will learn during retreat.

By following this technique conscientiously, you can verify it in the crucible of your own experience. This special Technique of the Buddha is called The Sublime Eightfold Way (Ariya atthangika mangga). It is a supernormal technique because its aim is to bring normal unhappiness to a supernormal level of happiness, unlike modern psychotherapy, which can only bring abnormal suffering to a normal level of unhappiness.

1) Right Thoughts / Harmonious Perspective

2) Right Understanding / Harmonious Orientation

3) Right Speech / Harmonious Speech

4) Right Action / Harmonious Action

5) Right Livelihood / Harmonious Life style

6) Right Effort / Harmonious Exercise

7) Right Concentration / Harmonious Attention

8) Right Mindfulness / Harmonious Equilibrium

It begins with the Harmonious Perspective. It is based on a principle discovered only recently in the West by Cognitive Psychologists. This important principle is that our views determine how we feel, and how we feel determine how we act. when our views are changed, our emotions change; when our emotions change, our behavior changes accordingly. This principle may also be stated as :

As we think , so we feel; as we feel, so we act

To change our behavior, we have to change the way we think and feel. This is important to remember when we study the Sublime Eightfold Way, and also when we want to change any habit.


Meditation will be understood as SELECTIVE thinking, or choosing the thoughts we think. Normally, thoughts come into our minds unconsciously. The moment we become conscious of them, they STOP. If we are carried away by whatever thought that comes into the mind, we remain unconscious. This is what is called day dreaming. Mediation, on the other hand is being awake and noticing the thoughts that come into the mind. It is also consciously selecting the thoughts we think.