Continuing “Returning to Tranquility: The Eightfold Way as One Thread” (Part 1)
1 | What I Left Unwritten
In Chapter 5 of my previous piece, Returning to Tranquility: The Eightfold Way as One Thread, I described right mindfulness as four layers (the four foundations of mindfulness, satipaṭṭhāna): body, sensation, mood, and thought. How one actually observes those four layers, though, I had planned to leave for a separate article.
In the language of the Eightfold Path, it seems natural to think of meditation practice as moving from right effort (the four right efforts) to right mindfulness (the four foundations of mindfulness). In the previous piece, too, I wrote that as right effort quiets the mind, right mindfulness begins to work.
But when I reread Venerable Punnaji’s explanations, I found that the practice of observing the four layers is also placed as the third of the four right efforts, “cultivate.” In other words, the four foundations of mindfulness are contained within the four right efforts. Then why does the Eightfold Path set up right mindfulness separately from right effort?
As I checked this question one step at a time along the lines of his explanation, two things came into view.
The first is that Punnaji explains the “cultivate” of the four right efforts and the four foundations of mindfulness as the same practice.
The second is that perhaps this same practice, explained from the side of purifying and quieting the mind, is right effort, and explained from the side of seeing how experience comes about within that stillness, is right mindfulness.
This second point is not something Punnaji states explicitly. It is my own reading, after working through the original text. In this article, I take right effort as the side that purifies and quiets the mind, and right mindfulness as the side that observes how experience is constituted, simply as a way of understanding the practice. It is not a complete account of the relationship between the two path factors. Nor does it mean that, in practice, the two always work separately in time. Punnaji himself says these stages are not separate things but belong to the same flow of the Eightfold Path.
So I would like to write this article in two parts, as an actual set of steps. Part 1 covers right effort, the practice of purifying and quieting the mind. Part 2 covers right mindfulness, the practice of seeing how experience comes about within stillness.
First, let me separate into two what I wrote as one piece in the previous article, following Punnaji’s explanation.
The reaction that occurs within us consists of four parts: perception, interpretation, emotional arousal, and action to release tension. These four can be read as occurring in roughly this order.[1]
By contrast, the entry point for noticing that reaction is the four observations that begin with the body: body, sensation, mood, and thought (the four foundations of mindfulness). In the Eightfold Path article, I lined these two up as if they were one chain. The “decision” in that chain also seems to belong less to the reaction itself than to the side that, after noticing, delays the reaction and chooses a response. I will touch on this in Part 2.
2 | Within the Sequence of the Eightfold Path
The Eightfold Path runs: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Meditation practice lies in its latter half, in the movement from right effort to right mindfulness.
The four efforts of right effort are called the four right efforts (sammappadhāna): prevent, remove, cultivate, maintain.
This is a systematic effort to purify the mind. In Punnaji’s explanation, when it is accomplished well, the purified mind enters the first jhāna and goes on to the second, third, and fourth.
Punnaji also explains the practice of the Eightfold Path in three stages.
The first is selective thinking, which is learning to remove the five hindrances.
The second is right effort, which corresponds to samatha. Samatha is the practice of quieting the mind.
The third is the seven factors of awakening, which correspond to vipassanā. Vipassanā is the practice of seeing how experience comes about. The seven factors begin with mindfulness (sati) and end with equanimity (upekkhā) in the fourth jhāna. I will cover these in Part 2.
What this first part deals with is the second stage: right effort.
3 | Prevent and Remove: From Outside to Inside
The first two, prevent and remove, are not about observing. They are about drawing attention back from external objects.
“Prevent” means pulling attention away from the images we perceive through the eyes, ears, and so on. “Remove” means pulling attention away from images in memory and from imaginings about the future. That is how Punnaji explains them. As long as we direct attention to an external object, we keep reacting to it.
The attention drawn back in this way is then turned not to the external object but to our own reaction to it. By “reaction” I mean the emotional response that arises unconsciously to what we have seen, heard, or remembered.
Punnaji reads the Pāli parimukhaṃ satiṃ upaṭṭhapetvā as drawing attention away from the surroundings and placing it within. He also says that this attention placed within is not “mindfulness” in the sense of merely paying attention to whatever is happening.
4 | Cultivate (1): Body and Sensation
The third of the four right efforts, “cultivate,” corresponds to the practice of observing the four layers (the four foundations of mindfulness). In Punnaji’s procedure, once you notice a reaction, you begin the four observations not from the mind but from the body. Please read this as a practical order based on his instruction, not as a definition from the suttas. There is also no need to hold to a particular posture or form, such as sitting or walking.
Observing the body (kāyānupassanā). First, observe the body: the beating of the heart, trembling hands, muscle tension, quickened breathing, sweat. Noticing these is the first layer. A reaction also shows up as movements of the body and as the number of breaths.
Observing sensation (vedanānupassanā). The next layer is sensation (vedanā). By sensation I do not mean the everyday word. I mean the distinction of whether the reaction that has appeared in the body is felt as pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. Punnaji explains that tension is felt as an unpleasant sensation, relaxation as a pleasant one, and the various movements of the body as neutral sensations. For example, I think the movement of some part of the body that we make unconsciously is felt as a neutral sensation.
Throughout this, the breath is used not as an object of concentration but as a cue for relaxing the body and quieting the mind. Punnaji explains that the breath also tells us how agitated or how calm we are. With that in mind, when exhaling, let go of the whole body as if setting down a heavy load you have been carrying. When inhaling, let the breath come in freely, as if opening a sluice gate and letting water flow in. Place awareness not on the breath itself but on feeling the whole body from the inside.
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Relaxing the breath and trying to get rid of a tension you have noticed are, I think, different things. First, simply know that there is tension there. The sensation itself, and the urgency of “I have to do something about this,” are close to each other yet separate.
5 | Cultivate (2): Finding Mood and Interpretation
Observing mood (cittānupassanā). The third layer is mood.[2] Here you observe what kind of emotion is contained in that mood: anger, fear, craving, worry, or perhaps the mood itself is stillness. Instead of continuing to think “I am angry,” you know “an emotion called anger has appeared.” That may be one way to put it.
Observing dhammas (dhammānupassanā). The fourth layer is thought, especially the interpretation of what meaning we gave to an event. Punnaji explains that this assigning of meaning is the beginning of emotion, and something to be seen and changed. What we notice is not the event itself but the meaning we gave it.
In this first part, however, I stay at the point of finding and noticing the interpretation. How to examine an interpretation once found, and how to deal with it, is the subject of Part 2.
Incidentally, the contemplation of dhammas is generally explained as the stage for observing the five hindrances, the five aggregates, and so on. Here Punnaji explains it as the observation of thought (interpretation). In his explanation, observation of the five aggregates is placed after entering the fourth jhāna.
6 | Maintain: Throughout the Day
Punnaji explains that when we direct attention to an external object, we react to it, and when we take attention away from it, the reaction stops and settles. He also says that a reaction continues only while it is unconscious, so as long as we keep noticing the reaction, the stopped state is maintained.
I do not think this means, however, that a reaction disappears the moment we notice it. Punnaji himself says the reaction “begins to cease.” Noticing may weaken the automatic flow in which a reaction continues, but emotions and physical tension do not necessarily vanish at once.
Punnaji explains this with the image of a heated frying pan. A hot pan does not cool immediately when the fire is turned off. It cools gradually, over time.
This inward attention is not only for when we are seated. Walking, standing, sitting, lying down: Punnaji explains that it continues in every posture, throughout the hours we are awake.
It is necessary to set times for meditation in advance and not let observation lapse within those times, but to keep observing all of daily life is difficult. When I notice a reaction, I return once more to “from outside to inside.” That much seems realistic to me.
7 | When Stillness Arrives
As the reaction becomes conscious, Punnaji says, it begins to cease, the body relaxes, and the mood settles. He also says that right effort brings purity and stillness of emotion, at least to the level of the first jhāna.
This stillness, though, is not the end point. “Cultivate” is the third part of right effort, and at the same time the first of the seven factors of awakening. Within stillness, we look at how experience comes about. That is the subject of Part 2.
Only on a water surface where the waves have settled can we see the sand at the bottom. Stillness, I think, is the place we need in order to see.
Notes
[1] On the order of the reaction
Ven.Punnaji lists the parts that make up a reaction in this order: perception, interpretation, emotional arousal, and action to release tension. Of these, the order of the latter part is stated explicitly in his text. Every emotional arousal produces muscle tension in the body, and that tension makes the body uncomfortable. To escape that discomfort, the body unconsciously tries to release the tension through action: getting what one wants, removing what one dislikes, fleeing from what one fears.
The first part, the order from perception to interpretation and from interpretation to emotional arousal, is something I read from the order in which he lists them and from his explanation that “meaning-making gives rise to emotion.” I have not been able to confirm a sentence that explains this relationship as a temporal sequence. In this article I read it as “occurring in roughly this order.”
Sources: Ariyamagga Bhavana Level II (pp. 17, 27, 32), Level III (p. 95)
[2] On mood and emotion
“Mood” is the English word Punnaji uses for the Pāli citta, a word commonly translated as “mind.” He divides the activities of the mind into three: perception (viññāṇa), conceptual thought or cognition (mano), and “emotional mood, that is, affect (citta).” The mind has an affective side and a cognitive side. The affective side deals with emotions, and the cognitive side with thinking and reasoning.
Mood has a range from calm to agitation. He also states that the limbic system regulates “differences in mood and temperament such as calmness and excitement.” He gives the example of a baby in a good mood, whose body is relaxed and mind quiet, and who, when it starts to cry, becomes tense in body and disturbed in mind.
Punnaji does not define mood and emotion in contrast to each other, but from how he uses the words, emotion can be read as a particular movement contained within that mood. The observation of mood is explained as “seeing the kind of emotion that mood is carrying: anger, fear, craving, or worry” (my translation), and also as awareness of “the emotion within the mood, or the stillness of the mood, or whatever else the quality of the mood may be.”
Sources: Ariyamagga Bhavana Level I (p. 27, the baby example), Level II (pp. 27, 33, 43), Level III (p. 102, limbic system)
[3] Main sources for each chapter (printed page numbers of Ariyamagga Bhavana)
Chapter 1: Level III pp. 30, 32 (cultivate = satipaṭṭhāna; the stages are not separate things)
Chapter 2: Level III pp. 20–21 (the three stages, the seven factors of awakening); Level II p. 30 (from the first jhāna to the fourth)
Chapter 3: Level III pp. 30–31; Level II pp. 31–32 (prevent and remove, parimukhaṃ, the difference from mindfulness)
Chapter 4: Level II p. 27, pp. 32–34 (the four observations, the distinction among sensations, the breath)
Chapter 5: Level II pp. 27, 30, 33; Level III p. 31
Chapter 6: Level II pp. 29–30
Chapter 7: Level III pp. 32, 127; Level II p. 28
The Japanese renderings of the terms were translated by RUMIKO with the help of AI.
